I think we’re right, at the moment, in terms of creating a truly, true sort of
integration of residential and academic. We’re in the early stages and we’ve got
faculty and staff who are stepping forward who might be thought about as kind of
early adopters . . . and partly what [Mark] and I are doing is trying to create some
models of success so that other faculty and staff can see how this might actually
work.
Edmonds then began to discuss some of his perceptions regarding faculty
members and their ability and willingness to participate in co-curricular endeavors:
You know faculty on the whole, I think, uh, tend to see, tend to see the cocurricular
and the residential as separate from the academic and they actually are.
They love to think through how we’re going to program students on the academic,
in the formal academic curriculum and, you know, have no hesitation to want to
put in place all kinds of requirements and things for students. But boy, when you
take them over to the residential, co-curricular, you get a whole range of views of
what is appropriate over there. And I think most faculty, probably, see it as
something that (1) is not their responsibility and (2) is something that shouldn’t be
heavily structured and programmed and so that’s partly, when I’m looking at it
from a faculty side that’s partly what you have to slowly change. And you won’t
change some faculty but you’ll, you can change those that are in the middle who
haven’t really, sort of, thought about it a whole lot and are more open to seeing
the virtues to a more integrative approach.