This is a brick wall.
A good brick wall has integrity; it has a strong foundation, it won’t collapse, and it does its job (i.e.- it holds up the roof). For the brick wall, we call this structural integrity, but it is still integrity nonetheless.
Much like the brick wall, UCA’s residential colleges also have a type of integrity called academic integrity.
When most people talk about academic integrity, they usually are talking about how cheating, plagiarizing, or infringing on anyone’s thoughts or work in any way is bad. This kind of academic integrity still holds within the residential colleges, but there is another aspect of this integrity which I believe better captures what the residential colleges are all about: maintaining academic standards.
Since my freshman year, I’ve seen just about everyone I have ever encountered struggle, at some point, in at least one of their classes. It’s kind of like a fact of life; if you spend four years at college, you are going to slip up eventually. Maybe you stayed up playing games the night before a big test, or you went to a party when you should have been doing a lab report, or you encountered our friendly brick wall in the middle of your mid-term essay. These things happen. But what’s important is what you take away from the situation. I’ve seen too many of my friends and classmates just pretend their slip-ups never happened, and then the next big assignment, they do the same thing they did last time and fail again. That is the opposite of what they should have done.
Within the residential colleges, we try to maintain an academic standard where, if and when these slip-ups occur, something is done to prevent them from happening again. Programs are often held about time management and how to build good study habits for each of the residential colleges, and in STEM, we have five Nerd Nodes (study rooms), Advocates, and Duty Nights three nights a week within the STEM Classroom. During the Duty Nights, three Advocates spend three to five hours in the classroom helping students with their homework and in understanding various concepts from their classes. This is all done in the effort to help students hone their academic skills and become more successful in both their current and future classes.
We want our residents to do well, and we work hard to make sure they have as many opportunities at success as possible.
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