FAS Dean Smith looks ahead
As it emerges from the worst of the global financial crisis, Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) is renewing its focus on priorities ranging from House Renewal to innovative pedagogy. With the release of the 2010 FAS annual report, Dean Michael D. Smith, John H. Finley Jr. Professor of Engineering and Applied Sciences, spoke to the Gazette about his goals for the year and about his three-year struggle to balance the budget and to create a culture of sustainable excellence for students, faculty, and staff. Q: Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) has been working through some extraordinary budget challenges. Can you give us an overview of where the budget stands now? A: We’re in a much more positive situation than most would have predicted a couple of years ago because we began to tackle the problem as soon as we understood that a significant change in the value of...