Human and Evolutionary Biology Dept. Holds Focus Groups on Renaming Concentration

Harvard’s Human Evolutionary Biology concentration may soon be known by a different name.

In an email to concentrators, Ashley Johnson, the HEB undergraduate program coordinator, wrote that the department is holding focus groups to seek student feedback on potential name options.

“We are conducting a series of focus groups about the Human Evolutionary Biology concentration, most especially its name,” Johnson wrote.

Johnson wrote that potential options include “Human Biology and Evolution (HBE), or Human Biology, Behavior and Evolution (HBBE),” or that they may “stick with HEB.”

Still, renaming the concentration is not a certainty, according to HEB Department Chair Daniel E. Lieberman ’86, who stressed in an email that the focus groups are intended only to solicit students’ thoughts and that any potential renaming is still a ways away.

The purpose of the focus groups, Johnson wrote, was to determine whether a name change would add more clarity to HEB’s purpose.

“We are always to find ways to improve the concentration, which includes trying to find out if a different name would help everyone — students, graduate schools, employers, parents — understand what the concentration is about.”

The focus groups were held Tuesday by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Office of Institutional Research.

—Rauf Nawaz contributed reporting.

—Staff writer Andrew Yu can be reached at andrew.yu@thecrimson.com.