Last week, I went to hear House Professor Blalock reflect on his time here at Cornell, now that his 6 year term is about to end. Cornell has a policy that they can only hold that position for 6 years before someone new has to be brought in. If it wasn’t for this, I suspect Professor Blalock would stay longer. From his discussion of some of the projects he has helped with over the years, I appreciated his conscientiousness. One of his favorite projects, founding the Rose Scholars Program, was born out of this. He questioned the system of a random number generator determining who could return to Rose House, and thought it should be more merit based. I totally agree with this approach, as it gives students the opportunity to take control if they really enjoy living here.

However, when Professor Blalock asked us about what Rose House means to us, the general consensus seemed to be that it lacks a sense of community. Many of the students don’t really get to know each other, even if they live on the same floor. Professor Blalock explained that they have learned that the architecture of the dorms plays a roll in this, and that the administration will hopefully take this into account when designing the new dorms on North Campus which are to come in the future. However, for the existing dorms, probably the only way to get past this issue is to organize more events for the students to get to know each other. I wouldn’t suggest ice breakers, as most including myself either don’t know them or believe they are ineffective. Instead, I think that just organizing events for each floor would probably be a good way to deal with the issue. This will be something for the next house professor to deal with. But we all greatly appreciate Professor Blalock’s service to the Rose House community, and he will be missed.

In this Rose cafe, our house professor dean Garrick Blalock talked about what Rose means to people living in Rose and a farewell talk to him, since he will be leaving next semester.

This is a really touching moment for me to learn about all the thoughts and efforts that professor Blalock and our House assistance dean Jarrett Anthony to make this place a welcomy and warm home to the residents. Especially the efforts that they put into for Rose Scholar program, which is a unique program on west only for Flora Rose. Comparing to the active citizen programs which my friends are doing in other residence halls, I find Rose Scholar program is great in that it can really keep people who like Rose and want to put in the effort to continue to live in Rose, actually get to continue to live here. I think really like this program for that i get to know a lot of different ideas through the coffee chats that I have not foreseen before, and I also made some friends during this process. It was an amazing experience for me to have an hour a week to listen to interesting ideas of people who are experts in the field that I’m not familiar with and their perspectives on things that I ran across everyday.

While enjoying these interesting activities and a good variety of activities every week almost everyday, I think what I’ve overlooked is organizing and planning of the professor, deans and students put into these. For example the professors that were invited to give the talks, the themed talks led by house fellows and the activities we have such as massage, observatory. I’m really grateful for the amount of work and thoughts that our professor Blalock and dean Anthony put into this to make this such a rewarding experience to us, and after each activities, I really felt my time were well-spent.

Since this is my last rose scholar post this semester, I really want to thank our amazing professor dean Blalock for the caring of students living in Rose, the great amount of work to make Rose House a supportive home for the residents and the insightful ideas that he shared with us in weekly cafe talk. I really think I will miss the thoughtful talks and ideas by professor Blalock, and he has brought such an amazing change to the system of continue occupancy at west, which is the system I would suggest should be applied to other residential halls at west.

Also a lot of thanks to our assistance dean Jarrett, for the weekly email of upcoming activities, and cares and reminder emails to the residents. As a Rose resident, I can feel the cares that the house deans and fellows give to us and the help that they are willing to give, and I ‘m so grateful for all the effort that you put into and I fell really lucky to get to come back to Rose and live here agian next semester. Thank you again for everything and wish all the best for future life!

After six eventful years, it’s sadly time to say goodbye to Rose House’s beloved dean and House Professor. You may ask why he’s leaving after only six short years for which I will tell you it’s because they are making him due to a six year term limit. During this final Rose Cafe of the school year Professor Blalock took us for a little trip down memory lane with some of his greatest hits throughout the years. In my opinion, his greatest achievement would have to be the development of the Rose Scholars program with the help and guidance from Dr. Anthony. The backstory behind the program was a lot more interesting that I would have expected. The program was designed to choose the 100 Rose House residents that would be allowed to return to Rose House the following school year. Prior to the scholars program, a lottery system with a random number generator determined the fate of all 380 Rose residents. Professor Blalock knew there was a better way to choose who should remain a member of the Rose community, and boy did he find it. All five years the program has been used, not one student has been denied entry from it. It definitely seems like the 100 students that will remain in Rose House for the following term actually want to be a part of the community that comes with it. If it weren’t for Dr. Anthony though, Professor Blalock would have been getting 100 slips of paper under his door each week! I think the blog is a much better medium to reflect on. Pencil and paper are so old school. I guess it is time to say goodbye to the old. Thank you Professor Blalock for all that you have done for the Rose House community. But as we say goodbye we can also welcome the new so say hello to our new house professor Rosemary Avery! Welcome to our home!

Last Wednesday, I attended the last Rose Cafe where Professor Blalock introduced his replacement Professor Avery for the House Dean position. We talked about how the scholar program evolved and the future of the housing system. It was a really nice conversation.

This year, I attended a couple of Rose Cafes and it was my favorite event in the Rose house. While at first, I came because of the scholar program, as times goes on, I love going simply because the I am attractive to the topics and the atmosphere of Rose Cafes. I’ve learned a lot from guests with various kinds of jobs, various kinds of background. At the same time I got to know something I was unfamiliar to, I also learned life experience from those successful guests and amazing students, such as maintaining the West Campus, how to cheer an athlete from the tennis Coach and the perspectives  from the pilots. I learned the passion about life and work, which helped me a lot dealing with my sophomore year loss about the future and what I’m going to do.

Thank you Professor Blalock for broadening my horizons in multiple meaningful ways and creating a cozy, relaxing and open environment where we could gram some coffee and cookies in the middle of the week. And thank you other scholars for this wonderful semester. Lastly, really looking forward to Professor Avery and wish you all have a nice break. See ya!

This past Wednesday I went to my first ever Rose Cafe and I can say that I am disappointed that it took me this long to go to one. I thoroughly enjoyed the conversational tone that the event had and the way that ideas were bounced around from everyone in the room. It was great hearing Professor Blalock talk about the Rose Scholars program and how it started. The idea of the Rose Scholars program came from trying to fix a system that could ultimately lead to unfair results, which made me think of the program in a new light. Not only did Professor Blalock encourage discussion about the current program and its origins, the discussion largely revolved around how the program could be improved. I believe that this is a prim example of the way that Rose House is different from some of the other West Campus dorms. This discussion of improvement and communication between scholars shows that the program that was set in motion is in fact working. Although there are some things that we would like to see changed, the program at its core is promoting the intellectual conversations that it hoped to achieve. My only regret from that resulted from this even is that it is the only chance at a cafe that I had this year, and that it was the only cafe that i will experience with Professor Blalock as House Professor. However, I look forward to the new experiences that await with Professor Avery in the upcoming school year.

This week I attended the Rose Cafe with Prof Blalock. It was a smaller cafe, probably due to the fact that it occurred the night before slope day, but it was a pleasant and reflective conversation. Prof Blalock is leaving Rose House after 6 years, and introduced his replacement, Prof Rosemary Avery, who seems like an excellent person for the job. We talked about how to improve Rose House and the scholars program as a whole, and I felt that the input was well received. I feel optimistic about the future of the House. Although I am a scholar, I am moving off campus next year so this was my last Rose event- it was a nice way to finish out my experience at Rose. I really enjoyed living here and being a part of the scholars program and, as a transfer student, I really appreciated the community that it provided. Overall, I will look back fondly on my experiences living here, and am happy that Rose House was a part of my Cornell experience.
I wish Dr. Avery the best in her new position!