The Harvard Guide: Harvard's 10 principal academic units

Governance of the University
Harvard's 10 principal academic units
Publications

Harvard's 10 principal
academic units

The expression "every tub on its own bottom" is often used to describe the decentralized organization and financial arrangement of Harvard's principal academic units: nine faculties overseeing Harvard's 12 schools and colleges and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Each unit is headed by a Dean, who is appointed by the President, and each is directly responsible for its own finances and organization. The University administration supports the activities of the academic units and other operations on a University-wide basis.

Harvard's principal academic units are:

1) Faculty of Arts and Sciences includes:
     Harvard College
     Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
     Division of Continuing Education
2) Business School
3) Design School
4) Divinity School
5) Graduate School of Education
6) John F. Kennedy School of Government 7) Law School
8) Faculty of Medicine includes:
     Medical School
     School of Dental Medicine
9) School of Public Health
10) Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study

In 1665, Caleb Cheeshahteaumauk became the first Native American to receive a Harvard degree. Less than a year after Commencement, he succumbed to tuberculosis. Despite the subsequent arrival of several other Native Americans, he remained Harvard's only Native graduate of the Colonial era. His handwritten Latin address to English benefactors survives in the archives of the Royal Society in London.

In 1734, according to the requirements set forth in the College Laws, a candidate seeking admission to the College must have been able to demonstrate the ability "ex tempore to read, construe and parse Tully, Virgil, or Such like common Classical Latin Authors; and to write true Latin in Prose, and to be Skill'd in making Latin verse, or at Least in the rules of Prosodia; and to read, construe and parse ordinary Greek, as in the New Testament, Isocrates, or such like, and decline the Paradigms of Greek Nouns, and Verbs." The President and tutors conducted the largely oral entrance examinations just before Commencement, on a date published in newspapers.

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