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At the end of the day, many professors get in their cars, drive off campus and go home. But for a few Elon professors, home is not so far away.

Italian professor Samuele Pardini lives in the Kenan Honors Pavilion with his wife and son, where he advises the Honors learning community. He is part of the teacher-scholar in residence program and moved to campus three years ago. He says living alongside students has altered his point of view as a professor.

"It's like seeing the world from a different angle in a way," Pardini says. "...It's like seeing the world from an airplane or you're on earth, you have two different visions, and you have a very different vision depending on where you stand.

"You also see a different side of who these guys are, who these kids are. You get to see them interact among each other. You know you get them on a day when they're a little gloomy because something didn't go well, an exam didn't go well, so you try to make them laugh about it, put a different perspective - 'It's one exam; the next one will be better.'"

Pardini also says living with students has also changed their perspectives on professors.

"You know, they see the professor not just as 'the professor,' the one in the classroom that grades you and teaches and you do homework for," Pardini says. "You see him as who he is, the human being that does the same thing that any other human being, person does, and especially having a family here, you see him with his wife, you see him with his kid, doing [normal] things. We do the laundry where they do."

Communications professor Vanessa Bravo lives in the Isabella Cannon International Pavilion. She says living on campus has brought many things to her attention.

"One of the things that I realize is that students work very hard," Bravo says, "And that's something that you hope or you assume when you do not live on campus, but here you actually see it. In the first floor, we have two classrooms and you see students work in there a lot, working late, reading."

Jon Dooley, assistant vice president for student life, runs the program and says he hopes to see it expand in the future.

"The goal will be that we're going to have a faculty director for every residential neighborhood," Dooley says, "So there'll be at least one faculty member who'll be living in every residential neighborhood, and then there may be other faculty members in that neighborhood as well."

Pardini agrees that this will be a benefit for Elon as a whole.

"I mean my understanding of what the university is and who the students are and who I am as a faculty has totally been improved and changed, transformed positively because of this," Pardini says. "I mean, I'm a hundred times better than I was, as a teacher, as a scholar, as a person, just by being here, and I hope that in some ways the students are as well because we're here.