Academic Advisory Group Helps Determine University's Future

Each month President Neil L. Rudenstine and the deans of Harvard's eleven schools lean back in the plush chairs of Mass. Hall and talk. On the agenda is everything from the use of the Harvard name to the establishment of the University's international outposts.

It is a scene that, before Rudenstine's tenure, would have been unusual to witness at Harvard, a university whose professional and graduate schools have traditionally been fiercely independent.

But now it seems that the highly autonomous schools of the University are slowly coming together, if in a very informal, ad-hoc manner.

The Academic Advisory Group is one indication of the integration of the University.

The group brings the president, Provost Harvey V. Fineberg `67 and deans together to share their plans and criticisms.

"We give each other ideas," says Joseph S. Nye, dean of the Kennedy School of Government. "It gets flows of information that are horizontal and not just vertical."

"It has the function, by exchanging information, to get us to see the University in larger perspective," he adds.

Although Fineberg noted that regular meetings of the president and the deans have been held at least since he was dean of the School of Public Health in 1984, Rudenstine formalized them under the name the Academic Advisory Group.

Rudenstine has made this sort of initiative his signature song. The group, now more active and influential under his administration, represents the president's continuing efforts, since coming into office in 1991, to centralize the administration of the University and encourage communication between the University's separate schools.

"Regular meetings of the deans also promotes understanding among the deans of common issues and distinctive circumstances facing the different faculties," Fineberg says.

While the group has no real governing power, in the past few years, it has been extremely influential in several of the University's new ventures, such as the Asia Pacific Center in Hong Kong.

For the rest of the year, Harvard's role in the international arena will probably be a hot topic. Rudenstine says that his travels this summer to the Far East gave him "a renewed sense of how crucial the international agenda" would be for Harvard.

International programs require serious discussion of faculty, facilities and capacity, according to the president, and he says the process must be collaborative.

The Asia Pacific Center was a product of discussion among the group--particularly among the Kennedy School, the Business School and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, the schools that will primarily be using the facility.

In addition, as greater media coverage of colleges and universities puts greater pressure on Harvard to present a united front, collaboration between the schools becomes indispensable. The differences between Harvard's ten schools might be glaringly obvious to its administrators, but the rest of the world sees only one Harvard.

Last year, the University acted as one in restricting the use of Harvard's name, a decision in which the Academic Advisory Group was very influential.

Fundraising, curricular development--particularly those aspects that involve several schools or departments--information technology, faculty planning and intellectual property are other issues that merit the attention of the group.

Many of these were discussed at the group's special meeting at the beginning of the year.

The Unification of Harvard

Although Harvard has traditionally been a decentralized university, no one so far has objected to the role taken on by the Academic Advisory Group.

"I found the meetings of the advisory group to be informative and helpful," says Joseph B. Martin, dean of the Medical School. "It is a format for me to learn about activities in the other schools and to think about areas of mutual benefits."

Rudenstine's other unification efforts, such as ADAPT, have not met with the same approval however.

Rudenstine created the $50 million initiative, Project ADAPT, aimed at coordinating financial record-keeping in the different schools. It will bring new computer software to offices across campus to centralize purchasing, benefits, grant management, payroll, accounts payable and receivable, and hiring.

Sources say Harvard's schools have been upset by the amount of personal autonomy Project ADAPT forces them to sacrifice for the cause of unifying the University information systems.

It also came under fire for the high costs individual schools must incur to implement the system. The $50 million budgeted for the project does not cover the funds the separate schools must lay out to set up the technology.

The difference in the reception of the two initiatives is perhaps indicative of the way that the schools prefer to approach Harvard's centralization.

Instead of forcing expensive changes on the schools, the forum of the Academic Advisory Group has allowed them to work more efficiently, co-planning projects like international outposts.

It is an initiative well-suited to both the schools' tradition of independence and Rudenstine's preference for leadership through discussion and consensus.

Within the advisory group, Rudenstine sets the agenda. The deans can discuss, come to a consensus and make recommendations, but, despite the voice given to the deans by the group, Rudenstine's voice is still paramount.

"[President Rudenstine's] authority doesn't get lost in the sense that he's not just a broker," says Kim B. Clark, dean of the Business School.

But, the deans say, Rudenstine does not impose his will on the other members of the group.

"It's a lot more like a family where you have strong family members," Clark says. "It's not a dictatorship. There's not a power issue."

The deans say they take the monthly meetings seriously and value the chance they have been given, as Clark put it, "to chart a course for the University."