Alice Cook House will launch new West Campus community

On West Campus, from left, Professor Ross Brann, who will be the new Alice Cook House professor and dean, joins Edna Dugan, assistant vice president for student and academic services and co-chair of the West Campus Council, and Isaac Kramnick, vice provost for undergraduate education and West Campus Council co-chair, in front of a mock-up displaying the exterior surfaces of the Alice Cook House, Nov. 21. Frank DiMeo/University Photography

By Franklin Crawford

In August 2004, approximately 360 upper level students, primarily sophomores but a mix of juniors and seniors as well, will become the founding student members of the Alice H. Cook House, the first of five houses being built as part of Cornell's West Campus Residential Initiative (WCRI).

Cook House will have its own dining hall, common rooms, library and a guest suite where, for instance, A.D. White Professors-at-Large or distinguished alumni can stay during visits. The other houses will follow suit.

With Ross Brann, house professor and dean, at the helm, the students of Cook House will help create Cornell's new residential learning environment, backed by a supporting crew of six graduate residents, three undergraduate student assistants, 30 to 35 non-resident faculty and senior administrative staff house fellows headed by an assistant dean, and even a house chef. The last role is certainly not the least important: Much of the Cook House's informal learning experiences will center around meals, especially dinner.

"Imagine a scenario where Janet Reno or John Cleese is staying in the guest suite and they informally pop in for breakfast or dinner with students -- as opposed to the structured, planned interactions of the lecture hall and classroom," said Isaac Kramnick, vice provost for undergraduate education, professor of government and co-chair of the West Campus Council. The council, composed of administrators, faculty, students and staff, is the governing body for the West Campus initiative. "That kind of absolutely spontaneous interaction with students is emblematic of the whole spirit of Cook House," he said.

Brann further described the "spirit" of Cook House: "The idea is that we're creating a smaller-scale intellectual community that is faculty-led and student-run, with staff acting as partners to both students and faculty," said Brann, the Milton R. Konvitz Professor of Judeo-Islamic Studies and chair of the Department of Near Eastern Studies. "We're counting on student leaders to emerge who are willing to take ownership of the house and to help us establish house identity and craft programming. Cornell is big, with all of the resources that come with the size of a major research institution, but it succeeds best when we can create smaller intellectual and social communities out of the larger Cornell community. Alice Cook House will be one such subcommunity."

Brann's appointment is a three-year commitment and he will live at Cook House, with his family, at least through 2007.

The search for an assistant house dean is under way and should be concluded in the spring of 2004, said Jean Reese, WCRI program leader. Recruitment and selection of faculty fellows, graduate resident fellows and undergraduate assistants also is under way. The remainder of the Cook House staff will be on board by the end of the academic year.

At a meeting of the West Campus Council in November, President Jeffrey S. Lehman voiced his support for the WCRI, which has been in the planning stages since 1998.

"I believe in the West Campus Residential Initiative because it will strengthen undergraduate education in two mutually reinforcing ways: by creating smaller communities in the midst of our large university and by promoting the greater integration of intellectual activities into our students' lives," Lehman said.

Planned from the inside-out in terms of programming, Cook House is a template for the West Campus residential system, resembling in certain ways the living-learning concept of North Campus. However, WCRI is programmatically geared toward the scholarly and career-oriented needs of upper-level students. When it is completed in 2010, West Campus will be populated by a student mix of about 75 percent sophomores, 15 percent juniors and 10 percent seniors.

"Unlike North Campus, which had to be built in four years, with West Campus we had the luxury of thinking about the programming first," said Susan Murphy, Cornell vice president for student and academic services. "What we've developed is consistent with the Cornell philosophy of permitting and encouraging student choice. It's important that people understand this is open to students across all the colleges and of every race and ethnicity, and these students will be the founding members of a new house system at Cornell."

Kramnick said that this egalitarian spirit of the house system is "uniquely Cornellian" in at least two other key ways.

For one thing, it's optional, not mandatory, he said. That's a big departure from residential house models at many peer institutions.

Secondly, Kramnick said, "there are no themes connected to the houses. Cornell prides itself on the diversity of its scholarly as well as social offerings and we want to build a diverse, inclusive community. Each house will develop its own personality reflecting the student and faculty leadership in residence at any particular time."

Cook House members may stay with the house for one year or longer and, if they leave, retain an affiliation with the house. That idea, along with a system of student self-governance, is modeled, in part, from the fraternity-sorority system, said Edna Dugan, assistant vice president for student and academic services and co-chair of the West Campus Council.

While the West Campus house system differs from those at peer institutions, she said, it also incorporates many features in place -- or lacking -- at other university house systems. West Campus council members visited Stanford, Harvard, Princeton, Yale, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Michigan, among other schools.

An artist's drawing of a Common Room in a West Campus house.

An artist's rendering of a West Campus house system dining room.

"We looked at what worked and didn't work and what would be a good fit for Cornell," Dugan said. "I jokingly say there are one or two things that we didn't 'steal' from the schools we visited."

Six graduate resident fellows will serve as mentors and role models to Cook House students, said Reese. They also will provide academic and program support for the house dean and assistant house dean to help create "a positive, vibrant and academically engaged community," she said.

Three student assistants -- either juniors or seniors living in Cook House -- will likewise provide support, focusing primarily on the well-being of house members and acting as resources and referral guides.

The Cook House administrative infrastructure will get a boost from the members of the longstanding Language House Program in Boldt Hall. Language House residents also will be members of Cook House, said Dugan.

"To have Language House members as part of the Alice Cook House is very exciting and compatible," Dugan said. "They have actively engaged faculty and students who are eager to be part of the Cook House system. It's a great partnership."

The Cornell residential vision, as a whole, is based on the premise that college learning is an ongoing process that evolves as much outside the classroom as in it. The ideal is a seamless continuum between formal and informal learning, with students taking an active leadership role in how that informal learning process is shaped.

With 30 to 35 non-resident faculty participating, Kramnick envisions a setting where students and professors seek each other out to pursue noncredit, informal seminars or programming on subjects of mutual interest, he said. It may be music, movies, science or politics. The idea is that faculty get to know the real student -- and vice versa.

"One of the saddest moments in being a professor at Cornell is when a student comes up to you at the beginning of their senior year and says, 'I know you don't know me that well, but I need two professors to write a letter of recommendation for law school or a job on Wall Street,'" said Kramnick. "For students coming out of the house system, hopefully this will never be the case. In addition to having a professor in their field, they will have another from the house who knows the student as a multidimensional person and can write that letter of recommendation."

Faculty affiliated with Cook House also will benefit by a deeper connection with the students they teach and advise, said Brann.

"Many faculty across the colleges are committed to deepening a sustained intellectual dialogue with students because they know the great pleasure and joy that comes from seeing students grow and succeed and discover themselves," he said. "We have found that the more faculty have become involved in planning the West Campus house system, the more faculty want to join us and become house fellows."

Within a few weeks of arrival, Cook House students, faculty and staff will most likely know one another by first name, and maybe even know something about one another's intellectual passions or favorite hobbies.

"People will leave here knowing that they went to Cornell but also knowing that they connected to 360 other students," said Dugan. "Twenty years later they will say, 'I was a member of Alice Cook House,' the way an alum today might say, 'I was a member of the Glee Club or hockey team.' It provides another positive sense of identity, which we all need."

The Cook House program also goes a long way toward fulfilling Cornell's primary mission: to graduate intelligent and thoughtful individuals who will become leaders in the community of the United States and the wider world beyond, Dugan said.