Higher Education News from the Collegiate Way

Residential Colleges and the Renewal of Campus Life

These news items about residential colleges and the renewal of university life are posted for readers of the Collegiate Way website. To receive a monthly e-mail digest of this news please add your name to the Collegiate Way mailing list. For more general information about residential colleges please visit the main Collegiate Way page.

Collegiate Way News · Topical Subset: Collegiate Life

¶ This topical subset contains news, views, recommendations, and examples of the successful cultivation of residential college life throughout the year. (Return to the complete news index.)

• Conversation and Integration in College Life (7 June 2009)

  ‘Without conversation and cooperation between subjects and disciplines, the achievements and riches of this place and others like it would be so much more limited than they are.’

• “In lilac-time, in lilac-time” (15 May 2009)

  ‘He that delights to plant and set, leaves after-ages in his debt.’

• Visiting Vassar’s House System (2 April 2009)

  A leading liberal arts college considers how to strengthen its existing residential programs.

• The Fierce Varieties of Men (20 March 2009)

  ‘The man who lives in a small community lives in a much larger world.’

• “You may blame Aphrodite” (9 February 2009)

  You’re always teaching. Even on Valentine’s Day.

• More Intellectual Fun at the University of Malaya (1 February 2009)

  The University of Malaya knows how to do ‘intellectual fun’ in residential college life.

• Ring a Bell for Cambridge Tonight (17 January 2009)

  Help Cambridge University ring in its 800th anniversary celebration.

• The Residential College Movement in Review (31 December 2008)

  In 2008 the collegiate way of living made encouraging advances around the world.

• College Christmas, College Home (24 December 2008)

  A residential college is a great household. It should feel like one at Christmastime.

• The Festival of Lessons and Carols from King’s (9 December 2008)

  Join millions of people around the world for this great residential college tradition.

• Feed Them and They Will Come (6 December 2008)

  And if you light candles, they may even dress up.

• Chess Championships and Collegiate Fun (18 November 2008)

  Tuanku Bahiyah College will host the GACC World Inter-Varsity Chess Championship.

• Raising (and Signing) the Residential College Roof (30 October 2008)

  The University of Mississippi understands the importance of collegiate ceremony.

• “The night of time far surpasseth the day” (22 September 2008)

  ‘And who knows when was the equinox?’

• Avast, Ye Scurvy Dogs (19 September 2008)

  If your college has no playful traditions, matey, why would anyone want to belong to it?

• Mississippi’s First Residential College Takes Shape (9 September 2008)

  Applications are now being accepted for the college’s opening in Fall 2009.

• ‘A Renaissance in Collegiate Education?’ (12 July 2008)

  Donald Markwell on the importance of the collegiate way of living in Australia.

• Ryan’s Collegiate Way of Living Now Available Online (19 June 2008)

  The best volume of essays on residential college life is now available online.

• Sons of This Place (26 May 2008)

  ‘Let this of you be said: that you who live are worthy of the dead.’

• Bowles Hall and the Collegiate Way of Living (10 May 2008)

  ‘One of the problems of such an institution as the University of California is so to subdivide its student body that the advantages of the small group may be retained without sacrificing the even greater advantages of membership in a large university.’

• The Regimental College (22 March 2008)

  ‘Win your world.’

• A Residential College is a Great Household (21 February 2008)

  Membership, not residence, is the key relation, but the language of membership is conspicuously absent from most of American higher education.

• A Middle East Ivy League? (11 February 2008)

  If American higher education is to be exported, let’s export the best it has to offer.

• Woodrow Wilson: British Colleges, German Universities (3 February 2008)

  ‘They have never thought of the university as a community of teachers and pupils.’

• Of Houses, History, and High Places (16 January 2008)

  Residential colleges (and school houses) are permanent societies that grow deep roots.

• “To gather from the air a live tradition” (21 December 2007)

  ‘A British college’s annual holiday tradition contains lessons for us all, writes Robert O’Hara’ at Inside Higher Ed.

• Magistri: Hodgson of Newnham and Stewart of Lowell (12 December 2007)

  Humane profiles of the life and work of two residential college masters.

• “Against Theme Halls” in Student Affairs Leader (15 November 2007)

  Themed housing is easy to sell, but in education what’s easy isn’t always best.

• Forty Years of Residential College Life in Binghamton (6 October 2007)

  Hinman College celebrates an important anniversary.

• Small Pirate and Lesse Greeke (16 September 2007)

  If your college has no playful traditions, why would anyone want to belong to it?

• The Burlington Free Press Reports on Campus Life (31 August 2007)

  A review of recent residential trends on campus, with comments on ‘theme halls.’

• A Collegiate House System for an Oklahoma School (11 August 2007)

  More on the secondary-school counterpart of the residential college movement.

• The New York Times on Residential Colleges (29 July 2007)

  In the Education Life section, Bruce Weber reports on ‘The Residential Collage.’

• On the Virtues of the Harvard House System (6 June 2007)

  ‘There I experienced formal dinners celebrating everything from new sophomores to illustrious past House residents, apple pickings and barbecues, and dining hall conversations about politics and philosophy that went on late into the night.’

• House Systems and Communal Dining (20 May 2007)

  ‘Ministers believe social and emotional intelligence classes will help stop children from turning into louts.’

• “The beautiful and death-struck year” (17 May 2007)

  Is your campus a warm and friendly Shropshire, or a cold London?

• The Malaysian Collegiate Way (6 May 2007)

  Residential college life is the same (and always popular) everywhere it’s found.

• An American at Cambridge (30 April 2007)

  A sketch of Cambridge collegiate life from visiting American scholar Anthony Grafton.

• Every College Needs an Auspex (23 April 2007)

  Of birds and titles and liberal education. It doesn’t get any better than this.

• Graduate Tutors for Princeton’s Residential Colleges (11 April 2007)

  Graduate students in residence will enrich the life of the campus.

• Families Enrich the Life of Every Residential College (9 March 2007)

  Ustinov College at the University of Durham shows the way.

• Catholic Residential Colleges in Secular Universities (22 February 2007)

  A colloquium to be hosted in 2008 by St. John’s College at the University of Sydney.

• “Awake ye muses nine, sing me a strain divine” (8 February 2007)

  ‘Unwind the solemn twine, and tie my Valentine!’

• Lessons and Carols from King’s College, Cambridge (7 December 2006)

  This annual Christmas service embodies many important residential college principles.

• McDonalds Does Not Have a Gong (25 October 2006)

  But at least one residential college dining hall does.

• Avoiding Self-Parody (15 October 2006)

  They’ll always make fun, but that doesn’t mean we have to provide them with material.

• Small Pirate and Lesse Greeke, Arrr (18 September 2006)

  Fill your college with joy, love, laughter, and pirates (of doom).

• Student Housing: Education vs. Marketing (15 September 2006)

  Why do some universities bother to house students at all?

• Chariots of Fire: College Sports as it Should Be (14 September 2006)

  An exemplary model of sport and collegiate charity from Cambridge University.

• Students Relish Residential Colleges (30 August 2006)

  More collegiate news and views from ‘The Australian.’

• Tea: The Foundation of Residential College Life (28 August 2006)

  Begin with tea, and everything else in residential college life will follow.

• Stanley Kunitz, 1905–2006 (15 May 2006)

  On residential college newsletters, and teaching with-out the curriculum.

• Collegiate Charity from Central Arkansas (27 January 2006)

  UCA provides a fine example of how residential colleges can do good.

• Tip-of-the-Month: Your Own Holiday Cards! (10 December 2002)

  It’s an easy way to brighten the end of the collegiate calendar year.

• Collegiate Tip-of-the-Month: Host an Art Show! (18 March 2002)

  Your college is bursting with talent—here’s how to put it on display.