Posted by Douglas Fisher on Thursday, July 23, 2015 in News.

At the very end of Spring 2015, VandyRadio interviewed Moore Faculty Director Jim Lovensheimer, Area Coordinator Matthew Sinclair, and me. The interview was posted on the College Halls at Vanderbilt Facebook group, which is where I discovered it last night. On listening, I was struck by how articulate Matthew and Dr. L were, and also how perceptive and informed our interviewers, Chukwukpee Nzegwu and Alex Slawson, were. The title of the podcast — The Truth about Warren and Moore — is delightfully suggestive, and I decided to keep it.

I remember the late night April 20 interview on the Monday Minds show, sitting around in a ellipse. The studio reminded me of my two years as a DJ in college, at WRNV — nice flashback!

I became perceptibly more relaxed as the interview progressed — I think others did too. There was modest editing to move the podcast along. I remember, for example, a long pause after Chukwukpee’s first question, but post editing, I jumped all over that question 🙂

The VandyRadio site of the podcast is https://soundcloud.com/vandyradio/monday-minds-reveals-the-truth-about-warren-and-moore. I took notes on questions as I listened. The radio interview treated “college halls”, “LLCs” (Living and Learning Communities), and “residential colleges”, as roughly synonymous. The outline below lists timestamps of all questions, so the distance between timestamps indicates the level of discussion.

00:19 What is the residential college system at Vanderbilt?
01:27 What are the responsibilities of faculty directors?
03:00 Is all of Vanderbilt’s residential life headed toward an LLC system?
03:55 Is there a place for students who don’t want to engage in an LLC setting?
06:15 How do you enforce engagement in college halls’ communities?
07:15 What are the relationships between Warren|Moore and The Commons?
10:45 What about the complaint that there is little transparency in programming?
15:50 What is Warren|Moore to Vanderbilt?
16:40 Does programming (clutter) in residential colleges “baby” its students?
22:25 Do you assess programming (clutter)?
24:37 What are next steps in college halls building development?
26:40 Is spending on residential life the best use of Vanderbilt’s resources?
30:01 Does college halls encourage cliqueness, or inclusiveness instead?
35:10 What is the application process for Warren|Moore?
36:44 What are the weaknesses of Warren|Moore?
40:39 Will residential colleges develop individual personalities?
46:55 Sign off

This post is a contribution by Douglas Fisher, Faculty Director of Warren College, and it does not necessarily represent the opinions of Vanderbilt University.