Graduate Policy Committee

Graduate Policy Committee

In the early 1990s, the Educational Policy Committee was reestablished to review individual undergraduate programs in a regular cycle and to ensure sustained senior faculty involvement in setting broad policies for undergraduate concentrations.

No comparable committee existed for the many FAS and interfaculty PhD programs that flourish under the stewardship of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. This situation was addressed by the establishment of a Graduate Policy Committee (GPC) to include faculty from Humanities, Social Science, and Natural Science PhD programs within FAS as well as faculty involved with PhD programs jointly managed by the FAS and other schools at Harvard.

The major functions of the GPC are:

  • To advise the Dean of the Graduate School -- and through her or him the Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and other appropriate authorities -- on major policies and resource allocations affecting all PhD programs. Consideration is supported by regularly collected data that allow comparisons across programs and inform members of the faculty about the competitive situations of Harvard programs, and about the issues raised by expansions of the Harvard faculty and support for new intellectual initiatives.
  • To review graduate programs run by departments, interdisciplinary programs, and interfaculty committees, engaging leaders of each program in a discussion about admissions practices, advising systems, student life, curricular offerings and requirements, temporal guideposts and time to degree, and outplacement of degree holders. Reviews are scheduled in a regular cycle over the years.
  • To coordinate with the FAS Faculty Council and the Committee on Graduate Education (a subcommittee of the Faculty Council) on policy discussions, mandated reviews of programs, and consideration of proposed new PhD programs. Where appropriate, the GPC also coordinates with relevant bodies at other Harvard schools involved in interfaculty PhD programs.

Membership

  • Co-chaired by the Dean of FAS and the Dean of GSAS.
  • Two senior faculty apiece from FAS Humanities, Social Science, and Natural Science programs. Some should be faculty involved in interdisciplinary as well as disciplinary programs.
  • Two or three senior faculty members who are key players in interfaculty graduate programs, with some rotation over the years, but always including one from a joint FAS/Medical School PhD program.
  • One ex officio senior faculty member designated each year by the Committee on Graduate Education of the FAS Faculty Council. This helps to ensure cooperation and free flow of information between the GPC and the CGE.
  • The following officials are regularly invited guests: the Dean of Harvard College; FAS Divisional Deans (who may especially want to attend when issues or programs in their jurisdictions are discussed); the Administrative Dean of the GSAS; the Registrar; and additional senior GSAS administrators when issues relevant to their expertise or responsibilities are on the agenda.

Graduate Policy Committee 2012-2013 Members

Members

Xiao-Li Meng, Chair

Dean, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
Whipple V.N. Jones Professor of Statistics

Margot Gill
Administrative Dean, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Richard T. Born
Professor of Neurobiology

Catherine Dulac
Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology

Mark Elliott 
Mark Schwartz Professor of Chinese and Inner Asian History

Laura Frahm
Assistant Professor of Visual and Environmental Studies

Gerald Gabrielse
George Vasmer Leverett Professor of Physics

Gonzalo Giribet
Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology

Jerry Green
David A. Wells Professor of Political Economy
John Leverett Professor
Senior Fellow of the Society of Fellows

Daniel Jacob
Vasco McCoy Family Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry and Environmental Engineering

Shigehisa Kuriyama
Reischauer Institute Professor of Cultural History

Jeffrey Schnapp on leave spring 2013
Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures

John Stauffer
Professor of English and Professor of African and African American Studies

Mary Steedly
Professor of Anthropology

Karen Thornber on leave spring 2013
Harris K. Weston Associate Professor of the Humanities

Christopher Winship on leave spring 2013
Diker-Tishman Professor of Sociology

Regularly Invited Guests

 

Russell Berg
Dean, Admissions and Financial Aid, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Noel Bisson
Associate Dean of Undergraduate  Education
Member of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences
Associate of the Department of Music

Jeremy Bloxham
Dean, Sciences
Mallinckrodt Professor of Geophysics and Professor of Computational Sciences

Michael Burke
Registrar, FAS

David Cardozo
Associate Dean, Division of Medical Sciences
Assistant Professor of Neurobiology

Evelynn Hammonds
Dean, Harvard College
Barbara Gutmann Rosenkrantz Professor of the History of Science and of African and African American Studies

James Hogle
Edward S. Harkness Professor Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology
Master, Dudley House

Peter Marsden
Dean, Social Sciences
Edith and Benjamin Geisinger Professor of Sociology

Garth McCavana
Dean for Student Affairs

Cherry Murray
Dean, School of Engineering and Applied Sciences
John A. and Elizabeth S. Armstrong Professor of Engineering and Applied Sciences

Michael D. Smith
Dean, Faculty of Arts and Sciences
John H. Finley, Jr. Professor of Engineering and Applied Sciences

Diana Sorensen
Dean, Arts and Humanities
James F. Rothenberg Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures and of Comparative Literature

Katherine Stanton
Assistant Dean of Undergraduate Education

Sheila Thomas
Assistant Dean for Diversity and Minority Affairs, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Nina Zipser
Dean for Faculty Affairs and Planning, FAS