The first residential college in Arkansas with an emphasis on science, technology, engineering and mathematics will open on the campus of the University of Central Arkansas in the fall of 2010.
The STEM Residential College will provide opportunities for greater student engagement and serve as a recruiting tool for students seeking a high quality, learning environment in the areas of math, science, computer science, technology and secondary math/science education.
It will also train more math and science teachers and improve science and math education in the state.
The STEM Residential College is the fifth residential college at UCA. It will house 210 freshmen in Arkansas Hall.
The hall will feature a large atrium with multiple study zones, an integrated classroom, and study rooms (Nerd Nodes) on each floor. Any student who has an interest in the sciences, technology, pre-engineering, or mathematics can apply to live in the residential college.
UCA is the only public four-year institution which uses a residential college system of learning communities for first-and second-year students.
“Other universities have recently developed living/learning communities, but UCA was the first and no other institution has a residential college system as expansive as ours,” said Jayme Millsap Stone, director of learning communities.
The STEM Residential College is a partnership between UCA’s Division of Undergraduate Studies’ Learning Communities and the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics. This is the first time one of the academic colleges has partnered with undergraduate studies to develop a residential college.
“There have been many partnerships with faculty, but there has never been this much involvement by the college, itself, with the residential college to develop programs,” said Dr. Carl Frederickson, associate dean of the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics.
Students will be able to take advantage of undergraduate research opportunities in several fields including cellular and molecular biology, organic chemistry, robotics, bio-physics, and aquatic ecology.
An important component of the program will be service-learning opportunities for students in the STEM Residential College. These students will have the opportunity to adopt a local elementary school and share the science they are learning in the classroom with students in these schools.
Frederickson and Stone noted that the residential college also fits into the governor’s call to help improve science, math and technology education in the state by building a community of young scholars.
“One of the things that we know about our state is that less than 19 percent of our adults over 25 have baccalaureate degrees,” Stone said. “We, as a state, cannot expect economic growth with an uneducated population. As educators of public institutions, we have a responsibility to the state for the state’s own economic survival to emphasize science, technology and mathematics. To pull our state, to pull our people out of poverty, we have got to be aggressive about science and mathematics education.”
