In revamping the house seminar program, Bossert suggests the administration look into two previously untapped teaching sources: graduate students and retired faculty.
Under current University policy, faculty emeriti are prohibited from teaching. Bossert points out that many of these professors, most of whom are "still vigorous academics," would have more time than current faculty do to devote to small house-based classes and seminars.
Graduate students, who are similarly free from departmental teaching requirements, are also barred from teaching house seminars. Bossert says graduate students might be able to do valuable and unique teaching by involving students in their research.
Several house masters say they think the administration may need to make an even larger commitment to ensure a strong house seminar program.
Currier House Master William A. Graham, a professor of the history of religion and Islamic studies, suggests that departments start teaching about one-quarter of their courses in the houses.
"The only way we're going to get a change in this is to put some sort of place for curriculum in the houses," Graham says. "The lives of those who teach are so intense that it is increasingly hard to shake people loose for things that aren't related to their fields."
Another possibility would be to give each house a fund to be used expressly in hiring faculty away from their departments to teach small, dormitory-based classes. This method of "farming out" faculty from the departments, practiced by Yale University, would require no new money and would be relatively easy to implement here, Bossert says.
Changing Priorities
Whatever economic or bureaucratic changes are in order, a change in student attitude may be crucial to creating the desired atmosphere. Bossert says undergraduates must bear much of the responsibility for change.
"Students say they want [increased interaction], but they're not willing to make it a priority," he says. "I've been repeatedly embarrassed by our attempts to bring senior common room members and students together. Students don't show up."
James D. Wilkinson '65, director of the Bok Center for Teaching and Learning and a former Lowell tutor, echoes this sentiment.
"I met with resounding failure in getting students to come," he says of the faculty discussions he organized as a tutor.
Wilkinson warns that a permanent solution to the lack of student interest may be impossible to find. In reality, the level of student-faculty interaction in the houses may never have been very high, he says.
"There's a lack of institutional memory in a University where the student body turns over every four years," he says. "Thirty years ago, when I was an undergrad, things weren't much better."
Former Eliot House Master Alan E. Heimert '49, Cabot professor of American literature, agrees. "The vision of the houses as laced with faculty is a bit of myth," says Heimert.
But Heimert, who is teaching a house seminar on Abraham Lincoln this semester, says that there are a number of relatively easy measures that could be taken to increase academic interaction on the house level. For instance, he suggests, the creation of house sections for large Core classes would be one step in this direction.
The council has already begun to make efforts of this nature. Last week, the council's committee on house life voted to send a letter to Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Jeremy R. Knowles, recommending that faculty emeriti be given teaching status.
Knowles has said he hopes "the houses can be intellectual as well as social foci for all undergraduates." And according to Graham, Knowles has been "very encouraging" when discussing the issue with house masters.
Substantial change may not come for a long time, however. Until then, Wilkinson suggests students and faculty "work on their social skills with each other."
Wilkinson says real progress can be made only by keeping in mind the complexity of the problems involved. "There's a lot to be gained, [but] we ought to do it with our eyes open," he says.