Knowles Presents Financial Aid, Hiring Projects to Faculty

At yesterday's full Faculty meeting, Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles presented and elaborated on his annual letter, which focused mainly on graduate student advising and Faculty demographics.

While Faculty members did not respond to content of the letter, the areas Knowles outlined will present challenges to departments and professors for the next several years.

Knowles' first project for the next few years will be the implementation of changes to Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS) financial aid that the Faculty approved last May. The changes phased in over the next two years will implement cohort-based funding and incorporate more teaching into aid packages.

The plan has authorized an expenditure of $5.7 million over the next two years, Knowles said. The plan will pay out $2 million this year.

Knowles cautioned that the plan would take longer than one year to impact all departments as it involves collaboration between department chairs, Faculty members and administrators.

"Some departments this year may see an increment less high than they had hoped," Knowles said.

GSAS Dean Christoph J. Wolff said this year's money would go almost entirely to social science and humanities departments. The money will then be shared among those departments.

"The principal goal we hope to achieve over a two-year period is to enable departments to meet their enrollment target figures, to make competitive offers, to guarantee four to five years of financial support, to help students thereby to complete their programs in a timely fashion and generally to increase program quality and stability," Wolff said.

Department chairs said they hoped the more generous financial aid program would help recruit graduate students.

"No doubt an increase in aid will help the graduate program of the Math Department and will make it more competitive," said Yum-Tong Siu, chair of the Department of Mathematics.

In addition to graduate student aid, Knowles said improving Harvard's science departments would be a priority in the next few years.

"I have been increasingly concerned about our competitiveness in several sciences, both in terms of faculty recruitment and graduate student quality and recruitment," he said.

Knowles said the meeting of the "summer science group" to discuss improvements in science departments and the creation of new centers devoted to fields of science are the beginnings of change.

Knowles said he expects to have proposals to "shape" neuroscience and computational sciences in the near future.

"My overall goal is to raise the level of attractiveness and excitement for all departments," he said.

Knowles also discussed the changing Faculty demographics in light of the Capital Campaign's pledge to increase appointments and the graying of senior Faculty since the abolition of a mandatory retirement age.

In his letter, Knowles noted that the total number of professors has not increased since 1987, despite the addition of several new tenured positions.

What this means, he said, is that although the overall number of Faculty members has not changed significantly, the number of tenured Faculty members has increased while the number of junior Faculty members declined.

"We did aim and we have succeeded in raising the number of tenured colleagues," Knowles said.

Knowles added that each department must work to improve junior Faculty recruitment and retention, noting that junior Faculty provide the "vibrancy" that leads to innovative teaching and research.

After discussion, the Faculty will decide "whether or what we should do in terms of policies that would help in junior Faculty recruitment," Knowles said.

Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis '68 said the loss of junior Faculty members reduces the diversity of approach in undergraduate course offerings.

"Certainly it would not be good for Harvard to deprived of younger scholars and teachers," Lewis said. "There are many important fields, as well as the Core curriculum, where we do not offer enough courses, by faculty of any age," he said. "I look forward to growth in the size of the Faculty in certain important areas."