The Residential College Movement in Review
Posted by R. J. O’Hara for the Collegiate Way
31 December 2008 (collegiateway.org) — It’s been another good year for residential colleges and the collegiate way of living around the world, and some of the year’s highlights appear below. If you have a friend, colleague, neighbor, or relative who might be interested in residential colleges and the renewal of university life, why not forward this page as an introduction to recent developments.
New-college notes from around the world: New residential colleges were established at a number of universities during 2008, and plans were announced for the creation of other new residential colleges and collegiate systems. Of particular note: six new colleges were announced for the National University of Singapore; Yale University formalized its plans to establish two new residential colleges and solicited suggestions from alumni on new-college designs; residential colleges were proposed for Columbia University, the University of Colorado, Tennessee Tech University, and the University of Alabama at Birmingham; Cornell University’s Flora Rose House was named, and Cambridge University’s New Hall was refounded as Murray Edwards College; the University of Kent at Canterbury established Virginia Woolf College, its first residential college for graduate students; the new residential college at the University of Mississippi began to take tangible form; and the alumni of Bowles Hall at the University of California sought to revive the collegiate way of living in their grand old castle by the bay. And house systems attracted a great deal of attention at the secondary-school level this past year as well—so much so that we created a special category to keep track of it all.
Collegiate tips and essay highlights: Over the course of the year did you use events celestial, anniversaries paradoxical, holidays memorial, and remembrances tragical to teach with-out the curriculum in your college? Was your college both a farm and a manufactory, as well as a refuge for rarities? Did you look back on the lost colleges of Coimbra and forward to the coming renaissance of collegiate education? And did you win your world and—very importantly—sign up to be a soldier in the global war on Taylorism?
Collegiate house and home: As you contemplate collegiate life in the year ahead, don’t forget that a college isn’t a building but is instead a great household, a community of teachers and pupils, an academical village, and a home away from home. It should function not only a place of learning, but also as a mutual aid society, a center for serious and silly fun, and a place of holiday cheer.
And finally: If in 2008 you didn’t read Mark Ryan’s collection of graceful essays A Collegiate Way of Living: Residential Colleges and a Yale Education—now available online for the first time—be sure to put it on your reading list for the year ahead.
We extend sincere thanks to everyone in the past year who has visited us, offered support, joined our mailing list, subscribed to our news feed, and worked to advance the collegiate way around the world. We mean you:
![[Map of visitors to the Collegiate Way website, March–November 2008]](http://collegiateway.org/images/news/2008-visitors-mar-nov.jpg "Visitors to the Collegiate Way website from March to November, 2008. (Click to enlarge.)")
