Federal funding is also of interest to the programs supervised by Meg Brooks Swift ’93, director of the Student Employment Office and Undergraduate Research Programs. Most budget reductions this fiscal year for the programs Brooks Swift oversees were taken from administrative funds so as to preserve the student grants themselves, she said.
“We are getting more pressure from across the campus to try to use more federal funds,” Brooks Swift said, referring to stimulus package money for research available through individual professors’ budgets. “Then we don’t need to rely as much on Harvard’s dollars.”
Such funds may be available through organizations like the National Institutes of Health or the National Institute of Mental Health.
“It’s quite a layered system of what’s out there,” she said. “It’s such an interesting landscape and we’re very lucky that we have so many resources.”
A NEW POLITICAL CLIMATE
Today’s network of federal funding options for Harvard includes the National Science Foundation, Departments of Energy and Defense, and other agencies, according to Kevin Casey, the University’s associate vice president for government, community, and public affairs.
“However, like any entity reliant on federal support...this delicate partnership on innovation may be at risk,” Casey wrote in an e-mailed statement.
In 1993, Harvard and MIT created a coalition with dozens of universities and corporate partners to press for continued federal support for financial aid and research, according to Casey.
This group, The Science Coalition, represents the type of collaboration and innovation that has come to characterize several of Harvard’s fights for funding.
After the recession, current University President Drew G. Faust argued for investment in research as a “down payment on future innovation in Congress’s recovery package,” a push for research funding for Harvard that was successful. Faust’s dealings with a large number of federal officials—including Speaker Nancy Pelosi, other House leaders, Senator Kerry himself, Senator Charles E. Grassley, and newly elected Mass. Senator Scott P. Brown—are also reminiscent of Bok’s interactions with Senator Kerry and former Senator Kennedy.
One concern that did not exist in 1985 is the “generational transition in Washington” that resulted in many champions of research funding leaving Congress, Casey added.
“We are as concerned as ever about the prospects for funding of science and students during this recession and with so many competing federal priorities,” Casey said.
—Staff writer Julie R. Barzilay can be reached at jbarzilay13@college.harvard.edu.