Abstract
COLLEGE, to most students, is the entire experience, and learning is what happens everywhere there—in classrooms and coffee shops, in the residence hall and on the rugby field, through service and through singing. Students discover how they think and who they are as they interact with educators in both the humanities and the experimental sciences, student life and academic affairs, personal and professional settings. Fortunately, their desire to experience all that college has to offer allows them to see disparate parts of higher education—those that we as educators often divide for practical or political purposes—as inherently connected.
This issue of About Campus pays tribute to the benefits of interrelated practice on the part of student affairs educators and faculty, beginning with a piece written by Robert Nash in which he explores the benefits of interrelations among student affairs and faculty educators in teaching and learning as he describes how and why he co-teaches with student affairs professionals. Next, Frank Shushok, Jr., Douglas Henry, Glenn Blalock, and Rishi Sriram describe how Baylor University embodied principles of collaboration between student affairs and academic personnel in creating a new residential college and a faculty-in-residence program. ACPA senior scholars Jan Arminio and Dennis Roberts and senior practitioner Robert Bonfiglio discuss how student affairs educators can professionalize their practice. Adam Peck's In Practice article describes Saint Louis University's Week of Reflection, in which students were offered an opportunity to reflect on the changes they had experienced as a result of their learning. Chad Ahren, Helen-Grace Ryan, and Amanda Suniti Niskodé-Dossett's Assessment Matters article recommends a cultural audit to help advisors of student organizations gain insight into an organization's values and assumptions.
Students will readily remind us that their ability to learn does not shut off when the last class ends each day as they collaborate on a group project in a residence hall basement, demonstrate critical thinking while electing candidates for student government positions, or engage in inquiry by determining the best way to meet a community need. The educator's job is to recognize these learning activities and to teach where and when students are learning. They, and we, cannot afford less.