Filreis to move out of Van Pelt

English Professor Al Filreis cited family reasons for his move. and Edward Sherwin For years, English Professor Al Filreis has preached the virtues of the new college house system scheduled to be implemented at the University this fall. But yesterday, after years of work on the new residential program and at Van Pelt College House, where he served as faculty master for three years, Filreis announced that family issues will cause him to move off campus next year. In an e-mail to Van Pelt residents, Filreis said the decision to move to a house on the 4600 block of Osage Avenue was spurred by a desire to spend more time with his children. "Ben and Hannah really need more time with us than we are able to give them," Filreis said in the e-mail. Filreis' term at Van Pelt ends June 30. He will also resign his current position as chairperson of the Residential Faculty Council. The council is composed of the faculty members from each of the college houses. Filreis' successor as chairperson has not yet been announced by Interim Provost Michael Wachter. Filreis was in Boston on a recruiting trip yesterday, but those who had worked with him on the college houses were unanimous in praising his commitment to the plan and to the University. "He was so active in building different residentially based programs," Engineering junior Laura Kornstein said. "He tried to build a community." Kornstein, who worked with Filreis on in-house math advising for the college houses, said "his reasons for [resigning] were personal, not professional." College junior Myra Lotto, who has lived in Van Pelt for the last three years, said Filreis made the right choice in moving his family off campus. "He's got a family and he's got these two adorable children," she said. "They need a backyard." "His term was three years," she added. "There's nothing that says he has to serve a fourth." But Stephen Gale, faculty master at Community House in the Quadrangle, was more cynical about Filreis' motives. "Its a good way of exiting without having to take the consequences," Gale said of Filreis' decision to leave before the implementation of the college house plan. "He has insulated himself from it if something goes wrong." But Gale is quick to credit Filreis with the creation of the college houses --Efor better or for worse. "Al did one very important thing -- he got the problems we had with the residential system on the front burner," Gale said. Filreis will also take a year's sabbatical, leaving teaching to concentrate on a book on the 1950s. He told Van Pelt residents that the book "has been in my head for a few years." However, Filreis will stay on as director of the University Writing Program and the Kelly Writers House during his sabbatical. "For all the things that he does at the University, he is first and foremost an academic," Lotto said. Art History Professor David Brownlee, who also worked on developing the college house plan, said he believes the college house system Filreis pushed for will be able to survive in his absence. "His loss? is a significant loss for the enterprise," said Brownlee, who will serve as faculty master in High Rise East next year. "[But] it can be surely left on its own." Kornstein agreed, saying that "he's not leaving before he's made sure everything will work next year." "He's done more for Penn than any other faculty member I've seen in my 20 years here," Brownlee said.