“The dean wants to maintain the excellence of all FAS departments,” he wrote. “While we have made very significant progress in tackling the originally-projected deficit, we are still in a period of constrained resources.”
FAS currently faces a $35 million deficit which it hopes to close by 2012.
In the meantime, the department has used short-term lecturers to fill in the gaps, creating a problem for concentrators looking to write theses.
“It’s hard to function if we have a lot of one-year lecturers because again we need a stable faculty to be able to advise senior theses,” Brinton said. “And we need faculty who are here for many years to guide [graduate students] through the program.”
—Staff writer Julia L. Ryan can be reached at jryan@college.harvard.edu.
—Staff writer Kevin J. Wu can be reached at kwu@college.harvard.edu.