The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 45, No. 1 - 12

James C. Stoner

A signiﬁcant amount of research, much of
which is now dated, has focused on comparing
the varying academic outcomes of residential
and commuter students. Students who live on
campus tend to persist and graduate at higher
rates than do their commuter student counterparts (Pascarella & Terenzini, 1991; Tinto,
1993). The residence hall experience also
positively inﬂuences academic self-conﬁdence
(Pascarella, 1985) and overall cognitive growth
and development (Schroeder & Mable, 1994).
Although not the only measure, grade
point average (GPA) is one easily quantiﬁable
student success outcome. However, despite the
demonstrated positive outcomes in academicrelated areas, the actual impact of living in
campus housing on student GPAs is questionable. While some research suggests that
residential students earn higher GPAs than do
both commuter students (Campbell & Fuqua,
2009) and students living in Greek housing
(Long, 2014), López Turley and Wodtke (2010)
note the lack of supporting evidence:
Given the positive relationship between
living on campus, student involvement,
and several outcomes closely linked to
academic performance, it is quite reasonable
to hypothesize that students who live on
campus will also earn higher GPAs than their
counterparts living elsewhere. However, the
weight of the evidence on this topic fails to
substantiate this expectation. (p. 508)
Housing departments aim to supplement
the residential social environment with academically aligned initiatives (López Turley &
Wodtke, 2010) that promote positive intellectual behaviors (Kuh & Hu, 2001). Several
housing-speciﬁc learning-centered initiatives

12

. . . the thought experiment presented
in this paper attempts to draw a
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course-speciﬁc, university-wide
supplementary instruction and the
unexplored area of course-speciﬁc
residence life programming.

(e.g., themed housing, living-learning communities, faculty-in-residence programs) have
become standard-and expected-practices
in the effort to support cocurricular learning (Shushok, Arcelus, Finger, & Kidd, 2013).
Unless higher education institutions have
heavily invested in broad application, such
initiatives have the most positive impact on
smaller populations of students (e.g., students
in the ﬁnite bed spaces allocated for particular
living-learning communities or students living
in a building with a faculty-in-residence); thus,
the overall academic gains experienced by
residential populations are necessarily limited.
One solution to broadly provide academic
support in an effort to raise residential GPAs
is enhancing the skills that all students use in
their classes (e.g., time management, study
habits, stress management). Since commonly
used transition-themed ﬁrst-year experience
courses often cover these skill development
areas (Zerr & Bjerke, 2015), another solution
may be to provide course-speciﬁc academic
support for residents similar to university-wide
Supplementary Instruction (SI).

THE JOURNAL OF COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY STUDENT HOUSING
The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 45, No. 1

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