The Residential College Experience: Dr. Clark Maddux visits RCAH for his research on residential colleges in America

April 12, 2019

• Maddux has been conducting research on Residential College in America since December 2018.
• RCAH seems to draw on both the experiential learning values of Justin Morrill as well as building on current pedagogies surrounding community-engaged learning
• I'm just scratching the surface and will need to continue to develop these thoughts and verify what are so far very tentative conclusions.

Kara Dempsey '19

Dr. Maddux is the Director of the Watauga Residential College at Appalachian State University. He earned his PhD at Purdue University in American Studies, and was previously a faculty member at Tennessee State University and Austin Peay State University. In 2012, he was appointed the Director of Civic Engagement at Appalachian Stat University, and named Director of Watauga Residential College in 2014. Along with teaching, Dr. Maddux is a volume editor for Biblia Americana series, the first biblical commentary written in America, as well as the editor for Ezra through the Psalms and the co-editor for John and Acts. 

Dr. Maddux has been conducting research on Residential College in America since December 2018. This week he stayed in RCAH’s Snyder Hall to observe the students and operations in the college.

 

How has your stay in Snyder Hall been for you and your wife? Have you had any interesting experiences living among our students?

The stay in Snyder Hall has been delightful--it's been helpful to be close to the university archives and to the other residential colleges on campus.  Unfortunately, I haven't been able to have any interactions with the students beyond passing them in the hall, though I would have liked to.  We've spent every available moment either working with archival material or conducting interviews with alumni, faculty, and staff.

 

What was the genus of your work on residential colleges, and what do you hope to present when your work is complete?

This project--a history of residential colleges in America from the mid-century to the present--grew out of my own work at the Watauga Residential College at Appalachian State University.  When I was hired to direct our college, I knew almost nothing of residential colleges, and so I began conducting as much research as I could on the subject.  I quickly found the _only_ historical survey on the subject:  Alex Duke's 1996 Importing Oxbridge:  English Residential Colleges and American Universities.  Even when I first encountered this book 6 years ago, I was struck that there were no other attempts to study residential colleges historically.  

In the years since, I have continued to examine the histories of colleges at universities I have visited and determined this year to begin a follow-up to Duke's work.  Duke's focus is quite narrow, and limited to universities that identify themselves as operating within the Oxbridge tradition and attempting to duplicate it, as at Yale and Rice.  He ignores state universities such as Michigan State, and overlooks numerous other instances of collegiate learning.  So, I wanted to write a history that reflects the recent history of residential colleges, including those established in the middle 1960s, as were the colleges here.  These colleges reflect the time of their establishment and so have a different cast to them than do the colleges at Yale and Rice.  The colleges at Michigan State (and, for that matter, the one I administer at Appalachian State, as well as numerous others) emerge from the educational ferment of the 1960s--the student unrest of that period, and the desire of faculty and far-seeing administrators such as John A. Hannah to put in place innovative educational practices (interdisciplinary, experiential, and self-directed learning).  These influences led to a different kind of residential college from those at Yale and Rice that both reflected the concerns of the time, and often ran counter to prevailing trends. 

 

What other colleges are you studying in person?

So far, I've visited Virginia Tech, University of Central Arkansas, Rice University, University of South Carolina (Preston Residential), University of Oklahoma, and now Michigan State.  I've also invited my colleague at UNC Greensboro (Sara Littlejohn at Ashby Residential College) to partner with me on the project, and so I have gone there.  I will go next year to the University of the Pacific and plan to go to Murray State, University of Michigan, and Wayne State where there was a program called Monteith College, as well as to Truman State in Kirksville, Missouri.

 

Are there some of similar themes or characteristics you are finding common among residential colleges? 

In general, the definition I'm using for the project is that a residential college is (1) an intergenerational community of students and faculty, in which (2) learning is conducted intentionally both inside and outside the classroom (where co-curricular experiences are as important as curricular ones), and where (3) student self-governance is promoted and nourished.  

Those colleges established in the mid-60s and early 70s have tended to emphasize interdisciplinary modes of thinking, experiential (active) learning, and invested a great deal of effort in allowing students to guide their own learning, even when that meant dubious decision-making.  Certainly this seems true of Justin Morrill and Watauga, as well as Ashby at UNC-Greensboro and the now defunct Western College Program at Miami, Ohio, but there are some unique elements of the colleges at Michigan State that deserve study in their own rights.

In addition, colleges established beginning in the late 1990s and early 2000s reflect the growing administrative clout of student affairs in universities.  There are some other factors involved, but student affairs has capitalized on the idea of residential colleges and they have begun to pepper schools where they previously did not exist, but often without the depth of integration exhibited in previous decades.  So, colleges established more recently (such as at Virginia Tech) look quite different than those at Michigan or Michigan State.  

 

How did you hear about RCAH?

Anyone who studies this subject at any length will sooner rather than later learn about the RCs at MSU.  I first encountered the other colleges (James Madison, particularly) in reading from a few years ago.  You may not know it, but John Hannah, shortly after the establishment of Justin Morrill and just before James Madison and Lyman Briggs, was an influential thinker on this subject itself and he presented a paper at a "Conference on the Cluster College Concept" in 1967 at the Claremont Colleges in California called "The University as a Matrix" in which he examined the genesis of the colleges at MSU and outlined the University's vision for them.  

I didn't really begin to put all this together, though, until I was fortunate enough to meet Scot at last year's Residential College Symposium, where I was able to learn more about what RCAH was doing and was introduced to its organization.

 

Are there interesting things you have discovered or uncovered about RCAH and the other residential colleges at MSU?

What interests me about Michigan State is that even though Justin Morrill plays to type here, to some degree both James Madison and Lyman Briggs run counter to this.  James Madison appears very focused thematically, and more narrowly directed (for lack of a better term) than do the "freewheeling" experiments of Justin Morrill, Western College, etc.  Meanwhile, I've never seen a program quite like Lyman Briggs and its aim of creating a residential collegiate bridge between science and the humanities, and RCAH seems to draw on both the experiential learning values of Justin Morrill as well as building on current pedagogies surrounding community-engaged learning. So the colleges at MSU have done some very interesting things--John Hannah and the more recent establishment of RCAH speak to Michigan State's commitment to ideas of education as a lived enterprise in a rich variety of ways.

 

What unique traits have you found with RCAH?

The way in which it both reflects the values that led to the establishment of RCs in the 60s (student governance, experiential learning) as well as drawing on more recent pedagogical practices such as community-engaged learning.  

One of the most interesting elements I've learned since I've been here this week is the total integration of student affairs into the RC experience at MSU.  In most universities, my own included, student affairs either works in a parallel track with academic affairs and the faculty of a college, but much more rare is a cohesive and coherent practice in which student affairs and academic affairs are part of the same guiding principles and practice.

 

How about Justin Morrill College?

Justin Morrill is interesting both for its early instantiation of experimental pedagogies (Watauga College did not begin until 1972, and Western in Miami, Ohio in 1974) and the ways in which it _seems_ to have developed along lines that are replicated in other schools including those listed above:  there is a tendency in these experimental programs for students to identify themselves in contrast to the rest of the university, so they can adopt an "us-versus-them" attitude that comes to define the college as a whole (accurately or inaccurately).  This is not, of course, entirely unusual; it happens in Honors Colleges all the time, but in schools like Justin Morrill it is often associated with political activism, disruptive innovation, and generally progressivist and social justice ideas of education.  I don't know for sure that all these obtained in Justin Morrill but this website developed by a Justin Morrill alumnus could have as easily been created by a graduate of Watauga College or Western College.  As I've finally gotten ahold of the Provost's records, I see now the proposal to make Justin Morrill the college for lifelong learners was NOT to be a residential college, though it was hoped that Justin Morrill would become the hub of non-traditional students and continuing education on campus and would in that way continue as a college or school (division was also proposed). Had it been allowed to grow along these new lines, it would have done something original yet again and likely have established another model for other schools.  

 

What has been your favorite part of living among students and doing research here in RCAH and at MSU?

Archival work is always my great delight, and the materials at MSU were a treat, though there are some gaps that are interesting and may reflect different cataloguing practices over time or an absence of records.  I learned a great deal from the interviews I was able to conduct, but I fear I'm just scratching the surface and will need to continue to develop these thoughts and verify what are so far very tentative conclusions. 

 

When and where will your work be published?

I haven't sought a publisher yet, but Michigan State UP might be a good place, given the Michigan colleges I will study.  I'm drafting some articles and have submitted one, and been invited to deliver a plenary address at this year's Residential College Symposium in Baylor University in November.