Vol. 24, No. 17	March 10, 1999

In New Program, Students and Faculty Come Together Over Dinner

BY A. DUNLAP-SMITH

What was started as an Arts and Sciences pilot project to create opportunities for students and faculty to get together outside the classroom is well on its way to becoming a Columbia institution. The Faculty/Student Dinner Forum has with each semester become an increasingly popular means for Columbians to come together over a meal, either at a professor's home or an on-campus site. So far, more than 800 students have participated. The program fosters the kind of exchange and collegiality that all participants say is invaluable to the school.

"It seemed to me that having dinner together would increase the sort of trust necessary to discussing such important and sensitive issues" as are raised in Core classes, said University Professor Caroline Walker Bynum, who recommends the forum to her colleagues.

Roger Bagnall, professor of classics and history and chair of the classics department, has held several dinners: "I can't think of any negatives."

Born of conversations Vice President for Arts and Sciences David Cohen had with student leaders in 1996-97, during which they voiced the wish for greater interaction with the faculty, The Faculty/Student Dinner Forum was launched last year on a trial basis. It caught on immediately. By spring '98, 66 dinners were hosted by 52 faculty-eight of whom hosted at least two.

Now that the word about the forum is getting around, this year is likely to be even better than the last. In the fall, 55 dinners were hosted.

Cohen reports that participation by senior faculty is on the rise. Besides Bagnall and Bynum, the other participating senior professors come from a range of disciplines-among them Professors Carol Gluck, Gerry Curtis, Jack Snyder, Antoine Compagnon, Joe Connors, Carol Dweck, Cathy Popkin, Andy Nathan and Nick Turro.

Three-quarters of the University's 28 departments gave at least one dinner, Cohen says, noting that all the departments in the Social Sciences have participated.

To eliminate any possible impediment to its success, The Faculty/ Student Dinner Forum was designed to be as hassle-free as possible. All a faculty member or, for that matter, a student group needs to do is pick up the phone and dial the vice president's office, and it handles everything-the tab too.

Several local restaurants are participating, including Carmine's (Italian), Massawa (Ethiopian), Columbia Cottage (Chinese), Symposium (Greek), Famiglia (pizza) and Faculty House (American)-allows the caller to simply choose a menu, give the date and time and place and number of guests, and hang up.

The Faculty/Student Dinner Forum so excited an alumnus that he donated the money to support it during its first year.

For students these dinners provide a new context in which they may come to see their professors. College sophomore Mary Lee says her evening at Bynum's house in November with the professor's Contemporary Civilization class was "a chance to interact with a professor on a more personal level." She found the experience so valuable that Lee e-mailed her sophomore deans to urge them to find similar possibilities for informal student-teacher interaction.

Classics major B.J. Rosen joined his "Monasticism, Church, and Society" class at Faculty House for a dinner hosted by Bagnall last semester. And although the course ended, the professor reunited the same students at his apartment in February around a meal and a show of slides taken during his winter-break tour of major Egyptian monasteries. Rosen is unequivocally enthusiastic about such evenings: "I'd love to do it again!"