In addition, Summers said that he has worked this year to change Harvard’s image of not promoting from within.

“I think there’s now a culture in a number of departments that junior faculty see themselves as having a real prospect of being promoted in a way that, particularly in a number of humanities departments, they would not have a few years ago,” he said.

While citing FAS’s curricular review and its expanding faculty in his list of accomplishments, Summers dissociated himself from the school’s major controversies of this year.

In March, a proposal to require student to preregister for classes died in the face of student and faculty opposition.

Both Summers and Kirby touted the plan’s potential to improve graduate student life and the quality of undergraduate education.

But yesterday, Summers said the failed policy didn’t reflect on the progress of his own initiatives.

“Preregistration was FAS’s thing,” he said. “I supported it as something to explore and saw merit in it but when there was such a strong feeling on the students and faculty’s part…my position had always been we couldn’t put flexibility at risk.”

Summers also said that student complaints following the dismissal of Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis ’68 did not have a major impact on him.

Summers has said in the past that while he supported combining Lewis’ office with that of Dean of Undergraduate Education Benedict H. Gross ’71, he did not orchestrate Lewis’ dismissal.

Student concern that the ouster signaled efforts to prioritize academics at the expense of extracurriculars had not changed his views “at all,” Summers said, because he has consistently recognized the importance of extracurricular activities.

“I was frankly mystified about some of the commentary that followed that,” he said.

An Extending Reach

While Summers continues to describe the College as the “heart of the University”, he said yesterday that he has been consciously more involved around the University than school deans might expect from Harvard’s decentralized central administration.

“We’ve fostered a higher level of involvement between schools and the center than has been traditional,” he said.

In addition to FAS, both the Divinity School and GSE are reviewing their curricula, and Summers has outlined visions for both schools this year.