by: Jayme Millsap Stone
Director of Learning Communities

UCA’s Tradition of Engaged Learning

Some of the best ideas happen when folks talk to each other.  In 1980, Dr. Norbert Schedler and then president, Jeff Farris, were discussing what could be done to meet the needs of a growing student population with exceptional abilities. How about setting up a special program for gifted students? Various models were looked at, faculty input was asked for, and by 1982, the UCA Board of Trustees approved the idea.  The Honors College was born with 60 students, $600, and Dr. Schedler as its founding director.  Soon, Rick Scott, the current Director of the Honors College, joined the work, as did many other faculty and staff. 

The Honors College progressed for the next 13 years, growing in numbers, courses, and national prestige, when in 1995, Dean Sally Roden and then President Win Thompson were talking about all the students with exceptional abilities whose academic and social needs could not be met by the Honors College.  How about setting up a program for students of many talents? As a result of these discussions, a feasibility study, and faculty recommendation, Hughes Residential College (HRC) opened in AY 1996-97 as Arkansas’ first living and learning community with faculty-in-residence. An apartment was built and aquatic ecologist Dr. Mike Mathis moved in.

Of course, when an idea works, there is an ethical obligation to extend the same opportunities for engaged learning to others.  Consequently, not only did the Honors College continue to develop, but State Residential College (SRC) was added in 1999.  Our current President Lu Hardin said, “let’s do some more of these living/learning communities,” and so Minton Residential College (MRC), and Short/Denney Residential College (S/DRC) were added in 2004 and 2006, respectively.  Designs for a new Honors Complex are currently underway and there will be a faculty-in-residence added to the program in 2008-09. Living and learning in community generates success. About 85% of Honors College graduates go on to graduate or professional schools. Residential College students earn significantly higher GPAs and graduate at rates 10-12% than non-residential college students, and both Honors and Residential College students find their nook, their cranny, their niche, their place among a community of scholars. Living/learning community students develop close relationships with their peers, are challenged by student-centered faculty, and have the honor and opportunity to give back to their communities by guiding a new class of frosh.