University President Lawrence H. Summers reflected on a year characterized more by groundwork laid than tasks completed in his last Crimson interview of the academic year yesterday.

Citing progress on major University planning initiatives, ongoing curricular reviews at three of the schools and Faculty growth despite tough times, Summers said he had advanced this year on many of the goals he first outlined upon taking office in 2001.

And in a year when Summers largely avoided major controversy, he was careful to keep it that way. He declined to identify yesterday any mistakes he had made and distanced himself from unpopular moves within the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS).

Of the accomplishments cited by Summers, the most concrete was the announcement in January of a $14 million financial aid program aimed at graduate students pursuing careers in public service. Summers also highlighted a change to University fundraising policies that made it easier for donors to give to smaller schools like the Graduate School of Education (GSE) and School of Public Health.

However, on two of the other long term priorities Summers described—reviewing undergraduate education and deciding how to develop the University’s land in Allston—Harvard moved forward with small steps.

A comprehensive review of the undergraduate curriculum, launched this fall, is only now beginning to gather steam. The names of the professors who will serve on the four committees leading the review were only announced earlier this month.

But Summers said he never expected that the review would have reached any conclusions yet, that the progress was encouraging and that the “broad objectives have been laid out.”

“The real test is what ultimately emerges from the [committee] discussions,” Summers said. “There have been a lot of informal conversations.”

He said his five major goals for curricular review—increasing student-faculty contact, reviewing the Core Curriculum, prioritizing flexibility in concentrations, integrating curricular and extracurricular education, and improving science education—did not change this year.

Meanwhile, the economist Summers cited improvements this year on several indices, including undergraduate admissions yield, class diversity and faculty acceptance of tenure offers.

“We’ve had just about three quarters of senior faculty appointments offered in the Faculty of Arts and Science accepted, a higher fraction than we’ve had in many years,” he said.

Summers said Harvard has recruited several “globally recognized stars,” including computational biologist Martin Nowak and psychologist Steven Pinker, and has given tenure to Assistant Professor Leah Price ’91 from within the English Department.

Summers has touted granting tenure to younger scholars and those interested in interdisciplinary work, and he said yesterday there had been progress on this front.

“There’s definitely been more of a tendency to appointments of that kind this year than in the past,” he said.

He said he thought Harvard had probably added enough faculty this year to meet his and Dean of the Faculty William C. Kirby’s goal of increasing the size of the faculty by ten percent over the next ten years, but that with some offers still awaiting answers he couldn’t tell.