“We’re really doing the intellectual work now,” Tatar said, adding that specific needs and numbers will begin to be fleshed out at the first meeting of the new Humanities Advisory Committee, which is charged with determining where junior- and senior-level Faculty should be added.

Kirby has also said that he hopes the coming years will see growth that goes beyond the departmental or divisional level.

He said at a Faculty meeting in October that he wants the number of female professors to increase, and later in an interview, that Harvard will focus on attracting young blood and tenuring from within the University.

“We’ve been trying to increase the size of the Faculty for a number of reasons,” he said. “[We want] to improve undergraduate education, and also to make sure that we are well represented in new areas of research and areas of knowledge.”

Kirby said he hopes to share specific plans with the full Faculty by the end of the year.

—Staff writer Laura L. Krug can be reached at krug@fas.harvard.edu.