YELLOW SPRINGS — Antioch College and Wilberforce University have announced a living learning partnership for the 2018-2019 academic year.
Sixteen students from Wilberforce University will be housed at Antioch College’s campus in a shared community experience at the College’s West Hall. The partnership will extend beyond housing — both institutions plan to collaborate with on-campus programming as well as the opportunity for Antioch College and Wilberforce University students to take courses at each other’s campuses through the Southwestern Ohio Council for Higher Education (SOCHE). The partnership was anticipated to begin as early as Sept. 15.
The engagement, centered around innovation and community building, is an exciting opportunity for both local institutions.
“This is the type of collaboration that are needed for colleges and universities to effectively and creatively respond to the common change we face,” Antioch College President Tom Manley said. “Win/win solutions are possible in many scenarios, and this is a great example of how they can work.”
Both campuses will collaborate for programming for all students, including through the Coretta Scott King Center for Cultural and Intellectual Freedom at Antioch College, and the Wilberforce University Mark and Shelly Wilson Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation.
“We are delighted to enter into this innovative living and learning collaboration with Antioch College, an institution which shares our interest in providing students with a rich academic and intellectual experience,” Wilberforce University President Dr. Elfred Anthony Pinkard said. “Our students will confront both their commonality and difference in ways that will challenge their perceptions of the other, and in so doing, begin crafting new ways of living harmoniously and productively in community. This is a living example of two institutions being intentional about partnering to provide students with a lived experience that encourages them to step beyond what is known and comfortable to imagine themselves differently.”
Antioch College Provost and Vice President of Academic Affairs Dr. Lori Collins-Hall hopes the partnership broadens the sense of community at both campuses.
“It is not often students from another campus get to experience a small bit of each other’s worlds to help expand and shape their understanding. At Antioch, we are good at sending students into the world. This opportunity affords us a chance to bring Wilberforce, and a better understanding of their campus and student experience, into Antioch. We look forward to welcoming Wilberforce students to our campus,” she said.
Both institutions hope and expect the experience to be more than shared housing and look forward to fostering partnership between the two institutions and their students.
