Living-learning houses are part of West Campus recommendations

By Jacquie Powers

A faculty-led committee charged with conceiving a plan to transform West Campus has given university officials a series of recommendations designed to create an intellectually grounded residential community -- based on residential houses or colleges -- attractive to sophomores and upper-class students.

The report, "Transforming West Campus," was drafted by a committee of faculty, students and staff convened last March by Susan H. Murphy, vice president for student and academic services. It outlines a new vision for academic and social programming for residences on West Campus, which in the future will house sophomores and upper-class students. (A full text of the report is available electronically at http://www.campuslife.cornell.edu/Residential_Initiative/west.html.)

The committee includes chair John L. Ford, the Robert W. and Elizabeth C. Staley Dean of Students and professor of policy analysis and management; Ross Brann, the Milton R. Konvitz Professor of Judeo-Islamic Studies and department chair, Near Eastern Studies; Edna R. Dugan, director of finance and administration, student and academic services; Eugene C. Erickson, professor emeritus of rural sociology; Donald H. King, associate director for community development, campus life; Isaac Kramnick, the R.J. Schwartz Professor of Government and department
chair, government; Michelle A. Schaffer, junior and Student Assembly vice president of public relations; Karen M. Taxier, senior.

The West Campus initiative is part of a comprehensive plan, outlined by President Hunter Rawlings last fall, to improve the residential living and learning experience on campus and to provide freshmen with a unifying introduction to university life. Rawlings has made improving the living and learning environment at Cornell one of his top priorities. His residential plan is designed to provide greater connection between the academic aspect of campus life and the social and residential aspects.

"I find this report thoughtful and thought-provoking," Rawlings said. "It is just the kind of thinking we need to enhance undergraduate education at Cornell."

Officials recently unveiled designs for structural changes to North Campus, where all freshmen will be living under the new housing plan. And a committee of faculty, students and staff is soon to be appointed to develop a similar vision, or concept paper, for programming on North Campus.

"I am grateful for the hard work the committee put into researching and writing this report," Murphy said. "They spent a considerable amount of time investigating ideas and options at some of our peer institutions and from that research proposed recommendations that they believe are suited to our unique campus. We are eager to get input on these recommendations and look forward to hearing from members of the Cornell community."

The committee stated that its "principal concern has been to articulate a transformative vision of residential life at Cornell in the next century for upper-class students who choose to live on campus, recognizing that transitional and implementation plans need to be developed soon."

The committee also noted there should be important differences in the vision plans for West Campus and North Campus. "In the freshman year developmental issues do, and should, dominate residential life, receiving more attention than academic exploration in the residence halls. For sophomores, juniors and seniors in university housing, however, the balance shifts from developmental concerns to intellectual community -- hence our core recommendation is faculty and graduate student leadership in the newly configured living-learning houses.

"When added to the plans for an all-freshman North Campus, these recommendations offer a comprehensive undergraduate residential experience in the next century for Cornell upper-class students who wish to live on campus. This experience will make available increased faculty-student interactions for those undergraduates who desire it, so that the two groups come to know each other beyond the formal interactions of the classroom, and so that students can be drawn more fully into the intellectual life of the university," the committee said.

The report made the following recommendations:

·Institute a post-freshman year living environment on West Campus that has faculty leadership (reflecting all of the undergraduate schools and colleges) as its primary principle.

·Develop living-learning houses, each with faculty leadership and involvement. (The "personality" of the living-learning houses will evolve and change over time as developed by the house faculty head and student residents.) These houses might be given the names of well-known Cornell professors, such as Carl Becker and Alice Cook.

·Redesign and/or construct four or five living-learning houses on West Campus to support the concept of faculty leadership and involvement. These houses should have appropriate facilities for encouraging interaction among members of the community. Facilities should include living quarters for faculty and staff, as well as graduate students, for each living-learning house. In addition, each house should have communal dining, seminar rooms, offices for staff, office space for faculty fellows who do not reside in the house and social space. Creative use of technology to support the community in its pursuit of the educational mission should also be provided.

·Recruit distinguished Cornell faculty and provide those who participate as live-in faculty "house heads" or in other important residential roles with compensatory rewards (e.g., course relief, stipends) for their leadership involvement. Develop methods of encouraging faculty engagement through providing resources for innovative teaching.

·Develop a Faculty Living-Learning Council with general responsibility for governance of the living-learning experience. This council should report to the president to link more closely the living-learning experience with the broader mission of the university.

·Charge the newly formulated Living-Learning Council to work with colleges and departments to integrate academic life (teaching and advising) into the West Campus living-learning experience. Provide residentially based support for specific classes or academic programs, such as tutorials or computer-based services, as needed.

·Encourage and facilitate student leadership and governance within each living-learning house through a joint faculty/student/staff governance structure.

·Provide in all the living-learning houses sophomore programming that focuses on the upper-class options available at Cornell (selection of major, study abroad, honors and/or research connections). In addition, provide linkages to public service, career services and internship possibilities.

·Provide common community space for the West Campus neighborhood of fraternity, sorority, co-op and living-learning houses that includes classroom, social meeting, theater, library, music and recreation/fitness facilities to meet students' needs. This common space will provide the opportunity for a shared upper-class experience for the various houses in the West Campus neighborhood.