Today, Hyman will meet with the University’s vice presidents and with additional staff from the Office of the Provost, he said.

In coming weeks, he plans to visit each of Harvard’s schools, meet with the deans, and “get to know the environment.”

Though he just began rearranging the furniture and placing photos of his children in his Mass. Hall office yesterday, Hyman has regularly visited Harvard, read “reams and reams” of briefing documents and communicated regularly with administrators since his selection.

“In the last few weeks, I felt almost like I’ve been doing two jobs,” he said.

Currently, he and Summers are striving for a “one-stop shopping” relationship between the president and the provost, Hyman said.

“No one should have to convince him of something, and then try to convince me,” he said.

Returning Home

Hyman entered his new Mass. Hall office yesterday to find a dozen roses on his desk.

The flowers were from DuBois Professor of the Humanities Henry Louis “Skip” Gates, Jr., a longtime friend from their days as students in Cambridge, England.

“Part of the joy of coming back to Harvard is getting to work with people like that again,” Hyman said.

Hyman returns to Harvard after serving as director of NIMH for nearly six years.

He described his time at NIMH as a “golden age” in terms of congressional support and potential for accomplishment, but when the Harvard job offer came, Hyman said, he was ready to leave the “hierarchical” NIMH.

“Here, there will be more of an opportunity for give-and-take, for learning and for self-renewal,” he said.

And, he added, it was “unusual” for people to “talk back to you” at NIMH.

“I don’t think that will be a problem at Harvard,” he said.

Hyman said he will regularly commute to Cambridge from his home in Maryland as he continues to look for a home in the Cambridge area.

His wife, Barbara Bierer, will transfer her lab, currently at the National Institutes of Health, to the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and begin working there July 1, he said.

—Staff writer Catherine E. Shoichet can be reached at shoichet@fas.harvard.edu.