The Mastership of Emmanuel College (Need a Job?)
Posted by R. J. O’Hara for the Collegiate Way
1 September 2001 (collegiateway.org) — Applications are now being accepted for the position of Master of Emmanuel College, Cambridge University. Although the Oxford and Cambridge colleges, as independent corporations, are rather more substantial in a legal and financial sense than most residential colleges elsewhere, the many facets of college life itself are universal. If you browse the description for the Emmanuel position you will get a pretty good picture of what every college master does, from “representing the college and its interests in the university,” to “promoting contact with well-wishers,” to “promoting the social cohesion of the college by entertaining members of the college, by supporting non-academic activities, and by presiding in hall.” Emmanuel was the sixteenth-century Puritan foundation that sent more graduates to the New England colonies than any other college. The original Harvard College in Massachusetts was modeled largely on Emmanuel, so much of higher education in the United States can trace its genealogy back to this small collegiate society of about 600 members.
