Posted October 18, 2012 by Mara Dahlgren

Are We Actually Building Community?

For my environmental theory and assessment class, I was assigned to assess the environment in a space tied to my assistantship. The assignment had me sit in a space of my choosing and observe and take notes on the activity, as well as the physical environment for 20 minutes. The intention of the assignment was to show us how much we could learn about our spaces if we took the time to really observe them.

I decided to sit in the Market, one of the Indiana Memorial Union’s dining areas after the lunch rush. I have noticed in passing that this space is often used to study before and after the lunch hour, so I wanted to take the time to observe what was actually going on.

While I was watching, I noticed that most of the users of the space were individuals looking for a place to eat a snack while they did their work alone. Looking around the room, I noticed the vast array of diverse people sitting in the Market. While I was happy to discover that this diverse group of people felt comfortable using our space, I noticed there were very little interactions across difference. There was very little interaction at all!

Based on this observation (which I know is in no way thorough), I wonder if we are creating spaces that actually build community or if we are just creating spaces that bring many different people together in one central location to do their own thing? Should we be doing more to engage the students, staff, and faculty that use our spaces every day in building community?

What do you think? Does your student union/center build community between its users? Does the physical environment of our unions create community or do you have to intentionally create it?

Filed Under:

Mara Dahlgren is the Graduate Student in the Higher Education and Student Affairs Program at Indiana University–Bloomington.

As part of higher education and student affairs program, Mara works as the building manager at the Indiana Memorial Union. In that role, she supervises assistant building managers and night security staff as they maintain the operation and safety of the building after hours. Recently, Mara had an internship with the ACUI Central Office and assisted with the various educational programs.

| Share

Comments

Mara, You’ve raised a number of important questions and you’ve touched on an incredibly rich area of research for us as professionals. How do we define community within our facilities? How do our students? Where is the overlap? How do we design and build facilities that meet our students’ evolving definitions of community? Many of the students on our campus study in community spaces but do so alone, or in small groups where everyone has headphones on. In conversation with students they have told us that they like to study in public spaces because it keeps them from feeling isolated and allows them to feel connected to the “community.” This is probably not what many of us would define as community, but for our students it is. In 2011 ACUI spearheaded a Summit on Building Community that brought together students, architects, administrators, association leaders, and planners to look at how physical spaces on campus impact community. The report can be found here http://www.acui.org/about/news/articles.aspx?id=18195 This is an important ongoing conversation for our profession, thanks for sharing this.

Patrick Connelly
pconnell@smith.edu

Comment posted 10/19/2012 10:09 AM

Interesting observation Mara. I'd tend to agree with you that a lot of our students use this community space somewhat alone. I see many seating areas for 2 or 4 that are occupied by 1, and when they're full, students will rarely share a table with someone they don't know. Patrick makes a good point about how we define community vs. how students might. Thanks for bringing up a critical aspect of what we do!

Jeff Pelletier
pelletier.12@osu.edu

Comment posted 10/19/2012 4:42 PM