Some of Lincoln University's "best" new students soon could find themselves sharing space on the same floor of the same residence hall.
Said Sewell, LU's new vice president for Academic Affairs and provost, told Board of Curators members last week: "We are moving to develop an Honors College - which is important for the retention and persistence and the graduation of our students who are our best and our brightest."
It would be one of four "Living-Learning Communities" the university wants to have for about 100 freshmen each year.
The others would involve STEM students (who focus on science, technology, engineering and mathematics), health/pre-nursing and pre-business/entrepreneurship, Sewell said.
"The idea is for us to create this cohort of individuals - 25 per Learning Community - to live together, take classes together for the first year and then go on to their various areas," he explained. "Learning Communities would only be for the first (freshman) year - because that's where most of the loss of your retention is, between your freshman and sophomore years.
"Which is why we would spend so much time with these 100 students."
But, Curator Don Cook asked, wouldn't those "top" students chosen for a special Learning Community be the ones who would stay, anyway?
Not necessarily, Curator Dana Cutler said.
"The problem is, you have them scattered now, and they're not getting the enrichment and the support that they might get in that Living-Learning Community," she said. "Yeah, the likelihood is that they'll probably stay.
"But, when they don't get that support, they leave."
Curator Marvin Teer said he had recruited "a very particular student" to come to Lincoln, "but in her first year, she told me, "Nobody else is around me that studies the way I do, or studies with me. They're partying all the time.'
"And she's not as happy as she could be."
That student thinks about leaving Lincoln for a college with a better environment for her academic efforts, Teer said.
LU President Kevin Rome said students like that one "will be academically successful, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they'll stay here. They might transfer somewhere else."
Rome sees the Living-Learning Communities as a way "to enrich that experience so they don't transfer."
No one mentioned Lincoln's "open admissions" policy or its history of being a college where students can get a good education, even if they grew up in a family - or a school system - that didn't provide a strong academic background or learning skills.
Cook said LU shouldn't forget those students.
In the past, the board has been told only about 10 percent of LU's students are admitted under the open admissions policy.
"We have a lot of programs to deal with our students who are called "budding' students or "budding' scholars," Sewell told the board, "but we have very few (programs) for our strong, academic affairs students.
"So, we want to try to balance this, to spread our resources across various areas, so we will keep them (all) here."
Cutler said colleges and universities "do a disservice at this level, when we forget about high flyers - because high flyers need support, too. And (for Lincoln), there are far too many schools - right around the corner and up the way - who will give them the world and beyond. So, if we don't do that, we'll lose them.
"And we don't want to be seen as - and I think there has been a historical perception that Lincoln is - just the bottom of the rack.
"And we need to balance it out, that we have every kind of student, and we have the capacity to make any student who comes here - who wants to - be successful."
Sewell said a number of details still must be worked out before Lincoln begins seeking students for the Living-Learning Communities - including which residence hall might be chosen to house the program.
"We want great students coming here, high achieving students coming here, because they know that their needs are going to be met as they matriculate through the institution," Rome said. "Students need to be academically challenged - but also need to have a peer group similar to them, so that high-achieving students (can) have a critical mass of other high-achieving students with them.
"And that's what we hope to build, a critical mass. We have many great students - but we need to provide more services so we can recruit even more."