Faculty Academic Planning Dean Named

Former Business School Assistant Dean Laura Gordon Fisher was named associate dean for academic planning in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences last week.

As associate dean, Fisher will work with Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles to advise departments on staffing and the faculty appointments process.

"We will also assist departments in long range planning," Fisher said.

Although Fisher was offered the position last summer, Harvard's governing boards only approved her appointment last week. She started work after Labor Day, she said.

Phyllis Keller, longtime associate dean for academic affairs, is now serving in a part-time capacity. Keller, a veteran administrator under former deans of the faculty Henry Rosovsky and Michael A. Spence, will now work with Knowles on special projects.

This is not the first time Fisher has worked on the Faculty side of the river. She came to Harvard as a graduate student in Slavic languages and literatures in 1971 and served as an assistant tutor in Eliot House.

In 1973, Fisher became senior tutor in Eliot House and held that position for the next ten years.

"I was the first woman senior tutor at a Harvard house," she said.

In 1985, Fisher became director of admissions at Harvard and Radcliffe and in 1986 moved to the Business School.

"I had spent quite a bit of my career in admissions," Fisher said. "I enjoyed my work and the educational aspects of it."

At the Business School, she served as director of admissions in the MBA program, and later took over the program's financial aid office as well.

In 1992, Fisher became director of MBA program administration and she managed the Business School's "Leadership and Learning curriculum overhaul.

"It was a very important opportunity," Fisher said of her work at the Business School. "It is also important to have an impact in the academic program."

In her new position, Fisher said she hopes she can help to improve undergraduate education.

"I think that what I can contribute is a range of experience that includes a somewhat different perspective, given my eight-year tenure at the Business School," Fisher said.