“I plan to stay at Scripps,” he said, adding that he does not have any serious involvement with the search at Harvard. He would neither confirm nor deny that he was offered the post.

Kirby declined to comment on whether candidates are currently being considered for the deanship, but noted that the committee will be choosing from “a field of enormous talent.”

“We have received excellent advice from colleagues across the University and indeed from around the world,” Kirby wrote in an e-mail yesterday.

Kirby has not made public the names of the members of the search committee, and has kept its activities tightly under wraps, even within the FAS.

“The administration has been very secretive,” Meister said. “These candidates as far as I know have at least been to campus...there was never an opportunity for the Faculty to meet and interact with them.”

Several professors on the search committee declined comment.

“It would be great if the Faculty would be kept in touch with these developments, but that doesn’t seem to be the way that the search is proceeding,” Meister said.

Cabot Professor of the Natural Sciences Douglas A. Melton, who is chair of the life sciences executive committee, declined to comment on the search.

He said in earlier interviews that he hopes the executive committee will conclude its work by June of this year, when an official dean is expected to assume his or her responsibilities.

And Lauder stressed the importance of the new post.

“Biology is becoming more interdisciplinary and the fact that President Summers is trying to integrate more aspects of life sciences at Harvard makes a very natural evolution,” Lauder said.

—Stephen M. Marks contributed to the reporting of this story.

—Staff writer Alexandra N. Atiya can be reached at atiya@fas.harvard.edu.