First-year students spend their first days at พรพรสำฦต navigating new terrain, organizing their living spaces, meeting classmates, and otherwise adjusting to life in their new milieu. What they are doing intrigues professors of psychology, anthropology, physics, sociology, and many other disciplines.
The first weeks of school are of special interest to psychology professor Carrie Keating, who studies social bonds and what makes or breaks them, as well as the psychological forces that give root to human dominance, hierarchy, and leadership.
โBy observing studentsโ nonverbal behavior, I glean hints about which way they are leaning,โ Keating said. โAre their smiles real or fake; are their laughs happy or nervous? Do their body postures say โcome hitherโ or โgo awayโ?โ
Anthropologist Nancy Ries, who has taught Core Russia as a first-year seminar, sees similarities between the residence hall experience and the Soviet revolutionary experiment of crowded communal living, where five or more families shared kitchen and bath areas.
โStudents have joked that sharing hygiene facilities with others requires tactics quite similar to those of Russia kommunalka dwellers,โ said Ries. โThey guard their personal hygiene products like soap, shampoo, and body wash. None of those products are shared or left in the collective bathroom either. The shower caddy โ a mundane plastic object โ provides a way for students (especially females) to maintain โself-otherโ boundaries, a small exertion of privacy in the collective space.โ
Physics professor Beth Parks sees communal living in the context of its impact on energy use. She has deployed student researchers to audit energy patterns on campus as a means of raising their awareness as well as improving พรพรสำฦตโs carbon footprint.
โOne thing I think is interesting is that once students arrive on campus their energy use changes,โ Parks said. โIn most of the U.S., the main way people use energy is by driving and heating and cooling their houses, but because college dorms donโt have much surface area (walls and ceilings) per person, hot water for showers becomes a bigger fraction of their energy use. Similarly, students at พรพรสำฦต donโt drive very much, since even if they have cars, most donโt have daily commutes.โ
Professor Chris Henke, sociology, teaches a class simply called Food. โWe eat food so that we can be nourished, but we also eat to create bonds,โ he said, โso food can make a big difference in how a student adapts to life here.โ He said that is especially true for international and multicultural students. โThrough the cultural organizations on campus they are able to demonstrate to others who they are.โ