Assistant Professor of Government Matthew J. Dickinson has fond memories of the years he and his wife spent resident tutors in Lowell House.

"We were there two or three years and had our kids while we were there," Dickinson says. "We loved it and had a great time."

But Dickinson was still a graduate student in the Government Department at the time. Today he has a full time job teaching and doing research, and is raising older children.

Still, though, he says that he might consider coming back to the House system, as an Allston Burr Senior Tutor.

"Under the right circumstances, depending on the details of the job, I could see doing it," Dickinson says. "But I believe I'm probably an exception. Most junior faculty, at least in government, would not be interested."

Yet that's exactly what Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis '68 wants to do. Lewis has proposed hiring more junior faculty as senior tutors.

"They would ideally have completed their own education, hold faculty appointments of some kind, and have demonstrated experience in resolving complex problems," says the 1994 Report on the Structure of Harvard College, which Lewis co-authored.

That report quotes a detailed job description from a published advertisement for senior tutorships.

"These are half-time positions in academic administration, held in conjunction with another half-time compensated appointment in the University," the ad reads. "Persons holding a teaching appointment in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences are strongly preferred."

Although the job of Allston Burr Senior Tutor was created in 1952 with professors in mind, none of the current senior tutors are faculty members.

Should a junior faculty member be appointed, Lewis and Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles say, the senior tutor's teaching load would be cut in half and the tenure clock would be pushed back.

Normally, junior faculty members may spend eight years at Harvard. At that point, they are either tenured or must find a job elsewhere. Knowles says that for each year a faculty member spends on the half-time senior tutor job, an extra semester would be added to their time here, up to two full years.

"What I'm trying to do is to remove the disincentive. Of course there is a disincentive at this moment," Knowles says. "I want the best possible senior tutors. I should want to deepen the pool of candidates."

Still, junior faculty members, even those potentially interested in the job, and current senior tutors express some reservations about the feasibility of combining the two jobs into one.

"The senior tutor's job...is a three quarter time job at a half-time salary," says Winthrop House senior tutor Gregory Mobley. "A lot of being a senior tutor is having your ear to the ground, being present, preventing problems from turning into crises."

"It isn't so much of whether you're in your office a certain number of hours per week, but rather whether you can be present and in the [House] community," he says.