Running head: CAMPUS VISITS FINAL PAPER

Mark E Campbell II
Campus Visits Final Paper
Western Michigan University

Introduction

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To begin with, in this course we have had the privilege of visiting two very distinct
institutions: first Kellogg Community College in Battle Creek, Michigan and the second being
my alma mater, Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan. For my own campus visit, I decided
to visit Wabash College an all-mens college located in Crawfordsville, Indiana. Each of the
three colleges that I visited had distinct features that make them unique and each college has
their own specific demographics that attract students. For example, Kellogg Community College
is a community college and has open access to their students. Calvin College is a Christian
Reformed college that focuses on having a religious and private liberal arts education that is
predominantly catered towards traditional students aged 18-22. Lastly, Wabash College is a
private liberal arts college that is solely for men aged 18-22. All three of the institutions have
student populations lower than 7,000, which in return gives each of them a small school vibe.
For example, Kellogg Community has the largest population of students with over 6,000
students. Calvin College has around 4,000 students and Wabash College has approximately 900
men attending college. (http://www.wabash.edu/admissions/international,
http://www.calvin.edu/admin/enrollment/day10/report.htm, http://www.kellogg.edu/admissions/).
Additionally, my visit to Wabash College was important because Wabash College is one of the
three all male traditional liberal arts colleges in the United States.

Concerning the human

aggregate component, I felt a sense that the people who work for these institutions truly love the
mission of their institutions. Each of the three institutions I visited were mission oriented
campuses; they all live and die by their missions. In this paper, I will compare and contrast the
physical and human aggregate characteristics of each of the three institutions that I visited.
Furthermore, I will discuss the proxemics of each campus. These areas were the most salient
comparisons between the three campuses that I visited. This paper shall serve as an analysis of

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the physical environments of each of the campuses. In my analysis each physical environment
edifies a socially constructed meaning for each campus and the subpopulations that they service.
In each section, the physical environment will be discussed, including how I see proxemics at
each campus. Additionally, I will conclude my analysis with a reflection upon the environment
in which I see myself fitting best.
This paper will serve as a comparison of the physical environments in how the environment
affects the student populations of each campus.
Kellogg Community College
According to the United States Census the city of Battle Creek has a population of 51,
848 people. Kellogg Community College was founded on September 1st, 1956 in Battle Creek,
Michigan. (http://www.kellogg.edu/services/library/college-archives/college-history/). The
population size is important because as a smaller city there is a small and intimate community
between the city and the college. The emphasis on community was stressed numerous times
throughout our presentation at Kellogg Community College. The connection between Kellogg
Community College and the city of Battle Creek is the people who share both environments. In
this section, I will describe the importance of human aggregate and how it relates to Kellogg
Community College and the city of Battle Creek.
Because of this strong connection to the community, I found that Kellogg Community
College is an exemplary example of community colleges in relation to the literature about
community colleges. For instance, as stated by Hirt (2006) The most distinctive element of
community colleges, however, is their local focus. All their programs are designed to serve the
people and organizations of their local service area. (p.135). The local focus for Kellogg

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Community College is the industrial area of the Battle Creek region. For example, Kellogg
Community College specifically has a building that focuses on industrial arts in the Custer
Industrial Park. The Custer Industrial Park serves the community by providing numerous classes
in manufacturing and industrial studies.
I believe that having the majority of the buildings on campus interconnected builds a
social construct of unity at Kellogg Community College. Proxemics defined as the study of the
social implications of use of physical space (Strange and Banning 2001 p.21) works at Kellogg
Community College by having their physical buildings being interconnected. The theme of unity
was present in their admissions promotional video, Define Yourself when students said, it
does not matter if youre in high school, a former prisoner, worker, and mom. We are all KCC!
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuLQMA6e4MQ). In my opinion, by having the majority of
the buildings interconnected, the proxemics sends a nonverbal message of the unity of the
Kellogg Community College campus. Furthermore, the video describes the myriad of people
who attend the institution yet their differences are superseded by all of them being a part of the
Kellogg Community College family.
Additionally, the physical environment of the buildings being interconnected is
archicterual determinism as defined Strange and Banning (2001), which suggests there is a
rather direct link between the built environment and the behavior within it (p.13). Thus having
the physical buildings being interconnected students at Kellogg Community College will have a
unified behavior among the various subcultures of the campus.
To continue, Kellogg Community College has two salient subcultures in their
environment as defined by Clark & Trow (1996) and stated by Strange and Banning (2001).
These subcultures are vocational and academic. Vocational is defined as, off-the-job training

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leading to a diploma and a better job than they could otherwise obtain and academic for the
most part composed of serious students who work hard, achieve high grades, and participate in
campus life (Strange and Banning 2001 p.37-39). In my opinion, Kellogg Community College
has both subcultures because they cater to community students who only enter college for
certification for their current employment such as students taking classes at Custer Industrial
Park. Yet Kellogg Community College has students that truly love their college and are
academically engaged. Kellogg Community College surely has a daunting task of balancing
both of these sub-cultures without one of them gaining dominance over the other.
Calvin College
In this section, I will focus on the importance of the physical environment and human
aggregate components of Calvin Colleges campus. Calvin College is a strong academic
environment because of its strong liberal-arts curricula. First, I will supply a pithy history of
Calvin College. Calvin College was founded in 1876 in Grand Rapids, Michigan at the Franklin
Campus which is located in downtown Grand Rapids ( http://www.calvin.edu/about/history/).
Calvin College is a private, Christian, liberal-arts institution with a robust connection with the
Christian Reformed Church (CRC) denomination. The location of Calvin College in Grand
Rapids is important because the headquarters for the CRC is also located in Grand Rapids,
Calvin College serves as the flagship higher education institution for the CRC.
Due to an increase of the student population and not sufficient room to house all of the
students, in 1956 Knollcrest Farms was sold to Calvin College and a new campus was built in the
1960s. Due to the campus being re-located on a farm, the campus has a pastoral and nature like
environment; this is in contrast to the urban downtown feeling that was dominant during the
Franklin campus years. Because of the pastoral environment, there are many trees and green

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spaces. Students are often encouraged to go outside to play, read, relax, and mediate. During the
spring there are many concerts, dinners, and other activities held out on Commons Lawn.
Commons Lawn is another example of environmental determinism and how students at Calvin
College see the lawn as a part of the classroom. For example, numerous professors have taken
their classes outside and have had class out on the lawn. This is an emphasis that learning can
take place inside a building, outside on the lawn, or within the chapel. Learning is not bond to
buildings and spaces; Calvin College equips students to act justly, think deeply, and to live
wholeheartedly as Christs agents of renewal in the world (http://www.calvin.edu/about/whowe-are/). The mission is not bound to thinking within the classroom, thus the spaces for learning
are limitless.
From a proxemics prospective, I noticed during our visit a minute but large detail about
the buildings of Calvin College: the cleanliness of each building. It was a rarity to see trash on
the ground, in the buildings, or on the grass when we were provided a tour of campus. In each of
the buildings that we visited, there were lobbies where students where gathered to talk and
discuss their faith and learning. The lobbies tie back to Calvin Colleges mission of integrating
faith and learning. The lobbies serve as a physical place where students can gather to discuss
issues of faith, learning, and of course their social lives. In my opinion, the lobbies are a physical
manifestation of how the physical environment determines the situation. For example, if Calvin
College wants students to embody their mission they have to build physical entities such as the
lobbies that encourage students to think deeply outside of the classroom. Furthermore, the
lobbies serve as much as a learning experience as the classroom and Commons Lawn because
they all require a community.

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Being an alum, I know that Calvin College is an institution that has a high human
aggregate component, as stated by Moos (1989) in Strange and Banning (2001), the character of
an environment is implicitly dependant on the typical characteristics of its members (p.35).
Calvin College has a superb mission but the mission is embodied by the staff, faculty, and
students who believe in the mission. Due to this fervent belief in the mission
Calvin College is strongly an academic campus (Clark and Trow 1996) because each class given
at the college must fit within the mission of the college. Also, the faculty must sign a form
acknowledging that they will teach from the CRC tradition and incorporate the colleges mission
within their courses. Lastly, being an alum, I know that from my experience the staff, faculty,
alumni, and the wider Calvin community truly live up to the mission of the college.
Wabash College
As previously mentioned, Wabash College is one of the three all male traditionally
private liberal arts colleges in the country. Wabash College is located in Crawfordsville, Indiana
which is a small rural town in central Indiana. An anecdote about finding Wabash College in
Crawfordsville goes like this: Where can I find Wabash College? Go to the middle of town and
turn right. True to this anecdote, it is quite simple to find the college. Since the founding of
Wabash College in 1832 its founders insisted on the institution being an independent and liberalarts college. The college was founded by Dartmouth College graduates and they sought to
construct a college in physical design and curriculum that was similar to Dartmouth. This is
fascinating, in how in the 19th Century the founders wanted a separation of the liberal arts and
religion. This is in contrast to many colleges on the East Coast who were originally chartered as
religious and private liberal arts institutions.

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Wabash College is mainly located onto one block in Crawfordsville. From stepping foot
onto campus, one can feel the traditions that encompass campus. This nonverbal communication
influenced me into possibly attending Wabash College and becoming a Wabash Man. The
campus is storied with red brick, ivy, and traditions. During my tour of the Allen Center, which is
the field house at Wabash College, I was told not to step on the W that was in the lobby of the
building. To step on the W would bring bad luck. Another tradition would be the arch on campus,
a Wabash man must walk through the arch in a certain direction and if he does not then a Wabash
man would not graduate. Throughout the tour many of the buildings had their own traditions
attached to them, it was like each building had its own history.
Wabash College has a rich history of fraternities on their campus. In fact I was told by my
tour guide that 50% of the students are in fraternities. However, that percentage used to be
higher in past years. Another interesting physical artifact is that Wabash College has two
cafeterias on campus: one for fraternity members and one for neutrals. The nonverbal
communication I received was that the college values fraternities and that they divide their
student populace by their fraternity interaction. Also, by having two separate cafeterias, I was
wondering how the physical environment of these two cafeterias affects the students. For
instance, do fraternity members feel of sense of belonging more than non fraternity members?
During my visit, I had the opportunity to ask two students one a fraternity member and the other
a non-fraternity about their sense of belonging on campus. Both of the students equally enjoyed
their time at Wabash and neither of them felt excluded due to the separate cafeterias. This was
interesting to me because if the physical environment determines how students interpret campus;
why did not the non-fraternity member feel excluded due to having to eat at a different cafeteria?
From the interview, the reason was that the idea of being a Wabash man supersedes any fraternal

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identity that the students had. For example, their first identity is a Wabash Man and their second
identity is their fraternity identity. The strong connection with their college was a sign that
Wabash College had a strong academic subculture on their campus.
Wabash College was littered with physical artifacts from the red colored walls in the
Allen Center, to the afro-centric displays at the Malcolm X Institute. The college was highly
vested in forming an identity for their men. The nonverbal communication from the red colored
walls in the Allen Center showed school pride and the color red is reminiscent of becoming a
Wabash man. Second, by having the placement of the Malcolm X Institute on campus, the
college is recognizing that African-American students can also be Wabash men and that the
college values the history of African-American men. Numerous times, my tour guide referenced
becoming a Wabash Man and how the college prepares students to have high values, morals,
leadership skills, and an education that will make students worthy of becoming a Wabash man.
The nonverbal communication of the color red and having the Malcom X Institute on campus
demonstrated to me that Wabash men come in all different shapes and sizes. However, their
differences are not important because what brings them together is Wabash College and at the
time of graduation these men will know what it means to be a Wabash man. Again, in my
opinion, Wabash was an academic environment because the students are highly engaged in the
college and their academics. (Strange and Banning 2001). Furthermore, the students that I met
truly believe in their education as preparing them to be leaders in society and fully becoming
Wabash men.
Comparisons
First, I will compare and contrast the proxemics and physical environments between
each campus. For example, all of the three campuses that I visited I noticed that each institution

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constructs their buildings to build or divide community within their student populations. They all
practiced environmental determinism for their campus communities. At Kellogg Community
College all of their buildings are interconnected with each other and they give the students an
over-arching theme of unity between the various types of students that attend Kellogg
Community College. At Calvin College the Chapel is set off and separate from all the academic
buildings because it shows that faith is integrated to learning because Chapel is the center of
spiritual learning while the classroom can be the place of academic learning. However, members
of the Calvin Community would agree that spiritual learning and academic learning can both
take place outside of the physical confounds of the Chapel and the academic buildings. Lastly,
Wabash College has two separate cafeterias one for fraternity members and the other for non
fraternity member. The college does not specifically say it values one group of students over
another yet the question remains: Why are there two separate dining spaces? In the future, it will
be interesting to see if Wabash continues to have two separate dining spaces, if fraternity
membership decreases. Ultimately, if fraternity membership declines how will that affect the
Wabash College community as a whole?
Conclusion
In closing, I have learned that I am more likely to be a student affairs professional at a
religious or liberal arts institution. The reason that am I attracted to these types of institutions is
that I enjoy the rich traditions that are accompanied in both the religious and liberal arts
institutions. To continue, as the current Graduate Assistant for the Office of Student Involvement
for Kalamazoo College, I enjoy the many hats that I wear in my office such as campus
programming, leadership programs, and student organizations. By having my graduate assistant
at a private small liberal arts institution my works days are varied and I get to see our students on

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a personal level. (Hirt 2006). Also, I enjoy working in places with strong institutional missions.
When I attended Calvin College, I truly believed in the mission and now that I work at
Kalamazoo College I believe in the mission of proving an excellent liberal arts curriculum to the
students of Kalamazoo College. These mission focused environments work well with my
personal philosophy of student affairs which has a strong emphasis on holistic learning. In my
current position I get to see the whole student which I find very rewarding.

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References
Bartlett, T. (2008). The manliest campus in America. Chronicle of Higher Education, 54(35), 1.
Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/61976547?accountid=15099
Strange, C. C., & Banning, J. H. (2001). Educating by Design: Creating Campus Learning
Environments That Work. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass
Admissions and Financial Aid. November 7th (2014). Wabash College.
http://www.wabash.edu/admissions/international
2014 Fall Day 10 Report Highlights. November 7th (2014). Calvin College.
http://www.calvin.edu/admin/enrollment/day10/report.htm
Admissions. November 7th (2014). Kellogg Community College.
http://www.kellogg.edu/admissions/
Kinetic Affect's Define Yourself, for Kellogg Community College. November 7th (2014).
Kellogg Community College. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuLQMA6e4MQ
College History. November 7th (2014). Kellogg Community College.
http://www.kellogg.edu/services/library/college-archives/college-history/