Recovering a true sense of learning in community must be part of the answer, because coherence and community are the only corrective for individualism run amuck. But building community, whether within or between departments, or between academic and student affairs, is a daunting task that requires more than encouraging faculty to cooperate and paying lipservice to integrative and interdisciplinary education. The university and the community are separated by incentives that discourage service and service learning Given these conditions, it s not surprising that faculty rarely interact with students outside the classroom and far too rarely take an abiding interest in particular students. Astin s research over the last three decades merits attention. For the most part, this is the domain of student affairs and largely missing from the academic world.
Most faculty are clueless about it.
Astin lists being a guest in professor s home, working on a professor s research project, assisting faculty in teaching a class, and talking with faculty outside of class. Alone, each of these sounds almost trivial, but as part of a paradigm shift from a libertarian to a communitarian university, each becomes significant. Sociologist Robert Putnam s research further amplifies the urgent need for building real community at universities and the reason it s so difficult. He records the declining numbers of community groups that Americans engage in, from PTA s to the Red Cross and Boy Scouts. His work has received a great deal of attention because it strikes a chord, in an era when virtual communities sometimes seem to outnumber real ones.