Professors and deans converged for a final meeting of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences yesterday afternoon, voicing optimism after a year of financial challenges and budgetary upheavals as protestors noisily rallied outside.

University President Drew G. Faust said she has found herself speaking “endlessly” this past year of the anticipated 30 percent decline in the endowment. Last Monday, FAS Dean Michael D. Smith added to the growing list of reductions by announcing an array of budget cuts that primarily affected the College.

“We need to focus not on what we have lost,” Faust said. “Let us try to focus our intentions on what we still have and how we can use that to the fullest advantage.”

Faust urged the Faculty not to view the changes resulting from the financial crisis as mere losses, but as opportunities for the University to refine its priorities and reexamine its identity.

“I think it forces us to ask who we are and who we intend to be,” Faust said. “We have to make very hard choices, we have to be willing to give some things up, and all of us are going to be finding ourselves doing things differently.”

Despite all the financial constraints of the past year, the Faculty worked unhindered, Faust said, as she recited the many achievements made by members of the Faculty in the past year.

“I’m sure some of you are sitting here right now, thinking, ‘Well, she didn’t mention my thing,’” Faust said when she concluded the list. “I apologize. Tell me about it. I’ll mention it next year.”

THANK YOU, MADAME PRESIDENT

During the question-and-answer session, Kirkland House Master Tom Conley complimented Faust’s actions in the wake of a Monday shooting of a Cambridge man in a Kirkland entryway.

“I’d like to praise you for coming out of your way yesterday to the House,” Conley said of Faust’s visit to Kirkland after the incident. “Your work was absolutely outstanding.”

“I’m very, very upset, as you can see. You can hear it in my voice,” added Conley, a professor in the departments of Visual and Environmental Studies and Romance Languages and Literatures, as he led the Faculty in a round of applause for Faust.

“I might start liking question period,” she said. “Other questions?”

VAGUE FAUST

When History of Art and Architecture professor Jeffrey F. Hamburger took the podium during the question-and-answer session, he eschewed something that has become a habit for him—an expression of concern for the state of the University’s libraries.

“Not about the library,” Hamburger assured the group before asking for clarification regarding the idea of “structural change” evoked by the FAS administration.

Invoking the concept of “reshaping”—something of an administrative watchword in recent weeks—Faust said she did not want to “unduly constrain” the imagination of faculty members as the six working groups charged with reviewing further budget modification draw up proposals.

“I don’t want to impose on you a set of approaches to these problems that might limit your ability to imagine,” Faust said.

She added that structural changes could involve “better ways of sharing” administrative duties both to trim costs and maximize efficiency.

—Staff writer Bonnie J. Kavoussi can be reached at kavoussi@fas.harvard.edu.

—Staff writer Esther I. Yi can be reached at estheryi@fas.harvard.edu.