Last Year for a First-Year Dean

As Henry C. Moses prepares to leave Harvard after 14 years, the man who pledged he wouldn't be a "nine-to-five administrator" leaves behind a legacy of reforms designed to instill a sense of community in the College's first year.

Fourteen years ago, Harvard first-years entered the modern era.

For the first time, no first-year students had to live in the distant Radcliffe Quad. The Harvard Union began serving meals on the weekends. And in that same year, 1977, Henry C. Moses took over as dean of first-year students.

Now, after a decade of overseeing the centralization of Harvard life and the first-year community there, Moses is saying goodbye to 6 Prescott St., the Union and Harvard Yard. In January, Moses announced that he will step down at the end of the current academic year to become headmaster at the Trinity School, a prestigious private school in New York City.

By all accounts, the job Moses has occupied for the past 14 years has been a demanding one. The dean roughly equates his post to being a master of a house with 1600 residents. He has supervised the advising system, monitored the quality of student life and installed new programs designed to turn the diverse first-year class into a single community.

"My job is the care and feeding of the freshman class," Moses says. "It's getting people from September to May, from high school into the house system and into a concentration, convincing them that their education is in their hands."

But if Moses's job is a big one, it's largely because he's made it that way, by vastly expanding the responsibilities that go along with his position. When he took over his job in 1977, he pledged in an interview with The Crimson that, unlike his predecessor, F. Skiddy von Stade '38, he would not be a "nine-to-five administrator," and his promise has largely rung true.

Under Moses, the Freshman Dean's Office (FDO) has gone beyond academic supervision and has taken to planning for numerous social events. And in fact, although it is still not an independent unit, the FDO has moved from a cramped office in University Hall to relatively spacious quarters in its own building on 6 Prescott St.

When Moses arrived to fill von Stade's shoes, he was greeted with a system in flux. As first-years all moved into Yard dorms and ate all their meals in the Union, life for them was becoming increasingly isolated. Although he advocates a first year that is special and distinct from the rest of the college experience, Moses was concerned that Yardlings were in danger of being too cut off from everyone else at the College.

Getting Closer

As a result, Moses immediately began creating programs designed to foster closer ties between upperclass and first-year students. He initiated the Prefect Program, which links first-year entryways to two upperclass students. In addition, Moses instituted the First-Year Outdoor Program (FOP), prompted by an Outward Bound course he took before becoming dean.

Moses says he has tried to balance making the first year a unique experience while at the same time preparing students for what the rest of college will be like.

"A general response of having all the freshmen in the Yard is to make that year special," Moses says. "The risk in making it special is that it becomes different from all the rest of the years here. Part of our job is to lay the groundwork for the next three years."

First-year students are often considered separate from the rest of the College, and so too are their administrators. Although the FDO has not escaped the watchful eye of the dean of the College, it has operated with a high degree of autonomy, something which Moses says can have its pitfalls.

"The downside is that we are seen as operating as an island," Moses says. "We say we are doing things better for freshmen, such as 'our advising is better than advising in upperclass years.' There is the tendency to let the FDO be separate like the freshmen are separate from upper class life. We are a tight group and can look at ourselves as our own college, which is politically disastrous, educationally disastrous."

Taking His Advice

Besides creating a new social role for the FDO, Moses has over the years expanded upon the FDO's traditional services in the realm of advising.

Moses says he is especially pleased with the improvement in the quality of first-year advising. He attributes this change largely to intensive training workshops he instituted for the 65 proctors and 150 non-resident advisers which form the grassroots of the first-year administration.

"From any point of view, freshmen advising is quite complex, quite well-done, and the changes that I've seen are that more and more topics have been taken up and that advisors are better trained and more accountable," Moses says.

Although Moses acknowledges that there are frequent complaints about advising, he maintains Harvard's advising system is far superior to that of other colleges. He readily admits that standardized advising may range in quality, but adds that a lot of advice at Harvard can be found "in the air," whether that means a chance sentence a student reads in The Yard Bulletin or an offhand remark made by a proctor.

"We want to strike a middle ground between coddling the freshmen and leaving them bereft," Moses says. "Lots of freshmen I have known think of themselves as being left to sink or swim. Freshmen have been so well-served by their senior advisors without knowing it; there is no way of communicating it to them. Freshmen everywhere complain."

Besides supervising the advising system, Moses has grappled with other standard problems confronting first-year students in the past 14 years, including sexism, racism and aiding students in adjusting to college life.

"We have tried to damp down sexism, racism, classism, veneration of old Harvard for the wrong reasons by laughing at it whenever we've seen it," said Moses. "I think we have tried to take each freshman on his or her own terms--male or female, white or person of color, heterosexual or gay, rich or poor."

But the outgoing dean says he does not feel the efforts he has made have entirely resolved the existing problems.

"We failed," Moses says. "In spite of all of it, there are still persons of color who don't feel like they own the place, women who feel alienated, and people who feel they have to compromise themselves too much to be a part of Harvard."

Besides instituting new programs, Moses has spent much of his time reflecting about the adjustment students must make once they come to college. Moses recently published a book entitled Inside College, which details many students' struggle with newfound freedom and dealing with a diverse community for the first time.

Moses says making decisions within a more open structure is one of the most crucial skills students gain in their first year at college. He adds that adjusting to Harvard's particular community, which has one of the most diverse student bodies, is even harder than the usual process.

"It is an unbelievably varied population at this place because people here are so smart and so opinionated that their differences are very strongly expressed," Moses says.

He says adjusting to this diversity represents one of the most important changes in college life in the past few decades and will continue to be a pressing topic. That issue of community was not discussed 30 years ago, Moses says, when students at the College were almost exclusively white and upper middle-class, and had basically the same notions of what college was for.

"In the 1990s, the challenges of freedom and diversity aren't going away," Moses predicts. "In fact, they'll become fiercer."

Dean as Prognosticator

Despite the fact that he created a number of new programs during his tenure, Moses foresees a decline in services exclusively designed for first-years in the years after his departure.

"I suspect that level of intense care of freshmen will decrease," Moses says. "Money won't be here for all we do now."

Although he says he is unsure exactly how much, if at all, the budget for first-year programs will have to be cut, Moses predicts that advising will be shielded from the cuts, and that instead potential new programs will bear the brunt.

Moses offers more prognostications about first-year life without his leadership, predicting a trend toward less requirements and more openness.

"I think it's conceivable that some of the freshmen who feel oppressed by so many requirements will be offered some relief," Moses says. "The requirements will be decreased--not by much--to allow freshmen to accomplish other academic things."

"Not just for freshmen, but for everyone, the disciplinary and administrative system will become more open," Moses adds. "This is not just a function of [President-designate] Neil Rudenstine coming, but it enhances what would have happened anyway."

Moses will be replaced by an acting dean, as yet unnamed, next year. Jewett is currently heading up the search for a new dean, and is forming a committee which will make a comprehensive study of the FDO's structure and the needs of first-year students.

"We have no motives in mind for the study," Jewett says. "It's a good time, having a change in deans, to look to see if the organization is working."

Jewett says he plans to study the efficiency of the FDO, but does not plan on cutting programs simply for its own sake. He does concede, however, that budget problems may decrease the likelihood of new programs being formed.

Despite being optimistic about the future of first-year life after Moses leaves, Jewett terms the outgoing dean a "valued colleague and personal friend," and says he regrets Moses's departure.

"A number of innovations, a variety of activities have been made in Moses's time," Jewett says. "I have come to rely on him as one of the most capable people with an unusual personal and administrative style."

For his part, Moses says he is leaving Harvard with both regrets and hope, anticipating the position as Trinity headmaster be fulfilling in ways a dean of student life at a college is not.

Moses has been in contact with Trinity for the past several years, several times running a retreat for the school's seniors that dealt with the realities of college life. As a result, when Trinity officials called about the vacant headmaster post, Moses says, he agreed to be considered for the job.

"Fourteen years is fourteen years is fourteen years. I think it's time for a change," Moses says. "I don't think I could leave for a better place."

"I'm leaving because I want to grow and embrace an entire educational institution," Moses adds. "I want to be in touch with every aspect of making a school great, or greater in this case."

'A number of innovations, a number of activities have been made in Moses's time. I have come to rely on him as one of the most capable people with an unusual personal and administrative style.' --Dean of the College L. Fred Jewett '57