With a simple swipe of their ID cards, Faculty members will now be allowed to accompany students to meals in any House, Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis '68 announced Friday.

The program, largely the result of lobbying by Undergraduate Council members John Paul Rollert '00 and Michael D. Shumsky '01, is likely to begin within a week.

According to Shumsky, the program represents a joint effort by administrators and students to provide more avenues for informal interaction between students and their professors.

"It is, of course, one of the regular criticisms of Harvard that such interactions happen too infrequently," Lewis wrote in an e-mail message.

Shumsky said he hoped to combat the perception that the Harvard Faculty, in contrast to that of Yale and Princeton's, is inaccessible to students.

He called the move the "first step in the process" of improving relations between faculty and students.

Under the new plan, senior Faculty members, including professors and some lecturers and preceptors, will be able to eat unlimited meals at the Houses or at Annenberg Hall, just as students do.

Students will continue to have to obtain a meal voucher in advance to take teaching fellows or junior lecturers and preceptors to meals in their Houses. But while vouchers used to be available only at University Hall, they can now also be obtained at the Houses and Annenberg.

Shumsky and Rollert's original proposal called for Faculty ID cards to entitle professors to three meals a week. According to Shumsky, the possible expense of such a plan "raised some eyebrows" among administrators concerned with whether such a plan would be cost-effective.

But after considering the proposal, Lewis and the House masters decided to go even further than they were asked, granting Faculty unlimited meals in the Houses as long as they are accompanied by a student.

Lewis said he envisions students and Faculty members continuing classroom discussions over lunch without worry of cost.

"I am very excited about this undertaking and hope that both Faculty and students will take advantage of it regularly," Lewis wrote in an e-mail message.

According to Ted A. Mayer, director of Harvard University Dining Services (HUDS), the program will begin as soon as HUDS is able to enter all the relevant data into its computer system, which should be some time this week.

Because the administration does not yet know how often professors and students will take advantage of the policy, Lewis said it is impossible to estimate how expensive the program may be.

Lewis said the program will be run this semester on an experimental basis. Administrators plan to review the program this summer to determine if it needs to be modified or discarded.