Frederick Schauer, who is currently serving his last week as academic dean at the Kennedy School of Government, said he began discussing the possibility of coming to Radcliffe about six months ago with Radcliffe Dean Drew Gilpin Faust and Dean of Social Science Katherine S. Newman.

“Both of them thought that what I do and the project I’m working on would be a good fit with the new Radcliffe,” Schauer said.

Though Schauer’s work will not be funded by Radcliffe—he recently received a grant for his studies of rules and decision-making from the Guggenheim Foundation—he said he plans to be a full-fledged program participant.

Other Harvard professors who will be moving their offices to the fellowship offices on Concord Avenue include Dean of Undergraduate Education Susan G. Pedersen ’81-’82, Assistant Professor of English and American Literature Lynn Festa, Professor of Chinese Literature Wai-yee Li, Assistant Professor of the History of Art and Architecture Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw, Assistant Professor of Music Richard Wolf and Fiona Doetsch, a junior fellow in the Society of Fellows.

Perks of the fellowship program involve office space, financial sponsorship and access to Harvard’s scholarly resources in addition to regular colloquiums and discussions with other fellows—advantages that were not lost even on Harvard’s own applicants.

“I applied to the Institute because I’m going to be in Cambridge working on my book and wanted to have a quiet office away from the Yard,” Pedersen wrote in an e-mail.

This year’s class of fellows is the second to come to Radcliffe since an ad hoc committee report released last February advised the Institute to make the fellowship program the core of Radcliffe’s work.

The current group of Institute fellows are now called Radcliffe Fellows and take part in a centralized program, a change from past years where fellows were scattered among different Radcliffe divisions.

Next year, Vichniac says, the program will experiment with different ways for fellows to interact with each other and the public.

She says the program also plans to encourage more undergraduates to participate in its Research Partners Program, which pairs College students with fellows.

And for the 2003-2004 academic year, Newman plans to convene a social science cluster focusing on immigration issues.

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