Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles yesterday released a preliminary document outlining Faculty of Arts and Sciences academic planning priorities and goals for their $1 billion portion of the upcoming capital campaign.
The "working document" calls for a $180 building campaign and about 40 new faculty positions. The plan has not yet been examined by the entire faculty, except for department chairs and the Faculty Council, and it will be discussed in Tuesday's full Faculty meeting, Knowles said.
The plan, which includes both long-term aims and specific financial allocations, took shape over years of discussions by faculty members, alumni, students and administrators, and it is not in final form, Knowles said.
"It's a somewhat uneasy hybrid," he said. "The academic goals are the top of the mountain we wish to climb...the campaign priorities is how we're going to get there."
A number of large-scale construction projects are planned to remedy the Faculty's "overall shortage of space" and a faculty layout of space that "often hampers...academic goals and degrades the quality of interaction among faculty and among students," according to the draft.
The largest single suggested disbursement is for a new, 108,000 square foot life sciences building, which would "provide modern research laboratories for faculty members working in the biological, biochemical and chemical sciences" as well as office space and classrooms.
The document also suggests $30 million go toward a new physical sciences building with a new experimental laboratory and instructional facilities to hold planned growth in the areas of engineering and computer science.
Another large construction project The already-announced Center for the Humanities and Memorial Hall Commons projects are given $23 million and $25 million, respectively, in the plan. The plan also sets aside $3 million to replace the student space lost in renovating Memorial Hall and to encourage extracurricular activities. Money is also set aside, according to the plan, for new Arts and Sciences faculty positions, partially in order to move toward a goal of "rationalizing the curriculum...and raising the overall ratio of faculty to students" with more faculty-student contact, the document says. $48 million is allotted for engineering and computer science faculty "in important areas where our present strength is subcritical," while $68 million will likely go to additional faculty in the humanities and social sciences. Choosing which specific departments will get new faculty positions will occur later, Knowles said. New positions will go to "areas of maximum educational need," Knowles said. The plan also lays a strong stress on the need for technological advancement, with large sums allocated for information technology and modernization of Harvard Library facilities, including a $12 million renovation of Lamont Library and $19 million for climate control for Widener and Houghton Libraries. The plan sets aside $6 million for a "new and more comprehensive" language laboratory. Another important area in the plan is for encouragement of student and faculty research efforts, with plans to encourage undergraduate internships abroad and research at home as well as money for graduate student dissertation fellowships and faculty career development grants. Such efforts aim to "shorten the time to [the] Ph.D. degree" of graduate students, as well as lure quality junior faculty to Harvard, the report says. Money is also set aside for physical sciences infrastructure, renovations for Hoffman Laboratory and the Geology Museums, and the establishment of a "Center for Global Change." The plan sets aside $15 million to help build "the largest university telescope in the southern hemisphere" in Chile with Cambridge University
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