Faculty in Residence

A note from our Faculty in Residence:

Welcome to North Russell residence hall, the home of the Baylor and Beyond Living-Learning Community. I am the Faculty-in-Residence at North Russell and live here with my wife and our two youngest sons. Our two oldest sons are Baylor students who lived in Noro (as it is affectionately known to residents) for their first year, so our family knows firsthand what a great community it is for students who live here. They loved the continual opportunities for personal enrichment and engagement with others present in the Baylor & Beyond LLC. Here you will find a rich and diverse community that is an ideal environment in which to broaden your horizons, make new friends, and find your place both within the Baylor community and the wider global community.

Part of the goal of the Baylor & Beyond LLC—as the name “living-learning community” implies—is to bring together your experience of residing on campus with your academic life at Baylor in meaningful and multifaceted ways. As an undergraduate I found residence hall life to be an incredibly important dimension of my overall college experience, but it was always very disconnected from the classroom component of my college life. We now think more holistically about such things, realizing that the classroom is only the starting point of a transformative educational experience—just one element in a matrix of connections across campus and throughout the day as students live, eat, study, socialize, and serve with one another. As the Faculty in Residence at North Russell I seek to be present for these out-of-classroom moments of learning and growing and to facilitate meaningful opportunities that enrich your academic, social, and spiritual development. I hope you will join us in becoming a part of this exciting and vibrant community that I know will enrich your time at Baylor.

Dr. Joe Coker

Senior Lecturer, Department of Religion; Editor, Baptist History and Heritage.