Associate FAS Dean for Physical Resources and Planning David A. Zewinski ’76 said at a community meeting this weekend that buildings used to teach undergraduates will stay on the Cambridge side of the river.

He added that he thought an Allston science hub would likely focus on life sciences, and would include possible collaborations between professors at the medical school and FAS.

DEAS Dean Venkatesh “Venky” Narayanamurti said last spring that he would be open to moving DEAS—which he hopes can be expanded—to Allston.

Former FAS Dean Jeremy R. Knowles, a chemistry professor himself, wrote a memo early this summer which laid out a case for keeping FAS science in Cambridge.

But the report came late in the game, after a similar report from HLS had long since been completed, and after most Allston committees had long stopped meeting.

Several FAS science professors said they did not know the memo existed.

Professor of Astronomy Alyssa A. Goodman, who served on the provost’s Allston planning committee on Science, said she hoped FAS science would not move because any relocation would cause a plethora of problems, both logistical and academic.

“This barrier of inconvenience is a very big barrier,” Goodman said. “A lot of what goes on in life sciences right now is hugely related to what goes on in physics and chemistry and to sever those things doesn’t make any sense.”

Goodman added that her committee “didn’t think moving science was a good idea.”

But if something in science had to move, she said she thought parts of the Medical School were the best candidates.

“The School of Public Health wants to go to Allston—in any case I think they’ve practically signed up—so it does seem to make the most sense that medically related stuff would go there,” Goodman said. “But that’s hard to define. And so one of the biggest problems that [University Provost] Steve Hyman kept talking about [was] that future science is so interdisciplinary,” she said. “Certainly the boundaries between departments that exist today aren’t going to exist in the future.”

Good News for Grad Schools

Several law professors—long opponents of moving to Allston, who in 1999 voted nearly-unanimously against a cross-river move—could not be reached for comment last night, because they were at a party in the Charles Hotel. It is unclear whether the professors were toasting their apparent victory in the Allston battle or simply celebrating the new term.

“From what I’ve read . . . I am pleased,” said HLS professor Howell Jackson yesterday afternoon. “But nothing is definite yet. I am confident that the final decision will be a good one for the University, with so much careful consultation and planning going into it.”

Professors at SPH seemed excited at the prospect of a more spacious campus in Allston.