Calendar Gets Mixed Reviews

A calendar proposal that would move first-semester exams before winter break received a mixed response at yesterday’s meeting of the Faculty Council, members who attended said.

The discussion was the first formal chance for Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) professors to review the proposal, released Monday, which would require students to begin classes immediately after Labor Day and enable FAS to add a month-long academic term in January.

Professor of the History of Science Everett I. Mendelsohn, a Faculty Council member, said that professors raised a number of concerns in response to the report by the University Committee on Calendar Reform, which was charged with synchronizing school calendars across Harvard.

“There was no enthusiastic support for the program,” Mendelsohn said.

“There was no real resolution,” said Baird Professor of Science Gary J. Feldman, a Council member who said that concerns about the early start date and a potential decrease in teaching time were not addressed by the report.

The report, adopted by the calendar committee in an 18-1 vote, recommends that all of Harvard’s 10 faculties begin the academic year immediately after Labor Day, begin Thanksgiving vacation the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, and start the second semester after a month-long intersession in January. Under the new system, commencement would take place in late May rather than in June.

“Given the trend toward greater cross-registration and collaboration...the current lack of calendar coordination imposes unnecessary barriers, such as varying instructional start dates, examination periods, and spring recess dates,” the report says.

Although six of Harvard’s 10 schools already have first semester exams before winter break, the FAS semester runs from late September to late January, with only two days cancelled for Thanksgiving. Commencement this year is on June 10.

Pforzheimer University Professor Sidney Verba ’53, who chaired the calendar committee and presented the recommendations to the Faculty Council yesterday, said that a unified calendar would enable students to take advantage of the University’s varied resources.

“A lot of the cross-registration, of course, is at the graduate student level,” Verba said. “There’s also a lot of interest in, and a lot of examples of, faculty members from other schools teaching in the Core curriculum.”

Not all faculty members were convinced that facilitating cross-registration inherently benefits undergraduate education or justifies a calendar change.

“I haven’t had the experience in my 34 years [at Harvard] that students have had trouble taking the classes they want to take or getting the jobs they want to get,” Plummer Professor of Christian Morals Peter J. Gomes, who spoke out against a potential change at a meeting of the full Faculty in December, said yesterday.

But Verba said that the committee had heard frequent complaints from undergraduates who have had trouble getting summer jobs because Harvard lets out so late in comparison to other schools.

Maier Professor of Political Economy Benjamin M. Friedman ’66, the calendar committee member who dissented from the final report, wrote in a memo accompanying the report that he doubted that synchronizing the calendar would necessarily make cross-registration easier for undergraduates.

“The discussion in our committee made clear that no one is contemplating allowing FAS students in any numbers to enroll in courses at the Business School or the Law School, for example, where the demand would be greatest,” Friedman wrote.

Gomes added that the proponents of calendar reform—who include Dean of the Faculty William C. Kirby—have not articulated a sufficient need for revisions even considering the ongoing curricular review.

“Many a curricular ship has foundered on the shoals of calendar reform,” Gomes said. “The chief argument cannot be that change is good, but that seems to be what’s driving this.”

Undergraduate Council President Matthew W. Mahan ’05 said he thought moves to facilitate cross-registration could actually be counter-productive.

“I would strongly caution the administration against making any changes that further ‘pre-professionalize’ the Harvard academic experience,” Mahan wrote in an e-mail last week. “We get enough pre-professionalism in our extracurriculars and I worry that with this change students would start competing on the basis of how many classes they were taking at the Medical School, for example.”

But Verba said that classes taught by professors at the graduate schools can have a place in a liberal arts education.

“I wouldn’t necessarily look at people taking something at the Law School or at the School of Education or the Kennedy School as professional education—[those courses] deal with intellectual subjects of great interest,” he said.

Associate Dean of the College Jeffrey Wolcowitz, who is one of the leaders of the curricular review, said last week that the synchronization would make it easier for professors at schools like the Law School or the Medical School to teach College classes.

Friedman also charged in his memo that the rationale for shifting the timing of the academic year and creating a monthlong intersession was premature.

“The faculty has yet to discuss the merits of the proposal for a January term, and so we’re not in a position to say whether that more fundamental change would be good or bad,” Friedman wrote. “It makes no sense to change the FAS calendar to pave the way for a curriculum change we haven’t decided to make.”

But Dean of the College Benedict H. Gross ’71 said last week that the potential J-term “is an opportunity for us to offer types of instruction that we don’t offer during the semester.”

“Maybe students decide this is bogus or I don’t want to do this or this is extra work,” he said. “But you know you can do something in a three-and-a-half week course when you’re doing nothing else that you can’t do during the term.”

Gomes said that, should such a month-long block of space be established, FAS would have little choice but to institute an academic term during that time.

“Our Puritan consciences wouldn’t let us take the time off,” he said.

Mendelsohn said that the Faculty Council had also discussed the mixed experiences that other colleges and universities have had with January terms.

“The question was raised about what we knew about the experiences at other schools and colleges, and the general feeling was that it was mixed,” Mendelsohn said. “My understanding from anecdotes is that my colleagues and students at MIT don’t really think it’s worth much.”

Feldman said that starting classes just after Labor Day would mean that professors interested in advising undergraduates and in preparing classes would have to return from their summer vacations at some point in August.

“Faculty don’t want to start before Labor Day,” he said, adding that some professors may choose not to advise undergraduates if it impacts their vacations. “I’d be very wary of a change in the calendar that makes us have a worse advising system than at present,” he said.

Although the Faculty is set to discuss calendar reform at its April 20 meeting, the Harvard Corporation, the higher of the University’s two governing boards, is ultimately responsible for setting the University’s calendar and approving any changes.

“I would have the feeling, if I were a member of the Corporation, that I would love to know what my faculties were thinking—particularly the FAS,” Mendelsohn said. “If I were a member of the Corporation, I would urge [Kirby] to at least take some straw votes on the issues. They’d be crazy not to.”

—Staff writer Joshua D. Gottlieb can be reached at jdgottl@fas.harvard.edu.

—Staff writer Laura L. Krug can be reached at krug@fas.harvard.edu.