The News In Brief

The next dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS) will likely come from within the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), rather than from another university, according to Dean of the Faculty William C. Kirby.

The new dean will replace outgoing GSAS head Peter T. Ellison, who announced last month that he will step down at the end of this year.

Kirby and members of the Faculty Council—FAS’s 18-member governing body—discussed the qualities they are looking for in a new dean at a Faculty Council meeting yesterday, though no prospective candidates have yet been named.

There will be no official search committee, and Kirby has the final say in the appointment.

“Its basically the Dean’s choice, although the Faculty Council is supposed to advise on this,” said Council member and Classics Department Chair Richard F. Thomas.

Kirby also reiterated to the Council yesterday that the Harvard College curricular review will not come up for a vote by the full Faculty until all members of FAS have had the opportunity to fully debate the review’s recommendations.

With only three full Faculty meetings remaining this year, Kirby’s announcement likely means that the Faculty will not vote on the review’s recommendations until next year.

The Council also heard a report on the progress of two recently-formed task forces on women at Harvard from Dean of the Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study Drew Gilpin Faust, Higgins Professor of Natural Sciences Barbara J. Grosz, and Professor of the History of Science and of African and African American Studies Evelyn M. Hammonds.

The task forces will issue a set of recommendations to the Faculty by this May. Once they have issued the recommendations, both task forces will be dissolved.

According to Assistant Professor of Sociology and Council member Prudence L. Carter, Grosz also presented the recommendations made by a 1991 task force on women, of which she was a member. While some of those recommendations have since been implemented, Carter said, others have “fallen through the cracks.”

The current task forces will look to implement the remainder of those recommendations.

—Staff writer William C. Marra can be reached at wmarra@fas.harvard.edu.

—Staff writer Sara E. Polsky can be reached at polsky@fas.harvard.edu.