Joint Department Debuts

The University’s top governing board this week approved the first cross-school department in Harvard history.

The collaboration between Harvard Medical School and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) to create the new Department of Developmental and Regenerative Biology marks a major step in the implementation of the December recommendations of the University Planning Committee for Science and Engineering (UPCSE), which aimed to strengthen scientific research at Harvard.

Like the three-year-old Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI), the department will be focusing in large part on stem-cell biology. But the new department will have a somewhat different purview, including the instruction of undergraduates.

“The one thing that [HSCI] doesn’t have is a formalized education program, nor does it have the ability to bring in faculty to do specific types of research,” said David T. Scadden, a co-chair of the new department and a professor of medicine at the Medical School. “We thought it was important to try to have a department to do that.”

Stem cell scientist Douglas A. Melton will represent FAS as the department’s other co-chair. The department’s initial 13 to 16 faculty members—who have yet to be named—will retain ties to their current faculties, but its headquarters will be stationed across the river in the Allston campus’ flagship science complex. The department will also conduct a search for three junior faculty members and plans to eventually expand still further.

In an e-mail announcing the Harvard Corporation’s decision to approve the new department, Interim President Derek C. Bok noted that the creation of cross-school departments was a “key recommendation” from the planning committee.

“Obviously, the report is being taken extremely seriously,” Harvard spokesman B. D. Colen said.

The announcement also coincided with the naming of the founding members of the Harvard University Science and Engineering Committee (HUSEC), another key proposal from the December report.

The new joint department will be funded and overseen by HUSEC, which is chaired by Provost Steven E. Hyman and consists of administrators and faculty from six Harvard schools—a group which includes the FAS and Medical School deans.

Hyman has been a proponent of interdisciplinary science in general and the UPCSE’s proposals specifically, since the committee’s report was released in December.

Hyman and Bok have both worked in recent months to hammer out the details of UPCSE initiatives.

Some professors said that they remain wary about Harvard’s increasing attention to currently popular areas of research.

“Harvard should be looking into new and exciting areas, but they should do so with the perspective that a lot of science doesn’t go very far,” said Richard L. Taylor, a professor of mathematics. “You have to make a difficult judgment in each case.”

Though the specifics of education in the new cross-school department are still up in the air, Scadden said there will be courses for both undergraduates and graduates.

“Certainly there will be both,” he said. “Whether or not it will be a separate concentration within the life sciences, we don’t know yet, but undergrad courses will be an important part of what we do.”

A doctoral program may also be offered in addition to the undergraduate program, according to Scadden.

UPCSE also proposed a cross-school Department of Systems Biology, but there are no plans currently to create a second inter-faculty department, according to Colen.

But HUSEC members see potential for future research through collaborative departments between Harvard faculties.

Committee member H. Kent Bowen, a professor of business administration at Harvard Business School, said new points of contact are emerging between traditional disciplines, especially in the sciences.

Bowen called this week’s announcements “an honest signal that with curiosity, and some luck, and some forethought, we might be able to empower people to find new opportunities at the interfaces.”

—Staff writer Clifford M. Marks can be reached at cmarks@fas.harvard.edu.

—Staff writer Laurence H. Holland can be reached at lholland@fas.harvard.edu.