The Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) was officially launched in 2007 under the leadership of Dean Venkatesh “Venky” Narayanamurti.

During the previous decade, Dean Narayanamurti had developed the Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences (DEAS), then a unit within the Faculty of Arts and Sciences with 43 faculty members, to the size and capacity necessary for it to become a separate school.

SEAS now has about 70 faculty full-time equivalents (FTEs) with plans to continue to grow the faculty to about 100 FTEs.

Transition from a Division to a School

First, guided by memoranda of understanding, the newly formed school became administratively independent of the FAS in most functional areas, including budget, communications, finance and accounting, human resources, information technology, physical resources planning and management, safety, sponsored research administration, teaching laboratories, and management planning. (Note: Some administrative functions at DEAS had also been run relatively independently, in anticipation of becoming a school.)

With the administrative transition completed, a new financial compact between FAS and SEAS—which has historically controlled its own separate endowment—was then finalized in Fiscal Year (FY) 2008.

SEAS still remains closely associated with FAS in important ways.

• SEAS maintains strong administrative links for the management of critical, shared academic functions such as faculty affairs, undergraduate affairs, and graduate student affairs;
• SEAS faculty members are also members of the FAS and teach in the College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS); and
• the dean of SEAS sits along with the FAS Divisional Deans on the FAS Academic Planning Group and along with the other school deans at the Council of Deans.

After Dean Narayanamurti stepped down as dean in September 2008, Frans Spaepen, John C. and Helen F. Franklin Professor of Applied Physics, assumed the position of interim dean for the next nine months.

Cherry A. Murray, previously principal associate director for science and technology at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, was named dean on July 1, 2009.

Building on Excellence

In the 1950 “Report of the Panel on the McKay Bequest to the President and Fellows of Harvard College,” chairman Vanevar Bush wrote of the importance of broadly educating engineers “… to become leaders in an expanding economy based increasingly upon the utilization of science in an economic manner for human needs.”

Sixty years later, technology has become one of the most pivotal aspects of our society. For Harvard to maintain its status as a first class, globally-minded institution, the University must foster an equally excellent program in engineering and applied sciences.

That means: providing a “technical” education to select students and giving all students the opportunity to learn about the broad implications of technology in our global society.

Harvard ranks first in citations per faculty member in engineering disciplines. Although the quality of the faculty at SEAS is high, the size of the faculty is very small compared to the intellectual breadth needed for engineering and applied sciences in the 21st century.

To address current and future societal challenges, knowledge from fundamental science, art, and the humanities must all be linked through the application of engineering principles with the professions of law, medicine, public policy, design and business practice.

In other words, solving important issues requires a multidisciplinary approach. With the combined strengths of SEAS, FAS, and the professional schools, Harvard is ideally positioned to both broadly educate the next generation of leaders who understand the complexities of technology and society and to use its intellectual resources and innovative thinking to meet the challenges of the 21st century.

The vision for SEAS echoes such ideals:

Through research and scholarship, we will create collaborative bridges across Harvard and educate the next generation of global leaders.

By harnessing the power of engineering and applied sciences we will address the greatest challenges facing our society.

Strategic Planning

To realize this vision, in September 2009, Dean Murray launched the first phase of a yearlong strategic planning process. Overseen by the SEAS faculty and executive staff, the process is focused on academic planning and curricular renewal.

The academic strategic planning is organized around discipline areas. Dean Murray believes in educating “T-shaped” individuals, or those who have deep knowledge in a discipline but are able to collaborate across the boundaries of disciplines, as opposed to educating “mile-wide-but-inch-deep” individuals, or those who are interdisciplinary but have no intellectual depth.

The “T-shaped” approach (an increasingly common concept in engineering, furthered in particular by Jim Plummer, dean of the Stanford School of Engineering) is particularly important for enhancing undergraduate education, an activity that has become a top priority for SEAS. Her plan is to organize the teaching of concentrations and curriculum by relevant disciplines, keeping in mind the synergy between and among disciplines and the need to expose students to cross-disciplinary challenges.

Further, Dean Murray has focused on the most synergistic engineering and applied science disciplines, and those core disciplines that are essential to address 21st century challenges.

By contrast, SEAS will not pursue the following disciplines: civil engineering, aerospace engineering, nuclear engineering, ocean engineering, mining and petroleum engineering. Such areas are more relevant for much larger engineering school such as MIT or Stanford and/or relate to “last century technologies.”

The chosen disciplines reflect similar areas of emphasis expressed in Dean Narayanamurti’s 2006 “Engineering a Renaissance” vision document for the new school.

Collaborations within Harvard and Societal Impact

Exposing students to the opportunities and challenge of cross-disciplinary fields is best accomplished through experiential learning (design projects and research experiences). Moreover, by being embedded in a major research enterprise, organized by societal needs and major challenges, students gain a first-hand understanding of the latest approaches to science and engineering to address those needs and challenges.

SEAS, as a “connector and integrator,” offers students an unparalleled opportunity to be part of an excellent engineering school inside of one of the world’s foremost research universities. Moreover, students enjoy the intellectual energy of a liberal arts college where they can engage in scholarship spanning the sciences, social science, art and humanities and gain an understanding of societal issues through the University’s professional schools.

With such breadth and depth, students can tackle the complex, multidisciplinary global challenges of the 21st century.

SEAS as the bridge between fundamental arts, social sciences and science connecting through the Harvard professional schools and cross-school initiatives (on the outside wheel) to create knowledge and give students the best education to address the global challenges of the 21^st century in multi-school collaborations (outside the wheel).

To that end, the strategic planning exercise includes a September 2009 – February 2010 exercise focused on undergraduate teaching. The aim is to determine the appropriate critical mass of faculty needed in the given discipline areas to enable a world class engineering education; foster cross-area synergies; and enhance existing and potentially create new concentrations.

During the spring term, the exercise will focus on implementing initial curriculum reforms and developing related management, financial, and fundraising plans to achieve long-term success. SEAS will also produce an overarching faculty hiring plan to address the major remaining intellectual gaps, ensuring the continuation of the positive momentum of the last decade.

Both strategies will be linked to a carefully monitored financial plan. Further, the strategic planning exercise will also refine the administrative structure for SEAS so that it adequately supports the new academic management.

The results of the faculty strategic planning exercise (in process) will help to determine which disciplines to strengthen to best support teaching and research at SEAS and to enable synergy and collaboration across schools.

Looking Ahead

The major focus of FY 2011 will be to implement the academic plan in tandem with creating an effective management structure; putting in place a thoughtful process of constant curricular reform and renewal; developing a realistic, flexible, but aggressive, space plan; and generating major new resources through fundraising.

As we move forward, our guiding principle is to “grow, without growing apart.” We aim to preserve the dynamic culture and close connections established at SEAS, while expanding our ability to build bridges within the classroom, across the campus, and around the world.