Faust Meets With Council

In her first public meeting with undergraduates since she was named president-elect, Drew G. Faust pledged last night to reexamine Harvard’s academic calendar and consider ways of improving interaction between students and professors.

For most of the 70-minute meeting with the Undergraduate Council, however, Faust nodded frequently and appeared to absorb the concerns of the elected representatives of Harvard’s roughly 6,500 undergraduates. Faust has never headed an institution with a student population in her professional career.

The topics ranged from postseason Ivy League football competition to environmental sustainability.

Undergraduate Council members raised concerns about the effect of Harvard’s academic calendar on mental health. Currently, many students spend winter break studying for exams or writing papers in anticipation of January exams.

The Faculty of Arts and Sciences addressed changes to the calendar as part of its curricular review, but the College has yet to act make any substantial changes to the calendar. Faust said that now that other parts of the review were “moving along,” she believed it was “time to look at calendar change again.”

Several UC representatives expressed a desire to have professors play a bigger part in the College’s advising system. In response, Faust noted the occasional inadequacies of faculty advisers.

“I think one thing that can be a problem is that faculty cannot always be the best advisers,” she said. “If you start asking a history professor how to meet your requirements for...Gen Ed, you might never graduate.”

At the end of the night, Faust, currently the dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, summed up a concern she had heard frequently.

“We’ve come at it in different directions, but clearly faculty-student interaction is something that you want more of, and something that you think you’re not getting enough of,” she said.

Jon T. Staff V ’10, who asked a question about revising the academic calendar, reacted favorably to the new president’s outlook on the matter.

“I thought her response was very encouraging,” Staff said. “She seemed dedicated to opening up the discussion on calendar reform in the very near future and that seemed a very welcome thing.”

Tom D. Hadfield ’08, a former candidate for the UC presidency and also a Crimson editor, asked Harvard’s president-elect about the feasibility of free tuition for low-income students and reforming the legacy admissions system.

“Now, I thought I was going to be asking you questions,” said a half-joking Faust, who subsequently added, “I will withhold my comments on those questions at this time.”

Mather House representative Matthew R. Greenfield ’08 did not appear to be put off by Faust’s occasional reticence.

“She was very clearly cautious, especially to questions about financial aid and other complicated topics,” he said. “But in part that jived with the format that she set up, which was for us to talk to her rather than for her to talk to us.”

Greenfield said he was impressed with the incoming president’s demeanor.

“More than anything I was impressed by the time she spent with us and the earnestness with which she listened to what we had to say,” he said.

Faust, whose daughter, Jessica M. Rosenberg, graduated from the College in 2004, said she was looking to add to the impressions of undergraduate education she has gathered as a parent.

“One of the things I need to do is take the snapshots that have been my experience of undergraduate life and develop that into a more systematic understanding of undergraduate issues,” she said.

The president-elect left yesterday’s meeting with a bound history of the establishment of the first College scholarship given by Ann Radcliffe, the woman whose name graces the institute Faust now leads.

The gift, Ryan A. Petersen ’08 said, would set a theme of support for undergraduates as Faust prepares to move into Mass. Hall on July 1.

—Staff writer Christian B. Flow can be reached at cflow@fas.harvard.edu.