Knowles To Step Down

Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) Jeremy R. Knowles announced yesterday that he will step down at the end of the academic year, ending an 11-year tenure in which he erased budget deficits, created a major humanities center and set in motion extensive science initiatives.

When he arrived in 1991, Knowles found the Faculty in dire economic straits, carrying an annual deficit of more than $10 million. Knowles stressed strict, sometimes controversial, fiscal discipline that brought FAS budgets under control. Eleven years later, FAS is running a multi-million dollar surplus.

Under his watch, the Faculty raised more than $1 billion for capital projects and Knowles personally oversaw major initiatives across all major academic areas.

He consolidated humanities Faculty under one roof in the revamped Barker Center. In the social sciences, he pushed for the creation of an expansive government center, plans for which remain in the works. And in the natural sciences, he sought more laboratory space and initiatives in genomics and other cutting-edge science fields.

In the arena of undergraduate education, Knowles created a committee to help him continually review the quality of the Faculty’s curriculum. He lobbied for expanded freshman seminars, smaller sections and closer interaction between students and professors.

In recent years, Knowles made increasing the size of the Faculty a priority. But, though in the past decade the number of tenured Faculty increased by a tenth, Knowles fell far short of his goal of endowing 40 new professorships.

With charisma, humor and patience, Knowles shaped an agenda of fiscal discipline, expansion and quality control.

Breaking The News

Yesterday morning Knowles sent a letter to the Faculty via e-mail notifying professors of his resignation.

While the announcement was sudden, it was not unexpected.

Many Faculty and administrators said they had expected Knowles to step down in the near future, since he had long made it clear he intended to serve roughly a decade as dean.

“People were wondering whether he might resign this year or next,” said Professor of the History of Science Everett I. Mendelsohn.

“I think many of us expected he would stay on through the presidential transition to make sure there was continuity and at some point he’d seek to pass the baton,” said Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Peter T. Ellison.

Knowles told The Crimson yesterday that he had long felt his departure from the deanship should shortly follow the selection of a new University president.

“Several years ago, I thought about this and decided that an overlap of a year was probably best for the institution and the Faculty,” he said.

When he started the job in 1991, Knowles said, he had planned to serve about 10 years. He is currently serving his 11th year in a position whose average tenure has, in recent history, been about six years.

Knowles, who is the Houghton professor of chemistry and biochemistry, said he will return to teaching—but he said he has not yet decided whether he will return to the classroom immediately next fall.

“Now, after 11 very rewarding (if sometimes too abundantly busy) years, I have decided to return to the Faculty,” Knowles said in a statement released yesterday.

Raising Budgets and Buildings

When he returns to teaching, Knowles will rejoin the ranks of the Faculty he first entered in 1974 when he arrived at Harvard from Oxford University.

He took the helm of the Faculty in July 1991, as Neil L. Rudenstine was taking over the reigns of the University.

During his tenure, Knowles led the Faculty through a number of major initiatives in curricular reform, physical planning and fundraising.

He slashed budgets, raised money and built buildings.

Having faced a $11.7 million deficit upon his arrival, by the end of just his first semester as dean, Knowles announced that the deficit had fallen to $7.5 million.

He urged fiscal discipline throughout the Faculty—a move which did not earn him many friends. He came under fire when he dismissed 10 staff members at Harvard’s Semitic Museum in a cost-cutting measure.

But by 1996, just five years after his arrival, Knowles had cut the deficit by more than twenty-fold, to $530,000.

As he scrutinized budgets, Knowles also put undergraduate education under the microscope.

In 1992, he created the Educational Policy Committee to advise him on all curricular matters other than those related to the Core, including review and improvement of undergraduate concentrations.

Knowles also presided over the 1997 review of the Core Curriculum that led to the creation of the to the Quantitative Reasoning Core area.

And in recent years, Knowles has worked closely with Dean for Undergraduate Education Susan G. Pedersen ’81-’82 to expand freshman seminar offerings.

“The rebirth of the freshman seminar program was really made possible because of [Knowles’] commitment to it,” Pedersen said. “He put a great deal of work into personally engaging the Faculty with that issue when we first thought about expanding it.”

But Knowles’ most far-reaching curricular initiatives came just two years ago. In 1999, he proposed a series of interdisciplinary endeavors—totalling several hundred million dollars—in the natural sciences that ultimately created new centers for genomics research and for the imaging of tiny structures.

After years of battling budget deficits, Knowles in recent years has turned to the Faculty itself and made increasing the number of tenured professors a top priority.

Since the 1998-1999 academic year, the Faculty has increased from 603 to 637 professors. And under Knowles’ tenure, the number of senior female Faculty members doubled.

“My legacy, I hope, would be a yet more exciting and intellectually distinguished faculty, an even better student body, and the best possible educational experience for them,” he said.

—Daniel K. Rosenheck contributed to the reporting of this article.

—Staff writer Kate L. Rakoczy can be reached at rakoczy@fas.harvard.edu.