Cancelled Program Awaits a Second Start

After cancelling a program for low-income high school students this fall, Harvard administrators say that limited housing will prevent them from starting a new summer program for underprivileged students this year.

But they say plans are in the works for an initiative to replace the Quest Scholars program sometime in the near future.

“We were happy with the program, but it was going to be very difficult to accommodate it this summer in any case, because of the number of buildings and dining halls that will be under renovation,” Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis ’68 wrote in an e-mail.

Since the summer of 2000, 22 high school sophomores and juniors from around the country have participated each year in the Harvard program, which is run by the non-profit Quest Scholars organization and focuses on environmental studies. The program is currently run out of Stanford University, where it was first founded in 1994.

Last fall, Lewis and University President Lawrence H. Summers decided to discontinue Quest Scholars at Harvard, to the surprise of some students who were involved with the program.

“In a way it was a complete turnaround from what happened in the summer because in the summer Lewis said it was a go for us, though we had been on shaky ground before,” said Daniel I. Song ’03-’04, who served as Quest Scholars associate director in 2001.

“But coming from Harvard it was not surprising because they were never really fully committed to the program,” he said. “I think Harvard missed out on a really big chance to be part of something special.”

Although the Harvard chapter of Quest Scholars will not be revived, Lewis said he and Summers have began informal discussions of launching a Harvard-based program modeled on Quest.

“The president expressed interest in starting a Harvard program at some point in the future. Plans for that really haven’t gotten off the ground, as far as I know,” Lewis said.

But Song said he could not understand why Harvard would choose to start a new program instead of continuing to support Quest Scholars.

“I don’t know what it’s going to be, and I don’t understand why they want to build it from the ground up when we already have such a successful model,” he said.

In 2000, Dana A. Gavrieli ’02, who participated in the program as a high school student, founded a Harvard chapter along with former director of the Center for Genomic Research Dari Shalon.

“It’s been doing really well [at Stanford], and we wanted to expand. We thought Harvard would be a great place to start because of all the resources in the area,” Gavrieli said.

Gavrieli said she and Shalon contacted then-President Neil L. Rudenstine, as well as Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles and College officials in order to get the program off the ground and found Harvard’s administration very supportive.

Song said he doubted Harvard would be able to duplicate the Quest Scholars’ program.

“I have a lot of doubt that a program can be as successful without the two founders because the two founders of Quest were very influential in creating a certain of mood about the program,” Song said. “That’s not to say that others can be successful, but they will somehow different.”

To compensate for the elimination of the Harvard chapter, Quest Scholar President Michael J. McCullough said that Stanford will host twice the normal number of students this summer.

McCullough also said Quest Scholars is currently undertaking a fundraising effort to accommodate up to 80 students next summer.