Students Seek Focus for Dean Search Advisory Committee

In last Friday’s open meeting of the recently selected student advisory committee in the search for the new Faculty dean, students expressed concern that the scope of the commmittee’s task is too broad.

The Undergraduate Advisory Committee on the Appointment of the New Dean of FAS—an ad hoc committee of seven members appointed by the Undergraduate Council two weeks ago—plans to present University President Lawrence H. Summers with a three-to-five-page letter next Wednesday.

The letter, which will outline qualities students would like to see in the new dean, will be based upon surveys first issued through the dining halls last week and recommendations from student e-mails to committee members.

The survey asks students to rank the importance of over twenty issues ranging from study abroad to Ad Board policy in order to asses the qualities that will be most important for the new dean.

But members of the committee say they now realize that compiling the results of the survey is not going to easy.

“We are not going to be able to, nor should we, write the five-year plans for the Dean,” said committee member Brian J. Emeott ’04.

At Friday’s meeting, the committee was split over how to determine which issues were most important and should be included in the letter.

Committee chair Kate B. Greer ’02 said she thinks it is important that they try to address as many issues as possible in the letter.

“It is important to get these issues on the table and we don’t want anything that we have talked about in discussion to get lost,” she said.

But others felt that the letter needed to addresses fewer issues in more depth—particularly those that have traditionally received less publicity.

“Maybe we shouldn’t be addressing the top five issues since everyone knows, for example, that advising is important,” said Rebeccah G. Watson ’04, another committee member.

Rachelle K. Gould ’03, who stopped by the these [student] groups and we should identify them to make up ground,” she said.

Students at the meeting also discussed the input they had been receiving from over 70 student e-mails that have been sent to the committee account.

The committee plans to meet before next weekend to draft the letter, which they will model after Dean Jeremy R. Knowles’ 2002 letter to the Faculty, according to Greer.

Committee members also said that they are unsure what—if any—impact the letter will have on the search process.

“In all likelihood this will just be a letter to the new dean and not have an impact on the choice,” Greer said.

But everyone at the meeting said they agree that the process of soliciting student input is still important.

“A big part of this project is to establish a formal way for student input to be heard,” said former UC President Paul A. Gusmorino ’02.

—Staff writer Jessica E. Vascellaro can be reached at vascell@fas.harvard.edu.