Ivy League Roundup

Starting in September, students at U. Penn. will be able to exchange a Dining Services meal for one with their professors.

The Student Committee on Undergraduate Education announced Thursday that their plans to convert a section of the Faculty Club's Hourglass Restaurant into a student-faculty lunchtime dining area would be realized this fall.

The SCUE Room is an extension of this week's "Take a Professor to Lunch Week," but will encourage student and faculty interaction on a daily basis.

"I hope by having a nice facility on campus, we will increase the culture of student-faculty relations out of the classroom," SCUE Chair Ari Silverman said.

Students and faculty will only be allowed to dine in the room if they are together.

"We want the two groups to get together for lunch as people," said Silverman, a College junior. "No one will be 'treating' anyone,"

The SCUE Room will bring student access to faculty back to the center of campus. Students can use PennCards, and faculty belonging to the Club can charge the meal to their accounts. Otherwise, cash will be accepted.

Hospitality Services and SCUE will finance the refurbishing of the SCUE Room, but Silverman said the room costs "almost nothing." The sponsoring organizations are planning a variation on the faculty club menu, but want to keep the food "cheap for students."

In an unrelated SCUE project, the group will encourage "learning for the sake of learning" by offering five preceptorials in the fall.

During the third semester of SCUE's preceptorial program, students will have the opportunity to flyfish and learn about ecology in Urban Studies Professor George Thomas' course "A Day on the Beach," discuss the occurrence of statistics in Literature Statistics Professor Ed Lusk's "Statistics and Literature: Say What?" and study the figure of the artist in modern literature in German Studies Professor Horst Daemmrich's "The Artist in Literature."

Other preceptorials available are Religious Studies Professor Robert Kraft's "The Jesus Tradition"--a course discussing the evidence and interpretation of religion--and Geology and Environmental Studies Professor Robert Giegengack's "Environmental Quality and the 20th-Century American Culture--an in-depth study of environmental issues."

Silverman said the benefit of taking a preceptorial is found in an environment with "no resume-builders or professors who only want to get paid."