Provost’s other hat: teacher
As provost, Alan Garber’s job is to help all of Harvard’s Schools work as one, a role that requires a near-constant aerial view of the University. But for two hours each week, he gets to narrow his focus to just 12 students, laptop-wielding freshmen who on a recent rainy afternoon gathered around a conference table in Sever Hall in his class called “Health Care on Less than $8,000 a Year.” The health care policy seminar, Garber’s first teaching experience at Harvard since he became provost in 2011, “has been one way for me to keep a foot in the world I used to inhabit,” he said. It’s also a chance for the University’s most senior administrator to connect with the youngest members of the Harvard community. In his prior life as a Stanford University professor, Garber said, he mostly taught and advised medical students, business students, graduate students in economics, and postdoctoral...