Faculty Outlines Agenda at First Meeting of Year

At the Faculty meeting yesterday, administrators outlined the issues that top their agendas this year, hitting on old standbys like grade inflation—and also hinting at dramatic change for graduate students.

The meeting was the first of the year, as well as the first for new President Lawrence H. Summers since his days as an economics professor. Officials took the occasion as an opportunity to announce major new initiatives.

Dean of Undergraduate Education Susan G. Pedersen announced that academic departments will have until January to internally evaluate and discuss their grading policies. The Educational Policy Committee, which discusssed grade inflation last spring, will revive the discussion again this spring, and is currently sending data for evaluations to individual departments.

“Grade inflation is a somewhat serious problem....[It] compromises our ability...to motivate students to do their best work,” Pedersen said.

“We are going to have to carry on this discussion as best we can, understanding that there will be some noise in the background,” she said, referring to recent national attention to grade inflation.

She added that improving the Freshman Seminar program continues to be a priority, and that expanding opportunities for study abroad will be a new focus. A report has already been commissioned to assess the state of study abroad at Harvard.

Graduate school students are in for some major changes too. Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS) Peter T. Ellison talked about how GSAS could better compete for the best students.

At the top of Ellison’s list is improving the experience of first-year graduate students—mainly by reducing the Faculty’s reliance on first-years as teaching fellows.

Ellison said that the long-accepted maxim that “Those who can’t yet do, teach,” is “not a good thing for our classrooms [and] not a good thing for our students.”

“We need to think more seriously about how we use graduate students as teachers,” Pedersen said.

Summers echoed Ellison’s concerns, and said that it is important that the teaching fellow experience not be viewed solely as a source of financial aid.

Ellison also said it is long past time to institute professional ethics courses at GSAS. Part of the GSAS budget this year will go to help academic departments develop ethics curricula.

And Ellison also wants to speed graduate students up. Students doing research projects—especially those in the humanities—need to be engaged more quickly, he said. Their degrees take one to two years longer than their peers’ at other schools.

But English Department Chair Lawrence Buell stressed the need to contextualize the discussion and warned against seeking to reduce the time-to-degree without first understanding the cause behind the lengthy duration.

The Shadow of Terrorism

The effects of the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks were highly visible at yesterday’s meeting.

In his remarks to the Faculty, Ellison mentioned legislation currently pending before Congress in Washington that, if passed, would revoke all student visas—greatly affecting the thousands of international students who are part of the Harvard community.

In his opening remarks, Summers addressed the anthrax scare currently facing the nation.

Though Summers urged both Faculty and students to carry on with their lives, he said he was assembling an “informal advisory group,” composed of faculty members and University administrators with “specifically relevant scientific expertise.”

Summers was also asked about the possibility of bringing the Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) back to campus—an issue that is getting increasing attention after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11. Recently, alumni of the University began a petition to reinstate the service.

Summers said that though he personally felt that military service is “honorable” and “vital to making possible institutions like Harvard University,” it is necessary to reconcile Harvard’s committment to the national community with its committment to nondiscrimination.

Summers was asked only two questions during the period reserved for this purpose—and one was directed at Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles.

However, the president preceded the question period by saying he would not take any questions on his inaugural speech, but he did briefly reiterate the major points of the speech.

—Staff writer Kate L. Rakoczy can be reached at rakoczy@fas.harvard.edu.