Residence Halls for Engineering Students
Posted on October 27, 2006 Comments (1)
Three residence halls allocated just for engineering students at Southern Illinois University by Alexis Boudreau
The National Science Foundation in September granted SIUC $1.2 million to help fund the endeavor. Chrisman said more than half of the grant would go toward funding the peer mentors’ salaries.
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Nicklow said there would be approximately five students per mentor, and the mentor would attend at least one class per week with the students, along with providing tutoring and guidance.
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“The whole purpose is for them to interact with one another,” Lorentz said. “They will be able to live, learn and study together. It will enhance the student experience.”
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The new program will also involve faculty mentors, free tutoring available in the halls four or five nights a week and 36 practicing engineers who will periodically speak to students.
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Nicklow said there would be approximately five students per mentor, and the mentor would attend at least one class per week with the students, along with providing tutoring and guidance.
…
“The whole purpose is for them to interact with one another,” Lorentz said. “They will be able to live, learn and study together. It will enhance the student experience.”
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The new program will also involve faculty mentors, free tutoring available in the halls four or five nights a week and 36 practicing engineers who will periodically speak to students.
Some of the ideas sound good. I am skeptical of the advantage for completely separate dorms, but I believe in experiments so I like the idea of trying this. It will be interesting to see the results of this effort.
One Response to “Residence Halls for Engineering Students”
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November 1st, 2006 @ 11:57 am
This is a very discouraging story. “Theme halls” are a very poor educational idea, as I argue here:
http://collegiateway.org/news/2005-theme-halls
What these folks are responding to is the collapse of the social fabric of the campus, but holy cow, for 1.2 million I could set up an entire residential college and run it for 50 years. What an enormous waste of money.