Hard of Hearing?

Twice each week, on Monday afternoons and Thursday mornings, Dean of the College Evelynn M. Hammonds brings together five of her closest advisers for a policy pow-wow in her University Hall office.

These conversations, Hammonds wrote in an email, allow her to “discuss at a high level” issues that affect student life, like winter break programming and alcohol policy, with divisional heads of the College.

During the early years of her deanship, Hammonds’ Cabinet included her senior adviser, Paul J. McLoughlin II, and Dean of Student Life Suzy M. Nelson, who both were often praised for their direct engagement with undergraduates.

Now, four years into Hammonds’ tenure as dean of the College, her trusted Cabinet is in a state of flux.

After McLoughlin’s resignation last August and Nelson’s departure this June, Hammonds will have lost two of her foremost advocates for students.

Hammonds, who named “campus community” as one of her top priorities for the upcoming year, said that these personnel changes will not alter the way she runs the College.

“I feel very strongly that the students should feel that they have an ally in any member of the Harvard College staff,” Hammonds wrote.

But in an administration where McLoughlin and Nelson formerly had the most direct contact with students, Hammonds may be forced to take on a more visible role on campus to replace them.

“Dean Hammonds is going to have to up her own ante in terms of interacting with students, now that she’s lost her longtime right-hand man and right-hand woman.” said former Undergraduate Council President Senan Ebrahim ’12. “It’s just a question of how she’s going to do it, not whether she’s going to do it, given her priorities and her commitment to student voice in College affairs.”

Members of her inner circle suggest she is up to the task. In Cabinet meetings, Associate Dean of the College Joan Rouse said, Hammonds is “a great listener”—a quality, administrators say, that serves Hammonds well in her interactions with students.

But though Hammonds has said she is committed to improving student life, the task may be complicated by the fact that she is trying to listen to a demographic that is not even showing up to be listened to.

A LEARNING CURVE

When Hammonds began her tenure as the first female dean of the College in 2008, she arrived with little knowledge of Harvard’s undergraduate culture.

As a professor, Hammonds had worked primarily with graduate students. Unlike three of her recent predecessors, she did not attend the College.

When she was named to the deanship, Hammonds told The Crimson that she was still familiarizing herself with the details of Administrative Board reform and the College’s alcohol policy, prominent issues of the time.

Hammonds said she convened her Cabinet soon after beginning her tenure as dean.

Interviews with her colleagues and student leaders suggest that since then, Hammonds has become increasingly knowledgeable about student life.

“I would guess that she, as with any faculty member who wasn’t a House Master or something like that, came in with little idea how many student organizations there were or really the whole student life side of things,” said Dean of Undergraduate Education Jay M. Harris, another Cabinet member. “She now knows it inside and out.”

CHANGING THE CHIEF OF STAFF

During his term as UC president, Ebrahim always knew who to go to when he wanted to convince Hammonds to accept a Council proposal.

He would reach out to McLoughlin, who became associate dean of the College and senior adviser when Hammonds took over as dean.

Before meeting with Hammonds, Ebrahim would talk to McLoughlin to fine-tune his proposal and make it more appealing.

“We found that she was much more likely to agree to our initiatives if we ran them by Dean McLoughlin first,” Ebrahim said. “Dean McLoughlin had her ear in a way not a lot of other people did.”

During his time at Harvard, McLoughlin was known as a student ally who worked extensively on social space, winter break, and Opening Days programming for the College. Though not all his ideas, like the creation of the Student Organization Center at Hilles, were popular in the long run, he was a critical peg in carrying out Hammonds’ commitment to listening to students.

In August, McLoughlin stepped down from his role in the College to teach graduate students at Boston University. He has since been named dean of students at Lafayette College.

In November, Hammonds chose Rouse—who worked in administration at Columbia for eight years before coming to Harvard—to fill one of McLoughlin’s two roles, the associate dean position.

Rouse, who had been hired as Hammonds’ executive assistant only a month before she was promoted to associate dean, now serves essentially as Hammonds’ chief of staff.

Speaking of her desire to get to know more students, Rouse wrote in an email, “This is truly the part of my job that I enjoy the most.” She mentioned a ROTC training event where she recently enjoyed interacting with cadets.

Hammonds has not filled McLoughlin’s second position, senior adviser—and she says she does not need to.

Hammonds said that she has many advisers throughout the administration and added that despite his job title, McLoughlin was never her only “senior adviser.”

McLoughlin declined a request to comment for this article.

MS. NELSON IS MISSING

When a group of discontented students were chanting slogans and pitching tents outside of University Hall, the College sent Nelson out into the crowd to be its messenger to Occupy Harvard.

Ebrahim speculated that Nelson was chosen to represent the College during the tense negotiations that night “because we see her as the most genuinely empathetic administrator.”

“It was a testament to the way administrators relied on her even in the testiest times,” Ebrahim said.

During her seven years in the College administration, Nelson was very often “behind the scenes helping others to plan events, programs, and opportunities for students,” she wrote in an email.

In March, Nelson announced her decision to leave Harvard for Colgate University, where she has been named vice president and dean of Colgate College.

Calling Nelson’s departure a huge loss for the College, Ebrahim said, “Whether they bring in someone new or promote internally, no one would have the rapport that Dean Nelson built up with students over seven years of service.”

Harris said he thought that the gap left by Nelson would require other administrators to take over additional job duties. “There are still plenty of people who are staying behind who have expertise and experience.... They will surely be asked to step up a bit, and I am sure they will respond well,” he said, adding that Hammonds has acquired the student life expertise to take on some of Nelson’s work.

NOT MUCH TO HEAR

A UC-sponsored town hall meeting at which Hammonds, University President Drew G. Faust, and Faculty of Arts and Sciences Dean Michael D. Smith spoke to undergraduates in October was the most visible of University Hall’s many efforts this year to convince students that administrators are listening to them.

In response to feedback from the Class of 2014, Hammonds wrote in a September email, the College extended Annenberg Hall’s hours until midnight to give freshmen a space to socialize. And in December, the College announced a new Task Force on Student Voice to discuss ways to enhance communication between administrators and students.

The College reached out to students throughout the year as it drafted its new alcohol policy and devised plans for the renovation of Old Quincy.

The administration held a series of evening meetings and opened an online comment box to solicit student feedback on drinking culture before releasing a new alcohol policy in March.

Administrators also held a number of informal meetings with Quincy residents to gather input on the furnishings and design of Old Quincy, which will be renovated next year.

Hammonds said she believes that the College’s efforts to engage the student body are leading students to speak up.

“I know that more students than ever before are taking advantage of the opportunity to visit me during office hours,” Hammonds wrote, adding that she is “always available to see any student who wishes to meet with me outside of office hours.”

But despite these many efforts by the administration to seek out student opinion, not all undergraduates feel the need to voice their views on College policy.

The seven alcohol meetings in the fall saw low attendance, drawing about 70 students in total. In April, the three meetings to allow students to vet the administration’s newly drafted alcohol regulations drew a total of five students.

“If you were to ask students what have been the College’s priorities the last few semesters, I don’t know if they could really answer that,” UC President Danny P. Bicknell ’13 said.

For Bicknell, the student body is divided between the “500 students who really understand the College,” and the “6,000 students” who do not understand or do not actively engage with the administration.

Bicknell said he thinks engaging the latter group of students is one of the biggest challenges facing the College.

“Going to meetings shouldn’t be a barrier to entry,” Bicknell said. “You don’t want to build a self-selecting community.”

Many students, Bicknell said, have trouble squeezing the administration’s public forums into their already packed schedules.

Catherine A. Brown ’14, who plays lacrosse and participates in ROTC, is one such busy student.

Brown said that her life on campus is too hectic to attend Hammonds’ office hours or other College meetings.

“I think the College definitely tries really hard to make students welcome in that process,” she said. “I didn’t take advantage of it because I have a lot of other things to worry about.”

Brown said that many of her athlete friends were also unable to attend the College’s various town halls this year.

“If the meeting is at 6 p.m., if you play a sport, you’re probably not going to be able to go, and certainly not commit to going,” she said.

Bicknell said that this issue could be remedied if administrators facilitated more casual interactions with students.

Pforzheimer House Committee Co-Chair Christine J. Hu ’13 said she was happy when she heard that Hammonds came to a dinner with students in her House and added that she would like to see the dean become even more visible on campus.

“If Dean Hammonds were to assume some of [Nelson’s] roles, I’d be really excited to work with her,” Hu said.

—Staff writer Rebecca D. Robbins can be reached at rrobbins@college.harvard.edu.