College as A House of Cards: Finding Home/Making Home in Higher Ed

By Elizabeth Rae Coody, Morningside University

The classroom where I teach my 100-level classes is in a beautiful but severe building built in the 1890s (see Image 1). The building itself is not conducive to home. It’s pretty much a castle transported to the upper Midwest, which makes it majestic from the street and worthy of a sign on the Interstate as a historical place of interest. Students will tell you it’s haunted, that they hear the pioneer-era piano in the attic playing eerie notes at night when no one could be there. It’s also inaccessible in just about every sense of the word – you literally cannot get in this building without making it up stairs…  Continue reading