Residential Colleges: Reforming American Higher Education

• About the Editors
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Ordering Information

ABOUT THE EDITORS

Don E. Robertson is currently the Vice President for Student Affairs and Assistant Professor of Business Administration at Murray State University. He has previously held administrative positions at Marshall University, Georgia Southwestern College, and the University of Tennessee. While at Marshall University, he taught the College Personnel classes in the Counseling Department. In addition, Dr. Robertson has taught leadership development courses at both Murray State University and Marshall University. He holds faculty rank in the College of Business.

Dr. Robertson is active on university committees and in community activities. He also is an active member of several professional education associations. Dr. Robertson provided the leadership and coordination in creating and developing the Residential College system at Murray State University. During the summer of 1997, he was the co-director of the Oxford Round Table on Residential Colleges held in Oxford, England.

PREFACE

Since the late 1980s institutions throughout America have been seeking to develop residential colleges and other residential academic units as part of a series of educational reforms intended to improve undergraduate education. Institutions as diverse as Wisconsin-Madison, Missouri-Columbia, Virginia, Appalachian State, Southern California, and Murray State are all experimenting with their own versions of residential college models and structures. So prevalent is the residential life experimentation today that it would be difficult to find a college campus that was not contemplating or attempting some model of residential life colleges, houses, or living and learning centers.

Most of these institutions have turned to residential colleges as one means of counteracting the increasing lack of institutional community and isolation that many students experience on large campuses. For many institutions developing residential colleges within the larger university setting is an experiment that has never been attempted on their campuses. For other institutions, the employment of residential college or house schemes to enhance student experiences is merely a return to an earlier era of educational practices that were devised decades ago.

Unlike several newer higher education reforms, the residential college concept has a rich history in American collegiate development. Often these reforms took place against the backdrop of constant and even dramatic change in higher education. Throughout the late 1800s and early 1900s numerous public and private institutional leaders attempted to emulate the residential college structures of the English universities of Oxford and Cambridge in order to address growing concerns about expanding enrollments and collegiate dissatisfaction in America. The success of earlier residential college initiatives at some universities eventually influenced others to implement similar institutional reforms driven by the residential college concept.

Recently, new interest in the revival of the residential college concept has emerged on both large and small university campuses throughout America. Influenced by earlier American collegiate achievements and centuries of success experienced by the English universities of Oxford and Cambridge, many institutions have turned to the residential college philosophy as a means of reforming existing undergraduate education.

Despite conceptual similarities among residential living concepts, many different residential college structures have emerged during the last decade. Some institutions have created only a limited number of residential colleges or academic units within dormitories to address specific student populations such as 'honors' students or first and second year students. Other institutions have transformed entire campuses into residential colleges involving the majority of undergraduate and graduate students. Due to the wide variety of residential academic experiments being conducted and the growing nation-wide momentum to adopt the residential college concept as a means of improving undergraduate education, the Oxford Round Table developed a forum to improve collaboration between institutions and administrative leaders in charge of overseeing the development of these important collegiate reforms.

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