Bring Faculty Into the Houses

Last week Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis '68 recommended that more Allston-Burr Senior Tutors be tenure-track faculty. This recommendation echoes last-year's Report on the Structure of Harvard College prepared by Lewis and Administrative Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Nancy L. Maull. We support this recommendation, though we hope that such jobs would not be limited merely to tenure-track faculty, but would be open to the entire Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

Having more faculty in senior tutorships would be very beneficial to the student body. We have long bemoaned the faculty's lack of concern for undergraduates. With a larger faculty representation among the senior tutors, we might see the change in the commitment to undergraduate education that President Rudenstine has promised us.

Senior tutors who are also professors could act as liaisons, bringing a better perspective on undergraduate life to the faculty. And this bridge goes the other way, too, bringing to undergraduates senior tutors who are more knowledgeable about the faculty and the curriculum.

This connection would not only benefit the students, but also the University. Having more connection between the faculty and the administration would act to strengthen relationships between the two. As Lewis said, "The [current] senior tutors are an excellent group, but the image that the faculty has of the Ad[ministrative] Board changes when the senior administrators are not the people they see in faculty meetings." By encouraging more faculty to act as senior tutors, the university would presumably be opening up a more diverse and presumably more talented pool of administrators. Such a policy could also create a pool of faculty with good knowledge of house administration, and thus better suited to be House Masters.

Finally, those faculty members who choose to become senior tutors would benefit. They would gain valuable knowledge about the workings of the University, and would gain administrative experience. That experience could come in useful, should they choose to enter full-time into university administration, as some of our faculty members do, or should they choose to move on from Harvard.

This sort of change may seem somewhat drastic at first. After all, we would be asking people to give up some of their academic pursuits to act as senior tutors. Yet, is it any more difficult for a faculty member to do the job than a graduate student, who is presumably at work on a thesis?

As Lewis said, "It would be better if their academic position were more stable, taking on this job." Also, the job of senior tutor is a half-time job, and taking such a job would be accompanied by the lowering of one's teaching schedule, thus still reserving time for academic study.

We support Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles' decision to lengthen the timeline for junior faculty members who choose to serve. The amount of time for those who choose to serve as senior tutors will be equal to the amount given to those who don't.

As late as the 1980s, there were faculty members acting as senior tutors in the undergraduate houses. The current lack of faculty in house administration is only a recent phenomenon, and not the way the office was meant to be filled, though we have grown accustomed to it. We applaud Dean Lewis for realizing the historical oddity and the loss to the university of today's situation, and we hope that he and the University act to bring faculty back into senior tutorships.