Corp. Confirms NIMH's Hyman As New Provost

National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Director Steven E. Hyman was officially named to the position of University provost yesterday after a meeting with the Harvard Corporation.

The selection brings to a close a six-month search process spearheaded by University President Lawrence H. Summers.

Hyman, a former professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School (HMS) and the founder of the Mind, Brain and Behavior interfaculty initiative, returns to Harvard after six years at NIMH.

“Steve’s talents and experience promise to make him an energetic leader in stimulating both cooperation and innovation,” Summers said in a press release.

Hyman said the Corporation meeting focused more on Harvard policies than on his selection.

“We had a number of conversations about the University’s business,” he said. “The part related to me was over with a handshake.”

In his first meeting with reporters since his official confirmation yesterday, Hyman described his NIMH position as “analagous” to the Harvard post.

“I’m well aware that heavy-handed top-down initiatives are not the way to do business,” he said.

As director of NIMH, Hyman helped shape major research efforts, managed a $1.2 billion budget and supervised a staff of more than 300 administrators and 1,000 working scientists.

The modern office of provost at Harvard, established by University President Neil L. Rudenstine at the beginning of his tenure, has never had a clear definition. And though three men have already filled the role of Harvard’s second-most senior administrative officer, defining the provost’s duties remains a “work in progress,” Hyman said.

Although hesitant to elaborate about his specific plans for the job, Hyman saidhe will work on increasing interdisciplinary faculty interaction and improving undergraduate education.

“I think it’s really a little bit early. I don’t want to be presumptuous,” he said. “The position of provost is also not so old or deeply entrenched, and there are a lot of possibilities.”

In yesterday’s press release, Summers said he expects Hyman to play a central role in “fostering interdisciplinary collaboration across Harvard,” defining education priorities and working with administrators to “plan and set priorities in more integrated ways.”

Hyman, too, named interdisciplinary initiatives as a top priority, citing his experience in the Mind, Brain and Behavior program as an ideal example.

“The faculty in very diverse disciplines recognized that they needed each other,” he said. “That’s something I’d like to build on.”

Hyman also stressed his commitment to undergraduate education at the College, echoing Summers’ inauguration statements about the importance of improving science education for all students—not just science concentrators.

“A curriculum can never be static.,” he said. “Knowledge is changing at an incredible rate.”

Hyman, 49, graduated summa cum laude from Yale University in 1974 in philosophy and the humanities. He was selected as a Mellon fellow and received a bachelors’s and a master’s degree in philosophy of science from the University of Cambridge in 1976.

From there, Hyman went to HMS, where he graduated cum laude in 1980. After an internship in medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), a residency in psychiatry at McLean Hospital and a clinical fellowship in neurology at MGH, he was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard in molecular biology.

Hyman went on to teach neurobiology at HMS and was the director of psychiatry research at MGH.

He left Harvard in 1996 to become the director of NIMH.

Currently, he serves on advisory boards internationally and is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences.

Hyman’s wife Barbara Bierer is a former HMS professor of pediatrics currently working at the National Institute of Health. They have three children.

—Staff writer Catherine E. Shoichet can be reached at shoichet@fas.harvard.edu.