What is the Residential Life Initiatives project?
The Residential Life Initiatives (RLI) project is a planned approach for the renewal, revitalization and modernization of campus residential facilities, including both student housing and dining.

Why is RLI important?
We know that student housing is more than just shelter. Residential environments at the University of Michigan should complement our academic mission by supporting students’ academic success and personal growth. Furthermore, adequate and supportive housing is a factor in attracting top-quality students.

RLI recognizes that housing improvements are overdue and the need for infrastructure renewal isn’t going away. With proper planning, we hope to avoid some deferred maintenance expense and reduce total housing renewal costs. Additionally, the process of developing a Comprehensive Housing and Dining Plan will establish a more solid and workable foundation—one that’s designed to meet our academic mission and built to satisfy students’ needs.

Overview of Housing Facilities
University housing facilities represent approximately 20% of the University’s total square footage. Current housing inventory consists of:

• 17 residence halls and managed housing units
  
• Built between 1915 and 1969
  
• Capacity for 9,607 students
• 12 dining facilities
  
• 1,483 apartments built between 1955 and 1972
  
• Most housing was built in the 1960s or earlier, with no new housing for undergraduates in almost 35 years.

Overview of Residence Education Guiding Principles
Residence Education must involve students in creating and sustaining inclusive communities in the residence halls in which the students themselves learn to participate and take responsibility.

Residence halls are communities that are intentionally designed to promote student learning and development from faculty, staff and peers. In residential communities, learning is enhanced when students play an active role in creating and maintaining communities so all members feel safe and valued, and when they take responsibility for the community’s success in achieving its goals. It is essential that the students who are a part of this community participate in all facets of the community living experience and therefore learn to take responsibility for developing the values and standards and their behaviors and actions within it. The community should be inclusive, reflecting the values of the University, not merely being aware of the differences but coming to learn about, appreciate and respect the differences among each of its members.

The residence halls and Residence Education specifically, should provide a critical nexus between the in and out of classroom experience for undergraduate students.

Residence halls provide excellent contexts to help students connect their curricular and co-curricular experiences and should be designed and administered in ways that enhance this potential. Residence Education should provide a compelling environment for living and learning, which includes a balance of formal and informal opportunities to provide both support for classroom learning, but also for lifelong learning skills. Student – faculty interaction needs to go beyond merely proximity and space to very intentional and purposeful programmatic linkages. It is recognized that faculty involvement is critical to student success, however residence education cannot accomplish this mission alone. A true partnership between faculty and Student Affairs staff with appreciation for each other’s contribution as the beginning of the creation of linkages and the direction toward common goals.

Students’ experiences in residence halls should complement their other university experiences in ways that are consistent with the university’s learning mission, ideals, and long-standing tradition of promoting excellence and leadership.

The University of Michigan student learning mission is dedicated to public education, academic achievement, respect for diversity, and involvement in community service, and aspires for its graduates to be responsible leaders in society. Residence Education should help students understand and come to embrace this philosophy in ways that will enhance their undergraduate experience and continue throughout the rest of their lives.

Students in the residence halls should have opportunities to participate in a wide variety of learning experiences that help them develop in cognitive, personal, social, and spiritual domains.

For many, living in a residence hall is a once-in-a-lifetime living environment that can serve as a relatively safe “laboratory” for the trial and error of refining life skills such as conflict resolution, appreciating and negotiating differences, and problem-solving and community responsibility. Residence halls also provide opportunities for the development of appreciation for the arts, for sciences, for civic engagement, and for personal, social and spiritual development. What makes these opportunities distinctive is they occur within intentionally enriched residential communities in which students learn from peers, professional staff and faculty.