According the weblog tracker Technocrati, 120,000 new blogs are started everyday–that’s 1.4 blogs per second! In fact, chances are you or someone you know may be a regular blogger. With the evolution of online social networks and distance learning programs, the internet is no longer a tool, but a community.
Here at Florida National University, the Office of Student Services is dedicated to building community on and off line. What is our vision of community? It is best expressed in the book Creating Campus Community in which William M. McDonald writes:
Shared purpose, shared commitment, shared relationships, shared responsibility–the need for community is a primal yearning and a practical necessity in our lives and in our society. A healthy community is one in which essential but often competing values are maintained in tensioned balance . . . the balance between access and excellence in education, rights and responsibility, justice and mercy, diversity and community, opportunity and disciplined effort, cooperation and competition, service and profit, self-interest and self-sacrifice, tradition and innovation. (3)
The Office of Student Services sincerely hopes that this new endeavor will positively contribute to the overall sense of community on all of our campuses. We look forward to hearing from you.
McDonald, William M. Creating Campus Community. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2002.
