The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 44, No. 1 - 92

Kathleen Buell * Vaughn Love * Christina Yao

program increased the likelihood of students
to attend graduate school in STEM fields by
35.4% (Szelényi & Inkelas, 2011). LLPs are
an important practice for supporting student
learning, especially for specific student populations and academic disciplines.

. . . faculty who indicated high

STEM-based LLPs are also beneficial for
promoting student and faculty interaction.
For example, Sriram and Shushok (2010)
found that students in an engineering and
computer science LLP reported more meaningful faculty and student interaction than did
non-LLP students in the same majors. The
LLP fostered an intentional environment that
promoted increased interactions with affiliated
faculty, whose roles ranged from living in the
residential facility to participating in programming efforts. Student participants favorably
reported the combination of increased faculty
interaction and academic peer connections in
the LLP. As indicated by Sriram and Shushok,
faculty participation in LLPs, which includes
having informal conversations and discussing
academic issues outside of class, is a critical
component to the overall success of an LLP.

with both student affairs

Although faculty interaction is often highlighted as a critical component in LLPs, most
research emphasizes outcomes for student
participants. Thus, research on faculty perspectives was largely missing from the literature until a special theme issue on "Faculty and
Housing Academic Partnerships" was published by The Journal of College and University
Student Housing in 2011. In this issue, Kennedy
(2011) illuminated tenured and tenure track
faculty motivation for participating in an LLP.
Findings revealed the importance of academic
department support as well as the realities of
time constraints related to participation, all
92

motivation for involvement
were invested in the process to
collaboratively build community
professionals and, more notably,
with resident assistants .

of which affect the tenure and promotion
process for faculty. As a result, Kennedy offered
practical recommendations for student affairs
professionals to provide thoughtful strategies
for including faculty while remaining considerate of the barriers to their participation.
Similarly, faculty participants in Ellett and
Schmidt's (2011) study of creating communities in residence halls acknowledged the challenges related to time constraints and other
academic department responsibilities when
trying to build community with residential
students. Yet the findings were largely positive,
with faculty acknowledging the importance of
building community in residence halls. More
importantly, faculty who indicated high motivation for involvement were invested in the
process to collaboratively build community
with both student affairs professionals and,
more notably, with resident assistants. As a
result, faculty were able to develop stronger
relationships with students, which was also
related to faculty development as educators
(Sriram, Shushok, Perkins, & Scales, 2011).

T h e J o u r n a l o f C o l l e g e a n d U n i v e r s i t y St u d e n t H o u s i n g

The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 44, No. 1

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