Dear colleagues and friends,

It is my pleasure to share with you the Dean’s Annual Report. This document summarizes the activities of the various units of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and provides an overview of the financial results for fiscal year 2011 (July 2010 through June 2011). A financial management report for fiscal year 2011 accompanies this report.

As I have for the past two years, I begin this report with an overview of the context in which the past year’s activities took place. It will come as no surprise that the activities of last academic year continued to show the effects of the global financial crisis and the need to focus on our core activities. Still, we have maintained the size of our faculty and our commitment to their teaching and research. We have expanded support for our graduate students, and we have continued to lead the nation in undergraduate financial aid and the excellence of our undergraduate programs. Emerging from the effects of the global financial crisis, we now have a robust, informed, and thoughtful academic planning process that supports the setting of our priorities and better informs our decisions regarding the use of our diminished resources. I am grateful to Dean for Faculty Affairs Nina Zipser for her leadership in this effort and for her ongoing partnership with Dean for Administration and Finance Leslie Kirwan, and I am grateful to all of you who helped to make these new processes successful.

Let me now address in specifics the state of our financial resources. Initiated in response to the consequences of the global financial crisis that began in the fall of 2008, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences has pursued a three-year financial plan, of which FY2011 was the third and final year. The initial year, FY2009, focused primarily on arresting expense growth and directing diminished resources to support our core mission. In FY2010, the FAS took on the harder work of developing policies and procedures that enable coordinated, long-term planning and efficiency, and making available the kind of data this activity requires.

At the start of FY2011, which was expected to be the most financially difficult year by far of the three, we had projected a $35 million unrestricted deficit. This in itself reflected enormous progress. Prior to the start of the interventions that began in FY2009, we had projected a $220 million unrestricted deficit for FY2011 had we remained on our prior course of expense growth. Over the course of FY2011, our collective efforts further reduced the unrestricted deficit from the projected $35 million to $16 million. A number of activities contributed to this improved position, including the enhanced support of relevant FAS core activities provided by our centers, successful savings goals in larger FAS tubs, increased current-use giving from our loyal alumni, and savings from improvements in utilities rates and reductions to our debt service obligations.

This is an enormous accomplishment, and one of which we should all be proud; however, it is accompanied by a number of significant concerns that must be acknowledged. The most obvious of these is the continuing instability of the U.S. economy. The threat of a government shutdown followed by the downgrading of America’s coveted AAA credit rating are poignant reminders that we look to a future of unprecedented uncertainty. Although this year’s Harvard Management Company report provided better than expected results, this must be understood in the context of a widely erratic stock market and an unsettled federal budget. What is certain is that the costs to attract, support, and retain world-class faculty and graduate students continue to grow, as do our fixed costs. Furthermore, our facilities and information technology infrastructure require significant investment. Now more than ever we must manage our resources to ensure institutional resilience and protect the traditions that make Harvard the unparalleled institution it has been for 375 years.

The changes we have made over the past three years have been critically important to the financial health of the institution and its sustainability over the long term, and I am aware that these critical changes have required sacrifices from the faculty. While it is impossible for us to roll back to the expense model in place before the financial crisis, our improved academic planning and budgeting processes are effective tools to help us think about the future. Identifying our academic priorities first and then matching them to available funds through the budget process allows us an opportunity to maintain the gains we have made while responding to the critical and evolving needs of our programs. I have confidence in these processes, and I ask that you continue your planning discussions with the candor and sense of constructive partnership that has characterized them over the past three years. We must make choices, but together we can ensure that they are informed and well-reasoned ones.

Although we have completed our three-year financial plan, we have not completely eliminated the deficit, which at the end of FY2011 remained at approximately $16 million. Last year, I stated that with continued discipline throughout the organization and absent a second downturn in the economy or changes to University guidance, the FAS was on track to eliminate the remaining structural deficit by the end of FY2012. I believe this still to be the case, and I am grateful to all departments, centers, programs, and units for their continued commitment to strategic prioritization and financial constraint.

A number of administrative changes were undertaken over the past year that both optimize the efficacy and efficiency of our operations and improve the support we provide our faculty, students, and staff. A prominent example is the unification of University Information Systems (UIS) and FAS Information Technology into Harvard University Information Technology (HUIT), which now directly serves both FAS and the Central Administration, while continuing to provide IT infrastructure to the entire University. Launched in partnership with Executive Vice President Katie Lapp, a nearly two year-long planning process has resulted in a redesigned organizational structure, a superlative leadership team, a new organizational mission, the definition (in consultation with users) of core IT services, the launch of a new web portal, and the co-location of the pre-existing IT help desks. Many have contributed to the development of this new organization, and I am particularly grateful to University Chief Information Officer Anne Margulies for her leadership, vision, and responsiveness throughout this process.

Smaller-scale reviews have also played a role in improving operations. Last fall, an Administrative Process Review Committee was formed by the Divisions of Social Science and Arts and Humanities to identify opportunities for increased administrative efficiency across the two divisions. While cost savings was considered within this context, the primary driver of the work was improved operations. Similarly, the launch in October 2010 of the Harvard Crimson Online Marketplace, a new purchasing system rolling out Harvard-wide, has provided cost savings, process efficiency, control, and visibility. The new StarRez Residential Portal has similarly streamlined the management of housing data for our undergraduate Houses. Sustainability efforts, detailed later in this document, have continued to provide significant savings and reduced our emissions of greenhouse gases. Improvements to systems do not grab headlines, but in an organization of our size, these investments of attention pay enormous dividends—in the quality of support the faculty and students receive, in the opportunities for professional development and advancement we can offer our staff, and in the costs associated with supporting our programs.

Beyond a focus on finances and organizational changes, last year we began to push ahead a number of important programmatic priorities that we will continue to advance over the coming year. Our activities in support of teaching and learning build on the important contributions of the Task Force on Teaching and Career Development and its 2007 Compact on Teaching and Learning. In October 2010, I reported to the faculty on the progress made since the Compact, and announced a planned expansion of the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning and the recruitment of a faculty director. Building on a strong and successful organization, the faculty director will assume an important leadership role in the FAS and will be a visible proponent of the centrality of our teaching mission, while expanding and deepening the Bok Center’s function as disseminator of relevant and significant research on learning and pedagogy.

In partnership with the Bok Center, I launched a series of faculty panel discussions on teaching and learning in 2011 called Conversations@FAS. This series explored the topics of active learning, teaching with collections, and instilling global perspectives in our students. Coordinated with each session, the Bok Center provided teaching and resource guides for faculty and sponsored ongoing dialogues with graduate students. I am grateful to Dean Evelynn Hammonds and Dean Allan Brandt for hosting two of the panel sessions, as well as to the faculty who participated as panelists. These conversations will continue this year and will take as their topic the future of knowledge production and transmission. The new panels will help us to explore the future of knowledge in an increasingly global and digital age. I have charged a planning committee, chaired by Professor Maya Jasanoff, to design the sessions and recruit the participants.

Together with Dean of Continuing Education Michael Shinagel, I have launched a national search for a dean of the Extension School. For the past 37 years, the dean of the Division of Continuing Education at Harvard has also held the position of dean of Harvard’s Extension School. Recognizing the importance of the Extension School as a leader in distance education and as one of our incubators for pedagogical innovation, Dean Shinagel and I have decided to separate the two positions again in order to bolster the School’s capacity to advance the use of technology in education. The dean of the Extension School will lead an effort to scale our successful distance education program while building opportunities for innovations in online learning across the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

Coordinated with similar efforts across the University, I have asked Professor Eric Mazur, Balkanski Professor of Physics and Applied Physics, to chair a 21^st Century Classroom Committee to engage in a pedagogy-driven discussion of the future of learning spaces. Their deliberations will shape the design of an innovative new facility on the terrace level of the Old Quincy Test Project, a complete renewal of a stand-alone section of Quincy House, which I describe below. Creating a cutting-edge learning space in Old Quincy is a key part of this effort and will be one of the highlights of this flagship project. Lessons learned from this process will shape a larger conversation about the future of classroom spaces across the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

The last year has been an important one for advancing our plans to renew the undergraduate House system. The residential House system is a cornerstone of the undergraduate experience at Harvard, and renewal offers a unique opportunity to reimagine this revered institution for the 21^st century. The architectural firm KieranTimberlake is leading the design of a test project in Old Quincy House to enable us to implement key design concepts for renewal across the Houses. Schematic designs were finalized in the spring of 2011 with input from a feedback group consisting of students, faculty, and House staff drawn from across Harvard’s Houses and freshman dorms.

Quincy House consists of two buildings, Old and New Quincy. Old Quincy, about half the size of most of Harvard’s neo-Georgian Houses and without its own dining hall or master’s residence, provides a valuable opportunity to test design concepts, while limiting disruption of the House community. The plan assumes that Old Quincy House will close for 15 months—or one academic year plus the summers before and after—beginning in June 2012. Affected students will reside in nearby “swing” space, made up of properties owned by Harvard University Housing. The approximately 180 students will remain part of the Quincy House community throughout the project, and will continue eating in the dining hall in New Quincy.

Once completed, the Old Quincy Test Project will provide a glimpse of the future of Harvard’s House system, offering a locus for the greater Harvard community’s conversation about the place of the House system in the 21^st century liberal arts education.

Last year we also took additional steps to broaden access to a Harvard education. We reviewed our undergraduate financial aid program and instituted moderate changes to the program’s guidelines, rebalancing aspects of it to enhance support for the neediest group of students. We will expand eligibility for the High Financial Aid Initiative inaugurated in 2004, raising the ceiling on family income from $60,000 to $65,000. Concurrently we will ask families with incomes between $150,000 and $180,000 and typical assets to pay slightly more than the 10 percent of income now charged. Our hope is that with these modest changes we will ensure that Harvard will be able, over time, to best use our resources to address increases in the demand for aid across the income spectrum due to ongoing challenges in the U.S. and global economies. This change continues our industry-leading commitment to financial aid, with spending on the program anticipated to grow from $154 million in FY2011 to $166 million in FY2012.

These advancements were made possible through the hard work of many, and there are a number of individuals whose service deserves special recognition. I am deeply grateful to William Fitzsimmons, dean of admissions, and Sally Donahue, director of financial aid, for their commitment to the ideals of our programs as well as for their practical approach to ensuring our programs’ long-term sustainability. I would also like to acknowledge Lee and Deborah Gehrke, masters of Quincy House, for their continued counsel as we advance our plans for House Renewal, and to Howard Georgi, master of Leverett House, for his role as chair of the swing space feedback group. Terry Aladjem and his team at the Bok Center have continued to be tremendous partners in supporting the continued dialogue on teaching and learning on campus, and we as a faculty are enormously fortunate to have them as a resource. The members of the Dean’s Faculty Resources Committee have provided invaluable feedback on our financial strategy that has made us stronger. The members of the Faculty Council have continued to carry out their governance role with true thoughtfulness and a profound commitment to the well-being of the institution. I am particularly indebted to the Academic Planning Group for their candor and collegiality and for the leadership they have shown in their schools, divisions, and units. Together they have all contributed to our ability to maintain the unequaled excellence of our programs even as we continue to address our financial challenges.

I would also like to acknowledge the service and leadership of Ingrid Monson, Quincy Jones Professor of African American Music, who generously served as dean of the Division of Arts and Humanities during Dean Diana Sorensen’s well-earned year of sabbatical. Ingrid served the division with distinction, and I enjoyed working with her over the past year.

The recipients of the second annual Dean’s Distinction, celebrated this past March, provided inspiring examples of the innovative ideas and the collaborative spirit of our dedicated staff, which, while always valuable, were especially important in making the changes this year required.

As always, we are enduringly grateful for the support of our loyal alumni and friends for our research and teaching mission in all its variety. In particular, I would like to thank the Dean’s Campaign Planning Committee for their guidance as we think about the future, and the Harvard College Fund Executive Committee for their work in making our FY2011 fundraising results so strong.

And, of course, we are grateful for the seemingly limitless energy and ideas of our extraordinary students.

Through the efforts of many, we have begun to turn the page from a difficult chapter in the history of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. I am proud of what we have been able to accomplish and look forward to all the advances sure to come in the new academic year.

Sincerely yours,
Michael D. Smith
Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences