Why LEAD – an Academic Village - A Seamless Campus?
LEAD is a type of academic village. Across the nation, academic villages bring together retirement communities and college campuses. (See the newsletter The Older LEARNer, (Vol. 10, No. 3, summer 2002.) In Hesston, Schowalter Villa, Hesston College, Hesston Wellness Center, and Dyck Arboretum of the Plains in a sense, contain each other. That is, the entities, while existing as distinct institutions, in effect have no boundaries or seams. In their working they blend into one seamless campus. Similar situations are occur nationally in more than 100 settings.
As the population of older people increases, it is anticipated that the number of these academic villages will grow. Such facilities already exist at Kingsborough Community College (New York City), the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill), Messiah College (Grantham, Pa.) and at Lasell College/Lasell Village (Newton, Mass.). In some academic settings, retirement communities are being intentionally created beside existing institutions of higher education at the cost of many millions of dollars.
The Hesston community is fortunate in that we already have the existing juxtaposition of these institutions. There are a variety of reasons for the development of these academic villages. In Hesston the primary impetus for this is to provide a synergy of the resources of the organizations noted above. For example, in Schowalter Villa’s assisted living facilities, frail elders and young adult college students are energized by each other. Elders appreciate the energy of youth and the young people are blessed by the life histories of the elders.