Ec Administrator Leaves Department

Students in the College’s largest concentration were given a day’s notice before they were left without an undergraduate program administrator.

In an e-mail to all undergraduate economics concentrators, Debbie Whitney, who was responsible for organizing programs such as tutorials and advising students on department policies, wrote Wednesday that she is leaving the post to join Harvard’s Health Policy Program at the Kennedy School of Government (KSG), effective yesterday.

She will become the program’s associate director, according to economics department chair James H. Stock.

Though students were not informed until Wednesday, department officials said they have been aware of the pending move for several weeks.

“December 8th is when she announced this to the staff and faculty,” Stock said.

He said that Whitney’s departure was “definitely a surprise” to the department, but added that it bore no “ill will.”

The move was sudden because the position with the KSG’s health policy program “needed to be filled quickly,” he said.

Stock said he would ideally like to have Whitney’s successor in place by the end of exam period or the beginning of the spring semester. He added that the department has started to review candidate resumes, and that interviews would commence next week.

“[Whitney] sent out a lot of helpful e-mails—I hope whoever replaces her does too.” said Ryan B. Darnell ’08, an economics concentrator.

Stock said he would not rule out a temporary solution should the need arise.

“If it looks as though there are important functions that are not being met by our staff, then we will get an interim person,” he said.

Stock said he did not anticipate a major impact on undergraduates.

“Our hope and our plan is that we would be able to fill in a stopgap way with the existing structure,” he said.

Assistant Director of Undergraduate Studies and Visiting Professor of Economics Jeffrey A. Miron said he thought the department would cope well with Whitney’s absence.

“There will occasionally be the rough edge here or there, but we’re absolutely eager and prepared to fill in for the next month,” he said.

Whitney could not be reached for comment yesterday.

Both Miron and Stock said that the timing of the move—between semesters—made the prospect of temporary operation without a lead undergraduate administrator easier to handle.

Though junior seminar placement and sophomore tutorial organization may have to be conducted before a replacement can be found, Stock said, thesis writers should not be affected.

“I think that for thesis writers at this point, the primary point of contact is their thesis supervisors,” he said. “That should be okay for the next few weeks.”

In her e-mail, Whitney urged students to make use of their House concentration advisors for questions that would normally be directed to her.

Lowell House economics advisor John N. Friedman said he thought that House advisers should not have trouble shouldering the increased responsibility.

“I don’t think this is that great a change in the sense that the house advisors have always been the first point of contact for questions students have about the department,” he said.

—Staff writer Nicholas A. Ciani can be reached at nciani@fas.harvard.edu.