HEHDlines September 2009

New HEHD Living and Learning Community in Full Swing


A Living and Learning Community dedicated exclusively for HEHD students opened it's doors for the first time at the beginning of the school year.  



For anyone choosing to earn a degree in Education, Nursing, Public Health Science, or Parks, Recreation, and Tourism Management, The College of HEHD Living Learning Community is designed to give every student a learning experience that is both social and unique to your experience at Clemson University.  



The HEHD Living Learning Community provides students with an extraordinary experience in a living environments that focus on learning in and outside of the classroom. These communities are ideal contexts for reaching deeper levels of learning by allowing you to become entrenched in the processes of critical thinking, understanding contexts, engaging with other learners, and reflecting and acting.



All Living Learning Communities have common hallmarks. Each community encapsulates a program that has clear academic objectives and mission. All students live together in a discrete residence hall. And each community has dedicated staff, curricular and co-curricular programming and resources specifically for the particular program of choice.

According to The National Study of Living-Learing Programs website, research data from a 2004 study illustrates the advantages that Living Learning Community participants enjoy over their non-community counterparts, including:

•     Dialogue with peers about academic and social issues
•     Have a mentoring relationship with a faculty member
•     Find their residence hall climates to be academically and socially supportive
•     Experience a smooth transition to college
•     Utilize critical thinking skills
•     Be more committed to issues related to civic engagement
•     Drink less and have fewer negative consequences of drinking

Subsequent studies in  2007 and 2008 have yielded additional data from almost 120,000 students at more than 50 colleges and universities.  Many of the schools surveyed in these most recent studies also participated in the 2004 study, providing valuable longitudinal data to assess student outcomes over time. These studies indicate that students are more likely than their peers to:

•     Experience a smooth transition into their new environment
•     Build, maintain, and utilize healthy social networks
•     Nurture relationships with faculty mentors
•     Perceive their residence hall to be academically and socially supportive

In 2002, the Professional Golf Management concentration with the College of Health, Education, and Human Development's Parks, Recreation, and Tourism Management (PRTM) degree program began their own living learning community housed in Benet Hall.  All freshmen enrolling in the Professional Golf Management program live on the same floor and share common coursework as well as specifically design social activities promoting student learning both inside and outside of the classroom.  The program continues to serve as the leading living learning community on campus recently earning accolades from President Barker for their 100% retention rate for students living in their community.  Additionally, the Call Me Mister program within the Eugene T. Moore School of Education also has an existing living learning community.  The Call Me Mister community is structured differently where all students enrolled in the program, regardless of academic standing, live together.  

Data from all of the living learning communities on campus (supported by data from similar programs at other institutions) have shown that the program retains students at a higher rate than non-participants, the College of Health, Education, and Human Development is proposing expanding on the solid foundations begun in the existing living learning communities on campus including the PRTM Professional Golf Management and Call Me Mister within the College.   Research conducted by Arthur Chickering promotes the "Seven Principles of Good Practice in Undergraduate Education" including encouraging practices such as increasing student-faculty contact, increasing active learning while also promoting high expectations.  Living learning communities are excellent ways to seamless yet low cost ways to implement these good practices for undergraduate students.  

Beginning in the fall of 2008, The College of HEHD began implementing programs that will prepare students to become professionals who, in addition to content knowledge and skills, hold these six dispositions:

•     Possess skills necessary to work collaboratively with individuals, families, and community groups from diverse backgrounds;
•     Possess skills necessary to lead effectively and creatively in complex and changing environment and to become agents of change;
•     Demonstrate flexibility, resilience, adaptability, caring, ethical decision-making, and ethical conduct;
•     Possess knowledge of organizational behavior and how governance systems work;
•     Engage in professional development for continual growth and life-long learning; and
•     Attain a global perspective and level of knowledge and skill necessary to succeed in a complex global economy.

The College of Health, Education, and Human Development (HEHD) Living Learning Community will foster the College's six learner dispositions by housing HEHD freshmen in Mauldin Hall that will be a research, teaching, and implementation site with a focus on beginning to develop graduates who will be "human development specialists".

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