Residential Life curriculum selected as a showcase presentation at the 2024 Institute on the Curricular Approach (ICA)

For the fifth year in a row, Residential Life's curriculum "ResCore 4" was selected as a showcase presentation at this year's Institute on the Curricular Approach (ICA) hosted by ACPA.

Five Residential Life staff members traveled to Chicago in October to present on a component of our residential curriculum. The presentation, "Following the Gold Brick Road: UMBC's Journey with Facilitation Guides," focused on Residential Life’s use of facilitation guides within the Residential Life curriculum. 

“We are happy that Residential Life could support us attending and presenting at this conference,” said Chris Ambrose, acting associate director. “ICA is a great opportunity each year to dive deeper into the curricular approach and come back to campus re-energized to keep moving forward! It's always a great time for us to network with other institutions to discuss trends and learn best practices.”

Those who attended the conference are below: 

• Chris Ambrose, Acting Associate Director

• Grace Collins, Residential Education & Leadership Coordinator

• Derek Webber, Community Director

• Miracle McKinon, Community Director

• Charlito Iwuagwu, Community Director 

The presentation abstract notes: "Clarifying staff roles is essential to the successful execution of the curricular approach. Our recent stop on our curriculum journey led us to further explore utilization of facilitation guides. Our phased approach gathered assessment data directly from students to capture the learning that occurred. The data displayed statistical significance reinforcing the value of our curriculum and the meaningful impact it had on their experience. After this, we introduced facilitation guides developed by professional staff that were piloted sequentially by student staff in creative ways. This presentation will bring you along our journey following the ‘Gold Brick Road’ of where we’ve been, where we are, and where we are headed with the successful implementation of facilitation guides at UMBC."

Ambrose shared, “Residential Life recently named and branded their curriculum the ‘ResCore4’ with input from our student staff and creative assistance from our partners in Student Affairs Communications and Marketing. We got stickers of our new logo made at commonvision and passed them out at the conference and everyone LOVED them! Finally, we couldn't have done this without our graduate assistants and other members of the Curriculum Committee that weren't in attendance at the conference but definitely contributed to building the presentation and the success of our curriculum overall.”