SIGN OF A GREAT TEACHER
Dowling says that his academic experience at the College would shape his approach as he crossed into the Faculty.
“I had one professor who made science fascinating—George Wald, who went on to win a Nobel Prize for discovering the role of vitamin A in vision,” Dowling says. “He made me interested in what I’ve spent my whole life working on. That’s the sign of a great teacher.”
But Dowling remembers rarely having access to such faculty as a result of his large, impersonal introductory science classes.
“They were really pretty terrible,” he says.
His contempt for introductory classes was part of the reason he returned to Harvard. Wald, by now his mentor, asked him to help design and teach a new undergraduate biology course at Harvard. Dowling, who had taken a leave of absence from Harvard Medical School to study biology, agreed—further deferring Harvard Medical School, from where he says he is still on leave.
Carey, too, considered introductory courses ineffective as an undergraduate, and found solace in the personalized environment of her sophomore tutorial. She recalls switching concentration three separate times—from math to biology, then to anthropology—until a tutorial leader sparked her interest in psychology.
As chair of the Psychology Department, Carey has overseen a push for greater interaction with students—including faculty dinners and more comprehensive advising.
For the last 15 years Carey has run an undergraduate internship program, and this summer she plans to host undergraduate student researchers in her lab.
“I would like to find that post-doc [tutorial leader] and tell him, ‘you did an amazing thing. You followed my interests instead of imposing yours.’”
THE BUG
Computer science professor Harry R. Lewis ’68 recalls the harsh reality of Harvard undergraduate life. He says he arrived at Harvard a math star, only to find that the College was full of stars.
“I took the equivalent of Math 25 or 55 today, and I figured out that being the best math student in my [high school] class of 24 did not translate into being the best math student at Harvard,” he remembers.
Lewis would eventually overcome this disappointment and become one of the most influential College deans in recent memory, serving from 1995 to 2003.
But his path back to Harvard began with a love for a budding field that he was exposed to through a part-time job in a psychology lab—computer science. Lewis would graduate in applied math, 16 years before the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences would offer a stand-alone computer science concentration.
“I then got bitten by the computer programming bug, and fell in love with it,” he says.
Lewis never strayed far from Harvard, finishing his graduate studies there in 1974 and joining the Faculty soon after. Since 1981, he has served as the Gordon McKay Professor of Computer Science—still several years before the creation of the concentration itself.
For Dowling, that bite of the Harvard bug was less predictable, but equally potent.
“My brother was surprised,” he says. “He recently told me that he never thought that 50 years later, I would still be at Harvard.”
—Staff writer Zachary Hamed can be reached at zhamed@college.harvard.edu.