Residential faculty serve a unique role on college and university campuses, living in community with students and serving as informal mentors for navigating the institution and academic life in general. Residential faculty programs have existed for centuries, offering undeniable, multifactorial, and lasting benefits: academic, cognitive, motivational, social, and even post-collegial benefits for students (Healea et al., 2015). Originating at the University of Oxford and University of Cambridge hundreds of years ago, residential colleges did not appear in the United States until the 1930s when Harvard adopted a Residential College Model. Today, this model is utilized widely at institutions like the University of Miami, Vanderbilt University, Southern Methodist University, Yale University, Princeton University, the University of Southern California, and many others (Lomicka & Lebron, 2024). These programs enrich the student experience by integrating faculty into residential housing and creating a culture of academic support not available at most institutions. Despite years of research conducted to understand the unique benefits offered by residential faculty programs and how they contribute to student success (Arabit et al., 2023), we still have only a limited understanding of how those benefits are elicited and perpetuated by residential faculty. Further, many recent studies focus on the perceptions of residential faculty rather than on how students view the impact of relationships that are developed in the residence hall (Arabit et al., 2023; Grabsch et al., 2023; Kennedy, 2023).
The present study provides the results of a qualitative investigation conducted to address this gap. Specifically, we conducted focus groups with students living in residential colleges in order to understand how residential faculty create and contribute to the academic culture and residential community. The results add to the literature on student development and success by detailing some of the complex cultural, relational, and community-based factors through which residential faculty programs can contribute to student outcomes (McLevain Overton & Sriram, 2024).
Residential faculty Programs and Student Success
Some researchers describe programs that prioritize student-faculty interaction outside the classroom, such as residential faculty programs, as the gold standard of engagement at modern institutions of higher education (James, 2010). In fact, many recognize that these institutions effectively prioritize meaningful student engagement and should take steps to enhance programs that facilitate faculty-student interaction, prioritizing quality of interaction over quantity of interaction (Kuh, 2003; McKay & Estrella, 2008; Schreiner et al., 2011; Umbach & Wawrzynski, 2005). This makes sense for a few reasons. The ever-escalating cost of attendance (Archibald & Feldman, 2011) requires marquee competitive advantages among peer institutions, and residential faculty programs are a visible and esteemed advantage for parents and students alike.
Recent work suggests that nearly half of college students fail to demonstrate meaningful improvements in critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing ability (Arum & Roksa, 2010). The programs, engagements, and one-on-one mentorship offered by residential faculty directly and positively impact these outcomes. Finally, the rise of online learning has disrupted how many colleges and universities function, whereas the tangible benefit of the personal engagement and mentorship experienced by faculty may help stem the tide of attrition resulting from the move to online instruction (Healea et al., 2015).
Benefits of Residential Faculty Programs
Outcomes associated with sustained student-faculty interaction facilitated by residential faculty programs are clear, multifaceted, and lasting. They can be broken down into six distinct categories: academic, cognitive, motivational, social/community, institutional, and post-collegiate life and career benefits.
Academic benefits. Meaningful interaction with faculty outside the classroom can lead to a constellation of academic benefits, including improved GPAs, a higher likelihood of earning a degree, graduating with honors, progressing to graduate school, and developing writing skills (Anaya & Cole, 2001; Feldman & Astin, 1994; Kuh et al., 2011; Lira et al., 2022). One noteworthy study among a national sample of college students found that meaningful academic and social interactions among faculty and students, as well as the perceived closeness of a relationship, positively impacted academic performance. This finding was a medium-large relationship (r = .34) found after controlling for a host of other metrics that impact academic performance (Anaya & Cole, 2001).
Cognitive benefits. Several studies suggest that increased student interaction with faculty is associated with cognitive benefits such as skills related to critical thinking, problem solving, personal development, and synthesizing knowledge across content domains (see Healea et al., 2015, for a review). Specifically, studies reveal that intellectual and personal development outcomes are directly related to the frequency and quality of informal relationships with faculty (Pascarella & Terenzini, 1978).
Motivational benefits. Residential faculty can also enhance and reinforce residents’ motivation to be good students and become engaged in the residential community. It is likely that the academic and cognitive benefits listed above are also impacted by the increased motivation that arises from interaction with faculty. In fact, meaningful interactions with faculty can enhance academic persistence, motivation, and positive attitudes toward learning (Feldman & Astin, 1994; Kuh, 2003; Tinto, 2012).
Social and community benefits. In addition to impacting students’ academic success, residential faculty can contribute to social and community benefits. Students who have meaningful interactions with faculty report higher levels of social integration into the higher education community and more positive multicultural attitudes than do those who do not meaningfully interact with faculty outside the classroom (Armstrong, 1999; Feldman & Astin, 1994; Tinto, 2012).
Institutional and post-collegiate life and career benefits. Students who lived with faculty in residential colleges are three times as likely to report thriving in their well-being as adults, are more engaged in their work after college, and report greater levels of post-graduate success in the workplace (Lumina Foundation, 2014). Institutions benefit explicitly from the residential faculty program through increased satisfaction, 4-year graduation rates, and student retention (Lamport, 1993; Lira et al., 2022; Wilson et al., 1975).
The Importance of Social Support in Faculty-Student Interactions
Many of the myriad benefits of residential faculty and student interactions manifest in the various types of supportive communication that residential faculty are uniquely situated to offer. Social support is conceptually defined as the perception or experience of being loved, valued, or cared for by those within your social network (Wills, 1991). As residents and community members within the residential college, residential faculty are able to provide this comparatively intimate level of support in ways that are likely unavailable to most general faculty. For this reason, we use social support theory as a guiding theoretical framework in our investigation.
Although many dimensions of social support have been conceptualized across disciplinary perspectives in the social sciences, most conceptualizations can fit under the influential theoretical framework developed in 1981 by social psychologist James House, which includes four different categories of support: informational, emotional, instrumental, and appraisal support.
Informational support. Residential faculty deliver informational support by providing general advice, as well as specific information about classes, subject matter, clubs on campus, and institutional resources and procedures during one-on-one meetings with students, through interactions at campus events, and during chance encounters in the hallways and in dining halls.
Emotional support. When faculty are able to empathize with students’ challenging course loads, personal situations, and feelings of homesickness, they are conveying and reinforcing perceptions of love or trust. This emotional support can be offered in response to a student seeking help or a parent contacting residential faculty asking to check in on their child. Sometimes, it is a matter of simply recognizing that a student may not be feeling their best.
Instrumental support. Residential faculty serve as important sources of information about campus resources and scheduled events on campus, specifically opportunities for career preparation, study resources, introductions to other faculty on campus, drug and alcohol counseling, and mental health counseling.
Appraisal support. Residential faculty can help students evaluate, reframe, or otherwise make sense of their experiences. From a developmental standpoint, one’s undergraduate experience is a crucial time to engage in these types of reflexive actions (Ryan & Carmichael, 2016). Residential faculty can provide this support by helping a student choose a major, reflect on their academic journey, and make purposeful choices for the future or choose a direction for their future career.
These four types of social support can contribute directly to the academic, motivational, social, post-graduate, and institutional benefits associated with residential faculty programs. Interacting with residential faculty can set cultural expectations for students about what it means to be in college, since they can serve as a constant reminder, both verbally and nonverbally, of the academic mission of the institution and can reinforce students’ academic focus. The sustained social support provided by residential faculty across a year can serve as a powerful influence—a series of conversations, reminders, check-ins, nudges, and empathic responses that can subtly establish, focus, or redirect the trajectory of young lives. Considering this, the overarching qualitative research questions addressed in this study are as follows:
RQ1: In what ways do residential faculty contribute to the academic culture of the residential college experience?
RQ2: In what ways do residential faculty contribute to the community culture of the residential college experience?
Method
The present study was designed as a focus group investigation. Focus group interviews are valuable because they assess complicated and broad outcomes such as culture (Stewart & Shamdasani, 2014), the richness and depth of which cannot be adequately captured through surveys or experimental research (Ponterotto, 2006).
Participants and Procedure
Participants (N = 26) were residents and student staff living in residential colleges who had interacted with their residential faculty. On average, participants were 19.12 (SD = 1.24) years old, female (n = 16; 61.5%), and White (n = 9; 36%). Other reported racial backgrounds included Black/African American (n = 8), multiple or other races (n = 4), Asian (n = 3), and Native American/American Indian (n = 1). One participant did not report their race. In terms of ethnicity, the majority of participants were not Hispanic/Latino (n = 19; 73.1%). The average GPA was 3.6, with a range of 2.8–4.0.
The sample included both general students and student staff. Five focus groups were conducted, ranging in size from three to seven participants each. All study procedures were conducted in a private conference room where participants were admitted to the study by two trained focus group facilitators unaffiliated with the residential faculty program. Participants were asked to keep the discussion confidential outside of the focus group conversation. They then participated in a 30- to 45-minute focus group discussion.
We utilized a semi-structured interview schedule (see Table 1) that included two ice breaker questions encouraging participants to discuss their experiences with residential faculty, followed by eight questions assessing general perceptions of residential faculty, academic perceptions, and community perceptions. The final question was a clearinghouse question to address any perceptions participants had about residential faculty that were not brought up in the course of the conversation. All participants were then given a $20 gift card to campus restaurants and thanked for their time. This study was approved by the university’s Institutional Review Board. The first and second authors are residential faculty at a higher education institution, although they were not involved with any data collection. Data collection was completed by authors four and five, and all data were anonymized before sharing with the rest of the team.
Analysis
For the qualitative content analysis, each transcript was divided into discrete units of analysis, defined as each turn in the conversation, where each person’s turn speaking was counted as one unit of analysis. Data were analyzed using thematic analysis with constant comparison techniques (Terry et al., 2017). The coding procedure consisted of three phases: open coding, axial coding, and selective coding. The first, second, and third authors participated in all three coding phases, and disagreements were resolved through group discussion. In the open coding phase, each coder read through the same complete transcript, taking notes during the process to identify salient themes (Strauss & Corbin, 1998). In the axial coding phase, coders met to discuss their initial codes and identify relationships among themes, organizing themes into higher-order categories where appropriate (Charmaz, 2006). In the third phase, all coders completed coding the remaining transcripts using the codebook created in phase two. Coders used constant comparison techniques in the discussion of themes throughout phases two and three to verify the appropriateness of the initial codes.
Results
We identified five themes organized into one higher-order category of social support: informational, emotional, instrumental, appraisal, and community facilitation support.
Social Support
Social support can be divided into four types—informational, emotional, instrumental, and appraisal support—which we used prescriptively to develop our own categories. During discussion and reflection, the three coders agreed that these four categories were insufficient to describe the entirety of the types of support provided by residential faculty, so we conceptualized an additional category—social community building, or community facilitation support—which is described in detail below. A description of all themes, including conceptual definitions, frequency of occurrence, and exemplar quotations, can be found in Table 2.
Informational support. This theme was conceptually defined as residential faculty giving a student information or advice. Examples of how this theme arose in our data included participants reporting that they had engaged in helpful conversations with faculty, benefited from faculty recommending academic resources or providing information about resources on campus, and were encouraged to participate in Finish Strong, an event at the end of each semester organized by residential faculty to provide tutoring and support for final exams. This category is best exemplified in our focus groups by the following assessments from two participants:
I would say—‘cause I’ve seen Dr. [residential faculty 1] for academic purposes—she just always encourages students because chem is hard, usually. She just provides resources and just tactics, in general, of how to improve their scores or just their level of understanding. Pretty much every day, when I see her pass, she’s always talkin’ to a student or I’m talkin’ to her. She’s just helping us.
. . .
I think they also help with providing a lotta life lessons and a lot of just—I don’t know how to say it. I guess it’s just life lessons. When they’re doin’ our Wednesday night programs, we had a cultural food night where different people got to talk about different foods from within their culture. It was good to hear people’s stories like that. We had an interview preparation night, and we got to learn a lot of, I guess, facts about interviewing, about just knowing how to approach an interview, how to study, and stuff like that. That was really nice. Each week, there’s somethin’ different. There’s somethin’ new. It’s not specifics or just one major or anything, so anybody can be a part of it. That’s really nice.
Emotional support. This theme was conceptually defined as conveying feelings of trust, love, and empathy and creating a safe and sometimes familial atmosphere within the residential colleges. Examples in our data included students reporting reassuring and comforting interactions with residential faculty or seeking out residential faculty when they were feeling overwhelmed or anxious. Emotional support was also coded when students reported feeling at home during interactions with residential faculty, detailing stories about sharing meals with faculty and their families, interacting with faculty pets, or positively reflecting on the parental influence that residential faculty bring to the residential colleges. The following experiences described by two participants demonstrate how residential faculty can provide emotional support to students:
I’ve had a lot of experiences over the years, so I’m trying to think about what to talk about. I agree it ranges anywhere from them having their faculty hours and being welcoming. I’ve seen them bring their dogs out a lot. Then also seeing them really have hard conversations with students or people getting visibly upset and having conversations that maybe they’re not as comfortable having with other student staff or other individuals on campus.
. . .
Just bein’ in college, this is a big transition time, so it’s good to have just an adult figure . . . you can go to. You obviously have your friends and your RAs, but sometimes you wanna have somebody [with] a little bit more life experience to go talk to, just a different perspective. That’s always nice to have.
Multiple participants brought up the fact that faculty who live in the residential colleges with their families seemed more open and approachable for advice and support. The presence of a family normalizes faculty for students in a way that makes them less intimidating and breaks down traditional power structures that sometimes limit faculty and student relationships:
I think having a professor that’s not necessarily your professor also sometimes makes it easier to talk to them. Even them having a family and stuff makes it less scary 'cause sometimes, you think of a professor as like, that’s so intimidating, but it makes them, I think, more normal in my head at least. I’m like, oh, okay, I can go talk to this person. They’re not necessarily the person that I see on a day-to-day basis in class. Doesn’t scare me as much at least.
More than providing support through listening, empathy, and comforting, we also coded emotional support when participants perceived residential faculty as willing and available to provide support:
They are helpful, and I think they’re also very caring and want to hear what students have to say. It’s a unique position for a lot of them to live on campus with their families. Typically, that means they do care about what they do a lot, which I think is impactful for students maybe looking for advice or help.
Instrumental support. Residential faculty offer instrumental support by making students aware of the tangible or intellectual resources available to them and by hosting networking events, game nights, tutoring events, or other planned events in their apartments on campus. Some aspects of instrumental support were dual-coded with other types of support, including interacting with a pet, which was coded as both emotional and instrumental support, as faculty were opening their homes to provide a tangible resource (i.e., a pet) that also functioned to increase the emotional bond between residential faculty and students. Additionally, stories about participation in Finish Strong were coded as both instrumental and informational support, as residential faculty provided informational resources but also a physical space for gathering to exchange those resources.
The following quotations from two participants demonstrate how residential faculty function as a crucial fulcrum to connect students to campus resources:
Dr. [residential faculty 2] and Dr. [residential faculty 3] are the people in [residential college]. Whenever I meet them, whether it’s just casually walking in the hallway or one of the events they’re hosting, they always just reassure the fact that there are resources provided and that these events are to help us get access to those resources.
. . .
My resident’s faculty, I’ll say she’s very inclusive. I remember we were both at [VP of student affairs’] Women’s Symposium. It was a networkin’ portion, and I’m prelaw, and so I told her that, and it was so many people that were studyin’ law. She was bringin’ them into the conversation and just tryin’ to introduce me to different people.
There were also many examples of faculty providing coffee, candy, meals, events, and even time with pets. While these resources are in and of themselves valuable to students, they can also function as tools for building relationships that can move beyond the transactional nature of providing resources into more meaningful opportunities for emotional support and mentorship, as demonstrated by the following assessments from two participants:
I remember the first time I met Dr. [faculty 2], she and . . . I would say we’re pretty close at this point. She asked me what my major was. I was talking to her, and she’s remembered all of my interests throughout the year. She’s introduced me to new people. She’s helped me network. I am now part—I’m part of several clubs that she’s been an advisor for.
. . .
I was just gonna say she introduces us to a lot of opportunities that I wouldn’t have known about, so we have dinners with different faculty that work in the school. I wouldn’t have met Dr. [general faculty 1] or Dr. [VP of student affairs] or Dr. [general faculty 2]. There are just so many people that I’ve gotten to meet because of these Monday night dinners, and I am just very—I don’t know the word I’m lookin’ for, but it’s nice.
Appraisal support. Residential faculty often engage in conversations with students to help them evaluate or reframe their academic or professional journey. This theme differs from informational support in that the purpose of the conversation is to help students through issues of academic or professional identity, rather than being solely concerned with a utilitarian sharing of information. Students reported having conversations with faculty that led them to reflect on their major, their academic purpose at the institution, and their potential future careers and to reflect generally on themselves or engage in conversations that reinforced or reinvigorated a culture of academic excellence at the institution. The following comments from two participants demonstrate how interactions with residential faculty can help students be more reflexive about their purpose at the institution:
Something that she said that really stuck with me is I’d only been talking to her for probably five minutes, and she immediately said, “I think you’re a very intelligent person. I’m really expecting good things from you, and I think you should apply for [First Year Experience Program].” I ended up applying for this program, and it was one of the best things I’ve done in my freshman year so far. She has really helped put me on the path to getting more involved in our school, and she’s become a mentor to me.
. . .
I would say the same. I think you come in not really knowing every . . . there’s a lot more to know than you think you know. Even, I think, on an academic scale, you have this idea of what you want to do, but you don’t really know what else is out there and how it can relate to what you want to do, or you don’t think there’s any relationship. I think talking to somebody like that who’s not a student, like she said, gives you that almost mentorship feeling. It leads you—guides you to see new things in your academics.
Community facilitation support. When residential faculty provide a space for social interactions and community building, they provide community facilitation support. We added this code during the coding process through discussion, as it seemed that participants perceived distinct benefits in faculty creating space for social bonding and networking (coded as instrumental support). Whereas networking is done in pursuit of academic and career goals, creating space for social outcomes can create a larger sense of community within residential colleges. As two of the participants described this,
I think, just what everybody else said, it’s just building a sense of community, I guess. You don’t feel like you’re isolated in your room and just with your roommates. When you walk into a hallway, you see people you know, people you met at the program. You could say hi. It’s the mood, and it makes the day go by easier.
. . .
I think it’s the culture of this campus. Here, there’s a lot of people from everywhere. I don’t know, growing up in the Bronx in apartments, it’s just there’s so many people doing so many things, but there’s not a chance for us to connect. If you do, you’re talking gossip in the apartment. It really does feel like a home away from home, and this is what [institution] does. It’s not . . . what family does. This is what [the institution] does. I just think it is a part of the culture, and if you’re not participating in it, I mean, that’s fine if you’re finding benefits and not having it. There is a lot of benefit in having a person.
Students’ Perceptions of the Benefits of Social Support
The present study was conducted to understand how students perceive the varied types of social support they receive from residential faculty, which can in turn facilitate community and a culture of academic excellence, with benefits extending beyond students’ time on campus and to the institution itself. To address this, we designed a qualitative investigation featuring focus groups that elicited students’ discussion of their experiences interacting with residential faculty and asked what attributes of residential faculty they valued and whether they would make any changes to the residential faculty program if they could.
DISCUSSION
The results detailed here contribute to our theorizing about the multifaceted ways that residential faculty can provide social support, detailing a novel pathway that may be unique to the residential faculty experience. The types of social support identified in this investigation and the frequency of their occurrence in the focus group interviews align well with Cox & Orehovec’s (2007) proposed typology of student-faculty interactions. This typology suggests five different types of interactions that faculty and students can engage in: disengagement, or no interactions; incidental contact, including superficial or unintentional interactions such as casual conversations and greetings; functional interaction, or engagements relating to academic concerns, projects, or guidance; personal interactions, which include purposeful conversations related to personal interests or concerns, often shared in more private settings such as over coffee or a meal; and mentoring interactions, which feature role modeling, assistance with professional development, and emotional support in sustained relationships.
The authors propose that the frequencies with which these interactions occur in this typology are at the lower end of a scale of engagement (i.e., towards disengagement or incidental contact). Indeed, the majority of students fall in the disengagement stage, but the goal of residential faculty is to get them interested in more meaningful interactions, such as functional, personal, and mentoring ones. Most social support interactions identified in our study fall into the functional interaction category, including informational support and instrumental support, which involve the provision of information and resources to facilitate academic outcomes.
The next two most frequent themes identified in social support were emotional support (providing empathy, listening, or comforting behaviors) and appraisal support (helping students critically reflect on their academic journey or future career aspirations). These two dimensions of support fit well within the personal and mentoring dimensions of the engagement typology. The connections between the types of social support offered by residential faculty and the typology of student-faculty interactions developed in previous work (Cox & Orehovec, 2007) are helpful, as these types of supportive behaviors allow faculty to provide students with the kind of help that can nudge their relationship from superficial interactions (such as disengagement and unintentional interactions) towards more meaningful ones (such as personal and mentoring interactions) that can tangibly benefit both students and the institution. In line with this, we found that the frequency with which participants mentioned different supportive acts aligned well with Cox and Orehovec’s (2007) typology of mentoring, where casual and informal mentoring (such as information support) occurs more frequently, and more intimate mentoring (such as appraisal support) occurs less frequently.
Our investigation proposes another type of social support provided by faculty: community facilitation support. In many higher education institutions with residential faculty programs, the faculty apartments serve as a primary meeting space for events and dinners, facilitating the creation and maintenance of social communities within the residential colleges. Residential faculty occupy a unique role, serving as hosts of informal and formal gatherings where students can meet each other (which can be categorized as instrumental support) and socialize (which can be categorized as social facilitation support). Community facilitation support provides space for other types of support to occur, including instrumental and social support. Additionally, community facilitation support can elicit other types of supportive communication outcomes such as networks. Networking space can be viewed as a tangible resource that contributes to students’ future careers, whereas social spaces create and perpetuate community within the residential colleges in a way that’s different from traditional-style residential housing, which is more like an apartment building where residents may know their neighbors, but may not feel like they’re part of a larger community.
There are also distinct practical contributions of this research. The results presented here, detailing the various and impactful ways that residential faculty can deliver social support to students, show that the presence of faculty in residence halls has the potential to break down barriers between faculty and students. These results are important for institutions struggling to counter a lack of engagement among students, increased rates of transfer or drop-out, or a lack of connections between students and faculty. Residential faculty programs can facilitate this engagement by providing space and opportunities for social and academic connections—as well as access to faculty and institution-specific networks for incoming first-year students in a way that speeds up matriculation into a network that can offer distinct professional and academic benefits after graduation.
Limitations and Future Research
There are some limitations to this work that should be addressed. It is difficult to make distinctions between the position of a residential faculty member and the individuals who occupy the role. That is to say, some participants’ responses may be affected by their personality attributes and interaction habits and may not be reflective of their experiences at other institutions. In addition, we conducted these focus groups in April, when most students are preparing for final presentations, papers, and exams, which may have limited recruitment. However, this strategy was necessary in order to ensure that first-year students had enough time to get to know their residential faculty. Finally, although the findings about social support are likely transferable to other residential faculty programs at different institutions, there could be unique organizational properties of our institution that are not. With this in mind, researchers and practitioners should take caution when applying these findings to other institutions. As an example, most institutions track attrition but do not have metrics in place to effectively measure when and how students who are thinking of leaving are retained, but residential faculty (and the academic and community cultures they create) can have a significant positive impact on retention.
Conclusion
The purpose of the present study was to understand students’ perceptions of residential faculty, including how they provide social support and whether there are specific factors that may lead students to seek social support from residential faculty over general faculty at the institution. Focus group results detailed the myriad ways in which residential faculty provide social support and facilitate community, and the results contribute to the research on the effectiveness of these programs.