Winthrop Offers Cash To Take Faculty Out

Winthrop House residents who tire of the dining hall, take heart—for once, you can go out to dinner, and the House will pick up the tab.

In an effort to facilitate more student-faculty interaction, Winthrop House Masters Stephen P. Rosen ’74 and Mandana Sassanfar allocated $1,000 of House funds for a House Restaurant Program, by which students can take faculty members out for lunch or dinner.

According to an e-mail the Masters sent to House residents on Monday, groups of 2-5 students can treat one faculty member, and each person may use up to $20 for the meal. Two limitations: each student may participate only once, and the money does not cover alcoholic drinks.

“Students at Harvard want more contact with faculty members, particularly senior faculty, and the Houses can help,” Rosen said.

Students who wish to dine with faculty already have some options. Most Houses offer semi-annual student-faculty dinners, and students can also take advantage of the Meal Voucher Program, which allows professors to eat with students in dining halls for free. But Rosen said he felt that an alternative was needed.

“Money for student-faculty dinners at restaurants makes getting together a little easier and a little more attractive for students and faculty,” he said.

Assistant to the Winthrop House Masters Karen J. Reiber, who is managing the program, said that it is “the masters’ attempts to be more creative in promoting student-faculty interactions. They are relatively new here, having been here only two years, and they have a lot of new insight.”

At some other schools, contact with faculty outside of class is less out-of-the-ordinary. At Stanford, for example, dorms formally host faculty dinner nights once every week.

Expectations about Winthrop’s new program are hopeful. While no students have taken advantage of it yet, Reiber said “there have been a lot of questions about it. Feedback has been very positive.”

“I have one section with a lot of kids from Winthrop, and I was thinking I’d organize something,” Caitlin W. Monahan ’06 said. “You kind of don’t want to take your professors out to the dining halls, and this program offers more flexibility,” she said. “Plus, you get to go out to dinner.”

Some, however, have doubts about the program.

“I’m sure I could find people from Winthrop in my section, but it’s not as easy as just being able to take whomever,” said Susannah M. Dickerson ’06. “It would be nice if other Houses had a sort of transfer program where students could transfer their funds.”

This program also poses a challenge to procrastinators. Dickerson said that while “house dinners give you a time structure to invite faculty by, with this program I might just forget and let it go.”

Rosen acknowledges that the program is indeed experimental. “It is just starting,” he said. “If it works well, we will try to expand it. If it does not, we will end it.”