The evening of Oct. 17 was like most others at Carl Becker House -- full of activity:

4:30 p.m., meet house fellow Professor Nick Salvatore at the third Becker Café Scientifique discussion;

5:30 p.m., join the entire "Becker family" at a house dinner for the "Feast of Tapas";

9:30 p.m., build an ice cream sundae at the Generation Mix Social.

This day, however, also included a visit from 10 alumni from the Class of '66 to give Becker residents a special class gift -- an endowment to ensure continued programming at the Becker House.

"Buildings are just bricks until you put programs in them, and we want our gift to help enrich life and allow leaders to develop," said Alice Berglas '66, one of the leaders behind the endowment. "You can't create friendship until you create conversation, so we decided to donate our money to something soft because we want our gift to change with Cornell."

When they were at Cornell 40 years ago, what the Class of '66 visitors missed was a small place that they could call home. Today, "home" for Becker residents is not only a place to eat, sleep and hang out with friends, but also where students have frequent opportunities to share inspiring conversations with visiting alumni, scholars, artists, scientists and their own professors.

That's because Becker House has a host of house fellows -- 32 professors and top Cornell administrators (including President David Skorton, astronomer Jim Bell and Dean of Students Kent Hubbell). And a new Becker Café Scientifique series, hosted by house fellows and open to the Cornell community, brings faculty members and students together over a cup of coffee and great desserts to explore the latest ideas and issues that fellows are studying.

The first talk on Sept. 11, by senior lecturer Richard Canfield, addressed the association of prenatal maternal stress on the behavioral development of infants whose mothers were pregnant and living in lower Manhattan on Sept. 11, 2001. Salvatore's talk was "Without a Song: Religion and Politics in One Minister's Sermon." And on Oct. 2, professor of earth and atmospheric sciences Kerry Cook talked about gender disparity in science and academia. "It's interesting to hear what students have to say about these issues," Cook said.

Upcoming sessions at Café Scientifique:

"Talking about the Media: Objective, Subjective or Corporate?" with house fellow Simeon Moss, director of Press Relations, Wednesday, Oct. 31, at 4:30 p.m.

"The Ivory-billed Woodpecker: Has the Lost Been Found?" with house fellow Charles Walcott, neurobiology and behavior, Wednesday, Nov. 7, at 4:30 p.m.

"Funding Big Science: Arecibo, NASA and the NSF," with house fellow Martha Haynes, astronomy, Wednesday, Nov. 14, at 6:30 p.m.

Involvement and guidance from faculty members, however, are only one part of the faculty-led, student-governed residential house system on West Campus, which also includes Alice H. Cook House and Hans A. Bethe House (two more houses are under construction). Residents also have opportunities to learn from faculty members and graduate students at the many in-house performances, seminars, movies, tutoring sessions and discussion groups -- some held around fireplaces in pajamas and slippers. Residents also participate in programming through the house council. The house council's most recent project was Halloween trick-or-treating for Becker residents.

House dinners on Wednesdays are also convenient times for students and faculty members to eat and talk together. At the Oct. 10 house dinner, Xu (Claire) Cheng '10, an economics and math major, talked with professor of philosophy Richard Boyd and professor of human development Barbara Koslowski about relativism.

"I have considered studying philosophy as a minor. It is really interesting to hear how professors explain some difficult philosophical concepts outside the classroom," Cheng said.

Graduate student Zheng Yang is a writer intern at the Cornell Chronicle.