Helping students link living and learning

The solving of puzzles – studying problems and coming up with the best way to work them out – is a source of endless fascination for Peter Quimby.

Whether the puzzle is a finer point of post-Soviet politics, the subject of his Ph.D. dissertation, or his new job in student academic affairs in the College of Letters and Science, Quimby derives great satisfaction from putting individual – and sometimes unrelated – pieces together to form an a strong, solid whole.

Helping undergraduates better fuse their in- and out-of-classroom lives occupies Quimby’s attention as he assumes his new position as the Chadbourne Residential College‘s assistant dean. Chadbourne seeks to create the atmosphere of a small liberal arts college.

Integrate faculty and staff into students out-of-class lives has worked well, observes Scott Seyforth, a Chadbourne building coordinator. “The more we know each other, the more likely we are to engage each other, and the more likely we are to learn from each other. This is how you build programs across boundaries.”

Agrees Quimby: “There’s no doubt that the classroom is a critical learning venue, but it’s not the only one. In a residence hall, teaching and learning can take place over meals in the cafeteria, during late-night discussions or through student- organized community service events.”

Residential learning communities are quickly becoming an important student housing option at UW–Madison, although such facilities remain relatively rare in the UW System. In addition to CRC, three other residential learning communities operate on the UW–Madison campus.

CRC planners also looked for inspiration to the Wisconsin Union’s student-driven programming and the Pathways to Excellence project, with which Quimby still works closely. The Pathways project supports initiatives that, like the CRC, help undergraduates take charge of their education.

Students initiate the vast majority of CRC activities and execute them through the CRC Forum, which is composed of all 670 Chadbourne residents. CRC committees are working on a resident-faculty debate series, a diversity festival and a hiking and camping trip to the Kettle Morraine. Next semester, a student-run speakers’ series exploring parts of the world or United States will be repeated.

The living-learning approach might sound ideal, but it’s often hard to realize, Quimby concedes. “Higher education sometimes divides students’ lives into parts, dealing with personal issues in one office, academic concerns in another, and residential matters in still another,” he says. “We’re trying to work against this part of the institution’s culture.”

Topping Quimby’s own to-do list is making sure there will be people to get what needs to be done, done, in the short- and long-term. “We need to develop a framework to help the CRC survive in coming years. There are no rigid hierarchies here, and we’ll need to be able to pass the baton when personnel turn over,” he says. “The CRC aims to show students what’s possible in life, and connections between people are necessary for that. All of us involved with CRC – students, faculty and staff – are doing our best to make sure those crucial connections happen, now and in the future.”