Kathy Hess wheels her bicycle out of her apartment in McCormick Hall shortly before her husband, political-science professor Charles Stewart, departs on his seven-minute commute to class. Hess, an environmental scientist with the EPA, chats with the front-desk staff and the grounds crew before heading off to work. Helmet on, she cycles past the Kresge lawn, where her teenage son often plays catch. She waves to Thomas Byrne, President Susan Hockfield's husband, who's out walking their dog, Casey. This evening, a dozen or so undergraduates will gather in Hess and Stewart's kitchen for a cooking class. They'll try out recipes the students have brought from home and then settle down for dinner and conversation. If the McCormick residents need them tonight, Hess and Stewart will be there--as they have been for the last 18 years. It's just another day in the MIT neighborhood, and in the life of an MIT housemaster.

Hess and Stewart are two of the 42 housemasters, most of them tenured faculty and their spouses, who serve as a bridge between academic and student life at MIT. Faculty members have lived in student housing since 1933, when chemistry professor Avery Ashdown, PhD '24, took up residence in Graduate House. ("Doc" Ashdown, famous for his wise counsel and tact, would arrive for dinner promptly at 6:59 p.m.--one minute before the end of dinner service--to ensure that no students would miss dinner if the dining hall workers were tempted to close early.) In 1951, Frederick Fassett Jr., the dean of residence, established an official faculty residency program in Baker, East Campus, and Burton House. Eventually, he hoped, the residents would oversee dorm "morale and climate" as housemasters. The first of these, Professor Howard Bartlett, was installed at Burton House in 1958. Bartlett's goal was to make the house "not just a place to sleep, by fostering a pleasant social and intellectual life away from home."

Now, more than 50 years later, housemasters are ensconced in every residence hall on campus, working to create an environment in which students can learn, study, relax, and feel at home. "They are accessible and always there when you need them, even if just as a friend," says Zachary Bjornson-Hooper '10, who lived in Simmons Hall for four years.

That everyday presence makes faculty seem more approachable to students, who are often in awe of their professors. "Having faculty living in the residences makes you realize that they're just people too," says Jane Wang, a graduate resident tutor (GRT) in McCormick. The professors, too, find the job an invaluable way to connect. "In the dorm, I was never 'Professor'--I was always 'Bora,' " says Borivoje Mikic, a professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, who along with his wife, Liba, served as a housemaster for 30 years; they lived with their two daughters in Senior House and then in Next House. "I know certain things they don't know; I can help them when they are in trouble," he says. "But that doesn't mean I can't learn anything from those young men and women, including what stereo I should buy."

Donna Denoncourt, associate dean for residential life, says she hasn't seen anything else like the system at MIT. "Faculty-in-residence programs do exist at other schools, but not in the numbers we have here or with the level of commitment by the faculty to life outside the classroom," she says.