Momentum - The Magazine for Virginia Tech Mechanical Engineering Vol. 4 No. 4 Winter 2019 | Page 24
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only blend academic and student life, but also
enrich the university’s close-knit culture.
“Residential environments on college campus-
es are often very underutilized resources,” he
said. “When we move from sleep-eat environ-
ments to live-learn environments, this creates
the groundwork for the kind of education that
we espouse and deeply admire.”
Regarded as a pioneer in the field, Shushok
successfully instituted residential colleges at
Baylor University a decade before introduc-
published in the Journal of College and
University Student Housing, faculty princi-
pals overwhelmingly said their roles as LLP
mentors made their work more rewarding
and additionally enriched their family lives.
“The transfer of knowledge goes both ways.
I learn a lot from the students,” said Bohan-
non. Bohannon leads approximately 300
students as faculty principal in the Leadership
and Social Change Residential College, which
focuses on integrating sustainability, social
responsibility, food equality, and environmen-
tal justice into daily life.
“My interactions with the students make me
a better teacher in the classroom and help me
be the instructor and advisor I wish I’d had as
an undergraduate,” he said.
A family away from home
Students living in the Honors Residential
College are universally effusive when it comes
to their living-learning experience with the
Tarazagas.
Pablo serves up
breakfast - for dinner
- just one of the ways
in which the Taraza-
ga's open their home
to more than 300
student members of
the Honors Residential
Commons in East
Ambler Johnston.
ing them at Virginia Tech. He’s published
numerous studies that affirm the benefits of
living-learning environments—benefits that
include improved student academic perfor-
mance, co-curricular engagement, persistence
toward graduation, and overall well-being—
and he co-authored one of the first studies to
examine the faculty benefits.
Virginia Tech remains relatively unique
among peer land-grant research universities
for embracing residential colleges. The Res-
idential College Society, founded in 2014 at
the university, has blossomed into a national
organization of universities exchanging best
practices.
In a 2011 report, “Students as teachers:
What faculty learn by living on campus,”
Nathan Schlundt, a junior from Los Angeles,
said moving into the Honors Residential
College improved his entire outlook. “My
first year was kind of lonely because I was far
from home and hadn’t found my niche yet,”
said Schlundt, a computer science major, as
he waited in line at the Tarazaga’s Breakfast
for Dinner feast. “When I came to the HRC, it
was a total 180. Dr. T and his family produce
a great sense of community. They’re always
bringing us together and inviting us into their
home with events like this. Look at them—
they’ll cook three hours just for us.”
Tyler Pugh, a junior double-majoring in
industrial systems engineering and Spanish,
said Tarazaga has become a mentor. “I really
wish I had him as a professor,” said Pugh, who
is also a resident advisor in the HRC. “Dr.
Tarazaga is so invested in his students’ char-
acter. We get coffee every Saturday and talk
about anything and everything. Sometimes
I forget he’s an award-winning researcher. I