Importance of university residential colleges for agriculture

Abstract

<p>CONTEXT </p><p> Penven, et al. (2013) reflectively reviewed the literature regarding residential colleges from 1974 onwards summarising the major benefits as increased student development and retention due to a sense of belonging, smoother transition in first-year and higher civic engagement. </p><p> The University of New England (UNE) has a long standing tradition of residential colleges since its inception in the 1930s, where in 1974 90% of first year students lived on campus (Watkins, 1977), and where still today the majority of first year students studying on campus stay in one of the eight colleges. Each college has its own traditions, with the majority of agricultural students staying in the UNE run Robb College, established in 1960, and St Albert’s College, established in 1969 and now run by the Catholic Diocese of Armidale. </p><p> Both academic and college staff share a duty of care but also a deep passion to support students both academically and pastorally, so identifying and sharing difficulties is beneficial to student progress and wellbeing. </p><p> This partnership between college and academic staff is valued by UNE as demonstrated with residential college staff given the opportunity to anonymously contribute to the formal cognate agricultural course review in 2019 as well as the college principles being invited to attend an interview with the review panel. </p><p> AIM </p><p> This project aimed to (i) identify the student perceived benefits of living in college; (ii) evaluate for college staff closely working with agriculture students what is working well, what can be improved, and the biggest challenges that need to be overcome to make change; (iii) create an implementation plan to improve support of on-campus agricultural students. </p><p> APPROACH </p><p> Students in June-July 2019 were invited to participate in an online anonymous survey via email, with 89 on campus students from first to final year studying undergraduate rural science and agricultural cognate courses completing the survey. In addition, college staff were invited via email to participate in an online anonymous survey of their experience working with these students (UNE human ethics no. HE19-144). </p><p> ACTUAL AND ANTICIPATED OUTCOMES </p><p> Agricultural students identified the benefits of living in college as student led peer tutorials, meeting people, supportive network by developing connections and friendships with peers and industry and close proximity to campus. These benefits align to a study of graduates from 2005-16 (Wilkes & Burns, 2019) showing the benefits of college residence remain similar even with greater internet connectivity and social media. </p><p> College staff have a unique perspective to agriculture students as they observe the behaviours and attitudes beyond their academic success to their social, sporting and cultural activities. The two main challenges identified by college staff as impeding student success were firstly, motivation of struggling students who do not perceive the content is relevant to their future career, and secondly, competing pressures for time. In particular, staff commented the acute drought, which since January 2019 has been the driest on record for parts of NSW and Qld (BOM 2019), has led to increasing family obligations to travel home to help on-farm which is impacting on their studies, especially mandatory weekly practical attendance. </p><p> College staff reflected on what they would like to better support the students and suggested they would like a schedule of assessment due dates to better align college events to avoid ‘pressure points’ and assist students with time management, so an implementation plan is being developed with academic staff. </p><p> RECOMMENDATIONS </p><p> For the majority of on-campus agriculture students UNE residential colleges form the fabric of their life. This project has shown students continue to value the same benefits as graduates from over a decade ago, despite increased technological social connectivity. An implementation plan to improve support of agricultural students is currently being developed and will be implemented in Trimester 1, 2020.</p>