Editors’ note: In August 2014 SMU will debut the Residential Commons on-campus living model. Eleven Faculty-in-Residence were selected to live among students. This is part five of 11 FiR profiles.
Film professor Mark Kerins knew he wanted to apply for the Faculty-in-Residence program at the very first development committee meeting years ago, simply because “it sounded like fun.”
Kerins earned bachelor’s degrees in chemistry and math at a small liberal arts college in Indiana where he enjoyed the small classes and interaction with faculty, which he hopes the Residential Commons model will provide.
“The times I’ve enjoyed most as a faculty member have been working with students beyond the classroom,” Kerins said.
Kerins has a master’s degree and Ph.D. in radio/TV/film from Northwestern University. He thinks his field will give him an advantage relating to students and plans to create resident programming around films, which he said “you can talk to anyone about.”
Kerins, his wife, who is a professor at Eastfield College in Mesquite and their two-year-old twins will move into Morrison-McGinnis RC next fall. Kerins said students are always excited to see his children on campus.
“I think on a college campus you get a particular age range of faculty and narrow age range for students,” he said. “It seems to be exciting when there’s somebody from a different age range than you usually see.”
Kerins hopes that the RC model will integrate student life.
“I think there’s a tendency in college to think of it as two different things,” he said. “There’s the college experience of students’ first time away from home and being out more independently. And then there’s the classroom side. I think those two can get separated.
“I’m hopeful what the Residential Commons can do is, not completely erase the fact that there are those two areas. I think that’s true in everybody’s life — a home element and a work or school element. But [I hope the RC] ties it together that the college experience and your academic work are part of the same thing and can influence each other.”
Kerins admitted that there may be days he regrets selling his home to live with college students, but that a much larger majority of his FiR years will be a positive experience.
“I think like any new program — and let’s be honest this is a massive new program that’s going to change a lot of things across the university — there’s going to be growing pains,” he said. “Part of our job as the first group of Faculty-in-Residence is going to be to iron those out and try some things knowing that not all of them will work.”
