Talking Stick - July/August 2015 - 59

10,000-foot level, connecting with our
academic partners in the respective
colleges. We are fortunate to have a fulltime academic coordinator who oversees
our LLC programs as well as faculty
involvement, tutoring, and outreach
programs. I learned some time ago that
if LLCs are everyone's responsibility they
end up being no one's responsibility.
You need to have a point person for your
department who serves as the driver to
coordinate planning, communication,
and assessment.

Tyler Page: The University of
Missouri (MU) has a long history, more
than 20 years, of offering students
the opportunity to live in learning
communities, and, at this time, it is
actually the only option students have if
they want to live with us.
Students may choose to live in a
general learning community (GLC)
or a thematic learning community
(TLC). The GLCs are just that: a general
approach to the educational development
of our residents based on their needs.
They focus on general issues affecting
student success, such as study skills,
time management, involvement, and
leadership. The TLCs are focused on
one specific major, academic interest,
or common learning theme (such as
engineering, journalism, nursing,
fine arts, career exploration, and
social justice). The community plan
is similar to a syllabus: a fluid, yearlong compilation of experiences for
each learning community. By building
on what is currently enhancing our
students' academic experiences, they
are designed to create value-added and
outcome-based community experiences
for next year's students while fostering
ongoing community development and
learning for this year's students, with an
emphasis on the particular needs of that
community.

Shana L. Warkentine Meyer:
At Missouri Western State, livinglearning communities have been
revamped and are experiencing a
resurgence. In 2003, we were one of
the Four-Year Founding Institutions
in the John N. Gardner Institute for
Excellence in Undergraduate Education's
Foundations of Excellence program,
with an award-winning focus on
living-learning communities. Changing
leadership and budget cuts hit us hard,
and, over time, the program changed
to an academic one, with no residential
requirement. Leadership of the learning
communities shifted to a faculty
member who is provided release time
and payment for his or her service as the
learning community coordinator.
The student affairs and residential life
departments are now looking to build on
our persistence rates, and revamping our
living-learning communities is one of the
strategies we are hoping to build upon.

TP: Additionally, and perhaps most
notably for MU, we offer residents the
opportunity to enroll in a residentially
based Freshman Interest Group (FIG).
FIGs began at MU in 1995 and were
modeled after programs at the University
of Oregon in Eugene and the University
of Washington in Seattle that were
focused on commuter students. At our
university, FIGs are small groups of
students (approximately 20) who live
on the same floor and co-enroll in three
general education classes and a seminar
class that focuses on the theme of the
FIG and transition to college.

SM: The real take-away here for me
is the need for evolution. As these
programs grow and expand over time,
our students change as well. New
teaching methods and technologies
emerge. How do we continually evolve
while remaining true to a core mission?
And how do we bring everyone along as
those changes occur?

TS: Specifically considering your position
and role, what are the deliverables that
you are most looking for from a livinglearning community? Is it retention?
Recruitment? Something else?

SM: In my position as vice president,
I am first interested in creating
positive student experiences; these
experiences should be built around
measurable learning outcomes. It's
also important to look at many aspects
through assessment. What is the faculty
members' experience in the LLC? What
are the programmatic outcomes? What
are the students' personal outcomes?
Without thorough assessment, how do
we know how well we did, what areas
could be improved upon, or even how
we got where we are? It is important that
we can tell our story. These outcomes
will be different for every campus.
Certainly persistence and success are
always important, but knowledge and
personal development are two important
outcomes that can help contribute to the
over-arching persistence.
TP: I agree with Shana. At MU we are
also seeking to impact the lives of our
students in a meaningful way as guided
by our mission, both the institutional
and residential life missions. However,
without measurable outcomes,
intentional programing, and rigorous
assessment we cannot speak to our
impact. As a mid-manager, I see Shana's
series of questions as my responsibility.
My position affords me the longevity
to build the needed partnerships with
faculty and academic staff, the oversight
and/or supervision of skilled staff to
ensure the administering of strategic
outcome-based programming, and the
experience to effectively assess the merit
of our work. At the institutional level,
the primary discussion is retention,
which means we, in residential life,
must be prepared to share how we are
contributing to it. In consideration of
roles, Shana is flying at 30,000 feet as a
VP, while I am dusting the crops.

JULY + AUGUST 2015

59
Talking Stick - July/August 2015

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