ENGINEERING A RESURGENCE

In the U.S. News and World Report rankings for engineering programs, Harvard finds itself in an unfamiliar place: 19th.

Without a full engineering school, the University has struggled to attract top faculty and students in applied fields of science. Harvard’s faculty of 65 is small compared to Princeton’s 120-faculty engineering school and tiny by comparison to larger engineering programs like those at Stanford and MIT, which have around 250 and 300 faculty, respectively, Venky said.

He added that while DEAS’ small size made recruitment challenging, the recent expansion has made it possible for him to hire people in electrical engineering, computer science and bioengineering, “which were a very tough recruit before.”

“It has been very hard, but I’ve broken some of that logjam,” he said.

Hyman wrote in an e-mail that technology’s central role in the future of science necessitates a stronger engineering program.

“There is an enormous unmet need for engineering collaborators around the University,” he wrote. “As a result it is a major priority to develop engineering.”

Venky said that an expansion to about 100 FTEs would allow Harvard to “really compete head on with some very good places.” He added that the school is working to expand in experimental areas while maintaining its theoretical base.

“If that happens, I believe we can compete very effectively across the board [and] still be highly interdisciplinary,” he said.

Last year’s graduating class of 1,586 had only 16 engineering sciences concentrators, 45 applied math concentrators and 75 computer science concentrators. Venky said that increasing the number of undergraduate DEAS concentrators had been discussed at recent meetings of his seven-member advisory group.

“I certainly would like to see some commensurate growth in the undergraduates,” he said. “Harvard College could still stay at 1,650 [students per class], but I would like to have a somewhat larger share.”

Director of Undergraduate Admissions Marlyn McGrath Lewis ’70-’73 wrote in an e-mail that while the College is successful in attracting a high proportion of engineering students who are admitted to Harvard, many look to more engineering-focused schools and may not even apply to Harvard.

“There are some people—can’t tell how many at the very high levels of academic excellence that would make them good matches for us—who think primarily of a more intensively engineering-focused place such as MIT or Cal Tech,” she wrote. “We may not see them in our pool, perhaps for good reasons (i.e. the match with Harvard may not in fact be good.)”

Harvard’s lagging ability to attract top students and faculty in these areas is a product of what McKay Professor of Environmental Engineering Joseph J. Harrington said is a history of indifference to DEAS. Adminsitrators were perfectly content to let DEAS subsist as a small outpost in the FAS science compound along Oxford Street.

“That’s been for quite a long time,” Harrington said.