“We’re paying particular attention to...people who are at a less advanced career stage than we would typically look at,” Cutler said.

Kirby began initiatives to facilitate the promotion of junior faculty members in the fall of 2003, when he reformed the process of granting tenure.

Previously, departments conducting searches sent “blind letters” to experts in the field at other schools, asking them to rank prospective hires from both within and without Harvard—but giving them no information about the candidates’ qualifications or how seriously the departments were considering them.

Under the revised system, each departmental letter will state its own ranking of the candidates in question, specify those who are already Harvard junior faculty, and include samples of their work.

In addition, all junior professors will receive written evaluations at the beginning of their third year at Harvard, even before a department considers them for tenure.

These assessments will give assistant and associate professors an indication of their chances of receiving tenure at a major research university.

“I think it is critical to the future of our Faculty, and essential in the lives of our assistant and associate professors, that we aim to provide them at each important milestone, particularly at the point of consideration for promotion to associate professor, with a clear assessment of their work to date and their future prospects, so that they can have confidence in our processes,” Kirby told The Crimson in 2003.

Reflecting this interest in growing the faculty by hiring professors at the assistant and associate levels and promoting them, three of the senior professors who started their appointments in the fall were promoted from within the junior faculty ranks, joining five who were promoted from within the previous year.

“A greater percentage of searches will be at the assistant and associate professor level, and we will encourage departments to provide opportunities for mentoring and career development and other forms of support so that our new colleagues may become strong candidates for tenure,” Kirby told The Crimson last year

DIVISIONAL DECISIONS

Kirby has also placed an increasing emphasis on broadening professors’ research opportunities by hiring more faculty members whose work spans disciplines.

“This remains an area of significant interest, not for its own sake but because of our conviction that some of the most interesting scholarship and exciting learning is taking place at the increasingly porous boundaries between traditional disciplines,” Kirby wrote in an e-mail.

This year, Kirby instituted a system of “divisional appointments” to identify possible hires who do interdisciplinary work and whose names might not surface in regular departmental searches.

“It’s a question of how you expand the names of who we consider for appointments,” Kirby said.

Generally, a professor is appointed to a particular department after the department convenes an ad hoc committee to consider the candidate.