7/30/2019 Pericles Lewis - Building a Community of Learning at Yale and NUS (National University of Singapore) - Residential College Model Fosters Peer Effect of Mutual Learning and Gr

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By PERICLES LEWIS

ONE of the aspects of Americanhigher education that attracts somany top foreign students is theresidential college model, whichgoes back to the first American in-stitutions of higher learning suchas Harvard and Yale and beforethem to Oxford and Cambridge.

The National University of Sin-

gapore (NUS) has recently beenembracing the residential collegemodel at University Town, intro-ducing a residential component toits University Scholars Pro-gramme at Cinnamon College,and establishing Tembusu andAng sa na c ol leges, a nd nowYale-NUS College.

Ground was broken this weekfor the new residential collegesfor Yale-NUS. This model givesSingapore the opportunity to fur-ther enhance its status as an edu-cational hub by adding to the edu-cational landscape a form of edu-cation that is currently rare in

Asia. Such a model emphasiseshow the residential liberal arts col-lege can shape a community oflearning.

The first residential collegeswere constructed at Oxford in the13th century for students at theuniversity there.

The father of English poetry,Geoffrey Chaucer, paints a fa-mous picture of a student at Ox-ford around that time, who wearsa threadbare cloak, rides an emaci-ated horse and is rather underfedhimself. So dedicated is the stu-dent to philosophy that when heg et s s om e m on ey f ro m h is

friends, he spends it not on fineclothes, or a new horse, or evenfood for himself, but on booksabout Aristotle. Chaucer con-cludes this memorable portrait ofthe Oxford student by sayinggladly would he learn and gladlyteach.

It is important for students tobe reasonably well-clothed andwell-fed, but the essential charac-ter of college life is not just the at-tention the college pays to theneeds of the body but also thesense of a group of friends andclassmates who learn togetherand who teach one another.

This is what social scientistscall the peer effect, and it issomething professors sometimesneglect to acknowledge, namely

that students can in the right en-vironment learn as much fromtheir interactions with one anoth-er in student societies and teamsports, and from late-night con-versations over tea and a snack, asthey do from their formal coursework.

The model of a community oflearning, in which living and learn-ing are intertwined, informs thetraditions and values of both Yale

and NUS.Yale College opened in 1701

with just seven students, and formost of its history, most studentslived on campus. Likewise, one ofthe original institutions thatwould eventually make up NUSwas Raffles College, which beganin 1928 with just 43 students wholived in nearby hostels.

Around the time that RafflesCollege was founded, due to thegreat generosity of one of Yalesmost memorable benefactors Ed-ward Harkness, Yale, which hadgrown substantially, was able toconstruct the first eight of its

beautiful residential colleges. Thenew colleges made possible a con-cept that we have come to callnested communities.

Within the larger group of over5,000 Yale undergraduates, stu-dents today belong to a number ofsmaller communities, notably thegroup of 400 students in theirown college, the smaller group ofaround 40 in their own neighbour-hood within the college, and theeven more intimate group of fourto eight suitemates. These nestedcommunities give Yale studentsstrong bonds to their peer groups.

Yale replicated the architecture

of Oxford and Cambridge, but italso made two distinctive contri-butions to the idea of a residentialcollege. The first was that Yalehad been, since the 19th century,a leader in the United States inthe development of extra-curricu-lar activities, or what we todaycall the co-curriculum, namelythe sports, clubs, societies, musi-cal groups and student publica-tions that create a lively civil socie-ty in parallel with the official cur-riculum taught by the professors.

Second, after some experi-ments with letting studentschoose their own college, Yale rec-

ognised the value of deliberatelymaking each residential college amicrocosm of Yale College itself,containing a diversity of talents

and backgrounds. Studies havefound that having a roommatefrom a different background or a

different country significantly im-proves the learning experience ofa typical undergraduate.

Friendships formed with peo-

ple unlike oneself blossom later inlife into a broad-mindedness, acosmopolitan outlook, that can be

inculcated more successfullythrough informal contacts thanthrough formal lectures on toler-ance. (In this context, lively de-

bate is part of everyday life. Thisis just one of the ways that theYale-NUS partnership can encour-age openness and understanding.)

The design of Yale-NUS Col-

lege seeks to find an architecturewhich balances Eastern and West-ern contexts and traditions, but ithas, in truth, created somethingnew, something greater than thesum of its parts. Courtyards punc-tuated by towers set in lush land-scapes and a set of processionalentrances match the openness, en-ergy and optimism of the curricu-lum we are designing.

Much like its educational mis-sion, the architecture of Yale-NUS, while keenly aware of its an-tecedents, is strongly committedto the ideas and responsibilities ofthis century and, in this way, is al-

so a vision for the future.A metaphor used by MahatmaGandhi in response to the rele-vance of the study of English liter-

ature for Indians articulates wellour goal of bringing East andWest together in a powerful andprofound dialogue at Yale-NUSCollege.

He wrote: I do not want myhouse to be walled in on all sidesand my windows to be stuffed. Iwant the cultures of all the landsto be blown about my house asfreely as possible. But I refuse tobe blown off my feet by any.

May the cultures of Asia, theWest and the entire world blowfreely through the buildings ofYale-NUS College and into theminds of many generations of stu-dents. And may we send those stu-dents into the world standingproudly on their own feet.

The writer is the president of Yale-NUS

College. This article is based on theprofessors remarks yesterday at thegroundbreaking for Yale-NUS College atthe National University of Singapore.

Christ Church College in Oxford, where the first residential colleges wereconstructed in the 13th century for university students. PHOTO: VISIT BRITAIN

Yale Universitys campus in New Haven, Connecticut. Its 5,000 undergraduatesbelong to smaller communities within their own colleges. PHOTO: BLOOMBERG

An artists impression of Yale-NUS College, the first liberal arts college in Singapore, which takes in its first batch of students next year. The design of the college

seeks to find an architecture which balances Eastern and Western contexts and traditions. PHOTO: NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE

Residential college model fosters peereffect of mutual learning and growth

Building a

communityof learningat Yale-NUS

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