A Guide to Mustang Living Housing Handbook | Page 20

FACULTY IN THE HALLS
The Faculty in the Halls initiative began in the Fall of 2013 and has become an excellent
way to engage residents and faculty outside of the classroom. Currently this initiative
exists in the First Year Area and Upperclass Suites. Resident Directors will continue
to work with faculty through this initiative to engage residents in faculty programming
in the residence halls. Generally faculty hold evening hours once per week in their
designated buildings and offer at least one program each month.
Chip Rouse
I’ve been a Faculty in the Halls mentor since the program began five
years ago, and it is an incredibly engaging program for both faculty and
students. We provide one more connection for residents who might
need to reach out to someone who’s nearby and interested in them.
We get to know our residents, chat with them informally each week,
and provide any kind of help we can – including desperate button-
sewing and pants-hemming sessions! I especially love our tailgates
in the First-Year quad and am always happy to serve up hamburgers,
nachos, and hotdogs to those who come out for a meal.
Romas Laskauskas
The 2017/2018 academic year marks the end of my fifth year of
participation in this program. I was invited to participate by the Vice
President of Student Affairs and quickly dedicated myself to the initiative.
One of the initial goals of the program was to increase retention of first
year students as they transitioned to their second year at the University.
I partnered with a colleague as we “adopted” the Susquehanna hall as
our FiH project. During that first year we experimented with a number
of different activities to engage our first year students throughout the
academic year...the objective was to provide an additional point of
contact between student and faculty outside of the classroom. We
hosted birthday celebrations, ice cream socials, tailgate parties. and
meet and greets during “Move in Days”. We quickly learned that the
value was not in the event...the value was in hosting an interesting
enough event to get the students to participate so that we could
engage them in discussions regarding what they were experiencing at
Stevenson. This led to discussions about majors (particularly interesting
for many first year students who were “deciding”), about career interests,
about registration in interesting classes, about athletic activities, and
even about life in general. We learned that students really appreciated
getting to know their professors in other than just classroom or advising
scenarios. Most importantly we learned that today’s students need to
experience a “sense of belonging” in the new community they joined
when enrolling at Stevenson. I believe that the SU Faculty in the Halls
program meets that need on many different levels.
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