“We want to make sure that colleagues up for promotion are fully informed about the process and that this process is standard and clear,” Kirby said in an interview last month. “Here, [the appointments process] tends to be more mysterious than it needs to be,” he said.

One way to make the tenure process more transparent, Kirby said, could be to make sure that every Faculty member has a hard copy of the Faculty handbook, which outlines the guidelines of the FAS tenure process.

Kirby said that although every department chair has a copy of these rules, not all professors do.

Committee members said they hope to talk to professors about ways they feel the process could be made more straightforward.

“It is a rather complicated process, and I hope we can make it more transparent,” Friend said.

Making the tenure process more effective is integrally tied to the curricular review, also kicking off this year.

In order to increase student-faculty contact, it is widely acknowledged that the Faculty will have to expand significantly.

Kirby has set a target of ten percent growth over the next ten years.

Kirby says he wants the Faculty to “look at what our capacity is and how quickly we can make appointments.”

“We can move fast,” Kirby said.

The Road Ahead

In addition to Friend and Cutler, Ford Professor of the Social Sciences David Pilbeam, Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures Mary M. Gaylord and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs Vincent Tomkins have also been offered the opportunity to serve on the committee.

Friend says the committee was purposefully kept small so that it would be able to meet on a regular basis.

She notes that the committee includes both professors who rose through the ranks at Harvard and those recruited from other institutions, ensuring that a breadth of experience with the tenure system will be brought to the table.

The committee will visit the Faculty Council to seek its advice, and Friend says she believes this topic deserves a discussion by the full Faculty at one of its monthly meetings.

Friend says she hadn’t planned on soliciting student feedback in the review but that she was not necessarily opposed to the idea.

Though the committee has not yet established a firm timetable, Friend said she hopes it will be able to produce a concrete list of recommendations by the end of the academic year.

—Staff writer Kate L. Rakoczy can be reached at rakoczy@fas.harvard.edu.