Adapted from an essay by GSAS Dean Allan Brandt that appeared in the Winter-Spring 2011 edition of Colloquy, the GSAS alumni quarterly.
This year, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences is celebrating the 20th anniversary of Dudley House as the graduate student center. In April, Dudley Fellows from each of those 20 years attended a reunion at the House, and next fall, we’re planning a gala dinner for the Harvard community to mark the official anniversary of the House’s dedication and to take special note of the tremendous resources it offers our graduate students.
As we’re fond of noting around here, Dudley makes a difference. The House is the hub of student life at the Graduate School, with offerings — recreational, social, and intellectual — that span every discipline and every conceivable interest. Last term, the House and its fellows sponsored an evening of Persian poetry, a clean-up project at the Charles River, an exclusive tour of the new American wing of Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, dissertation bootcamps, a foray into the music of West Africa, an Indian cooking class, and a viewing party for the world cup of cricket — and that’s just for starters.
As this roster indicates, the House is also place where the global diversity of our student population is fully expressed. Students from many nations and ethnicities come together to share important cultural and gastronomical traditions, helping to reinforce their own community and extending it by welcoming newcomers. In this way, as disciplines, experience, and interests blend, Dudley House becomes a key microcosm of the broader opportunities, and the diverse resources, of Harvard itself.
But the House is not the only way in which GSAS is interested in building community for our graduate students. We also support an integrated residential community called the Graduate Commons Program, administered by Harvard Real Estate Services. This program, which involves handsome new buildings along the Charles (at 10 Akron Street and 5 Cowperthwaite Street), houses students from all of Harvard’s graduate and professional schools. It creates opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration, social interaction, recreation, and a University-wide sense of community.
The GSAS Student Services Office and the resident advisors who keep our own four residence halls running — with creative programming and exciting outings — also foster connection and a sense of identity, something particularly important to first- and second-year students just getting to know Harvard and Cambridge.
And through our Graduate Student Council, GSAS supports more than 50 student organizations, groups that bring students together based on professional or scholarly affinities, countries of origin, or extracurricular interests. These organizations provide not only a key point of connection, but also a way for faculty, deans, and administrators to tap into the ever-expanding talents and interests of our students.
Graduate school, as those of us who have survived it often recall, can be an isolating experience. Doing advanced research for a dissertation, discovering new knowledge and new points of view, is an endeavor that demands hours of solitary investigation. But our students are endlessly, and quite broadly, creative and engaged, and their interests do not narrow as they complete their degrees. Despite the demands of their work, we encourage them to continue to follow their passions and build a whole life at Harvard. We know that they, and our entire community, will be the richer for it.