‘RISE IN CONSCIOUSNESS’

In a year marked by increased campus and national attention on the issue of sexual assault, Faust established a task force focused on sexual assault prevention in April and oversaw the roll-out of a new University-wide policy that took effect this semester. Thus far, the Task Force on the Prevention of Sexual Assault has increased support for the Office of Sexual Assault Prevention and Response and modified orientation materials. It is also set to conduct a survey to gauge the campus “climate,” the results of which will be compared to other higher education institutions this spring.

Those actions have not been made without criticism. In addition to undergraduate discontent that only two College students are members of the new task force and that the policy lacks an “affirmative consent” clause, 28 Law School professors condemned the policy in an open letter to the Boston Globe in October.

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Despite these controversies, Faust remained optimistic about the steps the University has taken in the past year.

“As I think back on the calendar year, it seems that we made a lot of progress in this, partly because of the huge rise in consciousness and awareness about it,” Faust said. “We’ve made progress on both how to adjudicate issues and in how to try to work for prevention. There’s still lots more work to be done, obviously, but I feel that thanks to the hard work of an awful lot of people, we’ve made some good progress.”

CHANGING OF THE GUARD

Faust has also faced an unusually high rate of staff turnover this year, especially among Harvard’s top brass.

In June, Harvard Management Company CEO Jane L. Mendillo announced that she would depart by the end of the year. Though Mendillo had led HMC to double-digit investment returns in recent years, the endowment’s performance also lagged behind many of Harvard’s peers. Nevertheless, Faust said Mendillo’s exit caught her by surprise.

“I was very sad when Jane said she was going. She came in last spring and said, you know, she really felt that she had put the company in a new place and that she had done this long enough in her own view and wanted to move on,” Faust said on Tuesday. “I would have been very happy for her to stay on.”

In September, a search committee selected Stephen Blyth, a managing director and head of public markets at HMC as well as a professor of statistics, to succeed Mendillo.

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“Stephen is a very competitive and ambitious guy,” Faust said. “He’s a cricket player. He likes to win, and I think he’s going to do a lot to really advance the best interests of the endowment and of Harvard.”

About a month after Blyth’s appointment, Faust lost another top official when Dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences Cherry A. Murray announced that she would leave her post by the end of the year. Earlier this month, Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Michael D. Smith announced that Computer Science professor Harry R. Lewis ’68 would succeed Murray on an interim basis.

Lewis came across, to some in University circles, as a surprising pick. The former dean of Harvard College from 1995-2003, Lewis has for years maintained a blog on which he has not been shy about criticizing University policies.