About Us

Faculty of the Committee on Freshman Seminars 2008-2009
The Committee on Freshman Seminars meets regularly during the academic year and is responsible for reviewing proposals for Freshman Seminars, Extra-Departmental Courses, and House Seminars.

Georgene Herschbach (Associate Dean of Academic Programs) (Chair)

Lawrence Buell (Powell M. Cabot Professor of American Literature)

Joyce E. Chaplin,(James Duncan Phillips Professor of Early American History)

Peter T. Ellison (John Cowles Professor of Anthropology)

Jerry R. Green (David A Wells Professor of Political Economy and John Leverett Professor) [on leave in spring term]

J. Woodland Hastings (Paul C. Mangelsdorf Professor of Natural Sciences) [on leave in spring term]

John W. Hutchinson (Abbott and James Lawrence Professor of Engineering and Gordon McKay Professor of Applied Mechanics) (on leave in fall term)

Sandra Naddaff (Senior Lecturer on Literature, Director of the Freshman Seminar Program) (ex officio)

A Brief History of the Freshman Seminar Program
In the Spring of 1960, the Student Council's Committee on Freshman Seminars reported, "The Freshman Seminar Program came into existence with amazing suddenness. The enthusiasm with which the original idea was brought to a practical realization in the space of a few weeks in the Spring of 1959 is a tribute to the vigor and resourcefulness of Harvard's faculty.... The Program has been urged along by a strong sense that Harvard has a responsibility to provide educational leadership, because of its reputation and resources. The specific grant of money which made the Freshman Seminar Program possible has only intensified this underlying feeling that Harvard must always be searching for ways to improve education here and elsewhere." What actually happened was a little more involved than this citation suggests.

On April 18, 1959, the Harvard Crimson reported that the "CEP May Make Change in First-Year Program" and that discussions of the first-year curriculum had been going on for several weeks. By the Spring of 1959, the members of the Committee on Educational Policy (CEP) were asking themselves what could be done for the first-year class. There was agreement that freshmen needed more contact with Faculty members. Dean of the College John Monro suggested that some kind of seminar or tutorial was needed. On May 20, 1959, the Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, McGeorge Bundy, moved on behalf of the Committee on Educational Policy that the Faculty permit "experiments to intensify the intellectual experience of the freshman year," and the motion was passed for a one-year trial program.

What had happened? In fact, the discussion of the first-year curriculum had been ongoing for several years, and these same years witnessed the reformation and strengthening of the tutorial program of the three upper classes. McGeorge Bundy, the Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, wanted develop a program to enliven the Freshman year.

Dean Bundy's staff came across Edwin H. Land's "Generation of Greatness, the Idea of a University in an Age of Science: The Ninth Annual Arthur Dehon Little Memorial Lecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology," (May 22, 1957). Land had announced, "I would dream that when a freshman enters the university, he would become at once a member of a small group; perhaps of about ten men. He would be associated ... with a mature, established scholar whose first interest is the education ... of this incoming group.... Let me just refer to (this scholar)... as an usher--someone who leads through the door--and describe him as a scholar who has a warm feeling for teaching.... He would associate (these students) with him as colleagues--junior colleagues, to be sure.... He would help these young colleagues look over the university, talk over the professors, talk over the courses; he would start them reading, and then start them going to some lectures. And he would start each one on a personal research project."

Finding support for the thoughts of the Committee on Educational Policy in Edwin Land's speech, Dean Bundy's staff approached this Harvard alumnus to learn more about his vision. Harvard benefitted not only from more detailed suggestions but also from an anonymous gift for startup expenses (Dr. Land permitted his generosity to be publicized at the time of Harvard's 350th Anniversary).

The 1959-60 trial of the Freshman Seminar Program was somewhat confused because of the late date of its implementation as well as the varied proposals that it tested. However, when McGeorge Bundy proposed the continuation of the experiment for another three years in the Spring of 1960, even the most vociferous critics (the Student Council's Committee on Freshman Seminars) concluded, "The Program has revealed to a good many Professors that students are human beings and worth talking to. The Seminars have rekindled for many a delight in teaching for its own sake. The Program has provided to students an amicable and encouraging atmosphere, in which the personal concern of an instructor has replaced the threat of grades as an incentive to performance. Such achievements warrant continuing support for the Freshman Seminars."

The experiment was continued for an additional three years, funded again by Edwin Land. A massive review and evaluation of the Program in the Spring of 1963, led to its permanent establishment in the Faculty of Arts of Sciences. Both faculty and student comments from 1959 to 1996, testify to the value of the Program for all participants. Beginning in 1995-96, funds from the Roger Annenberg Seminar Program were made available to increase the possibilities inherent in the program.

In 2000-2001, Dean of the Faculty Jeremy Knowles and Dean of Undergraduate Education Susan Pedersen initiated discussion on expansion of the Freshman Seminar Program among the faculty. They were able to convince instructional departments to increase their support of the program and to consider counting freshman seminars towards concentration requirements. The Program has grown from 30 seminars in 2000-2001 to over 120 seminars in 2006-2007.

Financial Support for the Freshman Seminar Program
The first four years of the Freshman Seminar Program were made possible by a generous anonymous gift from an alumni who supported the Program as something that would have enriched his Harvard experience. At the celebration of Harvard's 350th Anniversary, Edwin Land dropped the requirement that the gift be listed as anonymous and admitted his role in the funding of the early, formative years of the Program.

Between 1963 and 1994, the bulk of the funding for the Freshman Seminar Program has come from the unrestricted funds controlled by the Office of the Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. This support has been supplemented since 1994-95 by funds provided by Mr. and Mrs. Walter Annenberg in memory of their son Roger who praised small group instruction while he was at Harvard. The funds are provided through the Roger Annenberg Seminar Program. This fund supports Freshman and House Seminars in excess of the number of seminars offered in 1994-95, or other expenses not usually supported by the Faculty of Arts in 1994-95. It also will provide extra funds to all seminars to provide for set-up costs, trips, and refreshments for participants.

Generous funds are also provided through the gift of the directors of the J.M.R. Barker Foundation to establish the Robert R. Barker Fund for Small-Group Instruction in Honor of Jeremy R. Knowles (Amory Houghton Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor, and former Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences). The fund is to be used to support small-group instruction in the College, and thus to encourage close and early contact between undergraduates and members of the faculty.

In 2006-2007 the the Roger Annenberg Seminar Program supported:

24j Planets Around Other Stars
Dr. Myron Lecar (Department of Astronomy)

30w New York Intellectuals: An Episode in the History of American Thought
Dr. John H. Summers (Committee on Degrees in Social Studies)

32m Fantastic Families: Kinship and Science Fiction
Dr. Jacob Emery (Committee on Degrees in Literature)

36l A Cultural History of the Banana
Dr. Amy Spellacy (Committee on Degrees in History and Literature

36m Noisy Art
Dr. Damon Krukowski (Department of Visual and Environmental Studies)

40l Theories of Globalization and Development
Dr. Thomas Ponniah (Committee on Degrees in Social Studies)

47m Nationalism in Modern Western Europe
Dr. Nikolas Prevelakis (Committee on Degrees in Social Studies)

49i Understanding Ancient Politics in the Medieval World
Dr. Noah Dauber (Committee on Degrees in Social Studies)

49l Cruelty and Modern Law: The Jurisprudence of Cruelty, Brutality, and Suffering
Dr. Paulo Barrozo (Committee on Degrees in Social Studies)

In 2006-2007 the Barker-Knowles Fund supported:

21o Neurophysiology of Visual Perception
Professor David H. Hubel (Harvard Medical School)

22e Molecular Motors: Wizards of the Nanoworld
Professor Dudley Herschbach (Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology)

22j Seeing by Spectroscopy
Professor William Klemperer (Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology)

22z Quantitative Methods in Public Policy Decisions
Professor Richard Wilson (Department of Physics)

23k Insights from Narratives of Illness
Professor Jerome Elliot Groopman (Harvard Medical School)

23z Short History of DNA
Professor Roberto Kolter (Harvard Medical School)

24y Pharmaceuticals and Global Health
Professor Michael Reich (Harvard School of Public Health)

25g Impact of Infectious Diseases on History and Society
Professor Donald Alan Goldmann (Harvard Medical School and School of Public Health)

25k You Are What You Eat
Professor Karin Michels (Harvard Medical School and School of Public Health)

25m Epidemic as Metaphor
Professor Megan Murray (Harvard School of Public Health)

25n Understanding Psychological Development, Disorder and Treatment: Learning through Literature and Research
Professor Nancy Rappaport (Harvard Medical School)

25t AIDS in Africa
Professor Myron Essex (Harvard School of Public Health)
and Professor Tun-Hou Lee (Harvard School of Public Health)

25v Avian Influenza: Emerging Infectious Disease
Professor Tun-Hou Lee (Harvard School of Public Health)
and Professor Myron Essex (Harvard School of Public Health)

25w Responsibility, the Brain, and Behavior
Professor Ronald Schouten (Harvard Medical School)

25z Stress and Disease: Biobehavioral Aspects of Health and Disease
Professor Donald B. Giddon (Harvard Medical School)

26m Human Development: Early Experience and Developmental Programming
Professor Charles Nelson (Harvard Medical School)

31j Skepticism and Knowledge
Professor Catherine Elgin (Harvard Graduate School of Education)

31n Beauty and Christianity
Professor Robert Kiely (Department of English and American Literature and Language)

40n Art, Knowledge, and Faith in Boston's Copley Square 1870-1900
Professor Christine Smith (Graduate School of Design)

40p Law of the Internet
Dr. John Palfrey Jr. (Committee on Degrees in History and Literature and Harvard Law School)

41p American Presidential Campaigns and Elections 1960-2004: Is the System Broken?
Dr. Maxine Isaacs (John F. Kennedy School of Government and Department of Government)

44m Harvard and the History of Higher Education in the U.S., 1636-2006
Professor Ellen Condliffe Lagemann (Harvard Graduate School of Education)

44w Health and Inequality
Professor Jonathan Levy (Harvard School of Public Health)
and Professor Daniel Wikler (Harvard School of Public Health)

46m Understanding Terrorism
Professor Louise Richardson (Department of Government and Radcliffe Institute) and
Professor Jessica Stern (Department of Government and John F. Kennedy School of Government)

46p Human Rights
Professor Jennifer Leaning, (School of Public Health)
with Dr. Jacqueline Bhabha, (John F. Kennedy School of Government)

47k Invention of Nature
Professor Robert France (Graduate School of Design)

48k Political Legitimacy and Resistance: What Happened in Montaigne's Library on the Night of October 23, 1587, and Why Should Political Philosophers Care?
Professor Arthur I. Applbaum, (John F. Kennedy School of Government)

49k Wealth and Leadership: Two Centuries of Boston Philanthropy
Dr. Peter Dobkin Hall (Department of History and John F. Kennedy School of Government)

49n Measurements of the Mind: The Creation and Critique of the Psychological Test
Professor Marla Eby (Harvard Medical School)

49s United Nations, Past and Present: Can the UN be Fixed? Is the UN the Problem?
Professor Samantha Power (John F. Kennedy School of Government)