Student Life/ Academic Affairs Partnerships

STUDENT LIFE/ACADEMIC AFFAIRS PARTNERSHIPS

Brooks College

in Fall 2007, Brooks Residential College opened its doors, marking the first community of its kind at Baylor and the strongest partnership between academic and student affairs in the university’s 150-year history. From the first sketches to the final touch-ups, Brooks College was formed around how to help students learn in community – from faculty, from student affairs educators, and from one another.Brooks College is a unique community in Baylor’s mission to become a residential campus that fosters learning in and out of the classroom. Drawing on lasting traditions, and oriented toward meaningful relationships within a vital intellectual community, Brooks College is open to all undergraduate students and academic majors. Students are academically serious, personally responsible, enthusiastic, self-motivated, and possessed of diverse interests and a desire to serve others. While a separate application process gauges students’ understanding of the community and their desire to participate, the application excludes prior academic achievement in order to ensure an inclusive community.

Brooks College is connected both with the past history of residential colleges around the world as well as current best practices in residential life. On the one hand, it proudly stands in a tradition stretching back to Western civilization’s first universities. Amidst the medieval colleges of Oxford, Cambridge, and Paris, among others, life took on a distinctive shape. Students joined together with teachers, as apprentices to masters, not merely to learn about ideas, or acquire technical proficiencies, or prepare for careers. Above all, their aim was to become well-formed human beings.