In Search For Dean, Students Seek Role

The Undergraduate Council (UC) last night called on Derek C. Bok to appoint two students to a faculty committee that will advise the incoming interim president in his search for the next dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

Coming two days after Bok e-mailed a “request for advice” to faculty, students, and staff, yesterday’s resolution also established a seven-member undergraduate committee that will issue a “substantive report” on its criteria for the next dean.

But UC representatives involved in the legislation said that they did not know how Bok will use student advice in his search or whether he would accept the resolution’s proposals.

“We’re just sort of hopeful that he will be receptive toward having students involved,” said UC President John S. Haddock ’07, who co-sponsored the resolution with Ryan A. Petersen ’08.

If Bok accepts the UC’s proposal to have students serve on an advisory committee alongside faculty, he will depart from the framework of recent dean searches.

When University President Lawrence H. Summers was selecting a new dean of the Faculty in 2002, the UC formed an advisory group that met with Summers several times before he chose William C. Kirby to lead the Faculty. But no students served on the president’s faculty advisory committee, which is what the UC resolution, passed last night by a 32-5 vote, calls for.

Richard F. Thomas, a member of the Faculty Council and chair of the Classics department, suggested that undergraduates might not be aware of the full range of attributes that a particular candidate might possess.

Thomas said a good dean of the Faculty must be “a very good administrator, and I’m not sure that that’s the sort of function students are aware of.”

“So I would think that if students have any ideas, obviously they could send them in, but my sense is that it’s probably going to be more faculty advice that will help,” Thomas said.

Former UC President Rohit Chopra ’04, who was an ex officio member of the student advisory group when Summers was conducting his search in 2002, said last night that having undergraduates serve on the same advisory committee as professors would ensure that student input on the search would not be ignored.

“I think every time students sit on decision-making committees with faculty members,” Chopra said, “faculty members report that they appreciated the student input because they always provide a perspective that a faculty member doesn’t always think about.”

The UC will be accepting applications online for the student advisory committee beginning tomorrow.

SPRING SEARCH

As the UC debated this weekend how students would advise Bok on his search, the process for how professors will do the same has crystallized. Department chairs and Council members are now submitting the names of colleagues who they would like to serve on the six-to-eight member faculty advisory committee, according to Thomas. He also said he expects Bok and the Docket Committee, a three-person subset of the Faculty Council, to determine the makeup of the advisory group by the end of this month.

In his e-mail Friday, Bok followed through on his earlier pledges to professors to consult broadly and deeply in the search for the successor to Kirby.

“I am writing to invite you to share your thoughts about the opportunities and challenges facing the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, the qualities we seek in a dean, and whether the appointment should be acting or permanent,” Bok wrote. He also requested that specific recommendations for the deanship be sent to fasdeansearch@harvard.edu.

Bok, who led Harvard from 1971 to 1991, will not officially begin his term as interim University president until July 1. But with Summers having resigned in part because professors said they would not trust him with the search for the next Faculty dean, Bok has stressed that he, not Summers, will conduct the search and make the final decision.

“[T]he Corporation has asked me to undertake this search immediately, with the hope that we can have a successor named who will be able to begin when Dean Kirby steps down at the end of this academic year,” Bok wrote.

In Adams House dining hall last night, many undergraduates expressed little interest in the dean search. Several said that they did not remember receiving Bok’s e-mail message.

But other students said that, with parts of the College curricular review expected to come up for Faculty votes this semester and in the fall, the selection of the next dean of FAS would play an important role in undergraduate life.

“The people who have to suffer and enjoy the new curriculum is us, and that’s what the next dean will be all about—the curricular review,” said Ben Click ’06.

Many students reacted with surprise upon receiving the e-mail from Bok. “For a second I thought I was on a special committee,” Samuel M. Johnson ’06-’07 said.

Bok did not respond to e-mails requesting comment yesterday. Neither did A. Clayton Spencer and Kasia Lundy, two Mass. Hall officials named in Bok’s e-mail as his assistants in the search. Spencer is the University vice president for policy, and Lundy is chief of staff for the Office of the President.

—Brittney L. Moraski contributed to the reporting of this story.
—Staff writer Daniel J. T. Schuker can be reached at dschuker@fas.harvard.edu.
—Staff writer Anton S. Troianovski can be reached at atroian@fas.harvard.edu.