The selection of promising College Masters is one of the most critical steps of setting up residential colleges. You should nominate someone who you trust, look up to for inspiration, and feel comfortable with. A college master should be someone who you feel is genuinely concerned about the welfare of students. Send your nominations to rc@lums.edu.pk by Saturday 23rd May.

The following document on the qualities of a good College Master has been prepared from content available by Dr. Robert J. O’Hara on his website: http://collegiateway.org/howto/membership/

College Master

The Master is the head of the college, and should represent the college to the university and the local community. S/he should be an established scholars who is highly-regarded in the university, and is known for his/her concern for student welfare. It will be advantageous if s/he has some administrative experience, since one of the primary responsibilities of the master is the oversight of college budgets and property. S/he should also be skilled at working within the university to improve the educational environment.

College Masters will be appointed for the term of 1 year for the first time.

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Dear all,

They will be sharing their experiences with the LUMS community tomorrow, Friday 22nd May at 15h30m (3.30 p.m.) in the Sayeed Saigol (SS) Auditorium.

The Residential Colleges would like to commence their existence by contributing towards the Swat IDPs in these testing times. An important part of college life is the building of organic communities and creating vertical networks (across batches and also across faculty members and student body) in order to develop safety nets for those in need.

In light of this spirit and ethos, we are looking for volunteers for the following roles:

A. Organize teams of students to raise awareness about the urgency of the issue
B. Conduct initiatives on the lines of fund raising activities for both immediate and long term relief efforts
C. Evaluate and asses IDPs’ conditions in order to formulate plans to provide appropriate responses to day-to-day challenges

If you are interested please send the following fields of information to hirra.waqas@lums.edu.pk marked Residential College Team Volunteer.

Name:
Roll No:
Major:
Resident or Non-Resident:
Phone number:
Availability during the summer:
Previous experience / participation in relief efforts: Yes / No
Comfortable with traveling: Yes / No
Which of the roles are you volunteering for: A or B or C

Best Regards,
Residential Colleges Transition Team

As part of the Residential Colleges Launch Week, an Open House was conducted to discuss the idea of RC initiative at LUMS. Dr. Sohaib Khan first gave a short presentation to inform students of the basic ideas and rationale behind bringing RC to our university and then opened the floor for questions. There were mixed responses and concerns of the students – both sides were covered quite comprehensively by two articles published in the LUMS Daily.

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Here’s a visual story of the Launch Week events.

Photographers: Rehma Farhatullah Khairi and Kh. Mohd Fahd.

Art work for RC print work was made by Umair Kazi.

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Dr. Durrani, Vice Chancellor LUMS, serving ice cream to students

Our icecream social, the first ever at LUMS at this scale, was a smashing success. LUMS Daily Student has written a nice article about it. To quote:

… I have very little information on what a  Residential College actually is, but one thing I do know is that anything which brings with it chocolate chip sundaes must be AWESOME!
    And awesome it was. The idea was simple. Ask instructors to wear flowery aprons and florescent hats and serve ice cream to the students. “What good will this do?” you may ask. Well for one you students actually got to interact with faculty and realize that they are humans too. They laugh, have fun. enjoy music and eat icecream (I’m sure the faculty had similar moments of realization!) . “But what good would that do” you may ask. Well once you get to know the faculty outside the classroom, they do not seem as intimidating. Whenever you have a problem or need advice you’ll feel easier approaching a faculty member. 

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The Residential Colleges Programme is a new initiative to enhance the LUMS on-campus experience, inspired by the need for creating a strong sense of community and internal support for all students.

We are kicking off campus wide discussion on residential colleges with the following events. We would like to invite the entire student body to come and contribute to the discussion.

Information Desk - Ask the members of our student steering committee anything on residential colleges
Tuesday (14th Apr) and Wednesday (15th Apr) 1-3 pm outside PDC

Ice Cream Social - Guess who is serving free ice cream?
Wednesday (15th Apr) 5 - 7:30 outside PDC

Open House - Come join the discussion on residential colleges
Thursday (16th Apr) 7:30 onwards. Venue SS

Q. What is the Residential College (RC) System?
Following are some of the key features of the RC System:
· Self Governance: Students, along with faculty mentors, will get opportunity to govern the hostel system as well as many other aspects of student life at LUMS themselves
· Increased Faculty-Student interaction outside the academic sphere
· It aims at creating a warm, caring and home-like environment in the colleges
· Peer Mentoring: Freshmen will be mentored by senior students. This perhaps will also help in flagging some problems (such as depression) at an early stage
· Student Judicial System, with justices and advocates (the role of the disciplinary committee shall be minimized

In the new system there is room to make changes and put in place a new culture where students are treated as mature individuals who are responsible for their own well-being.

Our greatest strength lies in the fact that the Residential College model at LUMS would be designed by students and faculty working together, emphasizing the deep synergy between the two groups for today and for posterity.

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by Sohaib Khan

A warm welcome back to those returing for the Spring Quarter, and best of luck to SSE students sitting for their finals from today.

Those following this blog regularly may be happy to hear that the LUMS Management Committee has given the go ahead to start the implementation phase of the residential colleges project. We had given a presentation to the MC earlier in March, and had sought their approval for this important new phase of student life at LUMS.

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Posted by Sohaib Khan

An interesting quote from the collegiateway.org website:

Why not live in a place where I can have professors as friends? Why not live in a place with a network of support, advice, love, respect, melodrama, and laughter? Why not live in a place where you feel like a part of something bigger, something deeper, something more? Why not get the most you can out of college?

—A residential college student

Is such an environment possible at LUMS? To what extent does it already exist? What are the shortcomings?