Intellectualism in House Life: The Fourth Lie of Harvard?

Halfway through their first year, Harvard students receive a glossy booklet called "Inside the Houses." Here, students read that the houses will be the center of their upper-class existences, a spot where "daily interactions give fullest expression to the life of learning."

But upper-class students tell a different story. Many say their own experiences with house life have been much less intellectually-oriented than this description implies.

"People use the houses as pit stops," says Maya G. Prabhu '94, co-chair of the Undergraduate Council's committee on academics. "They eat here, sleep here, socialize here. Academic life stops when they leave the Yard."

For many students, this division of academic life from house life is not necessarily negative. Robert Bikell '91, a former Eliot House resident, says he thinks of the houses as havens from the often intense and competitive academic concerns of classes.

"The house dining halls are a relief," he says. "Sometimes people just want to hang out with their buds and act like morons for a while."

A Deeper Problem

But many students say the lack of student-faculty interaction in the houses stems from a deeper problem--the image of Harvard professors as unapproachable and intimidating.

"I feel that [faculty] are very busy and that what they have to do is very important," says David B. Berns '94, who says he has never been to a professor's office hours. "These people are so luminary."

Although each house has a senior common room that includes faculty members and community figures, many students say they never interact with senior common room members. One house master says that fewer than a dozen of the professors affiliated with his house show an interest in participating in house activities.

And students add to the problem as well: according to one recent graduate, professors who do show interest often meet with an unenthusiastic response. The student recalls a "septuagenarian crowd" of retired professors who often ate in his house's dining hall.

"Everyone knew these intellectual power houses were there in the corner, but they always ate alone," the student says.

The council's academics committee has recently launched an attempt to increase the likelihood of student-faculty interaction in the houses.

Ideally, the houses should serve as catalysts for student-faculty relationships to develop, Prabhu says.

"Theoretically, chatting with a professor over dinner should be less intimidating than in office hours," she says.

In December, the committee submitted a 14-point discussion paper to the Committee on Undergraduate Education (CUE), an academic advisory board made up of faculty and students. According to the paper, "the current house system...has largely failed in its mission to make the houses the academic and intellectual communities envisioned by President Lowell."

The house system created by President Abbott Lawrence Lowell was intended to allow students to mix academics with extracurricular life, in imitation of the residential college system of Oxford and Cambridge Universities.

The committee's paper, which Prabhu says has "generated a lot of talk on the CUE," aims primarily at drawing faculty into the houses more often. Suggestions include adding more house seminars and house-based sections and implementing house lecture series.

The paper also makes some recommendations which may be less realistic economically. These include using senior faculty as resident tutors, providing in-house office space for members of the senior common rooms and even constructing more physical classroom space in the houses.

Assistant Dean for Undergraduate Education Jeffrey Wolcowitz, who chairs the CUE, says he is convinced of the importance of these measures, but he cautions against undue optimism.

"It's cheap to make the recommendation, it's a lot harder to do these things," he says.

Budget constraints are not the only obstacle to increasing faculty presence in the houses. According to Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education David Pilbeam, current trends in academia might preclude the level of faculty presence that was feasible in the past.

"The pattern of academic life is different from what it was a few years ago," he says, explaining that today fewer faculty live near the houses--or even in Cambridge--than in the past. Professors are thus less likely to want to go to a house for meals during a busy day, Pilbeam says.

Pilbeam says that though the recommendations made by the council's academic committee "seem possible, and to some extent do-able," there are limits to what can be accomplished in concrete terms.

For example, he says he doubts the feasibility of constructing new classrooms in the houses, since any available funds would be used first to refurbish and upgrade existing spaces.

Faced with such social and economic realities, some faculty members believe changes in departmental policies might be the most realistic way to create more of a faculty presence in the houses.

Professor of Science William H. Bossert '59, master of Lowell House, says that current teaching requirements in many departments discourage senior faculty from giving house seminars.

"The people in the senior common room already teach too much at their departments," he says.

According to Bossert, many departments do not offer professors credit for teaching small house seminars. Thus house seminars are often extra, non-credit work which professors must do in addition to teaching departmental courses, Core classes and graduate seminars.

The result is a house seminar program that has "pretty much disappeared," Bossert says. He cites the 1991-92 course catalog, which lists only six house seminars for the year.

When the house seminar program was created in the 1970s, the 13 undergraduate houses were supposed to offer three to six seminars each, says David L. Duncan '93, a member of the Committee on House Life.

In revamping the house seminar program, Bossert suggests the administration look into two previously untapped teaching sources: graduate students and retired faculty.

Under current University policy, faculty emeriti are prohibited from teaching. Bossert points out that many of these professors, most of whom are "still vigorous academics," would have more time than current faculty do to devote to small house-based classes and seminars.

Graduate students, who are similarly free from departmental teaching requirements, are also barred from teaching house seminars. Bossert says graduate students might be able to do valuable and unique teaching by involving students in their research.

Several house masters say they think the administration may need to make an even larger commitment to ensure a strong house seminar program.

Currier House Master William A. Graham, a professor of the history of religion and Islamic studies, suggests that departments start teaching about one-quarter of their courses in the houses.

"The only way we're going to get a change in this is to put some sort of place for curriculum in the houses," Graham says. "The lives of those who teach are so intense that it is increasingly hard to shake people loose for things that aren't related to their fields."

Another possibility would be to give each house a fund to be used expressly in hiring faculty away from their departments to teach small, dormitory-based classes. This method of "farming out" faculty from the departments, practiced by Yale University, would require no new money and would be relatively easy to implement here, Bossert says.

Changing Priorities

Whatever economic or bureaucratic changes are in order, a change in student attitude may be crucial to creating the desired atmosphere. Bossert says undergraduates must bear much of the responsibility for change.

"Students say they want [increased interaction], but they're not willing to make it a priority," he says. "I've been repeatedly embarrassed by our attempts to bring senior common room members and students together. Students don't show up."

James D. Wilkinson '65, director of the Bok Center for Teaching and Learning and a former Lowell tutor, echoes this sentiment.

"I met with resounding failure in getting students to come," he says of the faculty discussions he organized as a tutor.

Wilkinson warns that a permanent solution to the lack of student interest may be impossible to find. In reality, the level of student-faculty interaction in the houses may never have been very high, he says.

"There's a lack of institutional memory in a University where the student body turns over every four years," he says. "Thirty years ago, when I was an undergrad, things weren't much better."

Former Eliot House Master Alan E. Heimert '49, Cabot professor of American literature, agrees. "The vision of the houses as laced with faculty is a bit of myth," says Heimert.

But Heimert, who is teaching a house seminar on Abraham Lincoln this semester, says that there are a number of relatively easy measures that could be taken to increase academic interaction on the house level. For instance, he suggests, the creation of house sections for large Core classes would be one step in this direction.

The council has already begun to make efforts of this nature. Last week, the council's committee on house life voted to send a letter to Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Jeremy R. Knowles, recommending that faculty emeriti be given teaching status.

Knowles has said he hopes "the houses can be intellectual as well as social foci for all undergraduates." And according to Graham, Knowles has been "very encouraging" when discussing the issue with house masters.

Substantial change may not come for a long time, however. Until then, Wilkinson suggests students and faculty "work on their social skills with each other."

Wilkinson says real progress can be made only by keeping in mind the complexity of the problems involved. "There's a lot to be gained, [but] we ought to do it with our eyes open," he says.