Residential Colleges
The current residential college system was instituted in 1933 through a grant by Yale graduate Edward S. Harkness, who admired the college systems at Oxford University and Cambridge University. Each college consists of a dormitory building or buildings, surrounding a quadrangle or courtyard. Each college includes a dining hall; student facilities, ranging from libraries to squash courts to darkrooms; and a few faculty, including a dean, a master, and two or more resident fellows. Most college buildings also feature distinctive architecture, and each has developed a different flavor or area of emphasis. Although Yale students take part in academic and social programs across the university, and all of Yale's 2,000 courses are open to undergraduates from any college, each college has a carefully constructed academic and social structure for its students, including seminars, social events, and master's teas with notable guests from around the world.
In 1990, Yale launched a series of massive overhauls to the older residential buildings, whose decades of existence had seen only routine maintenance and incremental improvements to plumbing, heating, and electrical and network wiring. Berkeley College was the first to undergo complete renovation. Various unwieldy schemes were used to house displaced students during the yearlong projects, but complaints finally moved Yale to build a new residence hall between the gym and the power plant. It is commonly called "Swing Space" by the students; its official name, Boyd Hall, is unused.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Yale created plans to create a thirteenth college, whose concrete facade would have broken with the campus's more prevalent Gothic and Georgian architecture. The plans were scrapped, after the city of New Haven put up substantial financial barriers, and the proposed site was eventually filled with condominiums and shops (Whitney Grove Square, among others).
In June 2008, Yale announced plans to build two new residential colleges, bringing the total to fourteen. The colleges would allow the school to increase enrollment by about 15 percent to approximately 6,000. The schools are to be built north of Grove Street Cemetery and are being designed by the Dean of the Yale School of Architecture, Robert A. M. Stern. The new colleges were originally scheduled to be completed by 2013, but construction was delayed by the recession that started in 2008.
Read more about this topic: Yale College
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