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Rice University will change the term used for its residential faculty members from “college masters” to “college magisters” at the start of the next academic year, in an effort to distance itself from the “negative historical connotation” of the word “master,” The Houston Chronicle reported.
Last week, the dean of undergraduates emailed students to inform them of the change, saying that the decision had been in consideration for more than a year.
At Rice, all undergraduate students are part of one of 11 residential colleges, each of which is overseen by a college master or masters. Masters are faculty members who live next to the college and who “have the overall responsibility for all aspects of student life in the college, including encouragement of broad cultural and intellectual interests, caring for the well-being of the self and others, and effective self-government within the college,” according to Rice’s website.
The dean of undergraduates explained to students that the title “college masters” was sometimes difficult to explain to current and prospective students, faculty and staff. He wrote that the name change, which will occur when the 2017-18 academic year begins, came out of “collaboration and constructive dialogue, and not from confrontation or controversy.”
A similar change occurred at Princeton University in November 2015, when the "masters" of the residential colleges there retired the term and began using 'head of the college" instead.
