Graduate Schools Consider Space Needs

The Physical Planning Committee has presented, among other options, a proposal to develop Allston into a professional school campus to allow greater cooperation among Harvard’s different schools.

The Law School has taken the lead in planning for an Allston move with its Locational Options Committee.

Meanwhile, most of the other schools strapped for space have begun considering expansion and the possibility of a move across the river to Harvard’s new frontier.

Graduate School of Education

The Graduate School of Education (GSE), is often mentioned as the top candidate for an Allston move.

According to Shattuck Professor of Education Catherine E. Snow, GSE’s representative on the University’s Physical Planning Committee, the school has nowhere to expand around its present campus and is currently forced to rent space in order to accommodate its needs.

GSE has been unable to formally consider an Allston move, however, because the school’s efforts have been directed toward the search for a new dean to replace Jerome T. “Jerry” Murphy, who left in June 2001.

“We still have some institutional items we need to work out first, like who will lead the school,” Snow says.

“Planning isn’t that central on our radar.”

The Allston move is still high on its agenda after pressure from University President Lawrence H. Summers, according to Snow.

“We have to do something about space and we are landlocked more than other schools,” Snow says.

“A year ago this was not on such a fast track as it is now. President Summers wants to speed it up,” she says.

The Kennedy School

The Kennedy School of Government (KSG) is similarly starved for space.

The school has rented space for many years and 30 percent of the its students and faculty work outside of the campus’s main courtyard, according to Jesus Mena, director of the KSG office of communications and public affairs.

The school has no immediate plans to convene a formal committee to consider the Allston move.

Internal planning is done by a committee that Executive Dean J. Bonnie Newman organized even before the Allston purchases were announced.

The committee has looked at several options to solve their space crunch, according to Mena, including a new building on their existing campus, thought plans to fund the construction are still not settled.

Harvard Divinity School

One of Harvard’s smallest graduate schools, Harvard Divinity School (HDS) has solved its space issues for the near-term, and is less likely to move to Allston. It has no representative on the Physical Planning Committee.

Further, it has not officially organized any committees to analyze a move to Allston campus, nor has it been asked to do so by the administration.

Over the past two years the school has finished renovating its library and converting Divinity Hall from dormitories into offices and classrooms, temporarily alleviating the space crunch.

“We have moved ourselves out of the category of ‘space crunch,’” says Timothy D. Cross, associate dean for finance and administration at HDS.

“We have no extra space, though, nor do we have space in which the school could grow,” he says.

Due to continued expansion, Cross says, HDS will probably face another space crunch within 15 years.

The school has kept an open mind about a move.

“We’re not opposed to thinking about [the move],” Cross says.

“We will talk at some point this spring at a faculty meeting about the space issues at the school, and will probably convene a small committee to think about what our space needs will be,” he says

—Matthew F. Quirk contributed to the reporting of this article.

—Staff writer Nicholas F. Josefowitz can be reached at josefow@fas.harvard.edu.