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 eight of 11 FiR profiles.
When moving from New York to Dallas a little over a year ago, Marla Teyolia and her husband, Will Power, never expected they would eventually move their family onto a college campus.
Teyolia, associate director of the National Center for Arts Research at SMU, and Power, SMU’s Artist-in-Residence, first heard about the Faculty in Residence Program while at dinner with other faculty members who suggested that the couple look into the program.
“We had just moved into town and we were like, ‘no we can’t imagine living on campus,’” Teyolia said. “Then I was going to Cox for one semester and I met this one guy who worked in residential life who told me about [FiR] knowing that my husband was a faculty member. So then I was like let’s just look at it and that’s how we started getting the ball rolling.”
The couple, who has six-year-old twins, said the concept of living on campus with students initially felt foreign, but they realized it was an opportunity they couldn’t pass up after they considered the possibilities for their family. Both Teyolia and Power worked with young people in the past and are excited to be able to engage students outside the classroom. Teyolia previously ran a young women’s leadership group, which is an area she hopes to reconnect with through the program.
“I am excited to be able to engage with the students. That’s something I had done previously in my life was working with young people — young women specifically,” Teyolia said. “I used to run a young women’s leadership program and I loved being able to work with young women and help them find their voices and figure out what they wanted to do and to figure out their dreams.”
According to Teyolia, Power is also excited about having out-of-classroom opportunities to know his students better.
“One of the things [Power] talked about was getting to know the students in a different way. There is something to be said about engaging young people with the totality of who they are outside of the classroom. Since we’ve both worked with young people in the course of our lives, that’s something that’s important to us. For him as a professor and as a faculty member, it’s really exciting to have this whole other way of engaging and having [an] impact,” Teyolia said.
In addition to having an impact on students’ lives, Teyolia and Power are excited about the FiR Program’s impact on their personal lives. Prior to moving to Dallas, the couple lived in a small town an hour north of New York City. Teyolia describes it as a funky artist town where, unlike Dallas, they were able to walk everywhere. By moving on campus where they both work, their lives will return to being more walk-able.
Despite the walk-able appeal of on campus living, the couple is most excited about the impact the FiR Program will have on the lives of their children.
“On a personal level, there is something really exciting for me about the kids having part of their childhood be on a college campus. We have friends who are faculty in residence at Vassar and it has been a really positive experience for their kids. I’m excited that for the kids a college campus will be something that’s very normal and familiar and they see college is something that you do and a college campus becomes normalized. For me as a mother that’s very exciting as well,” Teyolia said.
Although Teyolia and Power have discussed possible events they want to plan with the students, Teyolia said they feel it’s important that the decisions are co-created with the students rather than forced on them. According to Teyolia, both health and wellness and arts and culture are areas of importance to them and they are interested in hosting Sunday movie nights with smoothies or going to the theater or a show once a month.
“We are in the process of trying to coordinate a meeting with our residential director and residential student leaders,” Teyolia said. “I think for both of us it’s having a balance of doing something that’s very student led. We both really strongly believe that, as adults, we lead from behind and really support what young folks want to do.”
Teyolia attended University of California, Berkeley for undergrad and Columbia University for graduate school and wishes that she had the experience of a faculty in residence in her academic career. Not only does she feel it provides students the opportunity to engage their professors, but also acts as a good networking tool for after graduation.
“I think I missed out on having people advocate for you and be a really great resource as you move through your academic career and through your professional career,” Teyolia said.
“As we build these relationships, we can really speak [to] that persons character and if someone is interested in the things that we are we can really help them navigate professionally.”
