Foundational Documents

Students spend a majority of their time in college outside of the classroom, particularly in their living environments. Research has shown that valuable learning takes place in these residential settings. "Residence halls have the potential to challenge and educate students as they connect their learning experiences to their living realities” ( Schroeder & Mable, 1994, p. 1).

Students rarely differentiate between the in-class and out-of-class college experience. A residential curriculum serves to bridge the gap that exists between academic affairs and student affairs on many university campuses. It does this by connecting our work to the academic mission of the institution and building similar structures for creating and assessing learning opportunities for students.

Since the emergence of student affairs as a field in higher education, there have been frequent calls for professionals to embrace their roles as educators. The Student Personnel Point of View (1937 & 1949), the Student Learning Imperative (1996), and Learning Reconsidered (2004) and Learning Reconsidered 2 (2006) all challenge student affairs professionals to do more to support student learning in their daily work. These foundational documents, edited and published by our professional organizations, provide the basis for what our curricular work can be. Below are three articles that have taken the ideas presented in the foundational documents to build into a concept of how this can be practiced by staff in on-campus residential environments.

Curricular Approach vs. Traditional Programming Model

For staff who have worked in a traditional programming model, the concept of residential curriculum can sometimes be strange or challenging. A residential curriculum shifts from undergraduate, student centered design of learning and replaces it with professionally designed, sequenced, and scaffolded learning experiences that do not simply rely on attendance and participation at stand-alone events. The residential curriculum is tailored to the unique needs of the campus student population through multiple educational strategies and engages content experts across campus as partners for various learning opportunities.

A brief explanation of the differences between a traditional programming model and a curricular model can be found in the table below:

The Ten Essential Elements of a Curricular Approach

The introduction of the residential curriculum as a model for student learning in residential environments is structured around 10 essential elements. These elements ensure that a department is designing something to meet the needs of students on their specific campus, are implementing effective pedagogy for student learning, are utilizing students, staff , and partners in appropriate ways, are collecting valuable data to demonstrate learning, and are continually reviewing and updating their work to be more impactful.

At Clemson University, we strive to integrate the 10 Essential Elements into our Residential Experience Model. Later this summer, we will spend more time focusing on each element and discussing the ways in which REM is connected to each element.