Higher Education News from the Collegiate Way

Visiting Virginia’s Brown College on Monroe Hill

Posted by R. J. O’Hara for the Collegiate Way

11 April 2008 (collegiateway.org) — It was my great privilege last month to visit and speak at Brown College at the University of Virginia, one of UVA’s three residential colleges. The visit came about through the kind offices of Prof. Carl Trindle, Brown’s long-time principal, who is stepping down this summer after many years of distinguished service. A computational chemist by trade, Carl served as Brown College’s director of studies before he became principal, and in both offices he led the college from strength to strength. He is being succeeded this coming year by Drs. Jennifer Geddes and Charles Mathewes, both of UVA’s Department of Religious Studies, and my talk at Brown was part of a day of celebration in honor of their appointment.

The residential colleges at UVA have been very successful, and they were championed in their early growth and development by the university’s long-term president, John Casteen. And yet despite these successes, and Casteen’s support, UVA’s collegiate system hasn’t been expanded further for some years. Perhaps—and I speak only as an outsider—the clear call for renewal became overwhelmed by the clamor of can’t-do bureaucracy. Whatever the case may be, the existing UVA residential colleges do provide their students with just the kind of experience Thomas Jefferson envisaged when he founded the University of Virginia: each college is “an academical village” where students and faculty live and learn throughout the year.

Brown College was established in the 1980s in a collection of pre-existing campus buildings, and given the physical constraints those buildings imposed on it, it has adapted to its surroundings well. It is just far enough off the beaten path to provide a sense of physical separation, but its resident members need only dash across the street and a couple of lovely lawns to make it to the center of the university grounds.

One of the things that makes a college a residential college is that the heads of the house live there. Residential colleges typically provide housing for the master and the dean (or in UVA’s case, the principal and the director of studies), and at Brown College this is magnificently accomplished by way of Monroe Hill House, a former home of U.S. President James Monroe, now adjacent to the student residential blocks. (The central core of the UVA grounds, laid out by Jefferson, had once been part of Monroe’s farm.)

As its annual reports attest and as I saw first hand, the life of Brown College throughout the year is filled with social events, traditions (James Monroe’s birthday!), discussion groups, visiting dignitaries, and fun. One of the college’s exemplary offerings is the one-credit course called UVA Backstage that it has designed for its new student members. This is not a “University 101” fluff course that teaches freshmen how to make friends and keep a calendar; it is a rich cultural introduction to a great center of American history and learning, taught by faculty. And the students in the course make friends naturally along the way.

But let’s let some captioned pictures tell us more—pictures of early spring at a fine Virginia college.

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