Meet the Future of Residence Life: How TCU’s New Model Creates Belonging

Be Intentional in Knowing

The first step in the KCE model is “knowing.” “It starts with knowing names, and it starts with welcoming people to their community,” Allen says. 

Throughout KCE's “knowing” phase, the goal is creating a genuine sense that each student is seen and cared for, he says. Within the first two weeks, resident advisors (RAs), who supervise anywhere between 30 and 50 students each, are expected to know every student's name and be able to greet them personally.

Then, RAs go deeper, working their way around their floor to get to know what their residents are studying and how they hope to get involved on campus, picking up personal details about their families, hobbies, and interests. “We intentionally ask those questions, and RAs make it their mission to get involved with their students who live around them,” says Rachel Hopper, TCU’s director of housing and residence life, who is part of the group responsible for creating the KCE model. 

Hall directors, all professionals with master’s degrees, play a crucial role. They coach RAs who need help developing personalized strategies for getting to know students — whether it’s meeting with them face-to-face or writing texts and notes. “It’s just a matter of making sure that whatever they’re doing, it’s intentional, it’s repeatable, and it’s happening regularly throughout the semester,” Allen says. 

In his dissertation research, Allen found that consistency is key to building community and getting to know residents. 

That includes consistency in programming. As part of the KCE model, RAs and hall directors are required to attend community events, which happen at the same time each week in central locations in the residence halls. Pancake parties, often featuring guest pancake-flippers from across campus — including Allen, student-affairs team members, and a dean — are particularly popular.

Even students who didn’t plan to attend the events find themselves bumping into friends and staying to catch up. Those consistent meet-ups can create more friendships for students and nurture deeper relationships with current ones, Allen found. 

Allen also discovered that the consistent visibility of RAs is critical. While conducting his research, students told Allen that they don’t need their RA to be their friend, but they do consider their RA’s regular presence as evidence that they cared.

That’s why student staff are required to work their hall’s front desk each week, so they can chat with students as they come in and out, take part in community events, and connect with students in the hall.

“It was just those simple, repeatable things that happened throughout the year, not just at the beginning of the year, that signal to students, that person cares about me,” Allen says. “They know me.”

Campus Living Model Delivers Results, National Praise  

Fifteen years after Allen and his team introduced the KCE model, the results speak for themselves. This year, the Princeton Review ranked TCU No. 1 for happiest students, No. 2 for best quality of life, and No. 6 for best college dorms. Niche awarded it grades of A+ for both its residence halls and student life. And national benchmarking data from Skyfactor ranks TCU No. 1 among more than 100 institutions for peer interactions and program effectiveness, which is especially impressive because students are required to live on campus for their first two years.

National rankings are just one measure of KCE’s success, Allen says. Research has shown that student experience with on-campus residence can impact student success; the university’s first-year retention rates continue to rise, now standing at 93 percent. There has also been a drop in residence-hall vandalism from a weekly issue to a rare occurrence. And, at a time when many institutions are increasing compensation and lowering grade requirements to get more applicants for resident advisors, TCU is seeing significant increases in RA applications. Applicants often share that they had such a great on-campus living experience that they wanted to pay it forward. Housing can’t take credit for all those wins, Allen notes, but he believes that adhering to the KCE model has helped define TCU’s industry-leading student experience.

The model is also gaining traction nationally. In 2024, the University of South Carolina successfully implemented the model, and a May 2025 symposium at TCU drew representatives from more than 30 campuses, who were eager to learn more.

“I do believe that there's a hunger for this and a need,” Allen says. “And as I tell my colleagues […] we are where [students] live. We see them and interact with them 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Who is better positioned at a university to know students, to connect them to each other, and to help empower them than us? [...] If we are not building relationships as the foundation for our residential experience in an intentional, and systematic way, we are missing the boat.” 

“My hope is that when you’re leaving our residential campus and moving into an apartment complex or a neighborhood, that we’ve equipped you to be a great neighbor,” Hopper says. “That you are able to engage in conversations and really help to change our world, neighborhood by neighborhood. That’s ambitious. But it’s something that we believe we can do.”