“Mike [Smith is] conducting a very elaborate process,” Gross said in an interview last month. “When I was appointed, I think Bill Kirby just thought about it for a few weeks, called people in for interviews, and asked me if I wanted to do it.”

After Kirby was criticized for his lack of broad consultation before he appointed Gross in 2003, Smith in 2008 convened two search committees—an eight-member faculty committee and a 31-member panel of students from across the College—to advise him before he ultimately chose Hammonds. This year, after Hammonds’s July departure, Smith has leaned on a 21-member faculty advisory committee and scheduled three open student forums across campus, including one Thursday evening in Pforzheimer House.

"I believe that these meetings have been extremely helpful and quite productive,” Smith said in a statement to The Crimson. “The committee members and I greatly appreciate the time and honest opinions of the undergraduates. I hope the students feel that these have been successful opportunities for them to voice their ideas and experiences."

Yet Gross said that the final decision about the College Dean ultimately rests with the FAS Dean, and that, in his view, the influence of search committees is limited.

“[The committee] will sort through recommendations and come up with a short list, but ultimately [the appointment] is Mike Smith’s decision,” Gross said.

SHIFTING RESPONSIBILITIES

In choosing a new College Dean, some FAS deans have not just made a hire but also shaped the character of the College deanship by shuffling leadership positions within the College administration.

In selecting Gross in 2003, Kirby completed a significant restructuring of the College administration by eliminating the position of Dean of Undergraduate Education, which had been held by Gross.

As Dean of Undergraduate Education, Gross had in 2002 helped launch a curricular review that sought to internally evaluate Harvard’s academic program. Kirby said in an interview earlier this month that, by merging the two deanships and concentrating academic control in Gross, he aimed to strengthen the role of the College Dean in the curricular review.

Kirby’s decision had significant effects on not just the role of the College Dean but also the student experience in the classroom. The curricular review, which ran from 2002 to 2007, dominated Gross’s deanship. It eventually produced the General Education program, which replaced the Core as the College’s structure for distribution requirements.

CRAFTING AN ATMOSPHERE

Smith too has used his broad authority as FAS Dean to shape the influence of the College administration, but he has done so by embracing a model of thorough faculty and student consultation and completing an effective reversal of Kirby’s restructuring.

After Gross stepped down as College Dean in 2007, Smith opted to revitalize the position of Dean of Undergraduate Education, appointing Jewish studies professor Jay M. Harris in 2008. Smith has explained the move by contending that the Dean of the College should not supervise too wide a range of activities. He has given no indication that he has plans to make further changes to the administrative structure of the College this time around.

Musing on the model in which the College Dean also oversees undergraduate education, Smith said at the Lowell forum last week that he thinks “there is a lot to be said for somebody that is thinking about undergraduates in the entirety.”

But, he added, “dealing with all the issues in your academic life and all the issues in your extracurricular life, that’s too big a job for one person.”

—Staff writer Matthew Q. Clarida can be reached at matthew.clarida@thecrimson.com. Follow him on Twitter @MattClarida.