The development of a five-level dormitory is expected to implement social as well as academic aids, more so than just being a living space. This building known as Keene State College’s first official Living and Learning Community (LLC) will be available for incoming first-year students for the Fall 2016 semester.
KSC senior Sam Anderson said that more on-campus opportunities for living arrangements could help curb binge drinking. He said, “I’m of the opinion that we should increase on-campus housing because I think it might address some of the issues that the college leadership sees in the student culture.” He continued that this new building could also help the school financially, especially with enrollment on the lower side. “If more students are living on campus, more students are paying housing,” Anderson said.
Other students find the decision risky. KSC first-year Ashley Lindelof said she doesn’t understand why the school is putting money in a place they may not profit from. “So do they expect a huge class to come in? When I heard that I was like ‘wait, you have no clue how many people are going to decide to come’,” she said.
Associate Dean of Student and Director of Residential Life Kent Drake-Deese said the decision to construct this new dormitory was made a couple of years ago. “Primarily it was to decompress first year students [living conditions] because prior to this year, sixty-six percent of our first-year students lived in unnatural triples; you know, a double being made into a triple,” he said.
KSC first-year Faith Pudlo said it’s nice that she doesn’t have to worry about living in a triple since enrollment is down. Pudlo said, “As the school is now, [another dormitory] might not be necessary, but I think it’s a good idea if the school wants to promote more people to come. It never hurts to have more housing.”
Drake-Deese said he does believe this new building will attract incoming students. “The hope with a living and learning community is that [it’s a] place where you’d like high school seniors to look at and say ‘wow that looks interesting, I’d like to do that,’ because it’s a different approach to learning than you find on our campus anywhere else,” he said.
Drake-Deese said that the place where it might be the most similar is with honors housing. “The [current] living and learning community we [do] have is Pondside 3; we call them LLC, but they are not as robust as these programs are that we’re talking about [now],” he said.
Deese continued that what will make this LLC different is that it will combine the efforts of both a faculty member and residential assistance for each community involved.
He said, “The professor can think about ways to teach in interesting and dynamic ways because they have a residential staff working with them to present this to make this happen. You get a more enriched and emerging experience.”
Some students said that the living experience they have now is not the best.
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Lindelof said she lives in Monadnock and said that it’s not the best dorm to be in. “I think they should probably put some of the money into some of the buildings they already have,” she said.
Associate Director for Facilities and Business Operations Jim Carley said he sympathizes and agrees. He said, “We do what we can to upkeep the [older] buildings. [Monadnock’s] a classic example of a building that’s really old and tired and the issue becomes [that] when you have a structure that is really past its prime you have to make a decision: do you spend the money to totally renovate it or do you tear it down?”
Carley said finances are a big component of the decisions made. “There’s only so much you can do to renovate them. You can make them nicer, but you can’t really turn these buildings into living learning communities,” he said.
He said a lot of the older buildings don’t have what the school hopes for since living and learning community dormitories are the future. “The goal is [to] eventually to have all of the students who come into the college be able to be part of the living learning community. In order for us to be able to do that, we need to be able to have buildings that are capable of doing the real formal learning component,” he said.
Carley said, “This type of component is really geared toward first-year students. [This building is] for our freshmen students to really get them accumulated into the college [lifestyle].”
Carley said that the school is also aware of upper-classmen who want to stay on campus but have a difficult time doing so. “The goal is that there will be more residence halls like that on campus of that style, maybe not that size but that style,” he said.
Director of Residential Life Drake-Deese said that the college has to be weary of expenses. “You know you can imagine a building costing $32 million a pot so to put all first year students in one of these [buildings] would be expensive. So I think this is where we’re starting,” he said.
He continue to say that research supports LLCs and has show that they can encourage higher GPAs and help a student feel more connected to a college and have a more fulfilling social life. He also said that this type of building opens the door for more field trips and out of classroom experiences. “It’s a much more dynamic way of learning both academically and socially,” he said.
Dorothy can be contacted at dengland@kscequinox.com