When Larry Bowen leaves his office in Osband Hall at the end of the day, it’s only a few steps away to his apartment in Harris Hall, traditionally known for housing students.

Bowen is the associate director at the Center for Teaching and Learning, and is also the faculty-in-residence for Harris Hall, home to students of the Parker Adams freshman living-learning community, among others. Bowen is going on his 14th year as a faculty member living among students.

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Bowen’s apartment is comprised of what used to be six dorm rooms, now with a kitchen, what he calls a laundry closet, two bathrooms and two bedrooms. When the dorms were gutted and converted to his apartment, Bowen was able to pick paint colors and help with the design.

“It’s a real apartment, but I don’t have an outside exit. So I have to enter and exit through just like the students do, and from the outside my door maybe looks a little bit nicer, but the students have no idea unless they come in what’s in there,” Bowen said.

Bowen said the original Parker Adams building was more conducive to forming student-faculty relationships, but he has still maintained close connections with students since the move to Harris Hall.

“I still get to know them really well. Sometimes we go out to lunch at Bryant as a treat, or like during the school being closed down we had a movie night in my apartment. We watched two movies ‘til about one in the morning,” Bowen said.

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From taking students to get their driver licenses renewed to taking them to the emergency room, Bowen has not only seen all the ins and outs of student life, but has also made connections that last.

“Some of my best friends are people who were in that program and are now living all over the country and have kids now, but I’ve really kept up with a lot of them – Facebook makes that really easy,” Bowen said.

Bowen said his experiences have not been without incidents. He recalls a prank involving cryptic Latin messages on his white board. Others are more significant, such as trips to the Student Health Center and Druid City Hospital.

“This is the first year in a long time that I haven’t ended up taking someone to the emergency room for some injury or sickness,” Bowen said. “One year I got a student who had an infection in his thumb. I said, ‘You’re going to the doctor; get in the car,’ [Later] the doctor said, ‘I wasn’t going to tell you this earlier, but if you’d waited another day you’d probably lost that finger.’ You know, students think they’re immortal.”

Bowen said that though the convenience of living on campus, including close proximity to work and his own parking space, outweigh the negatives, there is a downside to living in a residence hall.

“My day never ends. All my life flows together; even when I’m on vacation I’m so connected I feel like I never leave work,” he said.

On the other side of campus, living in Paty Hall in a separate-entrance apartment, is Cole Altizer, one of three area coordinators, and his wife and their dog and cat.

“I have to live on campus because I’m on call. I have not been out of the resident halls since 2007,” Altizer said, “But I also haven’t paid for housing since 2008. So that’s the kicker right there, starting out as an RA to whatever other titles I’ve had.”

Altizer said he enjoyed his time in dorms because he loves working with students and because he has small conveniences like never having to pack a lunch, but he does not foresee his housing situation being sustainable for his growing family.

“Sometimes everyone experiences this, where you want to go in and go home and not have to say hello to anyone,” Altizer said. “Housing has been real good about this – I don’t live where I work. They make sure we’re not going home and seeing our RAs.”

Altizer has had a few situations of his own since moving to Paty Hall, including breaches of privacy, usually caused by students’ interests in his pets.

“I think the thing right now that’s interesting is that you can see in our windows because we keep them cracked because our cat likes to look out of them. So everyone comes up to the window to play with her,” Altizer said. “But what they don’t realize is that this is our home, and we’re sitting there having dinner and people are tapping on our window.”

Bowen said he’s kept young by the freshmen, as they show him modern music and TV shows, like “The Walking Dead,” but he says he also plays a big role for them, as a “parent-away-from-parents” and one of the few faculty members they are probably not intimidated by.

“They don’t really treat me differently. If someone they don’t know comes in, an adult, they kind of tone down their talk and everything, but when I’m around, they’ll say anything,” Bowen said.

Bowen said the greatest impact has been getting insight into students’ world. Before he lived among them, he said he had no idea how little sleep students get at night.

“When you’re out of school for awhile you forget what it’s like to be a freshman. Plus, I never lived on campus,” Bowen said. “I have more sympathy and empathy for students in my classes, and now I try to figure out what’s going on – before I thought they were just goofing off.”

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