The task of planning for this future in Allston has catapulted to the top of the committee’s agenda.

Senior Adviser to the President Dennis F. Thompson, who chaired the committee two years ago, returned from a sabbatical to head up a reconstituted body with a far more specific charge.

The committee has been expanded to include more faculty and a greater focus on community relations.

Thompson says the committee will be investigating “more closely and skeptically” the benefits that might result from freeing up space in Cambridge. In the past, Thompson says, the committee’s work on Allston had concentrated only on what would happen across the river.

And for the first time the committee will begin looking at specific plans for using land—both in Cambridge and in Allston.

The initial steps toward these more concrete plans were taken at the committee’s first meeting in February.

According to Thompson, the committee decided to focus on three scenarios as a starting point for Allston planning.

One, referred to as the “culture and community” model, focuses on Allston as a space for new graduate student dorms and museums moved out of Cambridge.

While the committee will be treating the model as a separate scenario, housing and cultural contributions to Allston will be part of any final plan, Thompson says.

A second scenario, the professional school model, calls for the consolidation of a number of the University’s graduate schools in a new campus across the river. This is the plan that the Law School had refused to consider but is being forced by Summers to rethink.

Added to the mix is a third model—a plan for science in Allston that has emerged since Summers’ arrival.

While the details on this plan are sketchy, the scenario envisions a new interdisciplinary science campus in Allston and dovetails with Summers’ goal of strengthening Harvard’s place at the front of a revolution in biological science. Summers speaks in terms of a new Silicon Valley for biomedical research and says Allston could play a part in his vision.

While the committee decided to focus on the three scenarios, “they also made clear that a mixed model is more likely in the end,” Thompson says.

In a further sign that Allston planning has accelerated, the committee is in the process of hiring at least a pair of consultants to study these possibilities.

“One consultant will gather information and ideas about the needs of the schools,” Thompson says. “The other, more of an architect-planner, will examine space on both sides of the river and flesh out the three scenarios.”