Grosz To Step Down as Dean

Dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study Barbara J. Grosz announced yesterday that she will step down from her post of four years to return to the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences faculty, saying that she did not have enough time to conduct research as a dean.

Grosz was not available for comment, but in her letter released yesterday, she said she would miss the opportunities she encountered as dean but that she wished to return to the world of research and academia.

According to Radcliffe Institute spokesperson Alison Franklin, Grosz, who joined the Institute as dean of science in 2001, did not plan on staying for 10 years.

“When she started,” Franklin said, “she thought she would be here for five [years].” Instead, when current University President Drew G. Faust stepped down in 2007 from her position as Radcliffe Institute’s first dean, Grosz stayed on for an additional four years.

“I thought about ... the next decade likely being the last of my own academic career. I realized that I was hungry for the intense scholarly life we afford our fellows ... and I concluded that it was time for me to return to the research, teaching, and working with students that brought me to Harvard in 1986,” Grosz wrote in a letter that announced her resignation.

Grosz will spend the next year as a full-time fellow at Stanford University, easing back into the research she used to conduct in artificial intelligence and computer science, Franklin said.

After the fellowship, Grosz will return to teaching at SEAS.

Franklin said it was Grosz’s inability to conduct her research that ultimately resulted in her decision to step down.

“She’s a very devoted scientist, and she has tried to maintain to the degree possible her research work and her support for graduate students as the dean at the Institute,” Franklin said. “But it’s not really possible to pursue the work at the level she wanted to because of her responsibilities as the dean.”

During her time as dean, Franklin said Grosz focused on interdisciplinary ways to bring the University together.

Franklin said Grosz asked herself and the Institute, “How can we pull people and engage people in cross-cutting initiatives?”

One product of this initiative was the Academic Ventures program, which engages faculty and students from the College and graduate schools in diverse collaborative discussions such as cybersecurity and educational inequality.

“I am thrilled that together we have made the Radcliffe Institute a place where sparks fly, where people who might not otherwise work together meet, take chances they might not take anywhere else, and explore issues differently,” Grosz wrote.

In addition, Franklin said the institute under Grosz has begun to digitize the Schlesinger Library’s collection, which features material documenting the history of women in America. She has also expanded the institute’s fellowship program, which invites academics and professionals from the fields of science, humanities, and the arts to collaborate at the institute for a year.

—Staff writer Michelle M.  Hu can be reached at michellehu@college.harvard.edu.