Proposals To Benefit Undergraduates

For undergrads camping out in the bowels of Cabot Library as they cram for final exams in introductory science courses, help is on the way.

It will come in the form of a $30,000-per-year “study center” initiative tucked inside the $50 million package unveiled Monday by University administrators to bolster the status of women and minorities at Harvard.

The initiative would establish centers staffed by advanced undergraduate tutors, who would be paid $12 an hour and be on-call to assist fellow students taking lower-level courses.

The “study center” proposal is just one of several recommendations from the Women in Science and Engineering (WISE) task force that could significantly impact undergraduate life.

The report also draws plans for dramatic reforms to the freshman advising system for prospective natural science concentrators.

And it calls for the University to take several steps that would help undergraduates find research assistant jobs and campus housing if they choose to stay in Cambridge during the summer months.

LET’S CRAM TOGETHER

According to Howard Georgi, Mallinckrodt professor of physics and co-chair of a student-faculty working group that developed the proposal, at least some of the study centers could be up and running by next year.

The proposal emerged from a series of discussions among undergraduates organized by Mariangela Lisanti ’05, who chaired the WISE task force’s student-faculty working group along with Georgi and Professor of Physics Melissa E.B. Franklin.

The fabled “Physics Night”—an informal weekly event on Wednesdays in Leverett Dining Hall—served as one of the models for the study center plan, according to Georgi, who is the Leverett house master.

“The idea of study centers is not ‘tutoring’—but rather to provide a space, both physical and intellectual, that encourages study groups to form and work efficiently,” Georgi wrote in an e-mail.

According to yesterday’s report, the study centers might be extended beyond the natural sciences to the economics department—where females are also underrepresented in more quantitative courses.

The proposal would not replace the Bureau of Study Counsel’s current tutoring program, under which students receive one-on-one help from more advanced undergraduates, according to M. Suzanne Renna, the bureau’s acting director.

AN ASTRONOMICAL ODDITY

In what appears to be an inexplicable quirk in the task force’s recommendations, the report calls for a study center to assist students in Astronomy 145, “Topics in Astrophysics,” and Astronomy 150, “Radiative Processes in Astrophysics.”

The report lists these courses as “introductory,” but Astronomy 145 instructor John P. Huchra said that the 15 undergraduates in his spring-semester class are primarily juniors and seniors.

Huchra, who is the Doyle professor of cosmology, said he was “a tad surprised” to find that Astronomy 145 was among the “introductory courses” highlighted by yesterday’s report.

But Huchra, who also teaches a freshman seminar, praised the report’s advising reform plan.

“One of the big issues I see at the University is that there has to be a lot more faculty involvement in advising first- and second-year undergraduates,” he said.

ADVISE AND CONSENT

According to the report, every freshman considering a natural science concentration should be assigned to an academic advisor who is an expert in that student’s field of interest,

The proposal would mark a major departure from the current system in which residential proctors—many of whom have no academic background in the natural sciences—assume the bulk of advising responsibilities for freshmen.

Franklin said that the advising proposal, “if it works, could be great.” But she added, “I’m not sure when these things are going to happen. I think that depends on who is chosen to make these things happen.”

The report calls for the formation of a Transition Committee, including WISE task force chair and Higgins Professor of Natural Sciences Barbara J. Grosz, to start the implementation process this summer.

Administrators at the Freshman Dean’s Office, which coordinates first-year academic advising, did not return repeated requests for comment.

CAMP HARVARD?

Monday’s report also calls on the Harvard College Dean’s Office to take a more active role in helping undergraduates find summertime lab jobs.

The task force recommends that one of the upperclass Houses be used as a summer dorm for students conducting research in Harvard labs. Franklin said the centralized housing could be “really fun” for students and that the dorm could host evening events teaching the “tools” of science research.

With summer housing centralized, the University will be better able to provide undergraduates—especially women—safe transportation to and from lab sites in Longwood and the North Yard, according to the report.

—Staff writer Daniel J. Hemel can be reached at hemel@fas.harvard.edu.