Practice Model

THE PRACTICE MODEL

For most of this century, the model for successful practice in the USA has been the Harvard Residential System – based largely on the British model of a faculty/student, living/learning community, and now widely copied by other private and public institutions alike. The key ingredient that they all have in common is a residentially based student peer group that lasts throughout the undergraduate years, combined with the simulation of an attentive faculty presence and academic support services that blur the distinction between academic and residential life.

The Harvard Model

All Freshman (about 1600) are housed on Harvard Yard in a way that ensures diversity; they eat meals together in the Freshman Union; and they receive orientation and academic advisement from a staff of "proctors." Proctors are graduate students who live in the freshman residences on the Yard and who are trained and supervised by a Freshman Dean whose office is located there. The Residential Proctor's top priority is academic advisement, and they provide the point of entry not only into the General Education Core, but also into the system of academic support services for those who need them.

After the Freshman Year, students enter a lottery to select one of the "Houses" where they spend their remaining three years. Each House has its own personality that seems to endure (despite administrative attempts at leveling), each has a "Faculty Master" who resides (usually with family) in a apartment in the House. Other faculty are "affiliated" with the House but do not live there. The Faculty Master and Affiliated Faculty are financially encouraged to join the students during meals in the house dining hall and to take modest responsibility for enriching the combined academic and social experiences of the students. (Each House has its own dining hall, meeting rooms, and library.)

University of California, Santa Cruz

The Santa Cruz campus was perhaps the first public university to be constructed on the British model. While enrollment growth, student diversity, and faculty preferences have substantially modified the original residential plan, most freshmen and sophomores still reside in one of the eight "theme" colleges that reflect their academic and social interests, and they retain their affiliation with that college even after they move off-campus and graduate. (Most colleges at Santa Cruz house 40% of their students.) Each college has an interdisciplinary core course, consistent with the college theme, that all freshmen are required to take (examples include self and society, history of the arts, values and change in society, world cultures, environmental studies, and ideas and imagination in the context of western culture). Other theme related interdisciplinary courses are offered by affiliated faculty as electives.

Each residential college provides academic advisement, and faculties include classrooms, faculty offices, and dining (although some colleges share a dining hall). Six to ten faculty apartments were designed into each college, but they are now occupied mostly by professional residence directors/advisors.

University of Michigan

The University of Michigan also was an early pioneer in this area, and currently has two types of residentially based academic programs within the larger undergraduate College of Literature, Science, and the Arts. First, a residential arrangement (called "The Pilot Program") at Alice Lloyd Hall is designed as a lower division "living-learning" community where students live in residence with Teaching Fellows and take general education and orientation courses together. The facility contains classrooms, offices, library, computer room, and dining hall.

Second, "Residential College," a separate structure of 850 undergraduates (although most elect to live off-campus after the sophomore year), features an interdisciplinary curriculum (although students can join any major in any of he LSA departments), a separate faculty (although most have joint LSA appointments and none live in he college), and a variety of facilities (including classrooms, faculty and administrative offices, art studios, music rooms, and an auditorium). This college within a college has about 40 faculty members associated with it, about ten professional staff, and admissions office, and even its own alumni group.

The Common element that merges the academic and student life cultures on these campuses is that most freshman share at least one course and receive heir academic advisement in the residential location, especially in the general education core. There are two variations on these themes that have been implemented by a large number of institutions. First, according to the resource center at the University of South Carolina, there are over 50 universities that have established non-residential "Freshman Colleges" or "University Colleges" that deliver general education courses and/or academic advisement and learning services. Second, another variation practiced by 00 campuses according to a recent survey, is a freshman seminar or orientation course that students share for a semester or a year.