At Tuesday’s meeting, Vennie Gore, Residential and Hospitality Services associate vice president, senior associate provost June Youatt and senior associate vice president for Student Affairs and Services Denise Maybank discussed the types of programs that will be offered as part of the neighborhood concept.

Gore said the town hall meetings have given MSU officials a chance to hear feedback form faculty and students.

“They’ve given the campus community an opportunity for dialogue,” Gore said. “We’ve been able to sit and have an opportunity to react. We’ve learned some things as we’ve gone by. We were hoping we’d get people to think about and then react to it and then we could get some knowledge back from that.”

The meeting attracted a crowd of about 80, roughly half students and half faculty.

“We had great attendance. We felt like we were very successful,” Youatt said. “This is close to home for people.”

The meeting focused on the pilot program in Hubbard Hall. In addition to the services which will be available for students within the dorm, there is also a planned engagement center to serve as a common area between students and faculty and an online service called “Spartan Connect” also is planned to run in East Neighborhood next year.

The program will allow students living in the neighborhood to connect with their roommates, suite mates and hall mates in June. It also will contain features such as blogs and video of the dorms.

“We didn’t want another Facebook,” Gore said. “We wanted something with more opportunity for us to engage.”

Students in East Neighborhood — which is made up of Akers, Holmes and Hubbard halls — will have equal access to the pilot program. Hubbard Hall, however, will be the focus of the program’s feedback.

Diagnostic molecular science junior Jeff Chludzinski, a resident mentor in Hubbard Hall both this year and next, said he saw the “selling” of the plan, but was not sure about the specifics of it.

He said he is concerned about the role resident mentors will play within the pilot program and the extent of their responsibilities.

“I feel like they’re trying to make us be the resource,” Chludzinski said. “I’m a little fearful of that.”

Youatt said clarifying the exact roles of members of the resident support team would be a next step for the program.

“People are asking ‘How do you describe this job?’ ‘What will this role be like?’” Youatt said. “We didn’t pretend to have that negotiated. That is for the next stage.”

Next week, the plan will be discussed with directors of organizations dealing with students such as the MSU Department of Residence Life and the Office of Cultural and Academic Transitions.

A team leader for the Hubbard Hall pilot will be identified on June 1 to run the program for the 2010-11 academic year.