Beneath Penn's Upper Quad greens, through an extensive, underground network of hidden tunnels, stands Ware College House Dean Nathan Smith. These low-ceiling, secret passageways, which Smith describes as "bizarre," are just one of Smith's discoveries from his time spent living in the Quad.
As the house dean, Smith's main duty is to deal with emergency response. "The funny thing about my job is that there is no typical day," said Smith, recalling times when he had to battle a sewage flood and a fire.
Event planning also plays a big part in Smith's job. He stressed the need for students to escape the "Penn bubble" and experience events outside of Penn's campus.
Smith, who has been at Penn for 12 years, stressed that above all he is a family man. Expecting another child, he smiled and shared that "time with his wife and daughter is the most important thing in the world" to him.
When not spending time with his family, Smith enjoys filmmaking, playing the banjo, and listening to music. Smith boasts an impressive "completely legal music collection of over 90 gigabytes of MP3s."
Exercising at Pottruck five times a week, he often eats lunch within five minutes at his desk to clear time for his busy schedule. In fact, while in graduate school, Smith could "bench 290 pounds."
But Smith is not just a house dean, as he juggles his roles as a lecturer in the Graduate School of Education and as an undergraduate instructor of the "Brains, Jocks, Burnouts and Rebels" critical writing seminar.
When asked which group he best fit into during his high school years, Smith answered, "It depended on the year. I started out in the brains and nerds category," he said, "but by the end of junior year, I was the student that no teacher would ever want to have."
Born in Knoxville, Tennessee, Smith was raised just outside of Charleston, South Carolina. Before coming to Penn, where he would eventually receive his doctorate in Education, Culture and Society, Smith worked as a high-school teacher in Pennsylvania.
Smith cites his interaction with high-school students as a useful experience in conducting his duties as both a professor and administrator.
"On the day that college freshmen arrive, they are no different from high-school seniors," said Smith. "In a house that is 98 percent freshmen, I know much more clearly where they are coming from."
