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“From Just Residential to Resident Intentional: Developing a Curricular Approach to Residence Life”
Residence halls constitute one of the most unconsidered and untapped educational venues on college and university campuses. Hundreds of thousands of undergraduate students live in a residence hall environment each year. The basic physical design and shared experience of the concentrated population affords a student experience that most have never seen and will likely never see again later in life. Opportunities exist in this setting for dialogue, personal exploration and philosophy testing with peers, and direct access to differences. These opportunities are rare in our society and should not be squandered.
Residence hall staff members’ efforts to be educators in this arena have traditionally occurred through the implementation programming models. RAs are responsible for organizing a number of programs on various topics and encouraging their residents to attend. The success of programming is often judged by attendance. However, contemporary vision statements such as The Student Learning Imperative and Learning Reconsidered invite educators to frame their practice around student learning goals. These vision statements provided a context for reconceptualizing educational programming in residence halls at the University of Delaware.