High rises, Quad to reorganize as houses

The changes include increased programming, more uniform academic support and new faculty. New residential plans released Wednesday call for the creation of 12 College Houses to replace the current system of first year houses, upperclassmen houses, College Houses and Living and Learning Programs. But the impact of changes to the system will not be uniform across the 12 houses. While many University dormitories are already accustomed to varying degrees of communal life, considerable changes will have to be made to larger dorms and those without permanent programs and staff, like the high rises. But the faculty and administrators who designed the plan said they want to assure students that residential life will not undergo any drastic or unwanted upheaval, Art History Professor David Brownlee said. Instead, for many houses the changes will consist of increased programming and a more uniform level of academic support services, according to Director of Academic Services in Residence Chris Dennis. "What this program will give us is the comprehensive ability to deliver services across the board," Dennis said. "This will allow us to do this in the high rises the same way we already do in smaller houses." Specific choices of programming or house themes and focuses will be left up to residents in a manner "compatible" with what students want, Dennis added. Ultimately, if the program is successful, the biggest change for residents in larger houses will be an extremely positive one -- the development of a community atmosphere in what are currently impersonal buildings, Brownlee said. But he added that these communities are striving towards a different goal than traditional notions of community building as simply being a matter of everyone learning each other's names. "These will be a different type of community than the ones created in corridor buildings where everyone shares a bathroom," Brownlee said. Rather the goal of the program will be to enable each student to find "a circle of friends with whom they share experiences." In addition to stronger community, students may also benefit from increased diversity produced by turning each house into multi-year communities with representatives from all undergraduate classes, graduate schools and the faculty. "This will be a more realistic community," Brownlee said. "In the real world one lives with people of different ages." The high rises are currently the only dorms without any faculty in residence, requiring Provost Stanley Chodorow to search for two new faculty masters for the buildings, in addition to finding a master to replace a Quad faculty master whose term will end in May, Residential Faculty Council Chairperson Al Filreis said. Brownlee, who has led various efforts to create a college house system over the past decade, will serve as faculty master for one of the high rises. Filreis, an English professor who also serves as faculty master of Van Pelt College House, said that since each house will have an additional faculty member in residence, three more faculty members must be found for the high rises. And the University will be looking to hire 12 residential deans for the houses, who will hold similar positions as the seven current assistant deans for residence. But while those deans currently focus primarily on disciplinary and maintenance issues, the new deans will be expected to serve a more academic function by coordinating services and advising students. The first change many students will notice, however, is that their buildings will no longer have the same name. Residents of High Rise North may be shocked to discover that the new college house in their building will be called Hamilton House. And the Quadrangle will have one fewer house than it has now, as Butcher-Speakman-Class of '28 House disappears from the Penn vocabulary. Speakman and Class of '28 will become a part of Ware House -- which will encompass the entire middle Quad area around the junior balcony. At the same time, the rest of upper Quad will become Goldberg House, while the Butcher building -- famous for its rambunctious student body --will become part of the usually quieter Community House. But don't take the new house names as a permanent institution either, Brownlee said. The University will be looking for potential donors to sponsor the houses -- as is already the case with the Goldberg House with a $2 million donation from film producer Leonard Goldberg. Brownlee added that the new system for building community and increases in-house programming makes the residences considerably more attractive to donors.

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