With 21 offers of tenure accepted and 14 still outstanding, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) is poised to welcome next fall one of the largest classes of senior professors in recent years.

In the first hiring season under the combined direction of University President Lawrence H. Summers and Dean of the Faculty William C. Kirby, almost half of those who have accepted tenure so far are women. A larger-than-usual number Harvard’s junior professors also got offers, according to Summers.

“It has been a very good year indeed,” Kirby said. “Excluding pending offers, more than three-quarters of those offered senior positions have accepted.”

With 14 cases still pending, the number of senior appointments will most likely surpass the level of the past two years. Last year, 23 appointments were made and 24 the year before.

Some professors, such as MIT evolutionary psychologist Steven T. Pinker, gained national attention with their decisions to accept Harvard’s offer.

Other scholars, such as Associate Professor of Art and Architecture David J. Roxburgh and Assistant Professor of English Leah Price ’91, will gain their chairs more quietly, rising from within Harvard’s own ranks.

Summers cited such additions to the Faculty as among his major accomplishments of the year in an interview Tuesday. He added that this year’s hiring is an important step towards his administration’s goal of increasing the size of faculty by ten percent in ten years. Kirby has throughout the year reaffirmed this goal despite the fact that budgetary concerns have lead to a “soft freeze” on hiring in FAS.

“The Faculty this year was ten or 12 people larger than it had been in the previous year, so we’re in some sense ahead of schedule,” he said.

While the number of hires alone may set recent records, the nature of the appointments also mark progress towards Kirby’s goal of increasing the number of women faculty.

This year, nine of the 21 scholars who have accepted Harvard’s offer are women. Over the past few years, the number of new women senior faculty in each tenure class has ranged from three to 13.

Kirby wrote in his annual letter to the Faculty in February that “although the progress has been significant, the number and percentage of tenured women in our ranks is still far from optimal.”

During his term as chair of the history department, Kirby was known as a strong advocate for female professors, resulting in a doubling of the number in that department.

This year’s hiring also reflects Summers’ and Kirby’s goal of granting tenure to more faculty from within.

In the past two years, a total of 12 internal promotions have been made. While only three have been officially announced this year, once the final numbers are in, there will likely be several more.

Kirby said in an interview earlier this month that departments should hire the most outstanding scholars at the junior level and, through continual support, ensure that they remain the most attractive candidates in their field when they come up for tenure. Professors can spend no more than eight years in the associate and assistant ranks before their department must decide whether to endorse his promotion to a tenure track.