Four faculty masters end terms

Electrical Engineering Professor Jan Van der Spiegel knows what it's like to be awakened each Sunday morning around 2 a.m. to the sounds of drunken chatter outside his window. In fact, he's had to put up with it for six years. During that time, Van der Spiegel, 47, has served as Ware College House's faculty master, living in a tastefully decorated, art-filled apartment atop the Quadrangle's 37th Street gate. This summer, he will pack up his worldly collections, his cooking utensils and books and move out. Ware's leading faculty resident is just one of a handful of professors who are completing their terms this spring in their respective dormitories and moving on to a home where they will no longer swipe their PennCard to get inside. Stouffer College House Faculty Master Karl Otto, Goldberg House Senior Faculty Resident Kenneth Shropshire and Van Pelt College House Faculty Master Al Filreis will also be finishing their terms this semester and moving out of the dorms. Interim Provost Michael Wachter has not yet announced replacements for the departing faculty, but new faculty masters are expected to be appointed in the coming weeks and will take office on July 1. Under the new college house system this fall -- which will reorganize the University's residences into 12 individual, multi-year houses -- each house will have one resident faculty master and several faculty fellows, as well as graduate and undergraduate students, on staff. Despite the occasional Saturday night "mini-gatherings" outside his window, Van der Spiegel said he will miss the Ware community when he moves back into his Center City house later this summer. "On the other hand, of course, it's going to free up some time for me to do more research and concentrate on my own work," he said. Among Van der Spiegel's achievements at Ware: creating the Ware Outdoors program, a late-August retreat for residents; initiating the William Carlos Williams symposium run by the Ware faculty master; and starting the regular open-house study breaks in Ware faculty apartments. Nursing sophomore Keri Hyde, a two-year Ware resident, said Van der Spiegel's open houses simulate "a family environment almost." "Jan made the best pizza bagels," added Ware resident and College sophomore Kobie Xavier. "And he makes a fabulous chocolate mousse." Breaking bread with the faculty master also seems to be an old tradition at Stouffer, where residents gather at Otto's apartment each Sunday night for "S & M at Karl's" -- which isn't what it sounds like. The 57-year-old German professor explained that the Sunday night event, formerly just "pizza with Karl," got its current name this semester. "I was tired of having pizza all the time," said Otto, who is also undergraduate chairperson of the German Department. He went on to explain that "the basic foods begin either with 'S' or with 'M' each night," such as spaghetti and meatballs. Otto has served as Stouffer's head for 12 years and will move on from there to Berlin, where he will spend a year directing Penn's study-abroad program. He admitted that leaving the house after so long will be "difficult," but he added that "directing a program like that where there's still a lot of contact with students will be a good bridge or a good transition." College sophomore Rob Olson, a Stouffer resident, said he found he can "treat Karl as just another peer." And when asked how he thinks Stouffer will be different without Otto, Olson had some difficulty answering. "I don't think that's a fair question," he said. "I don't think anyone can separate the two." Shropshire, who has headed Goldberg House in the Quadrangle for three years, has lived in a fully occupied apartment during his time in the house. The 43-year-old Legal Studies professor lives in the Quad with his wife and his two children, ages three and four. Shropshire recently gained notoriety for offering an independent study to Penn football star Mitch Marrow late in the fall semester, before reports of Marrow's academic ineligibility forced the Penn football team to forfeit nearly all its 1997 wins. Shropshire, who served as a faculty fellow in DuBois College House for three years during the late 1980s, said his decision to leave the dorm system after his first term as Goldberg master was rooted in "the kids." "We're on the fourth and fifth floors in the 'nipple'," he said. "It was tough to go outside and play. They get more anxious to do that, and that kind of thing got tougher to do." Shropshire added that the presence of his family may have been what caused house events to be located in various parts of the dorm rather than his apartment. "People just assumed that because we were a full-blown family, we didn't want that much traffic in and out," he said, adding that this kind of "respect" also kept the hallways around his apartment noise-free. "I never had to walk out and say, 'Can you hold it down?' " Shropshire said. The Shropshire family is already in the midst of moving out of Goldberg and into their new house in Philadelphia's West Mount Airy section. Filreis, who has been faculty master at Van Pelt for three years, announced to his residents two weeks ago that he and his family will be leaving the house and moving to the 4600 block of Osage Avenue. The English professor, one of the architects of the college house program, explained that he will spend next year on sabbatical, writing a book on the 1950s and spending time with his two young children. Filreis said he is proud of Van Pelt's achievement in piloting most of the existing in-house academic peer advising programs -- which together make up the Wheel program -- such as math, library, information technology and career services advising. Filreis will stay on as director of the University Writing Program and the Kelly Writers House during his sabbatical. Daily Pennsylvanian staff writer Lauren La Cascia contributed to this article.

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