David Brownlee: Creating community

In 1902 my grandfather was a freshman in chemical engineering at Penn. The Quadrangle dormitories were then new -- but only 25 percent complete (it would be more than 50 years before they were finished), and they were just one part of what Penn was doing to redefine itself as both a residential college and as a center for advanced research and professional training.

In addition to the Quad, in 1902 the facilities that were brand new or under construction included a student union (Houston Hall), the first athletic fields on the site of Franklin Field and buildings for engineering, law, medicine, dental medicine and veterinary medicine.

This year, as we've dodged construction workers in the courtyard that will be center of the renovated Ware College House and made our way around the scaffolding at the Engineering, Dental, Education and Wharton schools, I suspect that we have had a lot in common with my grandfather's schoolmates and teachers. There is a sense of exhilaration because so much is happening at an institution we love. But there is a certain amount of amnesia about just how different things are now than they were a few years ago, and there is a good deal of impatience about getting new programs up and running and new construction projects done in time for us to enjoy them.

This mixture of feelings runs especially strongly through the college houses. We have accomplished a great deal in three and a half years, largely by establishing new patterns in which students, staff and faculty live and work together outside the classroom.

At the heart of this accomplishment is a set of simple, but impressive facts: 42 faculty and senior academic staff and their families have moved onto campus, joining 199 RAs and GAs, nearly 200 ITAs and computing managers, more than 150 managers of other kinds, and a resident population of just under 5,500. Interest in the college houses has been consistently high. So high, in fact, that there have been waitlists and temporary assignments to the Sheraton.

The college houses were created to accomplish several essential parts of the academic mission of the University and also to support whatever else their residents and the broader University needed or simply wanted to do. As mandated, the college houses provide 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week computing support of a kind that is literally unique, coupled with a long and growing list of similarly conceived peer-to-peer, online and in-person academic services. One of these, our CSE mentoring program, won a Model of Excellence award, and it has inspired a new program in chemistry and several others now being developed.

The house deans collaborate with the four undergraduate schools to provide a single "front door" for advising and referral -- something Penn has never had before. Their contribution has been essential to the impressive turnaround of the College's advising system.

But we have also been there when new needs have been identified and when new opportunities appeared. When the Music Department decided that it was finally time for Penn to offer music lessons, they turned to the college houses as a partner. When PAC groups faced an even greater than usual shortage of rehearsal space while Houston Hall and Irvine Auditorium were closed, performers practiced dance steps and rehearsed soliloquies in the college houses.

When students wanted to build a blimp, they found support in the Science and Technology Wing program in Kings Court/English College House. Harnwell College House became home to the Underground Shakespeare Company. The Humanities Forum and the Center for Undergraduate Research and Fellowships joined with the college houses to appoint Humanities Research Fellows in every House -- with stipend-bearing awards.

In support of everyone's desire for more informal contact between faculty and students, the college houses have given unlimited free dining privileges to the 1,000 standing faculty of the seven schools that teach undergraduates. When students and the faculty master in Ware College House wanted to spend spring break exploring the archaeology of Central America, their college house sponsored the project. The Working Group on Alcohol Abuse called for an expansion of on-campus entertainment options, and the college houses coordinated the scheduling of their larger social events to create PennPM, with something to do on every Thursday, Friday and Saturday night.

Throughout the college houses, students and faculty have established more than a dozen new residential programs over the last three years, studying and celebrating particular interests and disciplines. These include Entrepreneurs in Spruce College House, Al-bayt al-Arabi in Gregory, Ancient Studies in Harnwell, Living Cultures in Community, Visual Arts in Harrison and -- new for 2002-2003 -- Healthy Living in Stouffer, Exploring Philadelphia in Hill and Law and Society in Woodland.

What have we done in the last three and a half years? A lot. What can we do? Much more. What will we do? Whatever several thousand of the brightest people on the planet devise. What are our limitations? Well, we don't have infinite resources. We don't have buildings that were built specifically for the purposes to which we now put them, although we have created essential facilities (like computer labs and meeting rooms for every house), and we have launched a thorough renovation project. This work will not be finished quickly, but three "new" houses will begin their lives in the Quad next fall.

None of us feel paralyzed by these obvious obstacles -- mostly, we feel torn among the multitude of important and interesting projects that we want to start or advance. We're impatient, like my grandfather must have been in 1902.

David Brownlee is professor of art history and Director of College Houses and Academic Services.

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