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 has existed for the many FAS and interfaculty PhD programs that flourish under the stewardship of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. This situation can be 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 will be:

• 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 will be 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 will be 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 should also coordinate with relevant bodies at other Harvard schools involved in interfaculty PhD programs.

Meetings and Agendas

GPC meetings will be bi-weekly.  

Meetings over the first semester would consider overviews of data on programs in major divisions  – and consider pending GSAS policy issues (such as how Women’s Task Force recommendations will be implemented).  After the first semester, and certainly by the second year, regular conversations with individual programs should begin. The GPC reviews will be a good venue in which to discuss issues about advising and student life, as well as longstanding questions about admissions, the structure of requirements, and the effectiveness of programs in moving graduate students through stages of their studies toward their degrees.

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 will help to ensure cooperation and free flow of information between the GPC and the CGE.
• The following officials should be 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 2007-2008 Members

Members

Michael D. SmithDean, Faculty of Arts and Sciences
Gordon McKay Professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering 

Theda Skocpol
Dean, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
Victor S. Thomas Professor of Government and Sociology

Margot Gill
Administrative Dean, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

David R. Pilbeam
Dean ad interim, Harvard College
Henry Ford II Professor of Human Evolution

Allan Brandt
Amalie Moses Kass Professor of the History of Medicine in the Department of Social Medicine
Professor of the History of Science

Susan Carey
Henry A. Morss Jr. and Elisabeth W. Morss Professor of Psychology

Catherine Dulac
Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology

Gerald Gabrielse
George Vasmer Leverett Professor of Physics

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

David Knipe
Higgins Professor of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics

John Stauffer (spring term only)
Professor of English and American Literature and Language and Professor of African and African American Studies

Judith L. Ryan, ex officio Faculty Council Representative
Robert K. and Dale J. Weary Professor of German and Comparative Literature

Richard Tarrant (fall term only)
Pope Professor of the Latin Language and Literature

Regularly Invited Guests

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

Brian W. Casey
Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, FAS

David Cutler
Dean, Social Sciences, FAS
Otto Eckstein Professor of Applied Economics

Thomas O. Fox
Associate Professor of Neuroscience
Associate Dean, Division of Medical Sciences

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

Barry Kane
Registrar, FAS

Venkatesh Narayanamurti
Dean, SEAS
John A. and Elizabeth S. Armstrong Professor of Engineering and Applied Sciences
Professor of Physics

David R. Pilbeam
Senior Advisor to the Dean, FAS
Henry Ford II Professor of Human Evolution

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