Today President Drew Faust named Team Nucleik the grand prize winner of the Harvard University President’s Challenge for social entrepreneurship, hosted by the Harvard Innovation Lab (i-lab). Faust developed the challenge last year to support students from across the University who were interested in developing entrepreneurial solutions to some of the world’s most important social problems. This year’s competitors tackled five topic areas: learning, energy and the environment, health, disaster preparation and relief, and the arts.

Team Nucleik will receive $70,000 to support its emerging business based on the software management information system team members developed while at Harvard for law enforcement officers.

“I spoke with the members of Team Nucleik earlier this month at the President’s Challenge Demo Day and was struck by their commitment to pursuing an idea and applying what they had learned in the classroom to improve the lives of others,” said Faust. “They’ve built a tool that will help law enforcement professionals better serve and protect communities across the country, and their inspiring work is something I will follow with great interest in the months and years ahead.”

On a field trip to Springfield, Mass., as part of Professor Kevin Kit Parker’s spring 2012 ES 96 engineering design seminar, the Nucleik team — computer science concentrators Scott Crouch, Florian Mayr, and Matthew Polega — saw firsthand the impact of violent crime and the everyday struggles of law enforcement officers handicapped by decades-old information management systems.

“Almost one and a half million gang members from 33,000 active gangs are responsible for 48 percent of the violent crime in the United States. We have a real problem with violent crime in the U.S., and technology can help solve it,” said Crouch. “There are many creative entrepreneurs — so many unbelievably talented people — out there, and they were all completely missing this issue.”

The system Nucleik developed provides instantaneous access to accurate and organized data to help law enforcement officers tackle gang violence, murders, and violent crime. It has been employed by the Special Projects Team of the Massachusetts State Police in Springfield, helping slash the time spent on office paperwork by 90 percent. The fledgling company is also in talks to launch the platform in several other major metropolitan police departments.

Three other student-led teams — Flume, PlenOptika and TerraTek — were recognized in the President’s Challenge for winning solutions to pervasive societal problems. Named runners-up in the competition, the teams tackled the complexity and potential behind understanding the human genome, the lack of affordable eye care in developing countries, and the challenges of registering for property rights and gaining access to public benefits in developing markets.

For the second year, Faust called on students from across the University to envision novel solutions to global problems that lack comprehensive answers. One hundred and twenty-seven student-led teams entered the competition, leveraging classroom learning and resources from the i-lab and across the University, as well as skills across disciplines, to develop unique solutions to problems that, like the teams themselves, are interdisciplinary in nature.

The three runners-up will each receive $10,000 to support the development of their ventures.

Team Flume is building a comprehensive and up-to-date map of the human genome through a crowdsourced webtool. Members hope access to their map will give researchers and clinicians information that provides comprehensive understanding of human biology, helping experts better understand diseases and supporting their efforts to fight them.

Team PlenOptika aims to distribute a device that can quickly test a person’s vision and provide the best off-the-shelf prescription. The project promises to bring adequate vision care to areas where professionals are in low supply. More than 1 billion people have poor vision because they don’t have the eyeglasses they need.

Team TerraTek is developing a two-sided platform that allows individuals to more easily secure property rights so they can obtain credit and other social benefits, and that assists governments of developing countries to expand their property rights databases to expand their revenue and plan more effectively. The team is launching the TerraTek platform this summer in Medellín, Colombia.

“The caliber of ideas that the judging committee considered this year was astounding, and it was very difficult for my fellow judges and me to choose from among the finalist teams — a wonderful problem to have in just the second year of the competition,” said Provost Alan M. Garber, co-chair of the judging committee.

“The members of the teams that split this year’s prize brought fresh perspectives and diverse backgrounds to tackle challenges related to crisis management, the environment, health, and learning. The range of issues they are addressing through their projects is a testament to the creativity and skills of students across the University — and to the success that follows when they connect with one another to identify and pursue common goals.”

Student teams took part in workshops and gained resources and mentoring to help build their skills. The 10 finalists named in March further developed their ideas with the expertise of handpicked mentors, tailored workshops, and $5,000 in seed money.

“The student teams met this year’s President’s Challenge with true passion,” said Gordon Jones, managing director of the i-lab. “There is an extra spark around their ideas that comes from firsthand experience, whether it be from ride-alongs with the State Police or seeing the impact of inadequate access to vision care in communities around the world. It is this spark that has fueled these teams to pursue and grow their ventures.”

Student learning throughout the challenge matched the scope of the ideas.

“I love being involved in all aspects of a real product; the ability to create something and watch it unfold in front of you is just so unique to entrepreneurship and that’s why I love doing it,” said Crouch. “It’s not about the money or the product, it’s about putting something you built in the hands of other people and watching it affect their lives. I would never have been an entrepreneur without the i-lab, having a central place where we could meet people who were like-minded and find the things that we needed to get our startup up and running.”

The Wyss Institute seeks to solve some of the world’s most complex challenges in health care and the environment by drawing inspiration from nature’s design principles. In addition to uncovering new knowledge about how nature builds, controls, and manufactures, the institute measures success in the ability of its faculty and staff to translate their discoveries into products that can have near-term impact.

“Mr. Wyss is extraordinarily generous, and we are deeply grateful that he has expanded his support of multidisciplinary research at Harvard,” said Drew Faust, Harvard’s president and Lincoln Professor of History. “Through the Wyss Institute, we are realizing his vision — generating promising technologies and building partnerships that extend far beyond our campus. This additional gift will enable the institute’s continued success and create new opportunities to improve people’s lives and the world in which we live.”

The Wyss Institute has grown at a rapid pace since its founding in January 2009, and now includes over 350 full-time staff located in 100,000 square feet of research space distributed between Harvard’s Longwood Medical Campus and Cambridge sites. This burgeoning community of scientists, biologists, physicists, chemists, engineers, and clinicians includes 27 core and associate faculty and their students and fellows, as well as 40 staff with extensive experience in product development and team management across multiple industries. The work at the institute ranges from early-stage exploration of new ideas to focused technology translation, with an emphasis on validating and de-risking technologies to enable their commercialization.

“We wanted to create a place where the innovation and imagination of the world’s best minds could work beyond disciplinary boundaries to deliver life-changing medicines and technologies that are inspired by nature,” said Wyss, who, after graduating from Harvard Business School in 1965, started a successful medical research and design company whose products have helped millions of patients recover from skeletal and soft tissue trauma and injuries. “I could not have dreamt of the institute’s remarkable discoveries thus far, and am proud and excited to help them continue to build, explore, and improve lives.”

A native of Switzerland who now lives in Wilson, Wyo., Wyss’ philanthropy fosters new ideas, new tools, and new collaborations in areas ranging from medicine, education, and the arts to economic opportunity, conflict resolution, and land conservation. The Wyss Foundation, which Wyss established in 1998, is known for helping protect some of the country’s most iconic landscapes — from Montana’s Crown of the Continent to the Wyoming Range — and ensuring they remain open and accessible to all. All together, the Wyss Foundation has invested more than $175 million to help local communities, land trusts, and nonprofit partners conserve nearly 14 million acres in the West for future generations to explore and enjoy.

Wyss is also a founder of the AO Foundation, a medically guided nonprofit led by an international group of surgeons who specialize in the treatment of trauma and disorders of the musculoskeletal system, and PeaceNexus, a nonprofit foundation that brings together and advises government institutions, nongovernmental organizations, and businesses to expand peace-building capacity in conflict areas around the world. His significant contributions to the Beyeler Foundation have helped conserve and display some of the world’s most important pieces of modern art.

At Harvard, Wyss’ support for the institute’s model of interdisciplinary work has led to impressive productivity in intellectual property creation, numerous corporate collaborations, multiple licensing agreements, and technology translation at an accelerated pace, with two potential products currently entering human clinical trials: a cancer vaccine and a vibrating shoe insole that promises to restore balance in the elderly. At the same time, the institute’s faculty members have an unparalleled publication record, with an average of one breakthrough publication in Science or Nature every month since the institute’s founding 52 months ago.

“Four years ago, we were tasked with developing an entirely new model for innovation, collaboration, and technology translation that more effectively bridges academia and industry, and that is precisely what we did,” said Wyss Founding Director Don Ingber. (Video: Wyss Retreat 2012)

Part of what makes the institute so effective, Ingber said, is its ability to harness expertise of members from its nine partner institutions, and to leverage the intellectual and commercial power of the Greater Boston region and beyond. Other members of the institute consortium are Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston Children’s Hospital, Boston University, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Massachusetts General Hospital, Massachusetts University Medical Center, Spaulding Rehabilitation Center, and Tufts University.

“The Wyss Institute has rapidly established itself as a hub for the new field of biologically inspired engineering,” said Alan M. Garber, provost of Harvard University. “Thanks to Mr. Wyss’ critical support, the institute has developed novel insights into living organisms with remarkable speed and productivity — and it has applied those insights to create an array of bioinspired devices and materials that promise to advance medicine and many other fields.”

The Wyss Institute organizes its research priorities around six synergistic technology platforms: Bioinspired Robotics, Programmable Nanomaterials, Biomimetic Microsystems, Adaptive Material Technologies, Anticipatory Medical and Cellular Devices, and Synthetic Biology. Examples of projects under way include:

An up-close view of the Lung-on-a-Chip, a microdevice lined by human cells that recapitulates complex functions of the living lung. Photo courtesy of the Wyss Institute

• The RoboBee — a tiny robot inspired by the biology of a fly that may be used in search and rescue missions or to carry out pollination and replace dying bee populations. (Video: Controlled flight of the robotic insect)
• Human Organs-on-Chips — microchips lined by human cells that are poised to revolutionize drug development and environmental testing by replacing animal studies. (Video: Lung-on-a-Chip — Wyss Institute)
• SLIPS — a novel surface coating that repels just about everything — from oil and water to blood — which is being applied to increase the energy efficiency of refrigeration systems, to prevent fouling of water and waste treatment plants, and to prevent blood coagulation in dialysis devices and tubing. (Video: SLIPS)
• An anticipatory medical device — a vibrating mattress that senses when an infant is about to stop breathing and then transmits signals that prevent apnea. (Video: What if we could prevent infant apnea?)
• MAGE — a genome re-engineering instrument that fast-forwards the evolutionary process to produce more efficient and cost-effective microbial manufacturing plants for the chemical, pharmaceutical, and agricultural industries.
• A biospleen for sepsis therapy — a dialysis-like therapeutic device that cleanses blood of a diverse array of pathogens and toxins by mimicking the body’s innate immune system.

The continued support will ensure that the institute maintains its fast pace, Ingber said. “Mr. Wyss’ additional gift — for which we are beyond grateful — ensures that our adventure in high-risk research and technology translation will continue,” he said.

Shinagel was first appointed director of the Division of Continuing Education (DCE) in 1975 before being named dean of the Extension School in 1977, a position he has held until his retirement this year. (Shinagel’s official title is dean of continuing education and University Extension.)

“The accomplishment is yours, but the benefit has certainly been ours,” said Faculty of Arts and Sciences Dean Michael D. Smith, adding that Shinagel had “made a singular contribution to our institution” during his time at Harvard.

More than a hundred administrators, students, alumni, and staff gathered on May 14 to celebrate Shinagel’s legacy of work at Harvard University. In his almost 40 years of service, he shaped the frontier of continuing and distance education at Harvard.

Pronouncing him “one of the transformative leaders” of the University, former president of Harvard Derek Bok, who appointed Shinagel to his position as dean, said that it was Shinagel’s flair for entrepreneurship, combined with the good timing of the era of lifelong learning, that made his impact on continuing and distance education such a powerful one.

“The number of people who come to Harvard today as nontraditional students, not in the traditional degree-granting programs …  that number is three or four times the number of the rest of the traditional degree-granting programs put together. It’s a major transformation, and Mike was a key figure presiding over that,” said Bok, who is the 300th Anniversary University Research Professor.

Shinagel observed that his career in continuing education at Harvard had begun 38 years ago on the same floor of University Hall where his retirement party was taking place. Recalling the meeting that finalized his appointment, Shinagel remembers asking Henry Rosovsky, then dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, what his mission should be. Rosovsky responded: “Mike, don’t embarrass us.”

“With these words of encouragement,” Shinagel said wryly, eliciting cheers of laughter from the crowd, he began his career at Harvard.

“Thanks to a loving family, the best colleagues, faculty, and administrative staff that any dean could wish for, we have made a success of it,” he said. “That’s because we have followed our high-principled mission: to make sure that the books stand open, and the gates unbarred, to thousands of nontraditional students.”

When Shinagel began his tenure at DCE, the institution taught 75 courses to 4,000 students each year — numbers dwarfed by 2013 totals, when over 600 courses were offered to more than 13,000 students. Nearly 500,000 students have taken courses at Harvard through the Extension School and the Division of Continuing Education, with approximately 16,000 students completing their degrees and certificates.

Shinagel was also instrumental in making a Harvard education accessible and affordable to its employees. He proposed the idea of the tuition assistance plan (TAP) for Harvard staff members, an idea implemented in 1976, and a benefit that many take advantage of today.

In 1997, Shinagel also led the way in creating distance education at the Extension School, ultimately attracting students from 195 countries and offering more than 200 online classes. Many alumni of these courses, and of the Extension School, have expressed their gratitude to Shinagel online, on a tribute page created to celebrate his legacy and retirement.

In addition to his 38 years in continuing education, Shinagel’s career at Harvard has touched almost every aspect of University life. He was a House master for Quincy House from 1986 to 2001, was a nonresident tutor for Eliot House, and is a former president of the Faculty Club. “I didn’t even know we had presidents of the Faculty Club,” Smith quipped, prompting laughter from the crowd.

Acknowledging his colleague and friend, Rosovsky said that one of his favorite moments every year during Commencement occurs when Extension School students, “in ever-larger numbers, stand up and take their rightful place” among Harvard graduates.

“Thousands and thousands of students have done so over the years,” said Rosovsky, the Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor, emeritus. “No future historian will ignore continuing education at Harvard, and that is due, in large part, to the efforts Dean Shinagel has made for the last 38 years.”

Students filled plates and sat at tables covered in blue and white tablecloths to pay homage to the Greek flag. Outside, the warm weather and the greening of the Quad signaled spring’s return.

Pforzheimer House Master Nicholas Christakis explained in an email to students what lamb in the spring signifies to Greek culture: “The idea behind a lamb roast is to celebrate the annual greening of the countryside with a ritual sacrifice of a new lamb. For millennia, the Greek diet was (and still is) organized around religious festivals, many of which involve fasting and the complete absence of dairy and meat for weeks at a time. In fact, some have hypothesized that the unusually high life expectancy of the Greek people comes in part from these periodic fasts from animal products. So, the traditional lamb roast signifies the coming of spring and an expression of gratitude for nature’s abundance.”

Adam Cohen, professor of chemistry and chemical biology and of physics, and Hopi Hoekstra, professor of organismic and evolutionary biology and molecular and cellular biology, were selected for their individual scientific excellence from more than 1,100 applicants from institutions throughout the United States. As part of the appointments, each will receive flexible support necessary to move their research in creative directions.

“HHMI has a very simple mission,” said its president, Robert Tjian. “We find the best original-thinking scientists and give them the resources to follow their instincts in discovering basic biological processes that may one day lead to better medical outcomes. This is a very talented group of scientists. And while we cannot predict where their research will take them, we’re eager to help them move science forward.”

Hoekstra, professor of organismic and evolutionary biology and molecular and cellular biology, said she plans to use her role at HHMI to focus her lab’s efforts on investigating the link between genes and behavioral variation. Photo by Rick Friedman

HHMI will provide each investigator with his or her full salary, benefits, and a research budget over their initial five-year appointment. The institute will also cover other expenses, including research space and the purchase of critical equipment. The appointments may be renewed for additional five-year terms, each contingent on a successful scientific review.

Jeremy Bloxham, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences dean of science, hailed the selection of Hoekstra and Cohen.

“Hopi’s and Adam’s appointments speak to the exceptional quality of the science performed in these labs,” Bloxham said. “As HHMI investigators, Hopi and Adam will have the freedom to undertake novel and creative lines of inquiry. I look forward to the exciting work that will undoubtedly emerge from their labs as a result of this freedom over the coming years.”

Going forward, Hoekstra said she plans to use the award to focus her lab’s efforts on investigating the link between genes and behavioral variation.

“In my mind, this is a next great frontier in biology,” she said. “This award will give us the freedom to follow our research where it leads us, to move quickly, and to take risks.”

Given the current atmosphere for research funding, she added, being named an HHMI investigator is particularly important, as it will free her up to focus on research.

“Federal funding is more and more difficult to secure, so many researchers are spending more and more time writing grant proposals and less and less time doing research,” she said. “Also complicating things is the fact that our work is highly interdisciplinary, which means our research proposals often fall between different funding agencies.

“This award will allow us to pursue our most novel and innovative work while maintaining our strength in integrating approaches from across traditional disciplinary boundaries,” she added. “The support of the HHMI will mean I can focus more on the part of my job I love best: thinking creatively about science.”

Cohen’s proposal to the HHMI outlined a project whose goal is to take an instantaneous snapshot of the activity state — firing or not firing — of every neuron in the brain of a mouse. The challenge, he said, is that a mouse’s brain consists of about 100 million neurons.

“This project has some technical challenges, but I think we can succeed,” Cohen said. “The financial security provided by HHMI is great.  Not only does it largely free me from the tedium and terror of applying for federal funds, but it also allows me to adopt a more long-term view of my research. With HHMI support, it becomes possible to tackle really big challenges that might take a few years to yield results.”

Of equal importance, Cohen said, is the fact that being an HHMI investigator gives researchers access to a nationwide community of exceptional colleagues, all of whom are working at the cutting edge of their respective fields.

“Funding and support are great, but many people have told me that HHMI also provides a unique community,” Cohen said. “They sponsor annual meetings where people at the very forefront of all areas of biological and biomedical research describe their ongoing projects and future dreams.  I think it will be incredibly inspiring to participate in these discussions.”

In addition to Cohen and Hoekstra, four Harvard Medical School (HMS) faculty members were named HHMI investigators. To learn more about HMS faculty, visit the Harvard Medical School site.

Not only was the long employment break a concern, but she had never used Microsoft’s Office programs. Her last employer had only used WordPerfect.

A year later, Connolly is so well-versed in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint that she is helping others, and just completed a stint as a teaching assistant in a computer class. She’s also on the job hunt, armed with a new résumé, freshly honed interview skills, and state-of-the-art knowledge of how to conduct Internet job searches, fill out Web-based applications, and upload resumes.

“I can walk through the doors of the company and feel very confident,” said Connolly. “They [the course instructors] have given that to me.”

Connolly, who lives in Brighton, credited her development to classes offered by the Harvard Allston Workforce Development Collaborative. The collaborative is part of a rich suite of programs, grants, and neighborhood improvements that stem from an agreement struck between Harvard University and the city of Boston five years ago.

The Education Portal is an example of where Harvard has gone over and above the terms of the agreement. It takes the strengths of the University and brings them to the community, to kids, to parents, and to teachers.” — Linda Kowalcky, deputy director of the Boston Redevelopment Authority

The agreement grew out of discussions between the University and the city over the construction of Harvard’s Science Complex in Allston. Although the University paused construction in 2009, implementation of the non-construction-related aspects of the agreement has continued.

What that has meant to the neighbors is the opening and expansion of the Harvard Allston Education Portal, a community-centered education facility that serves as Harvard’s front door to the neighborhood; access to certain University programs and facilities; more green space, in the form of the 1.74-acre Ray V. Mellone Park; and new resources, in the form of grants to community organizations and nonprofits that have totaled $500,000 in five years. (Information about the agreement’s benefits to the community, as well as about Harvard’s deep ties with Cambridge and Boston, are available on the new community-oriented Public Affairs website, which launched earlier this month.)

“Harvard is an engaged community partner and is committed to projects, educational and outreach programs, and other initiatives that benefit Allston,” said Kevin Casey, associate vice president of Harvard Public Affairs & Communications.  “The programs implemented over the past five years have created a solid foundation of meaningful community engagement to build upon as we enter into this next phase of community benefits associated with our new institutional master plan.”

Gavin Healy (left) and Brendan Shea go over a play at an A.R.T. workshop at the Ed Portal. File photo by Katherine Taylor

An Ed Portal “over and above”

The Harvard Allston Education Portal is perhaps the centerpiece of the University’s burgeoning relationship with the Allston-Brighton neighborhood. It opened in 2008 with mentoring and after-school enrichment programs aimed at local schoolchildren, including those at nearby Gardner Pilot Academy, the closest public school to Harvard’s Allston campus.

Over the last five years, 80 Harvard undergraduates have provided mentoring for 300 neighborhood students, and programming has grown to include the Workforce Development Collaborative’s computer and job-readiness classes, a lecture series that brings the Harvard faculty’s cutting-edge research to a community audience, and an outdoor farmers market that runs from June through October.

The free Ed Portal membership is open to any neighborhood resident. Membership has grown rapidly from 455 in 2009 to 1,700 this year. The facility has grown as well, with an annex opening last year that tripled its size.

“What began as a thoughtful but modest program of mentoring has blossomed into a full array of programs for kids, adults, seniors, and residents who speak other languages,” said Linda Kowalcky, deputy director of the Boston Redevelopment Authority.

Kowalcky, who helped to negotiate the cooperation agreement for the city, said that while there are aspects of the agreement tied to the science center construction process that have yet to be implemented, Harvard has carried out its non-construction-related obligations, and in some cases exceeded them.

“The Education Portal is an example of where Harvard has gone over and above” the terms of the agreement, Kowalcky said. “It takes the strengths of the University and brings them to the community, to kids, to parents, and to teachers.”

The key to the Education Portal’s success has been the University’s commitment to treat the relationship with the community as a core priority, said portal faculty director Robert Lue, professor of the practice of molecular and cellular biology.

Lue said he views the facility as something of a “sandbox” where innovative ideas about how to strengthen the relationship between the University and the community — while enhancing the understanding of learning — can be suggested and tried out.

“People who have great ideas and great energy need a place to do it,” Lue said. “It’s not something built separately. Sharing and outreach truly must come from the heart, and be an extension of the core priorities of the University.”

A longstanding community resource in Allston that predates the cooperation agreement is Harvard’s Ceramics Program, managed by the Office for the Arts. The program was founded in Cambridge in 1969 and has been located since 1987 at its studio at 219 Western Ave. In addition to events for all ages, presented in collaboration with the Ed Portal, the program provides adult ceramics classes, workshops, and seminars led by highly skilled artists and scholars from around the world, drawing about half of its student body from the University and half from the community. It also sponsors a semi-annual show and sale, which this month drew a record number of attendees. In the fall, the program will increase its visibility and commitment to the Allston community by moving to 224 Western Ave., where a large studio will feature enhanced amenities, including a dedicated exhibition space at street level.

Allston resident Stephanie Henry looks over the finished pieces at the ceramics studio. Managed by the Office for the Arts, the Ceramics Program was founded in Cambridge in 1969 and has been located at its studio at 219 Western Ave. in Allston since 1987. Photo by Kris Snibbe/Harvard Staff Photographer

Funding partnerships

The cooperation agreement also provides for the Harvard Allston Partnership Fund, through which the University has distributed $100,000 a year for the past five years. The funds have gone to 20 organizations, including the Friends of the Honan-Allston Library, the Oak Square YMCA, the Charles River Watershed Association, and the Fishing Academy, a nonprofit that runs summer camps for urban youth. Because of its success and popularity, the fund was extended this year for five more years as part of the planned relocations associated with the Barry’s Corner mixed-use development.

Fishing Academy Executive Director John Hoffman said the funds have provided scholarships for youth from Allston-Brighton, most of whom had never cast a line, tied a knot, or baited a hook. The weeklong camp provides two days of freshwater fishing in nearby ponds and then three days of fishing on the Boston Harbor islands, cruising aboard a local charter fishing boat, and taking a turn on the academy’s own boat.  In 2012, the academy received more than $5,000, which provided scholarships for 45 youths.

“Without support from the Harvard Allston Partnership Fund, a lot of local kids wouldn’t be able to get into the outdoors and participate in such a fun and educational experience,” Hoffman said. “It really is a program that can actually change the course of some of the kids’ lives.”

Carin O’Connor, librarian at the Boston Public Library’s Honan-Allston Branch, applied for partnership funds to enhance the library’s offerings for adult education. The funds were used to buy seven sewing machines and hire an instructor so the library could offer sewing and quilting classes. O’Connor said the partnership funds, which went to Friends of the Honan-Allston Library, are essential, since city budget cuts have meant the library had no funds for programming.

“It absolutely would not have been possible,” O’Connor said. “Adults really like getting back into making things. Why should the kids have all the fun?”

Camps and programs and scholarships, oh my!

While the Education Portal provides a physical focus for the partnership between Harvard and the Allston-Brighton community and the Partnership Fund extends resources into the community, a variety of scholarships give community members access to programs at the University.

Since 2008, 556 academic and recreational scholarships have been given to Allston-Brighton youth and adults. Each year, 50 scholarships allow adults to attend the Harvard Extension School, and each summer 50 more allow neighborhood youth to participate in summer camps for tennis, baseball, and swimming.

Last year, Erica Herman, principal of the Gardner Pilot Academy, attended instructional rounds at the Graduate School of Education’s Principals’ Center, with three other Gardner faculty members. Herman called the four days of professional-development classes “an eye-opening, challenging, wonderful opportunity,” one that should be experienced by other teachers at the school.

Herman said the Ed Portal’s mentoring program provides Pilot Academy children, ranging from kindergarten through sixth grade, a chance to interact with Harvard students and to see that college is a possibility for them.

Herman, who sits on the Education Portal’s advisory board, said that while Harvard has long had a partnership with the community, the two-way communication is better now. She looks forward to seeing the relationship continue to expand.

“There is definitely a deeper presence of Harvard in our community, in our school,” Herman said. “It’s not that Harvard has never been a partner, but the partnership has deepened. There’s a much stronger presence and a two-way conversation.”

But Hansun Hsiung, a Ph.D. student in East Asian languages and civilizations, isn’t convinced.

As part of the Harvard Horizons symposium, May 6 at a packed Sanders Theatre, Hsiung argued that distance learning began significantly earlier, with the printing of the first international textbooks in the 18th century.

“The textbook as we know it was a fairly recent invention,” developing only in the second half of the 18th century and rising in use over the course of the 19th, Hsiung told the audience.

For readers, he said, the access such books provided was considered in the same light as online learning is today. Access to the textbook “promised that every man could be his own teacher,” Hsiung said. “No matter who or where you were in the world, as long as you had the right textbook,” you — as a reader — could share in long-distance learning.

Created this year by the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS), the Harvard Horizons initiative highlights top research by doctoral students. One of the goals is to foster a greater sense of intellectual community across Harvard’s graduate schools. Another: to help students develop crucial presentation skills. The culmination of the initiative was an afternoon symposium in which eight Ph.D. students each offered five-minute presentations, styled on the popular TED talks, about a specific aspect of their current research.

Along with Hsiung, other presenters included:

• Edgar Barroso, music, “Enhancing Music, Social, and Entrepreneurial Innovation through Trans-Disciplinary Collaboration”
• Stephanie Dick, history of science, “Aftermath: Following Mathematics into the Digital”
• Alex Fattal, anthropology, “Guerrilla Marketing: Information War and the Demobilization of FARC Rebels”
• Fenna Krienen, psychology, “Big Brain Science: Strategies for Mapping the Human Brain”
• Aaron Kuan, applied physics, “Graphene Nanopores for Single-Molecule DNA Sequencing”
• Liz Maynes-Aminzade, English, “Macrorealism: How Fiction Can Help Us Understand a Networked World”
• Jeff Teigler, medical sciences, “Building Better Vaccines by Learning the Language of the Immune System”

GSAS Dean Xiao-Li Meng, Ph.D. ’90, hosted the event, which was attended by Provost Alan M. Garber ’76, Ph.D. ’82, and FAS Dean Michael Smith. In a video address, President Drew Faust emphasized the importance of the symposium.

“Communicating about one’s work outside of one’s discipline is an essential skill for scholars and researchers in the 21st century, and the women and men you are about to see are persuasive and powerful presenters,” she said. “Their presentations exemplify one of the finest gifts universities give to humanity: individuals capable of making new and significant contributions to the world of knowledge.”

While the presentations may have looked simple, they were the result of weeks of work.

After being selected from 55 applications, the eight members of the inaugural class of the Society of Horizon Scholars underwent a five-week training course that included mentoring sessions by Harvard faculty members and experts from the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning. The sessions, which focused on voice and on visual presentation skills, among other topics, were led by Laura Frahm, an assistant professor of visual and environmental studies, and Pamela Pollock, an assistant director of the Bok Center.

Harvard Horizons was the brainchild of Shigehisa Kuriyama, chair of the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations.

GSAS Dean Xiao-Li Meng: “In addition to possessing deep expertise in their field of study, our students need to be able to deliver an elevator speech, and that’s a skill that has not traditionally been emphasized. They need to be able to talk with a variety of audiences, across a variety of disciplines, about what they do and why it’s important.”

“One of the big challenges at Harvard is this: the wealth of talks and presentations constantly occurring on campus makes it hard to reach audiences beyond one’s division, or sometimes even beyond one’s department,” Kuriyama said. “Because the competition for attention is so intense, the ability to communicate one’s ideas lucidly and crisply is becoming an even more fundamental skill.”

Equally important, Kuriyama said, have been the social aspects of the program. Given the focus and time research demands of students, it’s unlikely any of the Horizon Scholars would otherwise have met each other.

“I think that’s one of the things that they found most invigorating, the social bonding and the intellectual exchange,” he said. “All of our students are curious, and eager to learn about other fields. But they have relatively few opportunities to speak with students in other divisions, especially students who have the ability to explain their research in terms that are clear and compelling to the nonspecialist. This program is designed to give them those opportunities.”

Meng said he sees the initiative as filling an important role in helping provide much-needed training in the communication skills students require — as teachers, as scholars applying for grants and fellowships, and in their professional careers, whether in academia or in policy, corporate leadership, or industrial research. Going forward, Meng said, he hopes to explore how to expand the program to ensure more graduate students receive the benefit of such training.

“We now have about 10 departments that include various courses on how to communicate,” he said. “Regardless of what your career may be — some of these students may become professors, and others may go into business or government — communication is a skill that is absolutely critical.

“If you look at how society is evolving, we’re all multitasking, every one’s attention span is getting shorter,” Meng continued. “In addition to possessing deep expertise in their field of study, our students need to be able to deliver an elevator speech, and that’s a skill that has not traditionally been emphasized. They need to be able to talk with a variety of audiences, across a variety of disciplines, about what they do and why it’s important.”

]]> 138304 Peter Reuell and Jennifer Doody FAS Communications homepage http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/050613_Horizons_139_605.jpg http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/050613_Horizons_139_605-223x149.jpg http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/050613_Horizons_139_605-280x187.jpg http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2013/05/sharp-work-in-substance-and-delivery/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/HarvardGazetteOnlineCampusCommunity/~3/XyrlJIW6zsE/ Thu, 16 May 2013 17:55:30 +0000 http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/?p=138302 Having spent their careers focused on teaching and learning, and community building, Anne Harrington and her husband, John Durant, say they are excited about the opportunities that lie before them as the new master and co-master of Pforzheimer House.

Today, Harvard College Dean Evelynn M. Hammonds announced the appointment of Harrington ’82 and Durant.

“I am very pleased that Anne and John have agreed to take on these important roles. Anne and John are tremendous scholars, passionate not only about science, but also deeply committed to teaching and learning,” said Hammonds, the Barbara Gutmann Rosenkrantz Professor of the History of Science and of African and African American Studies. “But in addition to their scholarship, they are wonderful people committed to mentoring students and fostering community in Pforzheimer. The Houses are such an enriching part of the Harvard College experience, and having a family like Anne and John’s join the Pfoho family will help strengthen that tradition.”

Harrington is a professor of the history of science, as well as director of undergraduate studies for the department, while Durant is the MIT Museum director and an adjunct professor in MIT’s Science, Technology & Society Program.

“I am very excited,” Harrington said. “We spoke to a lot of masters as a part of this process, and through those discussions we got a sense of the real joy that this kind of position can bring and also what a wonderful opportunity for service this can be.”

They will take over as House masters in the fall, bringing with them their 8-year-old son, Jamie.

Harrington said having their young child living in the House atmosphere is part of what drew them to the masters’ roles.

“Jamie will be 9 when we take over as masters, so we decided as a family that if we were going to do it, this is the time to do it,” Harrington said. “We like the idea of him growing up in an aspirational community, one that is full of creativity, and talent and diversity.”

Durant added, “I see this as enormously enriching for the family. To be surrounded by smart, energized, talented young people, why would that not just be the greatest opportunity for a young child?”

Harrington received her A.B. summa cum laude from Harvard and Ph.D. in the history of science from Oxford University. After completing postdoctoral work at the University of Freiburg in Germany, Harrington returned to teach at Harvard in 1988. The author of three books, Harrington specializes in the history of psychiatry, neuroscience, and the other mind and behavioral sciences.

“My career has also been marked by a sustained commitment to teaching, especially undergraduate teaching,” Harrington said.

In 2004, she was appointed to a five-year term as a Harvard College Professor, winning the Phi Beta Kappa Alpha Iota Prize for excellence in teaching.

Durant earned his B.A. in natural sciences and a Ph.D. in the history and philosophy of science from Queens’ College, Cambridge. In addition to his current day job as a museum director, Durant has worked to introduce science to a broader spectrum of people through the creation of the Cambridge Science Festival, and his efforts to launch similar festivals around the world.

“A lot of my career has been about community. I have spent a large part of my career in trying to engage the research community with the wider community outside of the university walls,” Durant said. “So there is something about community that I am drawn to, and now with Anne, I find myself drawn to a community within the university. I am hoping this will be exhilarating, I expect to learn a lot, I expect to be challenged and to also be stimulated immensely.”

The husband-and-wife team have also been teaching study abroad programs in England for the past five years. They will continue to do so this summer at the University of Cambridge with an eight-week program, titled “Science, Medicine, and Religion in an Age of Skepticism,” encompassing classroom study, extensive travel, and independent projects.

Durant and Harrington will be taking over for Nicholas and Erika Christakis, who have been House masters at Pforzheimer since 2009.

“I wish to extend to Nicholas and Erika Christakis my thanks for their service to our students during their time at Pforzheimer,” said Hammonds. “They have worked to foster a tight-knit House community and brought creativity and vibrancy to Pforzheimer. The College was fortunate to have them in these roles.”

Both Harrington and Durant said they look forward to fostering the tight-knit house community and traditions that currently exist at Pfoho, while introducing some new programs and events.

“There is a tremendous amount of enrichment and learning that happens just by virtue of living in a vibrant community with people with distinct talents,” Harrington said. “How can we leverage that into something greater than the sum of its parts? This is an opportunity and a challenge we take very seriously and one we are very much looking forward to.”

First awarded in 1981, the Harvard Medal recognizes extraordinary service to Harvard University. The service can relate to many aspects of University life — from teaching, leadership, and innovation to fundraising, administration, and volunteerism. President Drew Faust will present the medals at the Annual Meeting of the Harvard Alumni Association on May 30, during Commencement’s Afternoon Program.

2013 Harvard Medalists

James V. Baker has been an active citizen of Harvard, serving both his local community in England as president of the Harvard Club of the United Kingdom, as well as the global alumni community as the HAA’s first international president. He has always maintained an eye toward strengthening Harvard’s relationship with international alumni.

Baker’s commitment to the University has been consistent since his graduation from Harvard Business School (HBS). A recipient of the HAA Alumni Award in 2000, he has served in a number of different capacities, including as an alumni interviewer for both Harvard College and HBS, an HAA elected director, a vice chair of his class gift committee, chair of the Class of 1968 John Harvard Society Leadership Committee, and first marshal of his class.

His work at the local level in the U.K. saw a revitalization of the Harvard Club’s programs and a significant increase in the club’s membership. His talents were then recruited by the HAA to serve as a regional director for Europe. As such, he organized a European Leadership Conference in London, bringing together 16 European clubs from 13 different countries. The success of the conference led to it becoming a regular event, with a different European club acting each year as host. The format has subsequently been used by clubs in South America and Asia.

Following graduation from HBS, Baker worked for Goldman Sachs in London and Zurich, retiring as executive director of the equities division in 1996. He and his wife, Maggie, are the parents of Chris ’96 and Tanya.

William Thaddeus Coleman Jr. has devoted his life to public service. He was the first African-American to serve as a clerk for a U.S. Supreme Court judge, Justice Felix Frankfurter. Coleman was a contributing author to the landmark 1954 case Brown v. Board of Education, working with Thurgood Marshall at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and later becoming president of the fund. He was the second African-American to serve in a presidential cabinet, as the nation’s fourth secretary of transportation during the Ford administration. In 1995, he was a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Most recently, he has served as a judge of the U.S. Court of Military Commission Review.

Coleman was first in his class at Harvard Law School (HLS) and was an editor of the Harvard Law Review, and his call to service has extended to the University as well. He has served as an Overseer and has been a member of five Overseer visiting committees — Law School, Business School, Center for International Affairs, Institutional Policy, and Social Studies. He is a recipient of the HBS Distinguished Service Award, the Harvard Law School Association (HLSA) Award, and the Harvard Club of Washington, D.C., Public Service Award, and he has been an HLS Traphagen Speaker. He has also been a member of the HLS Dean’s Advisory Board since 1997.

Coleman and his wife, Lovida, have three children, Lovida, William, and Hardin.

Georgene Botyos Herschbach has made enduring contributions to the University and is among its most valued and selfless citizens. After serving as co-master of Currier House with her husband, Dudley, she embarked on a wide-ranging career at Harvard College, including: assistant dean and director of special programs, registrar of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, associate dean of academic programs, and dean of administration. Exemplifying all that Harvard holds dear, she worked tirelessly in support of many initiatives to enhance the experience of undergraduates.

Having earned her Ph.D. in chemistry, Herschbach brought astute analysis to shaping policy as well as advising students, mentoring fledgling administrators, and counseling senior colleagues. She collaborated with faculty in developing innovative interdisciplinary courses in the life and physical sciences, and was a co-founder of PRISE (Program for Research in Science and Engineering), a summer program in which undergraduates work with faculty on projects at the frontiers of science.

Herschbach’s family life has also been deeply involved with Harvard. While a Harvard graduate student, she married Dudley Herschbach, Ph.D. ’58, and became the mother of two daughters, Lisa, Ph.D. ’97, and Brenda, ’88, A.M. ’88, J.D. ’98.  For this family, the sum of their years as Harvard students plus Georgene’s three decades in administration and Dudley’s four on the faculty, totals a full century.

According to Pherwani, the principal of Ibis Consulting Group, diversity is often about counting heads. Inclusion is about making each individual count. “People who feel included perform to a higher level,” she said, and that “leads to a higher innovation level.”

Harvard Vice President of Human Resources Marilyn Hausammann opened the May 6 session of lively exchanges among staff attendees representing a myriad of Harvard’s Schools and Departments, from both sides of the Charles River. The purpose of the conference was to give employees “actionable tips and tools” on diversity that they could “bring back to day-to-day work,” she said.

Hausammann hoped the conference would give “opportunities for leadership skill enhancement, to aid managers as they navigate increasingly complex workplace issues, regulatory pressures, and increasingly heterogeneous work teams,” and “help with understanding and capitalizing on the benefits of an increasingly heterogeneous workforce through vigorous dialogue and interactions.”

In addition to innovation, Pherwani guided attendees through exercises focused on the impact cultures make on collaboration and teamwork, as well as the skills to help them to work effectively with and through cultural differences.

Why is this important? Besides reducing the risk of litigation, Pherwani said, studies show, for example, that organizations with women on their boards of directors are more successful. The effort also engages, and so retains, employees. Studies demonstrate that “groups of diverse problem solvers can outperform groups of high-ability problem solvers.”

The first exercise Pherwani led asked everyone to share their names, positions at Harvard, and one thing that no one would know about them or expect. So people shared their backgrounds and current avocations as a Caribbean-born and -raised country singer, a professional tennis player, a Baptist minister. The exercise offered “a small window into what people like to do outside the workplace,” and served as a unique segue into discussing diversity and inclusion.

The session also addressed effective tools to understanding and bridging key dimensions of culture, including communication styles, orientation to time and hierarchy, problem solving, and conflict, along with dos and don’ts for connecting with people.

It also addressed, and gave tips to overcome, unconscious biases, using the “FLEX” model: Focus within, Learn about others, Engage in dialogue, eXpand the options.

The conference was sponsored by the Office of the Assistant to the President for Institutional Diversity and Equity.

Instead, they said, they see the potential for cities’ public spaces to be transformed into performance spaces, contending that the challenge lies in connecting with the millions of people who attend and appreciate citywide events and festivals. This vision is what captivated the judges and landed the group $30,000 and the grand prize in the Deans’ Cultural Entrepreneurship Challenge.

“We operate in a world in which the arts have to prove their economic viability and be sustainable other than relying on government funding,” Loeb Fellow Helen Marriage said. “We need to be able to connect with this younger, diverse audience.”

She joined teammates Judy Fulton, Hokan Wong, and Wes Thomas, all of the Graduate School of Design, and Lucy Cheng ’17, as well as nine other finalist teams at the challenge’s inaugural demo day. Striving to find “art for the urban art explorer,” the online platform called Musey helps people find art in their vicinity, learn more about the artists, and even donate to projects, replacing the traditional busker’s empty hat with an app.

“This is a huge vote of confidence and encouragement,” Fulton said of the award. “We were going to go ahead with it whether we won or not, but there’s so much more momentum. Now we know we can probably work on it for a full year. It’s amazing.”

Sponsored by deans across the University and hosted by the i-lab, the competition challenged teams to spark innovations across the fields of music, visual arts, and performance.

The three runners-up, who each took home $15,000 awards, were Midas Touch, which uses 3-D printing technology to make paintings an accessible, tactile art form for the visually impaired; Culturally, an online social discovery and engagement ecosystem for the arts; and Music+1, a mobile app that provides adaptive orchestral accompaniment in real time to musicians.

Mukti Khaire, associate professor of business administration at Harvard Business School (HBS), said that in developing their projects, the students became a defining force for cultural entrepreneurship, an emerging business discipline.

“We’re at a moment in time when new ways of thinking about business and culture can have a profound impact on society,” said Khaire, who encouraged the deans and Harvard’s artistic partners to create the challenge. “The arts are essential to civil society, and if artists and artistic organizations are to thrive, we have to think about new models. The ideas the students have presented as part of the challenge are a significant step in the right direction.”

Announced in the fall and supported by the Office of the President as well as friends and alumni of Harvard, the challenge celebrates artistic and entrepreneurial visions, and grows out of an interdisciplinary partnership among HBS, the Division of Arts and Humanities in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), and the Silk Road Project under the leadership of Yo-Yo Ma ’76.

The inaugural challenge attracted entries from 70 teams across 13 Harvard Schools.

The three runners-up each took home $15,000 awards. One of the winning teams developed Midas Touch, which uses 3-D printing technology to make paintings an accessible, tactile art form for the visually impaired.

The event mirrors its sister project, the Deans’ Health and Life Sciences Challenge, in asking students to develop solutions to some of the world’s greatest social issues by disrupting traditional business markets. The Deans’ Health and Life Sciences Challenge will announce its own winner and runners-up later this month.

HBS Dean Nitin Nohria, who presented the awards along with his co-chair, FAS Dean Diana Sorensen, commented on how the challenge broke down boundaries.

“Who would have thought, for example, that the two of us would be working together on an endeavor of this kind?” he said to Sorenson. “To my mind, that’s what this venture is about: making unexpected connections and enabling remarkable things.  In many ways, that’s the spirit of the i-lab.”

Located at the frontier of Harvard’s Allston campus, the i-lab is Harvard’s newest home for entrepreneurial activity, helping students to achieve their innovative and entrepreneurial dreams. Earlier this year, the i-lab hosted three workshops supporting students in formulating their challenge proposals. The finalists were awarded tailored programming, expert mentoring, and a $5,000 grant to polish their proposals.

“Many of the problems we are facing today are interdisciplinary in nature. These teams have leveraged their passions, talents, and learning from all corners of the University to meet these challenges head on,” said Gordon Jones, managing director of the i-lab. “The i-lab and Harvard are uniquely positioned to build on students’ skill sets as they tackle big problems and offer big solutions.”

“Feedback is always positive, but last year, 100 percent of Harvard hiring managers said they would participate in the program again,” he said. The program employs local high school students from Boston and Cambridge on Harvard’s campus during the summer months. For some young people, it’s their first job.

Cain, who has been coordinating and overseeing the program for eight years, added that those high approval ratings go both ways, since many students come back to work at Harvard for several summers. Any department is eligible to participate in the program, whether the position is full-time or for just a few hours a week.

The cost of having a teen employee work full-time the whole term from July to August is less than $2,500, and hours and dates can be adjusted to fit a department’s needs and means.  The program also supports Harvard staff members in submitting job postings, receiving student résumés, and advising how to manage high school students.

Josh Bruno is the school-to-career and employer engagement director with the Boston Private Industry Council, which recruits, interviews, and prepares Boston teens for their summer jobs and coordinates with Harvard. He has a special appreciation for the initiative, since his own first job was in Widener Library.

“I was literally in the stacks,” he said, working amid the microfilm and microfiche.

Now running the private-sector component of Boston Mayor Thomas Menino’s summer jobs campaign, Bruno says Harvard has been “a historic partner” in putting public school students to work during summers.

“A lot of our students are contributing to their family income,” Bruno said, adding that any public school student can apply by contacting a Boston Private Industry Council counselor.  In Cambridge, teens can apply to work at Harvard through the Mayor’s Summer Youth Employment Program. “At a place like Harvard, students meet people they might never otherwise encounter,” Bruno said. “And on the employer side, they get super-talented, very motivated young people to come help them out.”

Speaking from the Harvard perspective, Cain hopes that more departments will connect with the program.

“These are talented, hard-working kids, and they bring a great perspective and energy to the workplace,” he said. “So many of them never imagined they would ever set foot in Harvard … so this breaks down the idea that Harvard is out of reach or inaccessible to them.

“The student gets wonderful work experience, and Harvard gets a great employee for the summer,” he said.

“Harvard has worked with Cambridge and Boston for more than a decade to provide employment opportunities for local youth, and we are really encouraging hiring managers to bring on a teen in their department this summer,” said Christine Heenan, vice president of Harvard Public Affairs and Communications. That department and human resources have teamed up again this year to support and promote the program to the Harvard community.

“This is a long-term partnership with a long-term future,” she added.

As the students earn and learn, Boston and Cambridge get Harvard’s support in their efforts to provide an enriching summer experience and prepare local teens to meet the demands of the workplace.

“The city is committed to teen employment and understands the important impact that early work experiences have on a young person’s long-term success,” said Sue Walsh of Cambridge’s Office of Workforce Development. “Harvard continues to be our most important partner in providing quality work opportunities to Cambridge youth, hiring more teens than any other employer/organization in the city.”

For more information on the program, please call 617.496.4213 or visit the Harvie website and click on the link Summer Youth Employment Program. Hiring managers can learn about how their departments can make a difference in young, motivated students’ lives through summer jobs.

Goins was honored for her dedication and service to her fellow students in their academic pursuits. She has served at the BSC as a peer tutor, an ESL peer consultant, a reading course assistant, and a posterer. She was a peer tutor in Spanish and Arabic, and her experience learning languages informed her work as an ESL peer consultant supporting international students in polishing their English language skills.

Mulumba was honored for his contributions to the Real Talk @ 5 Linden initiative in its inaugural year. Real Talk is a Friday afternoon salon where Harvard students meet for down-to-earth conversations about ideas and life. Mulumba was instrumental in helping to launch and sustain the initiative, coming up with the title, generating topics, publicizing the events, and updating its Facebook page and listserv. Most importantly, he set a tone of openness, sharing, and learning at the conversations.

For more information.

President Drew Faust said that she was struck by the values at the root of the finalist projects. “When we opened the i-lab and launched the President’s Challenge last year, we did so with the hope of attracting individuals with a shared passion for applying knowledge to improve the world,” she said. Faust added that many of the finalist teams connected students from Schools across the University, supporting the theme of “One Harvard.”

Patrick Ho, J.D. ’12, co-founder of Vaxess Technologies, which won the inaugural President’s Challenge in 2012, explained how winning the award transformed the Cambridge-based startup company. The most important asset in the face of entrepreneurial uncertainty wasn’t information or stability, but “confidence — overwhelming confidence in the face of the unknown,” he said.

“We certainly would not still be here if not for the support provided by President Faust and Harvard University — and given the ambition of your ideas, I can say without exaggeration that it is a benefit not only to the University, but also to the world, that you are now also about to set out on this path thanks to the President’s Challenge,” he said.

Finalist teams demonstrated innovative solutions to global problems — some of which have already been set in motion. Nucleik — led by Scott Crouch ’13, Florian Mayr ’13, and Matthew Polega ’13 — created information management software to help law enforcement agencies analyze gang activity. Police in Springfield have been using the tool since last August.

Crouch said that the outdated software systems used by police — “like something out of the ’70s and ’80s” — inspired the team to bring law enforcement analysis into the digital age. Nucleik restructures the way data is entered and used, giving officers faster access to complex information and relationships.

“The police love it,” Crouch said. “There have been instances when they’ve been able to learn new information about gang members from the analysis, and stop a shooting before it happens. It’s not predictive policing; it’s science.”

Crouch said that the support provided to each of the 10 finalist teams, including a $5,000 grant, dedicated space in the i-lab, and guidance from an expert mentor on how to develop the projects, was “phenomenal.”

“The workshops and the mentorship have helped us to hone our business model and our approach to entering these cities,” he said. “And the additional funds have allowed us to work with more departments outside Mass. and increase our presence nationally.”

Another team, Quantamerix, is inventing a low-cost diagnostic device to test newborn babies for easily treatable diseases. Stephanie Yaung, a Medical School student in the Harvard-MIT Health Sciences Technology program, said that being a finalist in the challenge has broadened the scope of the project immensely.

“The workshops we’ve done and the mentors who were assigned to us really helped us to think more deeply about the impact we could make and can make,” she said. “Not just how to implement it, but how to fit into the health care workflow of a country like China, for example, or how to get stakeholders on board — even other applications we hadn’t considered like home monitoring.”

Sightline Productions, which merges ethics, theater, genetics, and health, is a collaborative effort that transforms the real-life experience of a patient into a performance project, shedding light on the emotional and mental challenges of a diagnosis and condition.

“All of us have to face these questions at some point in our lives,” said Mariel Pettee ’14. “Seeing a performance of how someone has been affected by these problems on an emotional level connects [viewer] to it in a very visceral sort of way. It’s not a historical, stodgy thing — it’s accessible, and modern, and relevant.”

Pettee said that with help from the President’s Challenge seed money, the team has been in contact with Columbia Medical School, which has programming in narrative medicine — a field that helps doctors to interact and connect with patients on a personal level.

“The President’s Challenge really helped us with scope,” Pettee said. “Hopefully we’ll be able to bring this production to Columbia, and get scientists and artists together to have these conversations, create more of these professional pieces for the public, and develop socially relevant work.”

Gordon Jones, managing director of the i-lab, said: “We’re thrilled to host this challenge again. This year, we’ve introduced workshops and activities for all entrants to the challenge, not just the 10 finalist teams, to enable everyone to develop and get an idea of how to progress their ideas.“

The idea behind One Harvard, Jones said, is to create “a place where Schools pursue their excellence by coming together across disciplines, in collaboration and support of students and faculty — we’re proud to be part of that. The i-lab and the President’s Challenge, which we celebrate here today, are just two examples of One Harvard at work.”

Graduate School of Arts and Science student George Xu demonstrates his team’s project, Quantamerix, for President Faust.

]]> 137833 Jennifer Doody Harvard Correspondent category http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/050713_Demo_376_605.jpg http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/050713_Demo_376_605-223x149.jpg http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/050713_Demo_376_605-280x187.jpg http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2013/05/top-problem-solvers/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/HarvardGazetteOnlineCampusCommunity/~3/G7mtgUHz7F8/ Thu, 09 May 2013 14:59:08 +0000 http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/?p=137872 Richard J. Murnane, the Juliana W. and William Foss Thompson Professor of Education and Society at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE), will serve as acting dean of the HGSE, President Drew Faust announced today.

Murnane will take up the post on July 1, when Dean Kathleen McCartney leaves Harvard to become president of Smith College, and will serve until the HGSE’s new dean is appointed and in place.

“Dick Murnane has long been an admired leader within the Ed School faculty, recognized for his excellent scholarship and teaching, his wide experience and collegial style, and his deep devotion to the School and its beneficial impact on education policy and practice,” Faust said. “I am grateful to him for taking on this interim role, and I know he can count on the advice and support of people throughout the HGSE community.”

Said Murnane: “I am honored that President Faust has asked me to serve as acting dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, an institution that has a special place in my heart. I am pleased to serve the School during this period of transition.

“My colleagues and I are gratified by President Faust’s efforts to find a dean who will lead our vibrant School well,” added Murnane, who is a member of the faculty advisory committee working with Faust on the search. “I believe that the search is going well and that we will have a new dean soon.”

Murnane joined the HGSE faculty in 1983. A leading scholar at the nexus of education and economics, he is also a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research.

In recent years, with colleagues Frank Levy and David Autor of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Murnane has examined how computer-based technological change has affected skill demands in the United States economy and the effectiveness of education policies in responding to such demands. With Greg Duncan of the University of California, Irvine, he has studied how rising family income equality in the U.S. has affected educational opportunities for children from low-income families and the effectiveness of strategies for improving such children’s life chances. In 2011, with his HGSE colleague John Willett, Murnane published “Methods Matter: Improving Causal Inference in Educational and Social Science Research” (Oxford University Press).

A graduate of Williams College, Murnane holds his M.A. and Ph.D. in economics from Yale. Before coming to Harvard in 1983, he was a member of the economics faculty at the University of Pennsylvania and then at Yale. He is a member of the Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Education as well as a fellow of the Society of Labor Economists. Currently a member of the boards of the Spencer Foundation and MDRC, he has previously served on the board of directors of the National Academy of Education, on the policy council of the Association of Public Policy and Management, and on various committees and advisory boards of the National Research Council.

In a message to the HGSE community, Faust said that the search for a long-term dean “is progressing well, thanks to the helpful counsel of the faculty advisory committee working with me on the search and to the insightful advice I have received from so many people across the School and the University.

“For now,” she added, “with the academic year nearing a close, and with Kathy McCartney approaching the end of her outstanding deanship, I wanted to let you know about Dick Murnane’s interim appointment. Please join me in thanking him for his leadership and his willingness to serve — and in again thanking Kathy McCartney for her remarkable service to Harvard.”

But when she was a senior in high school, that intuitive ability began slipping away. Diagnosed with postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, an autonomic nerve system condition, Lubetkin was “robbed of her passion,” and became “a girl who danced no more.”

Deferring her first year at Harvard, Lubetkin initially despaired when she realized she was now a “former” dancer. But while she may no longer be able to perform, Lubetkin said choosing to let go of that former self, while still celebrating that former identity, allowed her to reconnect with the creative spirit that made her want to dance in the first place.

“My passion for free and authentic expression — that very passion which attracted me to dance in the first place — still lives,” she said, during the first in a series of “Senior Talks” on April 30.

“Life will make ‘formers’ out of all of us at some point,” she said, adding that it would be reductive to suggest that loss is a gift. “But I can say that letting go … bestows upon us the freedom to sculpt new selves.”

The Adams House resident’s inspiring story was the first of the 13 “Senior Talks” scheduled during Morning Prayers, held at 8:45 a.m. Monday through Saturday in the Memorial Church.

Nathaniel Katz, Epps Fellow at the Memorial Church, said that although undergraduates often speak at Morning Prayers, the “Senior Talks” series gives seniors the opportunity to reflect upon their time at Harvard.

In a Morning Prayers address the day before “Senior Talks” began, Katz, who coordinated the series, said that it evolved out of discussions with seniors in an effort to help them say goodbye to Harvard and return to “the big real world.”

“This year, these questions hold special importance for me because, like our seniors, I am preparing to say goodbye to this extraordinary place,” said Katz, whose fellowship at the church is coming to an end. By saying goodbye, Katz said, we acknowledge and show gratitude for the impact we have on one another’s lives: both for the ways in which others have changed us, and the ways in which we have changed them.

“These 13 mornings will provide an opportunity for wisdom to be passed down from seniors to underclassmen, and for the entire campus to celebrate the contributions of the Class of 2013 to our Harvard community,” Katz said. “We’re hoping that each House will bring its unique spirit to the Porch for all to experience and enjoy.”

The “Senior Talks” initiative follows the recent inauguration of the steps of Memorial Church as the Porch, a new common space dedicated to “the grace that comes from simply spending time in community,” Katz added.

One senior from each of Harvard’s Houses will speak over the next several days. The May 9 speaker is Fred-Ivo Baca of Leverett House. The talks conclude with Cassandra Thomson of Winthrop House on May 16. For a full list of speakers, visit the Memorial Church’s website.

Visitas was scheduled to be held April 20-22, but the search for the remaining Boston Marathon bombing suspect forced Harvard officials to cancel the program following a security lockdown of the Greater Boston area.

“Even at this difficult time, our undergraduates immediately reached out to prospective members of the Class of 2017 through social media, demonstrating a spontaneous devotion to Harvard that had a powerful effect on students’ decisions to come to Harvard,” said William R. Fitzsimmons, dean of admissions and financial aid. “Their concern for the students who were unable to visit Harvard was evident — and their outreach was especially appreciated, given the extraordinary circumstances of the tragedy that had occurred in Boston. The grace under pressure of our undergraduates was inspiring to all of us here at Harvard as well as to the new members of the Class of 2017.”

Harvard students made YouTube videos that showcased student groups and dormitories, including Wigglesworth Hall and Dunster House. The Harvard-Radcliffe Veritones and the Institute of Politics participated, and the Office of Admissions itself created its own virtual welcoming video.

The Admissions Office coordinated this activity via its website, email, and the Class of 2017 Facebook group created earlier in the year.  It also offered five Google+ student panels on study abroad, residential life (featuring student bloggers), advice from the Senior Class Committee, multicultural perspectives, and the freshman experience. Harvard students, faculty, and staff used the #virtualvisitas hashtag on Twitter to connect with admitted students and answer their many questions.

Leading the Admissions Office virtual outreach was Amy Lavoie, director of digital communications. Administrative Director Vaughn Waters, Grace Cheng, and Mary Magnuson were also important in establishing a communications strategy that allowed Harvard admissions staff to reach other Harvard administrators and to keep prospective members of the Class of 2017 fully informed of events transpiring in the Cambridge and Boston areas.

Students on the Undergraduate Admissions Council, the Undergraduate Minority Recruitment Program, and the Harvard Financial Aid Initiative redoubled their efforts after the cancellation of Visitas by once again calling and emailing students and hosting those who were able to visit Cambridge after the lockdown was lifted.

The 15,000 alumni interviewing volunteers around the world also reached out to admitted students by telephone, email, and hastily arranged local meetings.  Admissions staff, other administrators, and even Adams House Co-Master Sean Palfrey met stranded students at the airport during the lockdown to assist them with hotel arrangements and transportation. Dean of Administration and Finance Leslie Kirwan was able to reach out to Massport officials, who responded by creating an impromptu meeting area the students quickly named “Terminas.”

“We can never thank our alumni, faculty, and staff enough for all they did over the past two weeks and throughout the year,” said Marlyn E. McGrath, director of admissions.  “But we are particularly grateful to the co-directors of Visitas, Michael Esposito and Amelia Muller, assisted by Jake Foley, Bryce Gilfillian, and Tia Ray, who played a critical role in shifting Visitas to a virtual visiting experience.”

The contributions they made will form the basis for innovations to be used in recruiting the Class of 2018.  Already the admissions staff is on the road visiting 60 cities with travel partners Duke, Georgetown, Penn, and Stanford.

Financial aid was a crucial consideration for a large segment of those enrolling in the Class of 2017.  “Harvard’s financial aid program has been greatly enhanced in recent years, opening the doors as never before to low- and middle-income students,” said Sarah C. Donahue, director of financial aid.

This coming year, Harvard will spend $182 million on undergraduate financial aid.  Seventy percent of Harvard students receive some type of financial aid.  Almost 60 percent of Harvard students receive need-based grants, and the average annual cost to their families is $12,000. Twenty percent of Harvard families have annual incomes of $65,000 or less and have no expected parental contribution.

Families with incomes from $65,000 to $150,000 and with typical assets pay from zero to 10 percent of their annual incomes, and families with higher incomes can still receive need-based aid depending on individual circumstances, including having multiple children in college or unusual medical expenses.

Students are not required to take out loans, and home equity is not used in determining financial aid.  As always, students are asked to contribute toward the cost of their own education by working 10 to 12 hours per week during the school year and obtaining a summer job.

“The Financial Aid Office was open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. weekdays during April, and we were able to reassure anxious students that Harvard remains affordable during these difficult financial times. None of this would have been possible without the commitment of Michael D. Smith, dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Evelynn M. Hammonds, dean of Harvard College, and Drew Faust, president of Harvard University,” said Donahue.

At this time, men make up 52.4 percent of the class. Prospective social science concentrators constitute 28.3 percent, with 24.3 percent interested in the biological sciences, 18 percent in the humanities, 13.3 percent in engineering and computer science, 8.4 percent in the physical sciences, 7 percent in mathematics, and 0.7 percent undecided.  African-Americans make up 9.4 percent of the class, Asian-Americans 20.9 percent, Latinos 10 percent, and Native Americans and Native Hawaiians 2.3 percent.  International students constitute 11.1 percent of the class.

This year’s high yield means that the Class of 2017 is currently full. It is possible that later this month or in June a small number will be admitted from the waiting list.

Harvard’s yield is particularly notable because the College does not offer athletic or other non-need-based scholarships. In addition, Harvard’s Early Action program, unlike binding Early Decision programs, allows admitted students to apply elsewhere and asks only that they reply by May 1 after comparing other offers of admission and financial aid.  Such freedom and flexibility give students more time to choose the college that provides the best match, a contributing factor to Harvard’s nearly 98 percent graduation rate.

“The Class of 2017 was chosen through the most selective admissions process in Harvard’s history — from a record applicant pool in excess of 35,000,” said Fitzsimmons.  “But beyond these statistics, their strong personal qualities and character shone through during the challenging days of the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing and the uncertainties surrounding the cancellation of Visitas. Because of these experiences and the bonding that took place among future classmates at the airport and through social media, we have high expectations that they will prove to be a memorable Harvard Class.”

“We get to hear from a lot of incredible individuals who come to speak at Harvard, but it’s rare to hear from someone who has achieved such success and who not only can relate to our lives as undergraduates, but specifically wants to share her story with us, the Class of 2013,” said First Marshal Nina Yancy ’13.

An acclaimed journalist, O’Brien graduated from Harvard in 1988 and has since reported on breaking news from around the globe. In 2011, she won an Emmy for “Crisis in Haiti” in the category of Outstanding Live Coverage of a Current News Story — Long Form. O’Brien was part of the coverage teams that earned CNN George Foster Peabody Awards for its coverage of the BP oil spill and Hurricane Katrina, and an Alfred I. duPont Award for its coverage of the Southeast Asia tsunami. The National Association of Black Journalists named O’Brien the Journalist of the Year and she won the Edward R. Murrow and RTDNA/UNITY award for “Latino in America” in 2010. O’Brien has been integral in hosting and developing the award-winning “Black in America” franchise, one of CNN’s most successful international franchises. In 2010, she wrote a critically lauded memoir, “The Next Big Story: My Journey through the Land of Possibilities,” which chronicled her biggest reporting moments and how her upbringing and background influenced these experiences.

“This is a journalist who has done work on issues that have ignited so many members of our class during our time in college — from social justice to disaster relief,” said Second Marshal Scott Yim ’13.

O’Brien recently entered into a unique production and distribution agreement with the network to produce long-form programming specials through her company, Starfish Media Group. Launching in June, the media production company and distributor will be dedicated to uncovering and producing empowering pieces that take a challenging look at often-divisive issues of race, class, wealth, opportunity, poverty, and personal stories.

Class Day ceremonies will take place at 2 p.m. on the day before Harvard’s 362nd Commencement.

They are the 49 diverse artists and scholars who have been selected as fellows at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. They will have a year of discovery in which to write books, create art, pioneer research, and bring together theory and practice.

During the 2013-2014 academic year, these women and men from across Harvard and around the world come to Radcliffe to pursue projects across the arts, humanities, sciences, and social sciences. They are junior faculty, tenured faculty, and independent scholars and artists who will spend a year at Harvard’s institute for advanced study to pursue and enhance their projects in a rich, multidisciplinary environment.

Dean Lizabeth Cohen, a former Radcliffe Fellow herself, explained, “We provide innovative thinkers with the time and space to follow new ideas wherever they lead. Most scholars and artists are consumed with teaching responsibilities, administrative duties, and short-term deadlines for producing work, so a year at Radcliffe helps them reconnect with their intellectual and artistic passions and helps the public benefit from their brilliance.”

We provide innovative thinkers with the time and space to follow new ideas wherever they lead. — Radcliffe Dean Lizabeth Cohen

Only 5 percent of applicants were accepted to the fellowship program, an admission rate comparable to Harvard College.

The fellows hail from across the United States and around the world, including India, Turkey, and the United Kingdom.

Fifteen fellows are members of the Harvard faculty — from the College, Law School, and Medical School — and will pursue projects in art history, biology, economics, history, mathematics, medical science, music, philosophy, physics, political science, religion, and sociology.

Here are some of the 2013–14 fellows:

Lucia Allais, a junior professor of architecture at Princeton University, will undertake a project called “Designs of Destruction: Architectural Preservation in the Age of Total War” about the process of protecting monuments of art and architecture from destructions of war and modernization in the 20th century.

Political scientist Claudine Gay, in Harvard’s Government Department, will be exploring connections between the distribution of funds through the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit Program and electoral support. The title of the project is “Policy and Patronage: The Distributive Politics of American Housing Policy.”

Historian Linda Gordon, from New York University, will write a book about 20th century American social movements that will include the Settlement House movement, the Ku Klux Klan, several New Deal era movements, the Civil Rights Movement, and SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) and women’s liberation. The title of her project is “Social Movements in the 20th Century U.S.: Modeling Historical Analysis.”

Director and playwright Sean Graney, the founder of the Hypocrites theater company in Chicago, will work on adapting the 32 surviving Greek tragedies into an epic theater event called “All Our Tragic” that brings together modern verse, humor, and universal themes in contemporary times. While at Radcliffe, he will work closely with colleagues at the American Repertory Theater, where he is currently directing “Pirates of Penzance.”

Jennifer Hoffman is an associate professor of physics at Harvard who last year won the prestigious Roslyn Abramson Award given annually to recognize assistant or associate professors for accessibility, dedication, and excellence in undergraduate teaching. During her fellowship year, she will pursue her own research priorities with a project called “Enabling Nanoscale Imaging of Complex Oxides through Novel Film Growth Techniques.”

Economist Michael Kremer, the Gates Professor of Developing Societies in the Department of Economics at Harvard, will bring together Harvard faculty and other experts to focus on “Water, Health, and Human Behavior.” The project is designed to apply ideas from the fields of household and behavioral economics to the prevention of water-related diseases in Africa and South Asia.

Author Julie Orringer, who wrote the novel “The Invisible Bridge” and “How to Breathe Underwater,” a collection of short stories, comes to the Radcliffe Institute to write her next book. Orringer’s subject is the impact of American journalist-turned-rescue worker Varian Fry, who saved thousands of people — especially artists and writers — during the Second World War.

Tadashi Tokieda is the director of studies in mathematics at Trinity Hall, University of Cambridge (UK). He has collected and created dozens of toys that are useful for entertainment, for research, and for “communicating surprises of mathematics and science.”  For his project “Toys in Applied Mathematics,” Tokieda will devise new toys, improve old toys, and develop multimedia illustrations of how they work.

These fellows, and more than 40 others, begin their fellowship year in August. Over the course of the year, they will share their work through presentations and gallery exhibits. Many will engage Harvard College students in their projects as research assistants.

More information about the individuals and their projects is online.

GAZETTE: Who will make up the task force?

BARRON: The idea is to have a broad representation of the various components of the University, the various Schools that make it up; FAS [Faculty of Arts and Sciences] obviously, but the professional Schools as well, and a range of different actors within the University community, from faculty to administrators. [A list of the task force members.]

GAZETTE: What is the task force’s mandate?

BARRON:  The goal is to develop forward-looking recommendations concerning electronic communications and our policies regarding privacy of them, and access to them. The precipitating event was the controversy over the searches that became known relatively recently, but our real mandate is to devise recommendations about what the policy should be for the University community going forward with respect to electronic communications generally.

GAZETTE: Can you describe the process you will undertake?

BARRON: The first stage is information gathering. The way I think of it is if you are going to make recommendations about a policy, you really need to establish the baseline first; what is the existing policy? And there’s actually some confusion about that, either because policies that are in place aren’t known, or policies aren’t in place, or policies may be in conflict with one another. Part of the existing baseline consists of the actual practices, which we want to get a better understanding of, as well as what peer institutions do. We also want to get a feel for what the general expectations in a university community have been so that we can make sensible recommendations on the basis of a clear understanding of what is already in place or is understood to be in place, even if it’s not clearly in place.

At our very first meeting we’ll explore as much as we already know about what’s out there, but I think a main task of the committee is going to be to figure out what it is we need to know. We are absolutely going to look at other schools and many other contexts in which this issue arises within institutions that seem relevant. I think we want to know about other schools, but we also want to know about other workplaces, not necessarily because they map on to ours, but seeing the differences in how they’ve constructed polices might give us insight into what’s different about our community.

GAZETTE: Beyond the initial meetings, what will the process look like?

BARRON: I have every expectation that the recommendations of the committee will be a product of a broadly consultative process with the University community. For them to be meaningful recommendations, they are going to have to be the result of a lot of discussion with a lot of different communities within the University, including students, faculty, and staff.

GAZETTE: Will the recommendations be made public?

BARRON:  The aim of the task force is to assist the president and the University as a whole with coming up with a set of policies that would be better than whatever is in place now, and for that to happen they have to be known.  We ultimately are reporting to the president and the Corporation, and the president has said the recommendations will be submitted for community discussion.

GAZETTE: How will you incorporate the work of Michael Keating, the Boston lawyer who is conducting an outside review of Harvard’s recent email searches?

BARRON: To make meaningful recommendations we have to have a good understanding of what the baseline we are operating against is, and part of that baseline will be reflected in his findings, because that will give us a sense of, at least in this one salient incident, how the policies actually operate in practice.

GAZETTE: Is email privacy different at private universities vs. public ones?

BARRON: I am sure there are legal differences because we are not subject to state Freedom of Information Act laws, and sunshine laws and open records laws in the way public universities can be. But I’d say as a class, universities and particularly large-scale universities, complex universities like Harvard, are unusual institutions on a variety of dimensions because of their mission, but also because of their complexity and the variety of roles that they play, which aren’t even typical of a traditional employer, and so all of that has to be considered in making a recommendation about what kind of electronic communication privacy policy we should have.

GAZETTE: Are there different levels of privacy needed to protect academic freedom, as opposed to administrative work being performed by administrators, many of whom are also faculty members? If so, is it possible to have a policy that distinguishes among those areas?

BARRON: There are a lot of different ways the committee can think about this issue. There’s the issue about the nature of the information that’s in question, there are issues about the position of the people who are handling the information and there are issues about the purposes for which the information is being sought. All of these are dimensions of the problem that the committee is going to have to think through.

GAZETTE: How do you feel like your background at the Justice Department, and your experience at Harvard, both as student at the College, and a student and professor at Harvard Law School, will help you in your role as the head of the task force?

BARRON: The legal issues in the government context of email and electronic communication privacy is something that I encountered at the Justice Department, so there is that level of familiarity with it, and there is a legal dimension to some of the questions that surround email privacy both in terms of legal obligations to disclose in certain instances, and in terms of legal rights to maintain privacy.

But fundamentally the issue here is a policy issue for the University, as to how it wants to structure, within the legal bounds that there are, its privacy policy concerning electronic communications, and that’s something that my role as a faculty member prepares me for much as anything. I have been part of the Harvard community for now nearly 30 years on and off, as a student, as an untenured faculty member, as a faculty member, as a member of a committee, now as a member of a University committee, in a professional school, being taught by people at FAS, as a member of the campus newspaper, so like a lot of people who have been here for a long time, and that’s one of the great virtues of a university, you play many, many different roles and you see lots of ways in which the university operates and serves its mission. And I think like every person on the committee, including people who have a spent a lot of time at other universities and therefore have the perspective of what the expectations of those communities are, really it’s that insight as much as anything that will be most useful on the committee.

GAZETTE: Why is it important to get this right in the broader context of the principles that are important in an academic landscape?

BARRON: The recent controversy highlighted for people in the University something that in many other domains people are becoming increasingly aware of, which is their incredible dependence and engagement with electronic communications as the oxygen for their productive engagement in whatever endeavors they do, and at the same time their recognition of the privacy concerns that that engagement raises. And it’s not a shock that the University as a community would have to collectively figure out how it wants to manage that balance. But recent events have given an occasion to really think through those issues in a serious way, and I think the main aim of the task force is to help lead that reflective process and then turn it into something that’s operational and practical if we can.

GAZETTE: How will the University be able to ensure effective implementation of any recommendations?

BARRON: This is something that every lawyer knows, but every person also knows, that there’s the formal established policy, then there is the way things actually operate, and we want to be very mindful of making policy recommendations that are sensitive, particularly in this area, to making sure that they are transparent to people and they are useable at the same time. In this realm, a lot of attention needs to be given, not to just what the policies are, but how you communicate those policies to people.

GAZETTE: Do you anticipate that this process will result in an overarching University policy?

BARRON: It’s too early to assess that, but certainly one of the aims of the committee is to figure out for the University whether it makes sense to have a uniform University policy. I think at the level of principle, we are fundamentally a university and have an academic mission. We are in the business of educating, and researching, and learning together, and any policy for the University is going to grow out of that mission. But at the same time we are an incredibly large, complicated, multifaceted institution and any policy is going to have to be sensitive to that reality, too. So I think a major charge of the committee is to figure out for the University what is the best way going forward in devising an electronic communications policy; how sensitive does it have to be to these contexts and in what ways can it be more general. And I think that is going to be the focus of our efforts over the next many months.

GAZETTE: Will the recommendations apply to students?

BARRON: The mandate of the committee is to the entire University, which obviously encompasses students. There are unique questions that are posed by student communications and we are going to consider how our broad recommendations would engage with that.  An important task of the committee is going to be to consult with student representatives and those who are responsible for students to make sure we have a good understanding of that set of questions.

Patricia Byrne
Executive Dean
Harvard Divinity School

Emma Dench
Professor of the Classics and of History
Faculty of Arts and Sciences

Karen Emmons
Associate Dean for Research & Professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences
Harvard School of Public Health

Ann Forsyth
Professor of Urban Planning
Harvard Graduate School of Design

Jeffry Frieden
Stanfield Professor of International Peace
Faculty of Arts and Sciences

Archon Fung
Ford Foundation Professor of Democracy and Citizenship
Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation
John F. Kennedy School of Government

John Goldberg
Eli Goldston Professor of Law
Harvard Law School

Rakesh Khurana
Marvin Bower Professor of Leadership Development
Harvard Business School
Master of Cabot House
Harvard College

Jennifer Leaning
Director, François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights
Harvard University
FXB Professor of the Practice of Health and Human Rights
Harvard School of Public Health
Associate Professor of Medicine
Harvard Medical School

Nonie Lesaux
Professor of Education
Harvard Graduate School of Education

Barbara McNeil
Ridley Watts Professor of Health Care Policy
Harvard Medical School

Daniel Meltzer
Story Professor of Law
Harvard Law School

Richard Mills
Executive Dean for Administration
Harvard Medical School

John Gregory Morrisett
Allen B. Cutting Professor of Computer Science
Harvard School of Engineering & Applied Sciences

Jonathan Lee Walton
Plummer Professor of Christian Morals
& Pusey Minister in the Memorial Church
Faculty of Arts and Sciences
Professor of Religion and Society
Harvard Divinity School

Staff to the committee

Marilyn Hausammann
Vice President for Human Resources
Harvard University

Robert Iuliano
Vice President & General Counsel
Harvard University

Anne Margulies
Vice President, University Chief Information Officer
Harvard University

 Leah Rosovsky
Vice President for Strategy & Programs
Harvard University

A live stream of the event will be available online at harvard.edu/live-stream.

Best known for his 2012 smash hit “Gangnam Style,” the multiplatinum single that merged Korean flavor with global pop panache, PSY has mesmerized critics and fans worldwide with his enigmatic dance moves and unforgettable presence. The first music video in history to surpass 1 billion views on YouTube, the song went on to become both the “most-viewed” and “most-liked” on the site. His 2013 follow-up “Gentleman” has nearly 300 million views in three weeks and set a new YouTube record with 38 million views in a single day.

For more information, visit the Korea Institute.

In the past year, Harvard researchers have also shown that record warmth is leading to earlier flowering in springtime and that we can expect natural variations in sea level rise across the world as ice sheets melt. Governments, businesses, and higher education institutions are increasingly working together to address these challenges, finding that a collective response is more powerful than an individual one.

With this cooperative spirit in mind, the city of Cambridge, Harvard University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) today signed the “Community Compact for a Sustainable Future,” aimed at leveraging the intellectual and entrepreneurial capacity of the public-private sectors in Cambridge to build a healthy, livable, and sustainable future.

“Climate change is a crisis that requires a comprehensive and collaborative response,” said Cambridge Mayor Henrietta Davis, who worked for more than a year with Harvard, MIT, and city officials to draft the compact. “Cambridge is uniquely positioned to serve as a leader in this response: We have unmatched intellectual capital and a culture of innovation and commitment to the environment.”

Davis was joined by City Manager Robert Healy, MIT President L. Rafael Reif, and Harvard President Drew Faust in signing the compact. The signing ceremony was held in MIT’s Barton Auditorium prior to an urban design symposium hosted by MIT Professor Christoph Reinhart.

Reinhart, a former Harvard Graduate School of Design professor, recently launched an online map showing electricity yields and associated costs for installing solar panels on Cambridge rooftops. Reinhart’s project and the symposium were highlighted as examples of the benefits that come from the sort of collaboration between universities, government, and businesses that the compact seeks to encourage. “We are here because we believe in a transition to more sustainable urban living worldwide,” said Reinhart.

The compact lays out a clear framework for how Harvard, MIT, and Cambridge, along with other partners, will collectively improve the health and well-being of the Cambridge community by addressing nine key areas of collaboration, including energy efficiency, renewable energy, climate mitigation and adaptation, storm water management, and green tech incubation. A steering committee will oversee the activities of the Community Compact and create a forum to provide an annual report to the community. The groups will also develop a shared process for collecting data to evaluate progress.

“Harvard is honored to be among the first signatories of the Community Compact,” said Faust. “We have much to gain from continuing to work together to confront climate change, and I hope other leaders across the city are inspired to join us — and our partners in the private sector — in creating a healthier and more sustainable Cambridge.”

Through the effort, Cambridge, Harvard, and MIT will work to develop and share new and innovative strategies, technologies, services, products, and best practices that can be used as replicable models for others, considering cost-effective solutions. Additionally, the members of the compact pledge to explore opportunities to connect researchers with community needs and initiatives, and to better connect students with local entrepreneurs and social enterprises.

“Cambridge has helped to pioneer the idea of urban environmentalism. Building on that commitment, and drawing on the scientific, technological, and policy expertise of MIT and Harvard, together we can make a difference for our local community and perhaps extract lessons with global value as well,” said Reif.

To broaden the reach of the compact, Davis announced that the signatories have already recruited the participation of an initial group of major business partners, including Akamai Technologies, Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research, and Whole Foods.

“We believe energy efficiency and the management of greenhouse gas emissions are not only critical in information technology, but in all fields,” said Tom Leighton, CEO of Akamai. “We applaud the mission of the ‘Cambridge Community Compact for a Sustainable Future,’ and hope others in our business community will join with this important initiative.”

Harvard and MIT have a long history of partnering with the city of Cambridge to address environmental issues by serving on local committees; sharing best practices; improving operational efficiencies of topics such as green building, energy use, and waste reduction; supporting the expansion of the Hubway regional bike-share program; creating green spaces and community gardens; hosting farmers markets; and donating food and materials to local nonprofit organizations. By establishing the compact as a living document, the signatories hope to build on that history by continually improving their approach to collaboration and problem-solving.

“We’re Bostonians from birth, and we love this place,” Bob Alexander said. “We come to all the talks.”

The Alexanders were at the Ed Portal last month to hear Doris Sommer, the Ira Jewell Williams Jr. Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures and professor of African and African American Studies, speak to a crowd of nearly 50 about how the arts, serving as “cultural agents,” promote education, innovation, and citizenship. The lecture was the most recent presentation of the Ed Portal’s faculty speaker series.

Introducing Sommer, Robert Lue, faculty director for the Ed Portal, professor of the practice of molecular and cellular biology, and faculty director of HarvardX, said that her scholarship and breadth of work reflected her belief in building bridges across disciplines, fields, and communities.

“She believes in translating scholarship into action,” Lue said. “Her leadership at the Cultural Agents Initiative at Harvard brings together the arts, the humanities, the sciences, and the social sciences in an effort to understand how tying these fields together can bring the world together and make the world a better place — making art a powerful engine not just for scholarship, but for social change as well.”

Inspired by creative solutions that evolved in locations such as Colombia and Argentina, Sommer showed how the arts could transform the ways in which a developing society perceived itself and the values inherent in its culture and community. Those same creative solutions, she said, could also provide new ways for that culture to evolve and thrive, even in the most challenging circumstances.

Sommer began her lecture by discussing her observation, about a dozen years ago, that the best and brightest students in the humanities were leaving the field “in order to do something “useful.”

“Culture has enormous capacity to make and to resolve conflict,” Sommer said. “So did students assume that what we were doing in the humanities was useless?”

In the last few generations, Sommer said, a wave of pessimism — a focus on what didn’t work rather than what might — grew within her field, and scholars become reluctant to challenge it out of fear of “being wrong.” In contrast, artists view their work as taking risks.

“Our project, in Cultural Agents, is to add some of that spirit of optimism and risk-taking to academic work,” she said.

It’s that optimistic outlook and willingness to take chances that enabled artists to conquer obstacles that others might find insurmountable, Sommer said. One example she gave was that of Bogota, Colombia, in the 1990s, when the city was in such chaos that “children without bodyguards didn’t go to school.” Antanas Mockus, a philosopher and mathematician, was elected mayor of Bogota, and adopted a collaborative approach with his staff and citizens, considering all ideas to help restore order to the city.

To everyone’s surprise, that first step came in the form of improvised theatrical performances, right in the “busiest center of the most violent city.” Mockus fired traffic police and hired 20 pantomime artists to direct traffic. The mimes, bearing banners that read “Incorrecto!,” couldn’t give out tickets or arrest people — they could only make fun of those who were driving dangerously. People were startled at first, and then quickly joined in.

“People began looking up,” Sommer said. “They enjoyed the spectacle. Mockus managed to make a public. People in performance theory know that a public doesn’t come to an activity; the public is created through an activity.”

Sommer also handed out books born of resourcefulness. In Buenos Aires, during a terrible market crash, artists began making books out of scraps — cardboard gathered from trash, painted with bright, organic colors — with photocopied pages of texts donated by prominent authors. Inspired by this effort, Sommer developed Pre-Texts, a program that integrates literacy, the arts, and civic values. The curriculum has been implemented in classrooms throughout the globe, in Boston, at Harvard’s Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning, as well as at the Ed Portal’s GPA after-school program.

“You treat a book as raw material, rather than as a sacred object,” she said. “I learned that if you get people to do something creative with literature, to make something new and personal, you promote mastery and ownership of the material. Creative artists are authors and co-authors of the literature. They own it. And lessons of literary theory followed from reflecting on creative manipulations”

Through the Cultural Agents Initiative, Sommer said, she learned that the cultural agents she had been studying “were models and inspirations. I could be a cultural agent, too. I could teach anyone to read very difficult material simply by treating that group as artists.”

As the Alexanders readied to leave, Paula, who volunteers with Friends of the Library at the Boston Public Library’s Honan-Allston Branch and has worked at the Harvard Business School for more than 30 years, said she felt inspired. “We’re trying to get more members and people to be more involved, so she gave me some good ideas of how to approach that,” she said.

“The Education Portal is for everyone,” Bob Alexander said, looking around at the full house. “You know, Harvard’s our neighbor. This is our life — and things like this make it better.”

Initiated in 2009, the lectures offer an opportunity for the Harvard and Greater Boston communities to come together to discuss diverse topics, and for the public to broaden its understanding of research taking place at the University. Faculty members present a variety of topics, bringing the theory and discourse being taught in Harvard classrooms to the community.

To celebrate the spring semester and five years of mentoring at the Ed Portal,  there will be a student showcase and open house from 2 to 3:30 p.m. on May 5. The Ed Portal is located at 175 North Harvard St., Allston. There will be children’s activities and refreshments.

The last regular meeting of the faculty for the year will be on May 7.

Sorensen, the James F. Rothenberg Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures, is a decorated scholar of Latin American literature and culture, and has published extensively on these subjects, including most recently “A Turbulent Decade Remembered: Scenes from the Latin American Sixties” (2007).

“The center has been extremely fortunate in its trustees, and we look forward to the insight and leadership that Mr. Cohan, Ms. Fahrenkopf Foley, Mr. Guthrie, and Dean Sorensen bring with them,” said Geoffrey Harpham, president and director of the center.

For more information on the trustees.

It took a while, but finally it clicked: This girl had lived within a mile of Harvard for years, but had no idea she could walk there. But what would make a young girl who has Harvard nearly at her fingertips feel that it is so far out of reach? What can we do to make it more accessible to people right outside our doorstep and to people even farther away?

What brought the little girl and I together could be a window into Harvard for many: mentoring. Mentoring is so integral to and pervasive within the fabric of the University community that I have sought to make it a central part of my life.

It’s easy to get caught in the “Harvard Bubble,” the sheltered world in which we forget that there are significant things happening elsewhere. Between the 21,000 students and 2,100 faculty across 12 Schools, groundbreaking achievements are being made every day. As a freshman, I was thus surprised by just how small the radius was within which I needed to search to find individuals who remain unaffected by what happens here. I grew more and more interested in sharing what I learned at Harvard each day with others, hopefully to augment their lives. I have also been lucky enough to have mentored amazing youth, who have taught me unexpected things and helped me pop out of the “Bubble.”

In my first semester at Harvard, I worked with several other students to create a chapter of the national DREAM Program here. It was my first foray into working with youth, and I was excited to give Cambridge kids a taste of the campus that was so close to their homes. The program was fulfilling, but most emphasized community building and personal development. I wanted my role as a mentor to take a more academic direction. As a result, the next year I worked as a mentor for Crimson Summer Academy (CSA), a Harvard organization that invites high-potential, low-income students from Boston’s public high schools to spend three summers in a rigorous college-preparatory program on campus.

The mentor role was dynamic: We assisted the teachers in class, tutored the students, helped with homework, and kept order in the dorms at night. Most importantly, we built relationships with the students, and often discussed our Harvard experience with them. The “scholars,” as we called them, were curious about everything from our social lives to what classes we planned to take to the kinds of activities we did on campus. I remember sitting on the steps of Weld Hall with one boy, a rising junior at the time, as he excitedly asked me questions about Harvard for 45 minutes. While they were interested in my life here, I was constantly learning about their experiences growing up in Boston, and the challenges that they faced at home, in their neighborhoods, and at school as they attempted to achieve their academic and professional goals.

I felt a sense of responsibility to these students. As mentors we could inspire them to aspire to lofty academic goals, but we’d do them a disservice if we didn’t couple that inspiration with the academic and social support they needed to succeed. In CSA we achieved this multifaceted purpose; nearly all the program’s seniors went on to great colleges and universities, and one whom I got to know during my summer with CSA is now a freshman at Harvard.

My memorable and enriching experience at CSA inspired me to continue to couple relationship-building with academic development. During all three of my years here so far, I’ve tried to allow youth education and mentorship to penetrate my academic and extracurricular pursuits, but it hasn’t been easy. In the past year I’ve been involved in health education in both New York City and Boston, but I haven’t had many opportunities in that sphere to couple relationships with academics. Luckily, I am now in a unique position as co-chief executive officer of Smart Woman Securities (SWS) to make education and mentoring as widely accessible as I’d like. SWS was started at Harvard in 2006, to educate college women about finance in their personal and professional lives. It has grown into something of which my co-CEO, Meredith Toman, and I, as well as our current and past executive board members, are exceedingly proud. We offer Harvard women introductory and advanced finance education courses, the opportunity to manage investments in a $21,000 fund, and regular career panels and events. This organization epitomizes my belief in coupling learning with relationships.

Community is a major part of our culture, and we have three levels of mentorship to foster it: external, in which alumni build relationships with members; internal, in which the most experienced members work with the newest ones; and families, which are groups that bring members of various levels together to share ideas and advice. The strengths of our program, and the successes of our members, lie in the fact that we couple preparation in finance with social support, allowing women to build networks that give them opportunities and help them become leaders.

I would have loved to have a resource like this in high school. Many SWS members tell us that they first became interested in finance, and understood its relevance to their growth as independent women, when a firm or nonprofit organization approached them in high school. This semester, the SWS executive board planned our first High School Conference, a daylong program to give girls a basic understanding of personal finance, expose them to business and finance professionals, and help them start building networks. This is an opportunity for us as college women to build relationships with high school students, and share what Harvard has given us.

This University teaches many things. We can choose from more than 40 fields of concentration and 3,000 courses. Our faculty members are among the highest achievers in the world. Still, without the insights, advice, and experiences of my peers, I would not have explored many of the extracurricular opportunities that have let me put my coursework into action. The students and faculty inspired my academic ambitions, and the relationships we have built guided me along the road to achieving them. To offer youth the same guidance is the least that I can do with the opportunities and platforms that I’m lucky enough to have as a student at Harvard.

After the lockdown ended, President Drew Faust wrote, “Times like these test our resilience and call forth our humanity.”

At daybreak on April 24, the day of a memorial service for slain Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer Sean Collier, 20 stark whiteboards with the words “Boston Strong” and “Harvard Remembers” bannered across their tops appeared in the newly renovated plaza near the Science Center. A stream of yellow, potted daffodils lined the area, where passersby were invited to take up dangling pens and share their thoughts or feelings.

The project, called the “remembrance walls,” was the brainchild of the Undergraduate Council (UC), which wanted to provide an outlet for students to express themselves.

“The remembrance walls are a beautiful testament to the power of community,” said Tara Raghuveer, the UC president who, along with vice president Jennifer Q. Zhu, brought the council’s idea to the president’s office. “The students were interested in thanking the staff in the Houses and police at Harvard and in Boston and Cambridge for all their help. It was a tragic series of events, but the silver lining is we were able to come together and be reminded that so many people are dedicated to our safety and security.”

The students joined with the Harvard Common Spaces Program, which had been planning a commemoration on the revitalized plaza. Armed with the students’ idea, Harvard staff constructed the boards and placed 3,000 flowers throughout the plaza and in other common spaces for passersby to take home.

“It was an amazing first use of a new common space,” said Zhu. “The plaza offered a central location where people could come together to reflect on a disconcerting series of events over the past week.

“It was so meaningful to see students, professors, administrators, even tourists gathered together to express themselves, share the moment, and be part of a community,” Zhu continued. “It was really for the people.”

By day’s end, the boards were full of thoughts and feelings, thanks and condolences.

“Everything that happened that day — from the remembrance walls to the daffodils — gave students a great sense of community, [a feeling] that Harvard was there, taking care,” said Zhu.

The walls, which were on display during Harvard’s Arts First festival (April 25-28), will remain in place through the end of the week.

Support for early-stage research and new inventions is vital to bridge the most challenging obstacle in university technology development, known as the “development gap” — the period of validating and building value around early-stage technologies, making them ripe for partnering with industry. The Blavatnik Biomedical Accelerator will identify early-stage, highly promising technologies, upgrade their value, and prepare them for licensing and commercial development.

The gift will also create the Blavatnik Fellowship in Life Science Entrepreneurship Program at Harvard Business School (HBS) to provide M.B.A. students with experience in life science entrepreneurship through exposure to the biomedical projects supported by the Accelerator.

Len Blavatnik, a longtime supporter of Harvard and a widely respected business leader, entrepreneur, and philanthropist, is well known for his interest and investments in the nexus between scientific innovation and business. Through the Blavatnik Family Foundation, he has supported leading educational, scientific, cultural, and charitable institutions throughout the world, including the University’s original 2007 Biomedical Accelerator Fund.

“By partnering with Harvard’s world-class biomedical research division, I am delighted to help accelerate the development of new therapies,” said Blavatnik. “Moreover, by increasing the collaborative efforts between Harvard Business School and Harvard’s scientific community, we will empower the next generation of life science entrepreneurs and provide a further catalyst for innovation and research development.”

In welcoming the $50 million gift, Harvard President Drew Faust highlighted Blavatnik’s commitment to innovation and transformational science. “Len Blavatnik’s passionate support of entrepreneurship and science as forces for progress reflects the forward-thinking leadership that will allow Harvard and others to develop promising new technologies that benefit society as a whole,” said Faust. “The Blavatnik Biomedical Accelerator and the integrated cross-university partnership it enables will advance the next great breakthroughs in biomedical technology, with its roots at Harvard.”

HBS Dean Nitin Nohria added, “By bringing together expertise and experience from across Harvard, the Accelerator and the HBS Fellows program will further enhance Harvard’s commitment to innovative research and entrepreneurship. With student interest in entrepreneurship at an all-time high and with the resources of the University’s Innovation Lab and HBS’s Arthur Rock Center for Entrepreneurship at the ready, we are well positioned to make the most of this generous gift from the Blavatnik Family Foundation.”

The Blavatnik Biomedical Accelerator will be operated within the University’s Office of Technology Development. It builds upon the success of the first Biomedical Accelerator Fund — created five years ago by Isaac T. Kohlberg, the University’s senior associate provost and chief technology development officer — which was also funded in part with support from the Blavatnik Family Foundation. The original Accelerator Fund has funded 37 projects, half of which are already advancing through alliances with biopharmaceutical partners or the creation of new companies. The expanded Accelerator program will focus particularly on therapeutic opportunities. It is structured to become self-sustaining, ensuring that over the long term, Harvard will remain at the forefront of life science research.

“The Blavatnik Biomedical Accelerator will enhance the value proposition of early-stage technologies and expedite the flow of Harvard inventions through key developmental milestones and into the marketplace,” said Kohlberg. “Some of the most important therapies and technologies in existence today originated from alliances between academia and the life sciences industry, and we look forward to many more in the years ahead.”

The flowers decorated framed “remembrance boards” that were erected so members of the community could share their thoughts on the Boston Marathon tragedy. The same daffodils heralded the opening of another new common space called the Porch, formerly known as the steps of the Memorial Church.

At the dedication of the area, which drew students, staff, and affiliates to Tercentenary Theatre, President Drew Faust reaffirmed the importance of creating spaces in which interactions can take place.

“This week, more than ever, we have recognized the force, strength, and necessity of community,” she said. “When I think about how this space has been used, I think about coming here on 9/11. We all flocked to the Yard that afternoon, and were here together. We were here last week for the vigil after the bombings. We have celebrated here each spring at Commencement, and we stand here to greet the newest members of our community every year at convocation.

“It has been a place where we have come together to say who we are and what we believe in. And now it will be that in a more informal way: a place apart, a place of interaction, and a place where we can understand and celebrate who we are, and express our care for one another.”

At the dedication, Jonathan Walton, the Plummer Professor of Christian Morals and Pusey Minister in the Memorial Church, said the Porch affirmed Faust’s vision for “One Harvard.”

“This space belongs to you, whether you’re at the Business School or the Divinity School, whether you’re from Longwood, Cambridge, or Allston,” he said, addressing the crowd. “We have a saying here: Everyone at Harvard may not belong to the Memorial Church, but Memorial Church belongs to everyone at Harvard. With the dedication of this space today, we are celebrating one community, ‘One Harvard,’ and this space of grace.”

The Common Spaces initiative began in the summer of 2009 to create more locations for informal and open interaction on campus, and to strengthen a sense of community. One seasonal reminder of that is the arrival of the colorful chairs at the heart of Harvard Yard, which have become synonymous with the end of winter. Students, staff, and neighbors quickly take to the chairs each spring, reading, chatting, or just soaking up the sun.

Steps away from the Porch’s dedication, hundreds of University affiliates were engaging with one another at the plaza near the Science Center. Some wrote their thoughts and prayers on the remembrance boards, while others walked and rode bikes along the floral sweep. Others leaned back on the new chairs and benches.

The plaza, which was designed to be an open, flexible space, will host more programming in the future. Later this week, it will become a stage for dancers and musicians with the Arts First festival, which features more than 200 public events at 12 venues across campus. It will also be an outdoor movie venue, where films involving 2013 Harvard Arts medalist Matt Damon — such as “Good Will Hunting” and “The Bourne Identity” — will be shown. In May, the Plaza will host eighth-grade students from across Cambridge for a science and engineering showcase, as well as the returning Harvard farmers’ market and food trucks.

Lisa Hogarty, vice president for campus services, said that the development of these new common spaces would not only bring the University community together, but make it stronger.

“President Faust and the steering committee on common spaces had a vision for spaces on campus that could broaden and deepen our sense of community,” she said. “The Porch’s location in the middle of the Yard, combined with the plaza serving as a bridge between Harvard and the city of Cambridge, knits together our community. It really does provide opportunity, and space, for grace.”

The collections, showcased in a gallery at the Harvard Museum of Natural History, have long included the showstoppers: fantastic crystalline shapes of brilliant red, orange, and blue; semiprecious gems; and even meteorites, visitors to Earth from the distant asteroid belt.

But Macdonald, an assistant professor of earth and planetary sciences, thought the venerable gallery should go beyond just “pretty,” incorporate more science, and tell more about the story of the Earth and the processes that created it.

That sensibility is what drove a renovation of the Earth and Planetary Sciences gallery at the Harvard Museum of Natural History, one of the Harvard Museums of Science and Culture. Macdonald and museum officials felt it was time to link the beauty that has always been there more closely to the story of the Earth and to the work of faculty members in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences.

Francis Macdonald, an assistant professor of earth and planetary sciences, thought the venerable Earth and Planetary Sciences gallery should go beyond just “pretty,” incorporate more science, and tell more about the story of the Earth and the processes that created it.

“The data for these stories [about the Earth], we actually get from these stones,” said Macdonald, the lead scientist who helped to develop the new exhibits. The renovation was funded partly by the department and partly through a grant Macdonald received from the National Science Foundation.

The renovated gallery, which opened early this month, includes new panels telling the history of the Earth, starting with plate tectonics and continuing along a timeline running down the east wall. The timeline features specimens for visitors to touch, including a sample of the oldest rock on Earth, a stone from a time when the planet was nearly entirely covered in ice, and samples illustrating the rise of life on Earth (though in keeping with the gallery’s geological theme, it is life turned to stone in the form of fossils).

The renovation also saw the removal of several display cases in the center of the room to make space for an exhibit that will showcase the work of faculty members. Now, it represents Macdonald’s work in the Arctic, and includes a large relief map of the region with the ice removed, touchable so visiting schoolchildren can get a feel for the undersea ridges and ocean basins.

The specimens on display are just part of a vast collection held by the Harvard Mineralogical and Geological Museum, which is one of three museums that make up the Museum of Natural History. The collection, used for both teaching and research, holds 300,000 specimens, including samples of nearly 600 meteorites and 1,000 gemstones.

Associate curator Raquel Alonso-Perez said that the renovations included refurbishing the existing display cases and improving lighting. Officials reviewed the samples on display, replacing about half of the 3,000 specimens there, Alonso-Perez said, and dedicated one case to birthstones, which visitors often ask about.

When asked about his favorite specimens, Macdonald turned from the more showy samples to those he has collected personally, which not only conjure memories of his field trips, but also help him to tell the scientific story of how today’s Earth came to be.

“The idea is that the rocks are the data,” Macdonald said. “One of the [motivations] for me is showing that geology and mineralogy are active and alive.”

The specimens on display are just part of a vast collection held by the Harvard Mineralogical and Geological Museum, which is one of three museums that make up the Museum of Natural History. The collection, used for both teaching and research, holds 300,000 specimens, including samples of nearly 600 meteorites and 1,000 gemstones.

Concert for Boston

At 3 p.m. on April 28, the Dudley House Orchestra and Chorus present “Concert for Boston,” a charity event to benefit those most affected by the tragic events that occurred during the Boston Marathon and its aftermath. Proceeds will go to One Fund Boston. For more information.

Crimson vs. Dartmouth Raffle and T-Shirt Sale

The Harvard softball team will be selling T-shirts and hosting a raffle during Sunday’s (April 28) 2 p.m. doubleheader against Dartmouth. The raffle and T-shirt sale is to raise money for charities and foundations that are supporting victims of the Boston Marathon attack. Raffle tickets are $10 and T-shirts are $20. Tickets will be sold through the first game of the doubleheader and the drawing will take place during the second game. Fans do not need to be present in order to win the prizes. Raffle items include: autographed pictures by the Patriots’ Vince Wilfork, autographed baseballs from Dustin Pedroia and Clay Buchholz, Red Sox tickets, Harvard athletic apparel, tennis lessons, and more. For more information.

Harvard Runs for Boston Fundraiser

On May 1, reserve a treadmill at the Hemenway Gynasium for a 26-minute run or walk, with a suggested donation of $1 per minute. Donations of any size will be accepted. All proceeds will go to One Fund Boston. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. For more information.

One Fund Boston

For the many members of the Harvard community seeking to help the victims in the marathon tragedy and their families, consider donating to the fund established by Gov. Deval Patrick and Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino.

Harvard’s Employee Assistant Program offers aid

As a result of the bomb blasts at the Boston Marathon, many employees or their family and household members may be directly or indirectly affected. Harvard’s Employee Assistance Program is available for free, confidential assistance and consultation 24/7. The Wellness Corporation’s EAP therapists are equipped to handle any distress that people are experiencing even if it is unrelated to this event.

Radcliffe supports innovative work in the arts, humanities, sciences, and social sciences through its highly competitive Fellowship Program, its renowned Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, and its Academic Ventures program that supports collaborative, faculty-led research projects, as well as public events across all academic disciplines and the creative arts. The Radcliffe Institute is committed not only to the creation of bold ideas, but also to sharing them with a broad, global audience.

Members of the Radcliffe community — including fellows, Harvard students who are research partners with fellows, faculty advisers, librarians, and other staff, as well as members of the Dean’s Advisory Council — gathered in Radcliffe Yard for a surprise announcement by Radcliffe Dean Lizabeth Cohen, the Howard Mumford Jones Professor of American Studies at Harvard.

When Cohen and Knafel stepped onto the steps of the Radcliffe Gymnasium, Cohen announced that the building was being renamed the Knafel Center, “in honor of Sid’s longstanding and outstanding support for the Radcliffe Institute.” His most recent gift establishes the $10.5 million Knafel Fund, which will support programs at the institute that bring together Harvard faculty from across the University and scholars from around the world to work in private seminars and to create public programs.

“It is wonderful, and wonderfully fitting, that the Radcliffe Gymnasium is now the Knafel Center, serving as the center of so much bold and creative work at the Radcliffe Institute and at Harvard,” said Cohen. “We recognize that Sid thinks big and appreciate that with his most recent gift, he is inspiring us all to unite big thinkers across disciplines and boundaries to connect in new ways with one another and the public.”

“Sid was one of the early — and great — supporters of the Radcliffe Institute and is among the University’s most deeply engaged citizens,” said Harvard President Drew Faust, who grew close to Knafel when she was the dean of Radcliffe. “He is passionate about advancing Harvard, about supporting teaching and research, and about investing his resources wisely and well. I am pleased that one of our campus’ beloved spaces will bear his name as a lasting acknowledgement of his thoughtfulness and generosity.”

“It’s a pretty simple proposition for me,” Knafel said of his generosity to and involvement with the institute. “A stronger Radcliffe contributes to a stronger Harvard. A great university needs a place where thinkers from across its campus and around the world come together to take risks, explore new ideas, and connect theory and practice. At Harvard, the Radcliffe Institute is that place.”

The building formerly known as the Radcliffe Gymnasium is the center of that activity. Built in 1898 for Radcliffe College, and most recently renovated in 2005 for the Radcliffe Institute (which was founded in 1999), the Knafel Center will undergo external renovations this summer.  The first-floor conference rooms host intensive seminars led by Harvard faculty and former Radcliffe fellows that convene a diverse array of faculty, scholars, artists, and experts to launch research initiatives, publications, and public policies. Recent seminars include “Securing the Place of Organized Civil Society in Emerging Arab Democracies,” “A New Multidisciplinary Approach to Data Understanding: Integrating Human and Computational Approaches,” and “Human Rights to Water and Sanitation: From Theory to Practice.”

The  second-floor auditorium is home to thought-provoking events that are free, open to the public, and often webcast live, such as recent lectures by NPR journalist Melissa Block ’83, prominent historian Anthony Grafton, and theoretical physicist Lawrence M. Krauss, and the upcoming “Crossing Borders: Immigration and Gender in the Americas” concert and conference.

The Knafel Fund will support the Radcliffe Institute and the University’s long-term mission as planning continues for an upcoming capital campaign at Harvard, which is expected to launch in late 2013. Knafel runs SRK Management Co., a venture capital firm in New York, and supports a number of initiatives and schools across the University. He is the co-chair of the Radcliffe Campaign and honorary co-chair of the University-wide campaign.

Instead they had gathered, off-duty, to honor one of their own, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) police officer Sean Collier, the 27-year-old killed in the line of duty last Thursday in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombings.

“Emotions are running pretty high around here,” said Harvard University Police Department (HUPD) Chief Francis “Bud” Riley, as the group prepared to board two shuttle buses headed to Collier’s memorial at MIT’s Briggs Field.

Though Harvard and MIT are sometimes cast as rivals in everything from prank wars to academic standing, it is a friendly relationship. And the two universities’ police forces are especially close. HUPD often does in-service training with the Cambridge and MIT police, Riley said. Although most Harvard officers had not known Collier, who had patrolled MIT for only 15 months, his memorial drew nearly the entire Harvard force that wasn’t on duty.

HUPD joined thousands of law enforcement officials from around the country — and an equally large crowd of civilians — to pay tribute to Collier at a noon service. The MIT event attracted other college heads, including Harvard President Drew Faust, and politicians both local (Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino and Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick) and more national (Vice President Joseph Biden and U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., who each addressed the audience).

“The MIT community is like family to Harvard, and I wanted to honor Officer Collier and his service to the students, faculty and staff of our neighboring institution,” said Faust.

MIT President L. Rafael Reif (center, from left), Vice President Joseph Biden, and singer James Taylor gathered onstage at MIT’s Briggs Field to pay tribute to Sean Collier.

The day’s program — which included performances by singer/songwriter James Taylor, the MIT Symphony Orchestra, and Massachusetts State Police bagpipers and drummers — highlighted Collier’s contributions to the MIT community, and the unusual role that university police officers can play in campus life.

“Officer Collier did not just have a job at MIT. He had a life at MIT,” said MIT President L. Rafael Reif. “He had a deep, broad, beautiful sense of what his duty involved.”

Various speakers, including Collier’s brother, Andrew, recalled examples of Collier’s unusually personal commitment to the community he had vowed to protect: stopping into a robotics lab late at night to ask a grad student about his research, volunteering with an organization that served Cambridge’s homeless, even taking ballroom dancing lessons and going on hikes with student groups.

For all the law enforcement officers gathered on the field, whether they hailed from Canada, Florida, or just down Massachusetts Avenue, Collier’s service to MIT “left us a lesson,” said John DiFava, MIT’s chief of police. “Every time you put on the uniform, do it right.”

Those elected from Harvard this year are:

David Matthew Altshuler, professor of genetics and professor of medicine

Xandra Owens Breakefield, professor of neurology

Paul Arthur Buttenwieser, clinical instructor in psychiatry

David Winslow Latham, Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory astrophysicist and lecturer

Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, Emily Hargroves Fisher Professor of Education

Joseph Loscalzo, Hersey Professor of the Theory and Practice of Physic and chair of the Department of Medicine

John Francis Manning, Bruce Bromley Professor of Law

Richard J. Murnane, Juliana W. and William Foss Thompson Professor of Education and Society

Charles Alexander Nelson III, professor of neurology, psychology, and pediatrics

William James Poorvu, Class of 1961 Adjunct Professor in Entrepreneurship Emeritus

Xiaowei Zhuang, professor of chemistry and chemical biology and professor of physics

One of the nation’s most prestigious honorary societies, the academy is also a leading center for independent policy research. Members contribute to academy publications and studies of science and technology policy, energy and global security, social policy and American institutions, and the humanities, arts, and education.

“Election to the Academy honors individual accomplishment and calls upon members to serve the public good,” said American Academy President Leslie C. Berlowitz. “We look forward to drawing on the knowledge and expertise of these distinguished men and women to advance solutions to the pressing policy challenges of the day.”

For a full list of new members.

Nearly 1,400 students who had been accepted to Harvard, some of them coming from as far as Australia and India, were heading to Cambridge for three days of activities, before security officials decided to shut down the Boston area early Friday to hunt for the remaining marathon bombing suspect. The edict meant Harvard officials had to cancel Visitas.

“With the region-wide lockdown and all the uncertainty and anxiety created on campus by shootings and the ongoing manhunt, we decided to alert the people not to even begin their trips, and to give those on their way a chance to turn around,” Fitzsimmons said Saturday. “You couldn’t even get to Cambridge yesterday. And by the time the situation was over last night, too many people had already changed their travel plans.”

The annual weekend known as Visitas is a much-loved introduction to the Harvard experience. Admitted freshmen, often accompanied by family members, come for their first true taste of campus life. Students stay with hosts in the freshmen dorms and Harvard Houses. They attend parties, dances, lectures, panel discussions, and activity fairs. They eat in the dining halls and explore the University’s diverse academic and extracurricular offerings.

Harvard officials posted a message on the Harvard College Admissions website just before 7 a.m. Friday, added the same message to the Facebook page that had been created for members of the incoming Class of 2017, and emailed all admitted students and their Harvard hosts, saying the University was closed and Visitas registration had been suspended. Three hours later, another message went out asking those who had not yet begun traveling to Cambridge not to start out, and requesting students already en route to “stay where you are for the time being.”

By noon, decision had been made

As the day wore on, University officials, including Fitzsimmons and admissions officers and Visitas co-chairs Amelia Muller and Mike Esposito, held several conference calls to determine the event’s future. By noon, the decision had been made: Visitas was canceled.

Saturday afternoon, Harvard President Drew Faust emailed a note to the prospective members of the Class of 2017, offering them her regrets at the change of plans, and encouraging them to make Harvard a part of their future.

“Whether you are an aspiring artist or scientist, whether you are from Minneapolis or Mumbai,” wrote Faust, “whether your passions find you on the playing field or in the orchestra pit, whether you draw your intellectual energy from parsing texts or debating policy issues or writing code, I hope we will have the privilege of your joining the Harvard community.”

Melanie Slone, an admitted member of the class, left her hometown of Bellbrook, Ohio, at 6 a.m. Friday with her friend Jake Brewer, who had been admitted at Boston University, to make the long drive to visit the colleges they will soon call home. They were cruising through New York when Slone received an email from Harvard saying the weekend was canceled.

Though they turned around and headed home, Slone seemed undeterred.

“I’m still coming to Harvard next year, and I’m still very excited,” she said.

While Visitas would have kicked off officially with an address from Faust, hundreds of early arriving students, many traveling with their parents, were already on their way. Many landed at Logan Friday morning. Noah Selsby, Harvard’s assistant dean for administration, who lives a 5-minute ride from the airport, headed to the international terminal. There, with help from Massport officials who put up signs directing those arriving to a section on the terminal’s ground floor, he began tracking down students and explaining the shutdown.

Fitzsimmons soon joined him. Together they ordered pizza for the approximately 85 students and close to 20 parents, helped some reschedule return flights for later that day, and found hotel rooms for the remainder. Gene Corbin, assistant dean of public service in the Office of Student Life, grabbed some colleagues, borrowed a number of vans from Harvard’s Phillips Brooks House, and hurried to the airport to help shuttle students to a Holiday Inn Express in Saugus. Michael Burke, registrar for Harvard’s Faculty of Art and Sciences, did the same with his car, as did Sean Palfrey, co-master of Adams House.

Members of the Harvard community took to Twitter in force, using the hashtag #virtualvisitas, to reach out to the students. “The Harvard community thrives on the resourcefulness of its members,” said Harvard College Fellow Carla D. Martin. “#virtualvisitas is a great example of that.” Screenshot of Twitter

A slice of Harvard at Logan

Student Yusuph Mkangara arrived at Logan at 9 a.m. from Columbus, Ohio, with a friend who was also headed to Visitas. Knowing that the MBTA had already been shut down, they waited and checked their smartphones until they received an email from Harvard officials telling them to meet in Terminal E.

They arrived at the terminal’s “Camp Harvard” and shared pizza with other students while University officials helped them sort out their options. The resulting get-together wasn’t Visitas, but it was a little slice of Harvard nonetheless, Mkangara said.

“The weird beauty of the situation is I’ve gone to other visiting programs, and I’ve never gotten to meet more than, say, 10 people,” he said. “These are the people who are going to be my classmates. … It puts a damper on it that we can’t see the campus and meet upperclassmen, but it’s been wonderful to know that this is a sample of who we’re going to be with.”

Though his spirits were high, Mkangara recognized he would have an even harder choice ahead of him as he decided between Harvard — which he had not visited — and Yale.

“Harvard was my dream school, my No. 1,” he said. “This visit was really supposed to make my final decision for me. It’s going to be a lot tougher now.” (On Saturday, though, Mkangara was coming to campus. At 10 a.m. he tweeted “Headed to #Harvard. #TheAmericanRESOLVE  #IvyDreams!”)

Despite their disappointment, the students at Logan remained upbeat. They snapped pictures with potential future classmates and posted them to Facebook, and played impromptu “get to know you” games. Many of the students who were staying the night even opted for the Saugus hotel instead of one located at the airport, so they could continue bonding with their new friends.

“They just wanted to stay together,” said Selsby.

Dean William Fitzsimmons and Noah Selsby, assistant dean for administration, ordered pizza to feed the 85 students and close to 20 parents who they tracked down at Logan. Photo by Noah Selsby

Handling a difficult situation

The afternoon and evening proved a lesson in character. As the head of Harvard admissions, Fitzsimmons said one of the qualities he looks for in prospective students is their ability to handle difficult situations.

“It’s really been an amazing thing watching how the students have come together, and the parents have been very understanding. We’ve seen an enormous amount of grace under pressure,” he said, adding that the University would cover any additional costs for the students and their families, including meals, hotels, and flight-change fees. “We’ve made it possible for them not to incur any financial loss as a result of this tragedy.”

As the clock spun toward 9 p.m., Fitzsimmons and Selsby were still waiting for a young woman who was arriving from New Delhi. Suddenly, the weary student approached. “I’m delighted we found you,” exclaimed the dean.

There were other developments concerning the new class in Harvard’s virtual world. Members of the Harvard community took to Twitter in force, using the hashtag #virtualvisitas, to reach out to the students. Throughout the day, tweets poured in from Harvard faculty, students, alumni, and staff who encouraged students with questions to get in touch.

Like countless residents of the Greater Boston area, Harvard College Fellow Carla D. Martin was stuck inside monitoring the manhunt when she saw the Harvard tweet about #virtualvisitas. A 2003 graduate of the College who went on to earn her masters and her Ph.D. from Harvard, Martin tweeted out a note inviting members of the Class of 2017 to get in touch with questions about her specialties: African and African American studies, social anthropology, and music.

Greetings from virtual Veritas

“Since we all are on lockdown today, it’s a good way to put our energy into something positive,” said Martin on Friday afternoon. Soon, she noticed many alumni from her year, and even her current Harvard students, joining in the virtual conversation. “The Harvard community thrives on the resourcefulness of its members,” Martin said. “#virtualvisitas is a great example of that.”

Kirkland resident Ibrahim Khan was in Los Angeles with some of his Harvard roommates, headed to the music festival Coachella and using Twitter to follow the news in Boston, when he read a tweet about #virtualvisitas.

“Harvard 2017ers, I’m a junior in Kirkland and happy to answer any questions you have. I hope you are all staying safe,” Khan tweeted out.

While the University has no plans to reschedule Visitas, Fitzsimmons said he would consider extending the acceptance deadline beyond May 1 for students who had planned to attend the weekend event. In addition, the University will continue to connect with undecided incoming freshmen via email, phone, and social media, he said, to help them in any way possible.

“We will do whatever we can to help them in making their decision,” said Fitzsimmons.

Some Harvardians gained a sense of closure after Friday night’s capture of the second suspect in Monday’s Boston Marathon bombings, 19-year-old Cambridge resident Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, in nearby Watertown, which brought a massive manhunt to an end.

On Saturday morning, a group of 18 runners from the Harvard College Marathon Challenge — some of whom had crossed the finish line, or failed to, on Boylston Street on Monday — met at the John Harvard Statue.

Their recovery run took on added purpose after a tough week for the running community; several Harvard runners had been dangerously close to the blasts. On Friday night, senior Mark Jahnke had asked the group to join him for a slow jog along Boston’s Freedom Trail. It would be, he wrote in his email invitation, “a symbol that what we experienced this week will never take away what we experienced for four hours on Monday and will never stop us from being a united Boston.”

“There was also a level of frustration,” said Daniel Grafstein, a sophomore in Kirkland House. “It was just one guy, and the whole city shut down. But I think people understand it’s what needed to be done.”

Detour to slain officer’s memorial

The run had its somber moments, including a detour to the makeshift memorial for slain Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer Sean Collier, who was gunned down Thursday night, allegedly by the two suspects. But the run also provided a way for people to come together and to make a statement, said senior Sam Singer, that “those who might hope to inspire terror have failed to keep us off our feet.”

“Today’s run brought a really great sense of community,” he said.

For most students, as well as everyday Harvard Square residents and visitors to campus, Saturday morning simply promised a return to normal.

During the travel ban Friday, many Harvard Houses locked their gates for safety. Students were free to roam the halls and courtyards — Kirkland House even set up a croquet game and a trampoline on its lawn — but as the lockdown wore on, it seemed to give new meaning to the term spring fever.

“I think people were scared and nervous and really sad for everything that’s happened this week,” said Daniel Grafstein, a sophomore in Kirkland House. “There was also a level of frustration. It was just one guy, and the whole city shut down. But I think people understand it’s what needed to be done.”

Family and friends called and texted from out of state, though not as frantically as the modern-day trope of helicopter parenting would suggest.

“My mom’s a pretty classic Jewish mother, but she’s been good at letting go of the reins,” Grafstein said. “She trusts me to be safe. But it was a scary week, and it could have happened to anyone.”

Still, “My friend said he was called more this week than he was cumulatively the entire year.”

Freshmen Leah Schwartz and Cordelia Mendez spent Friday in their residence, Hollis Hall, listening to the police scanner and watching the news.

“I signed up for Tivli yesterday and watched it pretty much all day,” Schwartz said, referring to the free television streaming service started by Harvard graduates and entrepreneurs Nick Krasney ’09 and Ho Tuan ’09 that is now offered on campus. “It was hard not to.”

For freshmen living in the Yard, even the decision to head out for a meal was fraught. But many ended up in Annenberg Hall, Schwartz and Mendez said, “just to feel normal.” At lunchtime, freshmen gave the dining hall’s staff a standing ovation.

“It was a really nice time, only because it forced us all to be together,” Schwartz said. “We couldn’t focus on work; we couldn’t really focus on anything that required any sort of concentration.” Teachers were lenient about assignment deadlines on Friday, Mendez added.

Freshmen Leah Schwartz (left) and Cordelia Mendez said they went to Annenberg Hall on Friday “just to feel normal.” “It was a really nice time, only because it forced us all to be together,” Schwartz said.

Students who had planned to host admitted high school seniors for the Visitas weekend dealt with added stressors on Friday — namely, how to help their pre-frosh charges in the midst of an unprecedented crisis.

Nancy De Haro, a senior in Winthrop House and a seasoned Visitas host, connected with her two visitors from Los Angeles, Marleen Sanchez and Andrea Mosqueda, Friday morning

“I knew Visitas was canceled, but I told them to come over anyway,” De Haro said Saturday, as she led Sanchez and Mosqueda on a tour of the campus. “It would be too bad if the weekend went to waste, since they’re already here. There isn’t any programming, but I think they can still explore the city and ask me some questions and get something out of it.”

Mosqueda, who had never flown in a plane before this week, was lucky enough to make it to Cambridge before the travel ban went into effect. A Harvard alumna on her flight found her a ride, she said. Despite her surreal entry to Boston, her assessment of Harvard so far was reassuringly common.

“I really love the buildings. I want to major in civil engineering, so buildings are something I do admire,” she said. “It’s beautiful.”

The surest sign of normalcy, perhaps, was the renewed flood of tourists. Campus tours roamed the streets on what became one of the first nice days of spring.

“Harvard’s known all over the world,” said Ron Gabayan, an 18-year-old Israeli visiting the information center with his host family from Western Massachusetts. “I’ve been interested to come and visit here for a long time.”

“I noticed this morning that [Harvard] was open again, so I said, ‘Let’s go,’ ” said his American host, Lynn Lesser. “If something’s going to happen, it’s going to happen, whether you’re in Boston or Israel or wherever.” After all, she added, “He had already seen Yale. I said, ‘Harvard’s nicer.’ ”

Nancy De Haro (from left), a senior in Winthrop House and a seasoned Visitas host, connected with her two visitors from Los Angeles, Marleen Sanchez and Andrea Mosqueda. “There isn’t any programming, but I think they can still explore the city and ask me some questions and get something out of it,” she said.

Starting at 7 a.m. and for nearly 12 hours afterward, there were no classes, no shuttle buses, and no conferences at the University. Fourteen Harvard cafes and coffee shops never opened. Crimson Catering ceased operation. At Harvard College, Visitas, the weekend program for prospective freshmen, was canceled. At Harvard Law School, an alumni weekend gathering also was canceled, along with a program for prospective students.

The shutdown lasted until shortly before the bombing suspect was captured Friday evening in nearby Watertown. In an email to the Harvard community Saturday, President Drew Faust remarked on the double-edged quality of Friday, a day of both vigilance and togetherness. “Yesterday was a harrowing day in a week of tragedy, suffering, and uncertainty,” she wrote, “as well as courage and solidarity.”

Harvard hunkered down in tandem with the wider outside world. MBTA bus and subway service stopped. Most businesses closed. Traffic was scant. State and city officials asked citizens to “shelter at home.” Harvard officials told the University community to do likewise.

But as with the world at large, Harvard’s machinery never entirely stops. On Friday, the departments that supply security, power, meals, maintenance, and custodial services kept running.

Lisa Hogarty, vice president for Harvard Campus Services, summed up the operational result as “very smooth.” The College’s 6,000 students were fed three times at 12 residential Houses and at Annenberg Hall, where freshmen dine. At Annenberg, free meals were provided to Harvard police officers, custodians, and graduate students shut out of their usual dining venues.

Even though Harvard hunkered down in tandem with the wider outside world on Friday, its machinery never stopped. The College’s 6,000 students were fed three times at 12 residential Houses and at Annenberg Hall, where freshmen dine.

At lunchtime at Annenberg, freshmen gave dining hall workers a standing ovation. Many had been pressed into service from Crimson Catering, where workers typically start at 5 a.m.

A moment later, the same students spoke for everyone in the Boston area who felt defiant and proud in the face of Monday’s terror attack. Standing to face the American flag in Annenberg, they sang the national anthem. Nina Hooper ’14 witnessed that moment and called it “lovely.” (She’s Australian.)

The Harvard University Police Department (HUPD) was the tip of the spear during the shutdown. Thursday night, following the fatal shooting of a Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer, HUPD kept its 3-to-11 shift on duty through the night. That doubled the police presence on campus overnight, a tactic used for the next two shifts as well, until 11 p.m. Friday, just after the manhunt ended. “We had a lot of officers working a lot of time,” said HUPD spokesman Steven Catalano. “It was all hands on deck.”

HUPD officers helped pursue suspects

Some HUPD officers faced dangers on the overnight shift, as they joined a multiagency car chase through Cambridge and Watertown that ended in a gun battle with the suspected marathon bombers. “They were getting shot at, and grenades were being thrown in their area,” said Catalano of the responding Harvard officers. “They put themselves in jeopardy [that] night.”

But on the University’s Cambridge and Harvard campuses Friday, quiet reigned. Visiting scholars, shut off from scheduled conferences, organized mini-tours through Harvard Yard. Others sequestered at the Faculty Club, including many Marcel Proust scholars at Harvard for an international conference marking the 100th anniversary of “Swann’s Way,” the first volume of the novel “In Search of Lost Time.” Organizer François Proulx, a lecturer in Harvard’s Department of Comparative Literature, wrote in an email: “They worked on their papers or just followed the news. One did mention brushing up on some Flaubert.”

At midafternoon, National Guard soldiers stood watch on Harvard’s periphery near the entrance tunnel for MBTA buses. Two HUPD cars were at opposite ends of Harvard Yard, engines idling. Freed from classes, undergraduates played soccer and threw Frisbees and footballs. Near Massachusetts Hall, two young men played a blistering game of baseball catch.

Later, with a soft rain falling, a knot of tourists — a rare sight Friday — paused near the John Harvard Statue, their umbrellas open. An undergraduate walked by on the way to dinner at Annenberg, wearing a T-shirt that was an advertisement for normalcy. It read, “No one says ‘When I grow up, I want to go to Yale.’”

Beyond the crowded Yard, the streets were nearly bare of traffic. At one point, Catalano looked out the window of his Massachusetts Avenue office. He saw two pedestrians and one car. (In her email, Faust wrote of the eerie stillness of the daylong communitywide lockdown.)

The emptied streets and slowed traffic seemed “crazy,” but they were a relief too, said Catalano. “Everyone followed the directions [to shelter inside]. It was a smart thing to do: Stay safe and let law enforcement do its work,” he said.

Twelve Harvard alert emails

Twelve Harvard alert emails were broadcast to the community through the day. (The last, at 9:27 p.m., was a poem of joy and relief: “Suspect taken into custody in Watertown. Safe to resume normal activity.”)

Hogarty praised that effective communication, including the flurry of internal emails that for Catalano began at 10:56 p.m. Thursday, after the MIT shooting. “That started a very, very long night of communication,” Catalano said, including, at 12:15 a.m. Friday, the first of many conference calls. Catalano, like many Harvard officials, barely slept. Between 2 and 4 a.m., 31 emails had flooded his computer from just two College officials, and another 25 from people elsewhere. In the morning, said Catalano, “things heated up even more.”

Things stayed hot through the day for Harvard’s Crisis Management Team, too. This core group of administration deans from each School, along with Massachusetts Hall officials and vice presidents associated with operations, joined in nearly hourly groups calls — 10 of them between 6 a.m. and 6:30 p.m. alone, said Hogarty. Among the topics addressed were the timing of the closure, logistical needs (like how to staff the kitchens), and the content of messages to the Harvard community.

At dinnertime, Faust joined Dean of Harvard College Evelynn M. Hammonds at Annenberg Hall, where they spent 45 minutes talking with freshmen.

Around the same time, Harvard Provost (and Boston Marathoner) Alan M. Garber made the dinner rounds at Currier, Pforzheimer, and Cabot Houses to mingle with upperclassmen. Along the way, he met some students who had been diverted from the marathon just a few blocks from the finish line Monday. A few of them ran or walked all the way back to Harvard — cold, and without access to their checked personal belongings.

At Annenberg, free meals were also provided to Harvard police officers, custodians, and graduate students. Following Friday’s lunch, freshmen gave the dining hall workers a standing ovation. File photo by Amanda Swinhart

Students pitch in to keep Houses working

At Cabot House, students stepped in to make up for a staffing shortfall by washing dishes and checking in students. At Annenberg, Hooper, the freshman from Australia, organized two shifts of a dozen Class of 2016 friends to help out in the kitchen. “It was a nice chance to get to know the kitchen staff,” she wrote late Friday night.

But it was more than that, she added, writing a capstone for a day of cooperation.  “There is something very special about the students at Harvard,” and it goes beyond just being bright, she wrote. “Because they come from so many different ways of life, they really know how to appreciate how good we have it here and all those who make this possible.”

We are still stunned by Monday’s tragedy, mourning for and with those who have lost loved ones and suffered grave injuries. In times like these, we turn to one another for comfort and strength.

The president’s office has received numerous inquiries from members of this community asking how they can help. Your heartfelt generosity in the face of such pain is uplifting. As you may know, Governor Patrick and Mayor Menino have set up The One Fund Boston to help families affected by these horrific events. We hope you will consider donating to this cause by visiting http://onefundboston.org, or supporting those affected by this tragedy in other ways you might find meaningful.

Sincerely,
Office of the President
Harvard University

Considered by many to be second only to the Nobel Prize in prestige, the medal is awarded annually by the American Economic Association (AEA) to an American economist under the age of 40 who is judged to have made the most significant contribution to economic thought and knowledge. At 33 years old, Chetty is the second-youngest ever to receive the award; Paul Samuelson was 32 when he received the first Clark Medal in 1947.

“I was very surprised, honored and excited,” Chetty said, of his reaction upon learning he’d been selected. “The list of past recipients of this award is incredible, and includes many of my colleagues in the Economics Department here at Harvard, as well as people who have served as secretary of the Treasury of the United States or as the president’s chief economic adviser, as well as many Nobel laureates — to be included in such a group is a great honor.”

By synthesizing new evidence about human behavior with research from a wide array of economic fields, Chetty has been able to put new focus on a host of public policy issues ranging from how tax policy can affect savings to the impact teachers can have on students’ future earnings.

“Raj Chetty is a remarkably productive economist whose contributions assimilate evidence using a variety of methodological perspectives to shed new light on important public policy questions,” the AEA wrote, in presenting Chetty with the medal. “His work extends basic price theory by incorporating behavioral and psychological aspects of economic behavior; reconciles results from different branches of economics; and employs data that are uniquely suited to answer otherwise unanswerable questions. He has established himself in a few short years as arguably the best applied microeconomist of his generation.”

As an example of Chetty’s work, the AEA pointed to one of his most-cited studies, “Salience and Taxation: Theory and Evidence,” in which he showed that consumers’ purchasing choices are based largely on the posted price of an item, and that sales tax plays little to no role in their decision whether to buy a specific item, contradicting a canonical assumption of theories of taxation.

To conduct the study, Chetty and his co-authors convinced a large retail store to post prices that include sales tax for some items, while continuing to post only pre-tax prices on nearby items. The results showed that posting final tax-inclusive prices led to lower sales.

In another oft-cited paper, Chetty studied the effects of elementary school teacher quality on student test scores and long-term outcomes such as college attendance and earnings by tracking 1 million children from childhood to adulthood. The results showed that better teachers led to a substantially greater likelihood of college graduation and higher earnings.

“The driving motivation behind my research is to try to answer real-world social and economic policy questions using rigorous methods,” Chetty said. “My work uses tools from economics, psychology, and statistics to take a scientific approach to answering policy questions of current relevance.

“There is considerable political debate about whether we should have higher tax rates on high-income people or about how we can improve the American educational system,” he continued. “In my view, one should be able to obtain scientific answers to such questions. For example, take the question of whether taxing the richest Americans at higher rates will significantly reduce the number of jobs in the economy. That question was hotly debated in the last election but ultimately has a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer.  I’m in search of data-based answers to such questions, as basing such policies on hard evidence rather than political preference can have very important impacts on millions of people’s lives.”

Visit the American Economic Association website to learn more about Chetty’s work and the John Bates Clark award.

Being “engaged in a community of scholars” is what brings Herzog, 48, to Harvard and its Radcliffe Institute. “I ask questions,” is how she characterizes her study of people and places in Latin America, Portugal, and Spain.

In the process of exploring borders, citizenship, communities, belonging, and belongings, her work connects with many areas of study. “In addition to the wonderful history department, it will be an opportunity to connect with scholars in the areas of law, anthropology, Latin American and American studies, art history, political science, literature, and philosophy,” she said.

“I am very pleased that a scholar of Tamar Herzog’s caliber has agreed to join the History Department,” said FAS Dean Michael D. Smith. “She will enrich the FAS community with her groundbreaking research, and represents an exciting opportunity for Harvard College students to learn from a world-renowned scholar.”

“Professor Herzog’s approach to finding answers to her questions by crossing disciplinary and geographical borders is the kind of wide-ranging intellectual pursuit the Radcliffe Institute is dedicated to supporting, and that Harvard encourages,” said Radcliffe Dean Lizabeth Cohen, who is also the Howard Mumford Jones Professor of American Studies in the same department that Herzog will join.

Herzog received her Ph.D. from École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris, and since then has conducted research in Spain, Portugal, Latin America, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, and the United Kingdom.  Her international experience and orientation is one reason she chose to join the Harvard faculty. For her, “the University offers a concentration and intensity of intellectual engagement that draws people from around the world.”

The Radcliffe Professorship means that Herzog will be a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for two of her first five years as a professor at Harvard. Professorships at the Radcliffe Institute are offered in conjunction with tenured positions at the University and help attract leading scholars who will bring greater diversity to the Harvard faculty. The Radcliffe Alumnae Professorship was funded by contributions from hundreds of Radcliffe College alumnae who wanted today’s Harvard undergraduates to benefit from a more diverse teaching faculty than they had in the past.

Herzog, who has previously been a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and the European University Institute in Florence, Italy, and this year is a Guggenheim Fellow, recognizes the Radcliffe Professorship as “an exceptional opportunity.”

In her fellowship years, Herzog will pursue independent research in the institute’s stimulating community of artists and scholars. She expects that being a fellow will be perfectly timed as she determines the scope and nature of her next major project.

“The early stages are so crucial,” said Herzog, “and Radcliffe will be wonderful for that because there are so many different scholars, with different disciplines, and from different places who come together for intellectual exchange.”

Starting in the fall of 2013, Herzog will be welcomed to that “intellectual exchange” in an array of departments and schools across Harvard.

“College campuses are natural places to integrate bicycling, and Harvard University recognizes the small steps needed to make bicycling a safe and easy option for students and staff,” said Andy Clarke, president of the league, which announced the award Monday. “Young people are driving less and riding more, and Harvard has embraced that trend.”

Harvard is the highest-ranked Bicycle Friendly University in New England and the Ivy League. The silver award recognizes Harvard’s commitment to improving conditions for bicycling through investment in promotion, education programs, infrastructure, and supportive policies. The program was developed to influence how universities evaluate their efforts in sustainability, transportation options, and quality of life, while allowing administrators to benchmark their progress toward improving bicycle-friendliness on campus.

“Harvard is extremely proud to be recognized as a Bike Friendly University.  While the work of our CommuterChoice team has been exceptional, our initiatives and programs are successful because of the complete support and enthusiasm of Harvard’s biking community,” said Lisa Hogarty, vice president for campus services. “Being named a Bike Friendly University highlights just how strongly students, faculty, and staff are committed to using alternative forms of transportation.”

Last year, 17 percent of commuters to Harvard’s Cambridge and Allston campuses used a bicycle as their primary means of transportation. Harvard also works collaboratively with the Massachusetts Department of Transportation, the city of Cambridge, the city of Boston, and other stakeholders on municipal bicycle planning initiatives, and helps to incorporate facilities and pedestrian enhancements into planning efforts in areas of Boston and Cambridge that affect the Harvard community.

“Our goal is to partner with Harvard’s Schools, departments and our community partners to make the University safer and more accommodating for bicyclists,” said Ben Hammer, CommuterChoice’s program coordinator. “Harvard’s strong support of bicycling makes the University stronger and helps our community explore alternatives to driving that are healthier and better for the environment.”

On the Longwood campus, the Harvard Longwood Bicyclists is a student and staff initiative that encourages the use of bikes to and from the Longwood Medical Area. The group is sponsoring a bike fair at the Quadrangle Promenade on May 7, from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. On May 15, as part of Bay State Bike Week, the CommuterChoice program will host its annual bike-to-work appreciation breakfast. And on the evening of June 4, Harvard will host the Bay State Bike Bash at the Queens Head Pub.

The League of American Bicyclists promotes bicycling for fun, fitness, and transportation, and works through advocacy and education to encourage a bicycle-friendly America. The League has 300,000 members and affiliates. To learn more about the Bicycle Friendly University program, visit bikeleague.org/university.

“Everybody psyched?” Daniel Lieberman, professor and chair of human evolutionary biology and a dedicated runner, asked a group of students loading up on carbs. At that moment, it was a rhetorical question. The clear, crisp morning promised a perfect day for a run.

For Harvard’s small but dedicated community of distance runners, the Boston Marathon is a team sport — an attitude on display that morning as students, faculty, and staff prepared to board a bus bound for the starting line in Hopkinton. Some had qualified for the big race, many were charity runners, and a few planned to run alongside friends to help them keep up their pace. Some were old hands: Dunster House tutor Kirstin Scott was gearing up for her 20th marathon. Several were running 26.2 miles for the first time. They had spent months working to improve their times, prodding each other to meet before dawn for the long training runs.

But when their excitement turned to confusion, panic, and sadness that afternoon after two bombings that killed three people and injured scores, Harvard’s running community pulled together for a different reason. They sent out dozens of emails — over the Harvard College Marathon Challenge (HCMC) email listserv — to track down missing runners and volunteers. Runners who weren’t at the scene offered stranded participants rides back to Cambridge. Recent alumni living in Boston came out of the woodwork to offer up their apartments overnight.

The flurry of activity “was an example of what a supportive community of runners we have at Harvard, one that is reflective of the kinds of running groups that exist all over the world,” Lieberman said Tuesday.

Moments of crisis

“The Harvard community, and the Harvard running community, is a wonderfully close and resilient group of extraordinary individuals,” Craig Rodgers, who runs the HCMC listserv, as well as many other running events on campus, said Tuesday. “This has been made clear time and again in the past 24 hours.”

For many students, that community — and oddly enough, a simple email forum — served as a logistical backbone during the aftermath of the attack, and as a place to share stories and support as the difficult week went on.

“It’s a listserv, but really it’s a community of people who are united by their love of running,” said junior Sarah Siskind. “I have made so many friends who have stayed with me over the years, and made so many fantastic memories just from meeting people over the list.”

On Monday, Siskind was running with one of those friends, junior Ginny Fahs, and two other women. At mile 20, she said, she told Fahs she’d have to speed up to make it back to campus for class. When she came upon a bottleneck at the 26-mile marker and realized something was wrong, instinct kicked in. She hopped a fence, ran back to Harvard, and arrived at her Spanish class in time to give a presentation. When her professor asked her how the marathon had gone, all she could manage in Spanish was, “There was a bomb.”

“I was in a state of confusion,” Siskind said Tuesday. “I don’t know how to describe it except for confused and stunned.” After contacting family and friends, she found time that evening to make it to Quincy House, where HCMC hosted a post-run dinner and dessert night.

“We will grieve, but we will overcome,” she said. “That is one of the only things I’ve really had a grasp on since yesterday. This is absolutely not going to change my running habits.”

Seniors Ali Evans and Robert Tamai were supposed to have run the marathon together last year, Evans for the Phillips Brooks House Association and Tamai for the American Medical Athletic Association. But last spring, Tamai suffered an injury that forced him to sit out.

Then, he and hundreds of other 2012 runners received a lucky reprieve. The extreme heat at last year’s race prompted Boston Athletic Association officials to give a pass to runners who wanted to sit out until 2013. So Tamai continued to train, and Evans agreed to run with him this year as a pacesetter.

Given Monday’s ideal conditions, the two were on track to beat their goal of four hours. Tamai crossed the finish line at 3:59:03, with Evans just seconds behind him. On the HCMC listserv, Evans recounted beating his chest, picking up Tamai, and shouting, “We did it!” The time was 2:49 p.m. One minute later, they heard a blast.

“When I saw the smoke rising and heard the initial screams, I turned to Robert and yelled, ‘Run, man, RUN!’ ” Evans wrote afterward. They sprinted a few blocks away. Evans shouted the Lord’s Prayer “at the top of my lungs, repeatedly.” Their friends who had been waiting for them, who had run to the finish line to meet them, had been 10 yards from the first explosion. None of their group was harmed.

Then they checked in by email, adding their names to a chorus of voices responding on the listserv: “I’m OK!” “I’m safe walking back on Mass Ave right now.” “I am safe, and I hope everyone else is!”

“It was amazing to see everyone [at Harvard] respond so quickly and to be so generous in relaying information to family members, friends, and others to make sure that everyone knew they were OK,” Tamai wrote later.

A community endures

Over the years, a loosely connected but enthusiastic group of runners has taken in newcomers from across Harvard: curious freshmen, looking for a noncompetitive sport after years of high school athletics; visiting pre-frosh (on Saturday, HCMC will host its annual Visitas run, a jogging campus tour that gives admitted high school seniors a chance to chat with Harvard students); faculty and staff who are new to the Boston area. Even Provost Alan Garber, a veteran marathoner, found himself drawn into the fold when he arrived at Harvard in 2011.

“Before I came to Boston, I did almost all of my training by myself,” Garber said. “It was simply too difficult to arrange the timing to run with somebody else. Here I’ve had the opportunity to run with a great community.”

To many, that community is personified by Rodgers, a counselor/psychologist at the Bureau of Study Counsel, who has long been interested in helping high school athletes coming to Harvard, particularly former track stars who don’t plan to run in college, transition to a different kind of exercise — marathon training or just regular distance running.

“It requires a significant mental shift from running as fast as you can and trying to win something to training for a distance run over many hours that you’re highly unlikely to win,” he said. “It requires a shift in motivation and in focus.”

In 2005, he started the Harvard College Marathon Challenge, which helps to procure charity spots (including 17 this year) for Harvard runners, and which spawned the email listserv that gives rise to dozens of informal runs each week.

“One of the things that makes [the group] so successful is the informality,” Rodgers said. “Because everyone here is so busy, it’s hard to make a schedule.” The fact that runners can access 500 potential jogging partners with a single email lowers the barrier for getting together, he said.

Since Rodgers started HCMC, other groups have sprung up as well: the Harvard College Running Club, a student group, and Harvard on the Move, a University-sponsored initiative that hosts informal runs and walks multiple times a week on the Cambridge and Longwood campuses. The boundaries between the groups are less important than the excitement they’ve collectively generated for the sport, Rodgers said.

“There are no turf wars,” he said. “It’s not just me out there encouraging people [to run]. I need to be a bit of a cheerleader in the cold winter months, but by no means am I the only one.”

To Lieberman, one of the world’s foremost authorities on running’s evolutionary benefits, running is and always has been a community affair, a fact that’s important to reiterate now more than ever. “We will keep on running with a renewed sense of purpose,” Lieberman said. “We have always run to help each other and to make the world a better place, but to these objectives we will add another: to prove that evil cannot stifle love.”

By Tuesday night, the frantic wave of emergency posts to the HCMC listserv had receded. Different kinds of emails — the usual ones — started trickling in. A day after the marathon, Harvard’s runners were back on the horse, doing the one thing that felt right.

“Recovery Run: 8 a.m. For the early birds out there, and/or those with early class.”

“Going for about 3 miles at 9:30 pace. Would enjoy some company!”

“No pace too slow or distance too short. Come one come all.”

Gilon, an artist specializing in community projects, brainstormed with Harvard students about what cultural and religious diversity looked like and meant to them.  The group decided on an image of the Holi festival, a Hindu spring fete of colors.

“It was really important for the entire group, not to just do a montage of religious symbolism put together.  It was really exciting to focus on one tradition,” Gilon said.

With the support of Harvard Hillel, Harvard Memorial Church, the Harvard Chaplains, and Combined Jewish Philanthropies in Boston, Gilon and a number of Harvard students were able to devote a week to painting the mural.  Gilon helped students mix paint and showed them where to apply it to the mural whose outline she had stenciled ahead of time. Some students were artists; others just wanted the chance to spend time in the group. There was a relaxed atmosphere and lighthearted chatter among people meeting each other for the first time.

“The fact that these projects are time-consuming, it’s a way that people can work side by side who wouldn’t necessarily work together in another setting … in time they can connect on a friendship level and then maybe dive deeper into things that would make them normally uncomfortable to talk about right away,” Gilon said.

Work on the mural has been extended through Thursday at the Rieseman Center for Harvard Hillel, 52 Mt. Auburn St. The community is invited to stop by and view the artistic endeavor. Building hours are 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday-Thursday.

Keir GoGwilt ’13 received the Louis Sudler Prize in the Arts. The prize recognizes outstanding artistic talent and achievement in the composition or performance of music, drama, dance, or the visual arts. This prize honors the sum of a student’s artistic activities at Harvard. A literature concentrator in Adams House, GoGwilt is awarded this prize in recognition of his exceptional and extensive work in violin performance. He is a member of the Brattle Street Chamber Players, and has performed with the Bach Society Orchestra and at ARTS FIRST. He has studied at the Taos Music School, the Mozarteum Summer Academy, and the Sarasota Music Festival, where he collaborated with Professor Robert Levin. He received a 2012 Artist Development Fellowship to study with teachers from the Köln Hochschule and the Guildhall School of Music. Additionally, he worked with American composer Tobias Picker on a recording for Tzadik records. At Bowdoin he served as a performing associate fellow and performed the Beethoven Concerto with the Bowdoin International Music Festival Orchestra. GoGwilt is collaborating with 2012 Louise Sudler Prize recipient Matt Aucoin ’12 and Victoria Crutchfield ’10 on a concert series at the Peabody Essex Museum, which brings together drama, poetry, and visual art in the space of musical performance. Along with the first program of this series in May, upcoming concerts include Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons” with the Bach Society Orchestra of Harvard and recitals at Miller Theater and the Canadian Opera Company in Toronto. Next year, he will continue performing while working with Benjamín Ramírez on extending the interdisciplinary implications of Ramírez’s scientific study of musicians’ technique.

Madelynne Hays ’13 and Oliver Luo ’13, recipients of the Council Prize in Visual Arts. The prize recognizes outstanding work in the field of visual arts. Hays, a history of art and architecture concentrator in Cabot House, is awarded this prize for her work in stage design. Her scenic design work has been featured in Farkas Hall, Agassiz Theatre, the Loeb Ex and the Loeb Mainstage including productions of “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street,” “Next to Normal,” “House of Yes,” “Cain & Cain,” and “The Tempest and Talk Radio.” She received a 2012 Artist Development Fellowship, interning with Tony Award-winning Broadway set designer Derek McLane ‘80. Later this month her work can be seen in the production of “Closer” at the Loeb Ex, and the original student work “Of the Sorrows” at Arts@29 Garden Street. After graduation she plans to relocate to Australia and pursue a career in theater design.

A visual and environmental studies (VES) concentrator with a secondary field in physics and affiliate of Cabot House, Luo is awarded this prize for his work in animation. His work has been exhibited on campus at the Harvard Student Organization Center at Hilles Gallery, Harvard VES Monday Gallery, Annual CGIS Harvard Student Art Show, and also in the Harvard Museum of Natural History installation “Bizarre Animals 2.0″ (2011). Luo has also served as a member of the design board of The Harvard Advocate.  His work was featured in the 2011 Boston Institute of Contemporary Art animation screening “New England Animators.” He is the recipient of a 2013 Artist Development Fellowship and will use his fellowship to study and work with professional animators and studios in Estonia and the Czech Republic and attend a traditional puppet animation workshop in Prague this summer.

Benjamin Moss ’13 is the recipient of the Radcliffe Doris Cohen Levi Prize. The prize recognizes a Harvard college student who combines talent and energy with outstanding enthusiasm for musical theater at Harvard and honors the memory of Doris Cohen Levi, Radcliffe ‘35.

A resident of Lowell House concentrating in English with a secondary in dramatic arts, Moss is awarded this prize for his work in musical theater productions both as an actor and composer. He has performed in “Grease” (Danny Zuko) and the Hasty Pudding Theatrical productions “Kashmir if you Can,” “There Will Be Flood,” and “There’s Something about Maui,” the last two of which he also served as composer. He has also served as music director for a production of “Little Shop of Horrors,” and acted as adviser to the 2012 production of “Spring Awakening” at Oberon. Moss is a former member of the Harvard Glee Club and in the summer of 2012 was a stage management and music intern for the American Repertory Theater’s summer workshop for their production of “Pippin” currently on Broadway. Before attending Harvard, Moss was a member of the first national tour of “Spring Awakening” performing the role of Ernst. Currently Moss is working on a two-woman musical scheduled to take place on the Adams Pool Theater during the upcoming ARTS FIRST festival (April 25-28).

Xi (CiCi) Yu ’13 is the recipient of the Louise Donovan Award. The award recognizes a Harvard student who has done outstanding work behind the scenes in the arts (e.g., as a producer, accompanist, set designer, or mentor and leader in the undergraduate arts world).

A psychology concentrator in Pforzheimer House, Yu is awarded this prize for her multi-faceted behind-the-scenes work. During her four years at Harvard, Yu has served as choreographer, stage manager, dance producer, lighting designer, and/or sound designer, for more than 30 productions and has served on the leadership boards of the Harvard-Radcliffe Modern Dance Company and Harvard CityStep. Yu has also designed posters and programs for various theatre and dance productions as well as the 60-page guide for Harvard’s annual ARTS FIRST Festival.

Irineo Cabreros ’13 and Shayna Skal ’13 received the Suzanne Farrell Dance Award. Named for the acclaimed dancer and former prima ballerina of New York City Ballet, the prize recognizes a Harvard undergraduate who has demonstrated outstanding artistry in the field of dance.

A Pforzheimer House resident enrolled in the Harvard/New England Conservatory joint five year A.B/M.M. program concentrating in physics and studying flute performance, Cabreros has served as both dancer and choreographer for the Harvard Radcliffe Dance Company. He has participated in the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange and Christopher Roman January Dance Intensives. In late March, Cabreros performed in the OFA Dance Program’s spring performance at Farkas Hall. A Dance Program emerging choreographer, his work will be featured in the “Emerging Choreographer Showings” at the Harvard Dance Center, April 18-19.

A physics concentrator with a secondary concentration in mathematics in Quincy House, Skal has been involved in numerous concerts produced by the OFA Dance Program and the Harvard Ballet Company. She has appeared in pieces choreographed by Dance Program Director Jill Johnson and visiting artists Christopher Roman and John Jasperse, and also performed in Counterpoint presented on the Loeb Mainstage by Harvard Radcliffe Dramatic Club in collaboration with the Harvard Ballet Company and the Harvard-Radcliffe Modern Dance Company. In addition, she has also collaborated with the Harvard Pops Orchestra and the Harvard Jazz Bands.

Eleanor Regan ’13 is the recipient of the Robert E. Levi Prize. This prize acknowledges a Harvard College senior who has demonstrated outstanding arts management skills over the course of an undergraduate career.  The recipient’s dedication, organizational talent and creative problem-solving, as well as ability to nurture artistry, have been critical factors in the success of one or more arts organizations and/or projects. The award honors the memory of Robert E. Levi, Harvard College class of 1933 and Harvard Business School, MBA, 1935.

A social studies concentrator in Adams House, Regan has stage managed or produced over ten undergraduate productions including “Macbeth,” “The House of Yes,” “CryHurtFood,” “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street,” and “Equus.” Regan served as a teaching fellow for the Freshman Seminar “26y: Science, History and Theatre.” In addition, Regan has house managed for the American Repertory Theater and served as a programming intern at OBERON.

Emily Hyman ’13 is the recipient of the Jonathan Levy Award. This prize recognizes the most promising undergraduate actor at the College.

A literature concentrator with a secondary in dramatic arts residing in Pforzheimer House, Hyman has performed in over sixteen productions in venues across campus. Her roles have included Lady Macbeth in “Macbeth,” Emilia in “Othello,” the woman in “Cleansed,” and M in “Crave.” She appeared in the visiting directors projects “The Flies” and “Trust” on the Loeb Mainstage as well as the 2010 A.R.T./MXAT Institute production of Tennessee Williams’ “Stairs to the Roof” directed by 2005 Sudler Prize recipient Michael Donahue ’05. She will appear on the Loeb Mainstage in the HRDC production of “Sea Change” during the upcoming ARTS FIRST festival.

Matthew Warner, recipient of the Alan Symonds Award. The Alan Symonds Award, administered by the Office for the Arts and given by the Harvard-Radcliffe Gilbert & Sullivan Players in honor of Alan Symonds ’69-76, HRG&SP alumnus and former Technical Director for Harvard College Theatre, recognizes outstanding work in technical theater and commitment to mentoring fellow student technicians.

An English concentrator living in Quincy House, Warner ’13 has been involved as a designer for over 25 productions during his time at Harvard, including set designer for “The Mikado” and “Yeomen of the Guard” at Agassiz Theatre, as well as the Loeb Ex production of “You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown” (2012). Lighting design credits include the fall 2010 visiting director project “Trust” on the Loeb Mainstage, and Harvard Early Music Society’s fall 2010 production of “Les Plaisirs de la Paix.” From 2010-12 Warner served on the executive board of the Harvard College Stage Designers’ Collective as studio coordinator and also as secretary and vice president of the board of directors for Harvard-Radcliffe Gilbert and Sullivan Players.

The OFA supports student engagement in the arts and integrates the arts into University life. Through its programs and services, the OFA teaches and mentors, fosters student art making, connects students to accomplished artists, commissions new work, and partners with local, national, and international constituencies. By supporting the development of students as artists and cultural stewards, the OFA works to enrich society and shape communities in which the arts are a vital part of life. For more information about the OFA, call 617.495.8676, or visit www.ofa.fas.harvard.edu.

But on Tuesday afternoon, as authorities released more information about the victims of the two explosions in Copley Square, a Harvard family — and the University community — received word that everyone on campus had hoped not to hear.

Krystle Campbell, 29, the daughter of longtime Harvard Business School (HBS) Restaurant Associates employee Patty Campbell and sister of Cabot House dining services staffer Billy Campbell, was confirmed as one of three dead in the attack. Krystle Campbell herself had worked for HBS Restaurant Associates, where her mother has been on staff for 30 years, while attending college several years ago. According to news reports, Campbell, an Arlington resident, was standing in the crowd along Boylston Street with a friend when the bombs detonated.

At 3 p.m., the Business School held a moment of silence on the steps of Baker Library. There, HBS Dean Nitin Nohria announced the news of Campbell’s death as roughly 200 community members and many of the Campbell family’s co-workers stood by.

“Our heart goes out to Patty, to her husband, Bill, to their son, Billy,” Nohria said. “As difficult as these moments are — and this is truly a difficult time for all of us in this community — these are also the times that remind us how much we rely upon each other, how much we lean on each other, how much this also brings out in us our very best.”

Claire Aly cries for her co-worker Patty Campbell, whose daughter was killed in the attacks.

Nohria’s message was in evidence across campus Monday and Tuesday as the University, along with concerned family and friends, worked to confirm the safety of the more than 100 students, faculty, staff, and alumni who were running, helping, or simply cheering along the marathon route. That number included a busload of runners — from undergraduates running their first 26.2 miles for charity to longtime marathoners like Provost Alan Garber — who had taken off from Mt. Auburn Street early Monday morning for the starting line in Hopkinton.

On Monday, offers to take in stranded runners poured in by email from recent Harvard alumni who live along the marathon route, and the Harvard University Police Department offered to provide rides back to campus. The Harvard College Marathon Challenge, a campuswide group that helped 17 Harvardians secure charity spots in this year’s race, used its email listserv of hundreds to help track down any missing participants.

On Tuesday morning, President Drew Faust sent a letter to the University community announcing that at least one Harvard staff member and some family and friends had been injured and were being treated at area hospitals; their names were not released.

In her statement, Faust thanked local physicians, nurses, and first responders — many of whom trained or work at Harvard-affiliated hospitals — for using “extraordinary skill and heroism to treat patients with injuries more commonly seen in a war zone.”

“The Boston Marathon is an event that demands resilience,” Faust wrote. “As we struggle to make sense of yesterday’s events, I urge all of us to draw on the strength of the Harvard community and the support of colleagues and friends.”

A family’s grief

Nowhere was that strength more necessary than at the Business School, where a somber mood darkened the clear and unusually quiet day. At an afternoon vigil in the Spangler Center, people gathered to write notes to the Campbell family.

Restaurant Associates employees shared memories of Krystle Campbell, who worked at Spangler Grille while putting herself through college, her former co-workers said.

“She just needed a little spending money when she was putting herself through school,” said Jean Adams, a cashier at HBS’s Baker Library who has worked with Patty Campbell for three decades. “She put herself through college, never asked the family for anything. She and her brother threw their parents a 25th anniversary party. She was very independent.”

“If I had a daughter, I would want her to be like Krystle. … She was just an awesome, awesome kid,” Adams said, her voice breaking. “I don’t understand why.”

Claire Aly wrote a message to her co-worker Patty Campbell: “I’m so sorry about your lost darling. I’ll pray for you and your husband, your son.”

Adams and other Restaurant Associates staff called their team at HBS a “second family,” with Patty Campbell serving as one of the group’s honorary matriarchs.

“She’s been here since before buildings were here, before I was born,” said Janell Alvarado, who has worked in the Kresge Boardroom with Patty Campbell for the past five years. “She truly loves this place. … It feels like we all lost somebody today.”

Patty Campbell had been working in Kresge when news of the bombings spread, her co-workers said.

“We’re trying to move on today but it’s hard, especially not seeing her face here,” Alvarado said.

“Everyone just seems a little bit out of place,” agreed Henry Green, a fellow co-worker in Kresge.

Many at the vigil said they hadn’t considered not coming into work on Tuesday, and that the day’s sad news had strengthened their desire to stay on campus.

“I have to tell you, when that confirmation [of Campbell’s death] came through, you could almost feel the wave go through campus,” said Barbara Cleary, an HBS faculty assistant. “As soon as they heard there was somebody from the HBS community who was involved, everybody just dropped everything.”

Harvard University Dining Services (HUDS) also expressed grief for their colleague’s loss.

“Today our hearts are with Billy Campbell, a member of our Cabot-Pforzheimer team since October 2000,” said David Davidson, managing director for HUDS. “Billy and Krystle were especially close, and she was well-known to many at the Quad, as her brother has shared countless stories about her.”

Somber gathering

Just after 8 p.m., Harvard’s last vigil of the day unfolded on the steps of Memorial Church, facing Widener Library. First a dozen, then a few dozen, then a hundred, and finally a thousand lit candles to remember the dead and to comfort one another.

The Harvard Glee Club opened the ceremony. Then came the speakers, each brief, including Harvard Undergraduate Council President Tara Raghuveer ’14, Harvard President Drew Faust, three Harvard chaplains, the Rev. Jonathan Walton, and Anqi Peng ’14, whose Boston Marathon race stopped just short of Mile 26 when smoke bloomed in the distance. “I came back here,” she said of her race day, “and I saw all my friends and I hugged every one of them.”

Everyone else took up the same theme: Look on, embrace your friends, and find love within the aftermath of tragedy.

Faust remembered the words of Toni Morrison: “We tend to overlook goodness, and we must put goodness in the center of our lives.”

She remarked on much of her scholarly career, “devoted to war and tragedy and violence. As I looked at the events yesterday, I thought about my own historical work and how so often I can find in those tragedies the glimmers of hope and the glimmers of humanity that affirm all of us and our common community, amidst the tragedies and violence we experience.”

The day after the bombings leaves more questions than answers, said Walton, the Pusey Minister in the Memorial Church and Plummer Professor of Christian Morals. “Anxiety is understandable and anger over senseless acts of terror is appropriate,” he said. But: “Don’t allow your anxiety or your anger to take your mind to an awful place. Darkness cannot drive out darkness. Only light can do that.”

Looking out at the sea of small flames arrayed at dusk, Walton said: “As you blow out your candles tonight, let the light of God light you up.”

— Corydon Ireland contributed to this story.

Nestled in a residential neighborhood just outside Harvard Square are two late-19th century Victorians that house the 32 undergraduate students. The architecture features arched ceilings, fireplaces, and built-in bookcases and drawers, and the rooms are decorated with posters, scrolled poetry, guitars, and ukuleles. The spaces are as individualized as the students who reside there. Impeccably neat or strewn with laundry, each room takes on a character of its own.

Despite the distinct personalities that inhabit the house, co-opers jump at the opportunity to praise the community as a creative and supportive place. Charlotte Lieberman ’13 comments, “You know everyone’s name and have some sort of personal connection to them. Everyone truly cares about one another. When someone asks about your day, they actually care about how your day was.”

As a self-governing group, the students must find solidarity in the collective. Kaplan’s thesis title, drawn from a statement written in the dining hall, is a reminder that “each group of co-opers must learn to come together over many issues, and to recognize that what affects one, affects all.”

“I was touched,” said his husband, Kevin Patton-Hock, a full-time parent to the couple’s two sons, 11 and 13. “I thought it was really nice, and just a beautiful thing to see everyone treated the same.”

But as a gay married couple, there was always one day where the Patton-Hocks were not treated just like every other Harvard family: Tax Day, when they faced additional federal taxes on their health coverage that heterosexual married couples do not.

“Harvard’s been a wonderful employer to me,” Arthur Patton-Hock said. “It’s only at the moment of benefits-election time or tax-preparation time that the inequity rankles.”

This year, thanks to a change in Harvard policy, more than 100 married couples like the Patton-Hocks will have that cost offset by the University — an important step in advancing equity for LGBT employees, advocates say.

Under current federal law, any worker enrolled in an employer-sponsored medical plan who extends that coverage to a same-sex spouse is taxed on the fair market value of the spouse’s medical coverage. Although eight states and the District of Columbia now allow same-sex marriage, the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act prohibits the federal government from recognizing those unions for tax purposes.

Under a new policy announced today and effective this month, Harvard will provide a tax equalization payment of $1,500 a year to eligible faculty, staff, and internal postdoctoral fellows whose same-sex spouse (or, for employees living in states where same-sex marriage is not legal, same-sex domestic partner) is covered under one of the University’s family medical plans.

The decision to provide a tax equalization benefit is in keeping with Harvard’s nondiscrimination policy, which includes sexual orientation, said Rita Moore, director of benefits and human resources systems for Harvard Human Resources (HHR).

“The unequal tax treatment of health benefits under federal law has been troubling to many LGBT employees at Harvard as a matter of equity with other families,” Moore said. “I’m pleased that, like a growing number of other employers, we’re providing this payment to help offset extra taxes paid by employees who cover a same-sex spouse.”

Eligible employees are automatically enrolled and will receive the new benefit in monthly payments of $125, the first of which should appear on employees’ paychecks in May. (The amount will be $166.66 per month for employees who are paid only nine months a year, such as dining services workers.)

Harvard joins a growing number of major employers, including the city of Cambridge, that have adopted similar policies in recent years, in part to remain competitive in attracting LGBT employees.

“This policy will help Harvard attract the best talent,” said Michael Goetz, a Harvard Divinity School employee and past co-chair of the Harvard LGBT Faculty and Staff Committee. “But what it comes down to for me is, it’s the right and just thing to do. Harvard’s seen as a leader in the higher-education world, and it’s a place whose leaders are concerned with doing the right thing.”

Harvard has been considering a policy change since last August, said Charles Curti, director of human resources at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. After a study of other institutions with similar policies, HHR determined that a uniform payment would be the most effective way to reimburse same-sex married couples.

“Everyone across the University was very supportive of the concept,” said Curti, a member of Harvard’s gay community who worked on the policy’s drafting and implementation. “There’s been a strong desire on the part of the LGBT community to have this come to pass.”

The constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act was argued before the Supreme Court last month, and the court is expected to rule on the issue in June. If the law is overturned, Harvard’s new tax equalization policy could become irrelevant, as the federal government would likely no longer tax same-sex married couples differently than their heterosexual counterparts.

“We still don’t know how the Supreme Court is going to rule,” Curti said. “Harvard can’t repeal that law, but it can look to mitigate some of the impact of this legislation. … To me, it’s a sign of Harvard’s commitment to diversity and inclusion.”

Harvard’s decision to move forward as the law hangs in the balance is also a show of good faith to the LGBT community, the Patton-Hocks said.

“I think it’s great that the University is doing it now, because it needs to be done, and I’m very glad that the University isn’t waiting for the Supreme Court decision,” Arthur Patton-Hock said. “It’s important to indicate to LGBT employees that we value you equally in all respects and are going to make it right regardless of what the court decides.”

Of course, there are practical benefits to the new policy as well.

“We’re a family for whom the money will make a difference,” Kevin Patton-Hock said. “We have a million things we could use that for — for our kids mostly.”