When I was admitted to Penn, stuffed inside the big envelope was a glossy brochure highlighting Penn's new college house system for the 21st century. The living-learning residence program, the information packet hyped, would create 12 unique communities within the existing campus dorms.
Three years later, the reality is that the new college house system for the 21st Century looks a heck of a lot like the old college dormitory system of the 20th century -- albeit with a fancy new logo and names for the high rises that nobody can get right.
The Quadrangle is still home to mostly underclassmen. Campus dining is still a major complaint. And administrators are still wrestling with Penn's decades-old question -- just how do you instill a "sense of community" in a 24-story, high rise apartment building?
One answer was found in 1999, when Art Casciato came to Penn as the first dean of Harrison College House -- or High Rise South for you old-timers. In just a few short months, Casciato transformed one of the most notoriously anti-social dormitories on campus into a thriving community.
Since then, Casciato has become the head of the Center for Undergraduate Research and Fellowships. And while his presence at Harrison is sorely missed, University leaders can learn a lot from what he accomplished to improve the current college house system. Here are four big ideas.
1. Leadership Matters More.
College House Director David Brownlee rightly points out that the architecture of the high rises makes it extremely difficult to foster community. But while the physical environment is important, leadership matters more.
As Harrison's dean, Casciato set the tone for both students and staff with his take-charge drive and friendly personality. When students asked for an ATM in the lobby, he pushed for one and got it. When a resident assistant was sick, he would volunteer to fill in. Students were so impressed they claimed Casciato "walked on water." And most of all, he was always around. Which brings me to my next point:
2. Know Thy Students.
The conventional wisdom around the University is that community can be manufactured through better programming and more support services. But at its core, community is about personal relationships.
As house dean, Casciato made sure he knew the name of almost every one of his 840 residents. Each morning, he would chat briefly with students as they left for class, and he made a concerted effort to introduce students to each other. In short, Casciato understood his job was not just to sort out roommate conflicts -- it was to get to know his residents.
The high student-to-faculty ratio in the high rises doesn't make that easy. Nor does the high turnover rate among faculty masters and house deans. But too many college house staff believe that students should simply seek them out. In reality, it should be the other way around. Moreover, the staff must:
3. Focus on the customer --the resident.
When Penn officials speak about the college house system, they point out it is modeled after the "living-learning" communities at Harvard and Yale.
For high rise living, though, a better model might be a luxury apartment building.
When Casciato was house dean, he was always thinking of ways to provide better services that met the needs of his customers -- the residents. To that end, he created a small cafe in the lobby, complete with jazz music and chairs. He went beyond the typical services provided to college house residents to set up a video store in basement and keep the computer lab open 24 hours a day.
What Casciato realized -- and the college house system too often forgets -- is that Penn students are busy with their schoolwork and campus activities. In an apartment-style college house, residents prefer high-quality services to a large quantity of social events. And they want programs that:
4. Focus on Food.
Administrators like to point out that food is at the heart of the college house system. After all, "creating community" -- not just Penn Dining's fiscal ineptitude -- was the reason behind the absurd proposal for a 17-meal-per-week freshman meal plan.
But what administrators forget is that quality house events involving food don't require a communal dining facility.
In fact, Harrison's best-attended events were formal dances and Wednesday night study breaks that were catered by restaurants around Penn and Philadelphia. Unlike like dinners with professors or esoteric lectures at other college houses, students weren't required to stay. But in the few short minutes they stood around and chatted with other residents, students got a greater "sense of community" than at any structured program.
These days, Penn administrators seem more focused on saying just how wonderful the college house system is than making constructive changes to improve it. Perhaps they think that simply repeating how "the college houses create community" somehow makes it true.
But building community in a high rise will take a lot more than just empty rhetoric. It will require wholesale changes in attitudes and policies -- as well as a whole lot more Art Casciatos -- if it ever is to become reality.
Eric Dash is a senior Management and American History major from Pittsburgh, Pa.
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