With this year’s crop of new professors, Harvard has made small steps toward the goal of granting tenure to younger scholars and those who do interdisciplinary work.

The number of new tenured faculty is likely to be slightly higher this year than last, and three accepted offers were made to current Harvard junior faculty.

Although University President Lawrence H. Summers has urged granting tenure to junior faculty members, fewer internal candidates have accepted offers of tenure this year than last.

However, the tenure of at least 21 new professors this year puts Harvard on track to increase the size of its faculty by 10 percent over 10 years—a goal originally suggested in 2000 by former Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) Jeremy R. Knowles and adopted by Summers and FAS dean William C. Kirby.

When describing their accomplishments this year, both Kirby and Summers put faculty growth at the top of their lists.

They say this year saw a particularly high yield on tenure offers—three-quarters of those offered tenure have accepted. Fourteen offers have yet to be accepted or declined.

The University made 23 and 24 senior appointments during the previous two years. Similarly, 21 scholars have accepted offers of tenure so far this year. There are still 14 offers outstanding, although those may not be resolved by the end of the school year.

Nine of the 21 hires this year were women, a higher number than has been usual in the last several years.

FAS would not provide statistics on the number of senior or junior faculty departing this year. Increasing the Faculty by 10 percent requires hiring 60 new professors in addition to those who are replacing retired or departing faculty members.

Summers cites the hiring of two professors—computational biologist Martin Nowak and psychologist Steven Pinker—as major coups for Harvard.

“We’ve recruited a number of people who are globally recognized stars,” he said.

He touts the English Department’s promotion of Leah Price ’91, a 31-year-old scholar of Victorian literature, as part of his push to tenure young scholars whose best work lies ahead.

The English department will add three senior professors next year—Price, Daniel Albright and James Simpson—a banner year that Department Chair Lawrence Buell attributes to the department’s “unusually flourishing state” right now, although he notes that high acceptance rates also involve a bit of luck.

“We’re always looking for the best people we can get, so to some extent a good year is a luckier than average year in an ongoing quest that’s always high stakes,” Buell said.

Economics department chair Oliver Hart said that while his department has made no senior appointments this year, several candidates are awaiting approval for tenure.