In the Community

The Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics is giving middle school children in three Massachusetts towns a taste of astronomy, using robotic telescopes they control themselves to fuel their interest in careers in science, technology, engineering, and math.

Twenty-eight Harvard staffers sorted 9,000 pounds of food at the Greater Boston Food Bank. The volunteer effort kicked off a University-wide commitment to the food bank.

A university president’s day is packed with public presentations, private meetings, and a steady stream of phone calls and visitors. A photo essay chronicles one day on President Faust’s schedule, from dawn till dusk.

More than 60 Harvard volunteers descended on the 80-year-old Cambridge Community Center Inc. (CCC) Saturday (Oct. 24) for a much-needed, daylong facelift.

Arts Bridge is an initiative developed by recent alumni in the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Now current students in the program are teaching kids from Allston and Brighton how to make their own films.

For the fourth-straight year, Harvard is at the top of the 2010 College Sustainability Report Card, a report that grades the green credentials of 300 colleges and universities.

Harvard has hosted its Allston and Brighton neighbors to an early reception and a football game for the past 20 years. It is a bookend to Cambridge Football Day, which was held earlier this month.

President Drew Faust addresses the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce, discusses tough economic times, recommitment to expansion, and ties with Allston neighborhood.

Harvard welcomed many football-loving residents of Cambridge on Saturday (Oct. 17) to its annual Cambridge Football Day.

Volunteers from across the University are lending a hand to the Greater Boston Food Bank from November through May.

Harvard University is kicking off the 2009 football season with a new “Crimson Kids” program.

The second round of Harvard Allston Partnership Grant Funds totaling $100,000 are now available to community members and nonprofit groups to help support neighborhood improvement projects, cultural enrichment, and education programs benefiting the North Allston/North Brighton community.

Harvard Graduate School of Design students unite to help Boston’s Chinatown neighborhood bring back a local library that was demolished 50 years ago to make way for Boston’s Central Artery.

Elementary and high school teachers attend a weeklong Harvard workshop on oil and the economic, political, and environmental issues that accompany it.

To enhance the Harvard community’s campus experience, the University will install tables and chairs within Harvard Yard and the Radcliffe Quad and host open-air performances.

Sponsored by the Office of the Mayor for Cambridge and the Office of the President of Harvard University, the annual Harvard Yard Picnic draws hundreds of senior members from the local community to Harvard Yard to enjoy food, friends, and music.

In addition to the market’s fresh, seasonal produce from local farmers, this family event will feature a variety of health related displays for people of every age. The Joseph Smith Health Center will be conducting free glucose, cholesterol, and blood pressure screenings. The Fair will offer information on walking and biking in Boston…

Budding young scholars met with one of the University’s top scholars to learn about the finer points of academic research, the field of history, and what it’s like to be the president of Harvard.

The Harvard Swim School, a program for all levels of swimming and diving ability, is taught by members of the Harvard men’s and women’s swimming and diving teams under the supervision of the varsity coaching staff.

In a single year, approximately 7,000 Harvard University students collectively performed more than 900,000 hours of community service work in and around metropolitan Boston, according to a new report released Thursday (July 23). This commitment by Harvard students in 2005-06 was the equivalent of having 450 people working full time, year-round, providing community services in local neighborhoods.

Last week (July 8), Harvard University planners presented preliminary designs to residents of Allston for the new 1.74-acre public park to be constructed behind the Honan-Allston Branch of the Boston Public Library on North Harvard Street.

The Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) presented five educators from the Boston and Cambridge public school systems with James Bryant Conant Fellowships in June. Each of the recipients will receive one year of study at HGSE.

Welcome solar rays scrubbed clouds out of the sky and shone down on the Harvard Allston Farmers’ Market. Now in its second year, the market is open every Friday from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m., through October. Bring big bags, and your appetite.

Over the next five years, Harvard will award grants to nonprofit groups serving North Allston/North Brighton.

As thousands of Harvard students celebrate their graduation in grand style, the first graduating class from a project across the river will depart with little fanfare but immeasurable success.

When Alexandra Fuentes and Alicia Rosenberg enlisted in the Teacher Education Program (TEP) as students in the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE), they were infiltrating a chaotic realm of teenagers and homework — and life would never be the same again: They were going back to high school.

Five years from now, at high school graduation, the memory of their first visit to Harvard might not be as vivid, but it’s one that will last. The 40 young, inquisitive students who flocked to Cambridge on May 20 got a brief glimpse of a university with three and a half centuries of history — and a reminder of why they are pushed to work so hard in school.

In a sun-drenched conference room on the second floor of Maxwell Dworkin Hall, about 40 fourth- and fifth-graders from the Elihu Greenwood and Louis Agassiz schools in Boston gathered for some hands-on experiments with Harvard graduate students.

On a bright May afternoon, two third-year Harvard Law School students set out on one of their regular visits to Dorchester and Mattapan. They are a slightly odd couple: Nick Hartigan, an intense, fast-talking 225-pound former running back, and David Haller, a laid-back native of Arkansas, with a slow Southern drawl. But they have been drawn together on a mission of hope. For the past nine months, the students have been driving through Boston neighborhoods in a car bought on Craigslist, offering to use their legal skills to help families stay in their homes and fight foreclosure.

Scott Ruescher of the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) was honored by the Cambridge School Volunteers (CSV) with its annual Mack Davis Award on May 13. Ruescher is the program coordinator for the Arts in Education Program at HGSE. He was one of six volunteers to receive this award.