Mark Ryan, a Collegiate Way of Living: Residential Colleges and a Yale
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
M . is Titular Professor of International Relations and History at the Universidad de las Améri- cas-Puebla, where he also serves as Regent of Colegio . José Gaos, President of the Council of Regents, and A Collegiate Way of Living Coordinator of the graduate program in United States Studies. Prior to his arrival at UDLA in 1997, he was for over twenty years Dean of Jonathan Edwards College and a teacher of history and American studies at Yale University. Originally from Houston, Texas, he holds A a Ph.D. in American studies from Yale and has also C o Mark B. Ryan l l taught at Williams College. He can be reached by e- e g i mail at [email protected]. a t e W a y o f L i v i n g M . is Titular Professor of International Relations and History at the Universidad de las Améri- cas-Puebla, where he also serves as Regent of Colegio . José Gaos, President of the Council of Regents, and A Collegiate Way of Living Coordinator of the graduate program in United States Studies. Prior to his arrival at UDLA in 1997, he was for over twenty years Dean of Jonathan Edwards College and a teacher of history and American studies at Yale University. Originally from Houston, Texas, he holds A a Ph.D. in American studies from Yale and has also C o Mark B. Ryan l l taught at Williams College. He can be reached by e- e g i mail at [email protected]. a t e W a y o f L i v i n g A Collegiate Way of Living A Collegiate Way of Living Mark B. Ryan • 2001 This publication is made possible by the Jonathan Edwards Trust. Designed, set in type, and printed at the direction of the Yale University Printer and Yale University Reprographics and Imaging Services Front cover: Harkness Tower from the courtyard of Jonathan Edwards College; back cover: The Great Hall, Jonathan Edwards College ©2001 Yale University ISBN 0-9723669-0-3 Who lived with me through it all and who understood, celebrated, and shared in my passion for it Contents Foreword by Richard H. Brodhead 9 Preface and Acknowledgments 11 Part One Introduction: Yale’s Residential Colleges 17 Checking the Circles: Welcoming Remarks 25 P art Two The University: The Changing Shape of a Yale Education 35 The American Residential College: Genesis and Legacy 47 The Collegiate Way: Historical Purposes of Residential Colleges 59 Part Three Residential College Deanships: An Anniversary Celebration 77 Self and Curriculum: Growing through a Yale Education 85 Inner Life/Yale Life 93 Part Four : The College in the University 99 Self-Knowledge and Liberal Education 113 Heart and Intellect: The Dalai Lama at Yale 129 Coda Why J.E. Sux: The Spirit of a Residential College 143 Epilogue Internationalizing Residential Colleges: An Experience in Mexico 151 Foreword A visiting Yale for the first time would be pardoned if he thought the residential colleges to be the school’s oldest feature. Dignified with visible age— an admiring visitor once told me that he had not remembered that Yale had been built in the thirteenth century—the residential colleges dominate the cen- tral campus, giving Yale its distinctive look and spatial structure. In the under- graduate school, the colleges are at least as central to the spirit of the place as they are to its physical layout. Before they have been here one full day, arriving freshmen frequently identify themselves by saying “I’m in Pierson” or “I’m in Davenport” or “I’m in Morse.” They identify with their residential college, this is to say. In the new identity they are forming as Yale students, their college a‡liation holds pride of place. The joke, of course, is that the colleges are not old at all. Seen within the whole sweep of Yale’s history, they are in fact quite recent inventions. For fully three-quarters of its existence, from the founding in 1701 to Edward Harkness’s proposal of the college system in the mid-1920s, Yale had no colleges, indeed had no idea of ever having them. (Harkness’s o›er to fund the building of the residential colleges, we can remember, was at first turned down.) In a world where the slightest innovation is talked out at endless length, it seems almost inconceivable that a school could ever have embraced the idea of consigning its whole future to this newfangled scheme, let alone cleared the ground on which to build it. But in the history of institutions, it would be hard to name a late interpolation that had made itself so central. In the seventy years since their creation, Yale’s residential colleges have con- tinued to give undergraduates a pleasant, elegant place in which to live, eat, and associate. As their founders must have hoped but in ways they could scarcely have foreseen, they have also proved to be magnificently adaptable. Indeed the colleges have been crucial to this University’s success at adjusting to new cir- cumstances and embracing new functions. As Yale has grown in scale, they have taken on increasing value in giving students a small-college “feel” together with the resources of a great research university. When the colleges were created, 9 Yale’s concept of the services they should o›er undergraduates was rudimentary in the extreme. But as Yale has come to embrace a fuller idea of service, the res- idential colleges have become the central site for individual student support, with the college deans—a position only half as old as the college system— giving aid and comfort on every front, academic, social, psychological, and even spiritual. Similarly, though they were built to house a relatively homogeneous student population, as the Yale undergraduate body has become radically more diverse, the colleges have become the chief site of education in the arts and values of community. The college suites and dining halls are the place where students learn to live together in the richest sense of the word, with comrades whose earlier lives may have nothing in common with their own. No one, it may be, has a more intimate knowledge of the Yale residential college system than Mark Ryan. Having agreed to come in as acting dean of Calhoun College for one year in the mid-1970s, he served as dean of Jonathan Edwards from 1976 to 1996, a longevity unequalled in modern times. Long referred to as “the dean’s dean,” Ryan brought to this job virtues that this collec- tion of writings brilliantly displays: unfailing grace of manner and expression, devotion to the college as both an ideal and a daily social reality, and an abiding concern for the whole human welfare of each student in his charge. Ryan brought a large measure of wisdom to this job, but he also learned by living and working so intimately with students, and this volume is the distillation of that knowledge. One thing this volume teaches is that the residential college is a portable idea, something that has been carried from place to place since its inception in thirteenth-century Europe. In this light it is fitting that this great proponent of the college system should have left to give this idea new life in a new place. Ryan is now working to establish the first residential college system in Latin America, at the Universidad de las Américas in Puebla, Mexico. As he goes forward, he leaves us, together with the memory of his exemplary service, these reflections on what the residential college can mean. Seldom has anyone expressed so elo- quently what this model of academic community can contribute to the develop- ment and education of the self. Along with our best wishes for his new colle- giate ventures, he deserves our lasting thanks. Richard H. Brodhead, Dean of Yale College , 10 Preface and Acknowledgments T in this volume emerged out of the life of Yale’s residential colleges. Some were written as talks for the ceremonial occasions that are part of college life; others are broader reflections on the role that such residential communities play, or can play, in a university education. Together, they are an attempt to articulate the values and illustrate the functioning of a residential college system, and to portray its educational possibilities. In classical political philosophy, there is a fundamental distinction between associations organized for “mere life,” and those organized for the “good life.” “Mere life” refers to the provision of basic physical necessities, whereas the “good life” implies the cultivation of virtue and human fulfillment—the full development of the talents and capacities of all individuals in the association. Essentially, that is the distinction between a dormitory and a residential college: a dormitory is organized to provide food and shelter; a college, to provide for the student’s intellectual, social, and personal development.This book endeavors to show how residential colleges pursue those ends. Yale’s residential colleges and the similar house system at Harvard University were established simultaneously in the early 1930s with gifts from the same donor. They have since become models for residential systems or units estab- lished at universities across the United States and beyond. In recent years, as universities have grown in both size and a concomitant impersonality, more and more institutions, both public and private, have shown an interest in establish- ing orenhancing comparable,relatively intimate residential communities within their midst. It is my hope that the reflections gathered here might be of use in this growing educational trend.