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http://www.watauga.appstate.edu

Clark Maddux, Director

Watauga Residential College is an interdisciplinary, alternative general education program located in the Living Learning Center (LLC). Watauga pursues its mission through a sequenced, experiential curriculum that incorporates community-based research and multicultural immersion, consciously connecting students’ academic, social, cultural, and residential experiences. The curriculum and community create an atmosphere of discovery that blends academic accomplishments with an understanding of the responsibilities of community membership.

Watauga Residential College is structured to develop students’ expertise in the three dimensions of knowledge, skills, and competency. Knowledge comes from a full understanding of and the ability to synthesize information after assessing its relevance and quality. Skills are based on the appropriate methods of searching, assembling, demonstrating, and communicating knowledge and practice. Competency is broadly defined as the ability to combine knowledge, practical skills, and the social understanding and behaviors necessary to be a fully functioning member of a community at many levels, from the individual to the small work group to the larger community. The program takes a holistic approach to living and learning, emphasizing the academic and social community through collaborative team teaching and shared co-curricular activities and modeling a way of being that includes but surpasses academic excellence.

Students coordinate their courses in Watauga with Appalachian’s General Education requirements, with classes in their major, and with electives. Watauga classes fit a variety of formats: lectures, smaller discussion sections, small project groups, linked classes, and trips beyond the classroom, providing many different approaches for comprehensive learning, ensuring that one or more of these formats will be ideally suited to a diverse population of students. These classes require students to be active participants in all phases of learning-listening, discussing, questioning, researching, and collaborating on group projects.

The residential component, and the resulting community, both complement and support Watauga’s academic mission. The bonding among faculty, staff, and students is a natural result of shared academic work, community-based research, collaborative group projects, and the necessary involvement of all residents in the dynamics of a residence hall that is to an extent self-governing. The Watauga community provides an identity for all students in the program and is the basis upon which all activities, from the structured to the spontaneous, take place. At the same time, students remain free to pursue their choice of a major and to enjoy a wide range of student activities offered by Appalachian, including intramurals, service clubs, student government, fraternities and sororities. Watauga Residential College offers the benefits of a small, close-knit academic community within the broad range of opportunities available at a comprehensive university.

All Watauga freshmen live in the Living Learning Center, sharing this space with future educators, international exchange and degreeseeking students, and members of the Language and Culture Community, as well as upper-class students in all four programs. Because of the proximity of faculty offices, classrooms, kitchens, and lounges, as well as a music room, library, and vegetable garden (The Edible Schoolyard), residents of the LLC and program faculty frequently interact at all levels from the social to the academic. Watauga Residential College attracts a diverse group of students from a variety of ethnic, political, religious, and geographic backgrounds. Computer enthusiasts and creative writers, artists and scientists, actors and activists, entrepreneurs and missionaries all feel equally at home in Watauga.

The program of study is available at: www.programsofstudy.appstate.edu/experiential-interdisciplinary-education-certificate-
139a-2016-2017

The following criteria must be met with a minimum GPA of 3.00:

1. Successful completion of WRC 1103 Investigations: Local  and WRC 1104 Investigations: Global : 12 s.h.
2. Successful completion of two 2000 level Watauga Residential College courses (6 s.h.). WRC 2001  does not count among these credit hours.
3. Successful completion of one of the following capstone experiences.
   The capstone must be completed after the required hours for areas I and II.
   1. WRC 3XXX Junior Seminars (3 s.h.)
   2. WRC 3525 Pedagogy of Investigations : 2 (s.h.) plus either
      1. WRC 2203 Peer Leader  (1 s.h.) or
      2. WRC 3520 Instructional Assistance  (1 s.h.)
   3. WRC 3500 Independent Study , which must be one of the following:
      1. Semester abroad with WEC faculty direction/approval and a presentation upon return;
      2. Significant off-campus experience or an appropriate Writing in the Field Program;
      3. Major service project or international internship (coordinate through ACT);

The scope and details of this experience will be determined in collaboration between the student and the Director. It will require the application of skills acquired in Watauga, reflect the mission of the program, and follow successful completion of the first 18 hours of Watauga coursework. The course component must connect this experience with the academic mission of Watauga.

All individual experiential option require a public, interdisciplinary narrative presentation at an appropriate time following the experience.

How to Apply for the Individual Experiential Option:

Consult with the Watauga Residential College Program Director to identify the capstone experience prior to completion of 60 semester hours. The Capstone Proposal Form must be submitted by the end of September for a spring experience and by the end of February for a summer or fall experience.

Electronic Portfolio:

Compile all certificate documents into an electronic application portfolio. Submit this portfolio to the WGC Director at the completion of the required 21 hours, with the following documents:

• Research paper and file of presentation for both WRC 1103  and WRC 1104  
  Final paper/project 2000 level courses and Capstone experience
  Documentation of service (20-hour minimum)
  Reflective essay on the Watauga experience
  Written Capstone Proposal for Independent Experiential Option (if required)
• The portfolio must be submitted by November 1 for December graduation of the same year; by April 1 for May/August graduation of the same year. This portfolio will be reviewed by the Watauga Residential College Core Faculty.

Programs

• Experiential, Integrative Learning Minor

Courses

• WRC 1010 - Introduction to Mathematics for WRC (4)
• WRC 1103 - Investigations: Local (6)
• WRC 1104 - Investigations: Global (6)
• WRC 2001 - 28607: Days in the Life (3)
• WRC 2201 - Hearing Voices: Inquiry in Literature (3)
• WRC 2202 - What If? Asking Historical Questions (3)
• WRC 2203 - Peer Leader (1)
• WRC 2302 - Freudian Dreams and Cultural Analysis (3)
• WRC 2400 - Masterpieces of Latin American Art (3)
• WRC 2401 - Disciplined Cultural Practice (3)
• WRC 2403 - The Practice of Poetry (3)
• WRC 2500 - Independent Study (1-4)
• WRC 2530-2549 - Selected Topics (1-4)
• WRC 3000 - Interrogating Popular Culture (3)
• WRC 3210 - Poverty: Theory and Practice (3)
• WRC 3401 - Myth and Meaning (3)
• WRC 3402 - Work as Art and Creative Expression (3)
• WRC 3403 - A Walk in Beauty (3)
• WRC 3500 - Independent Study (1-4)
• WRC 3520 - Instructional Assistance (1)
• WRC 3525 - Pedagogy of Investigations (2)
• WRC 3530-3549 - Selected Topics (1-4)
• WRC 3665 - Black Mountain College (3)
• WRC 4001 - Seminar in Experiential, Integrative Learning (3)

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