In the Community

Janet Elliott, the daughter of a turn-of-the-century railroad tycoon and a member of New York’s social register, had her life pretty well mapped out for her, and aside from deciding which of the eligible young men of her class she would consent to marry, it wasn’t a life with a whole lot of choices.

Harvard College Environmental Action Committee’s Earth Day 2007 events and entertainment

1991: University Committee on the Environment established to encourage and coordinate University-wide environment-related activities and scholarship.

Seven years into the new millennium, Harvard has taken steps to lessen its impact on the environment. These are already bearing fruit, putting the University at the forefront of the national move to create environmentally friendly practices, buildings, and institutions.

The Harvard Bridge to Learning and Literacy recently celebrated the success of its pilot program ‘SEIU Career Pathways at The Bridge.’

At first glimpse, the photos don’t seem particularly revealing: a fish on a plate, a television, clean dishes on a rack, a toddler with outstretched arms, a lighted porch. But to Wendy Luttrell, these pictures — and 1,600 others like them in her data base at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) — open a window onto a largely secret world of childhood.

Statistics may cause some people to grow bleary-eyed, but not a group of New Orleans residents at a recent community meeting where they listened to Harvard students talk about post-Hurricane Katrina recovery rates in their neighborhood.

The Kennedy School of Government (KSG) recently announced that the Broadmoor Project is being launched to formalize the School’s existing relationship with residents of the New Orleans neighborhood that was severely damaged by Hurricane Katrina. KSG students and staff will spend March 25-31 in New Orleans to continue the work of the ongoing project.

Allston-Brighton’s youngest hockey fans and their families enjoyed skating on Crimson ice at the 18th Allston-Brighton Family Skating Party at Harvard last week. The annual event, held at the Bright Hockey Center, is a popular night out for neighboring families.

In conjunction with the exhibition “Overlapping Realms: Arts of the Islamic World and India, 900-1900,” the Sackler Museum is offering a workshop in Islamic art for children ages 9 to 12. Children will learn to recognize several elements of design in Islamic art including tessellations, linear repeat patterns, and arabesques. The workshop will include a guided look at the artworks in the exhibition, gallery activities, and a hands-on art project to take home. The same workshop will be repeated each Sunday, so please register for only one.

In conjunction with the exhibition “Overlapping Realms: Arts of the Islamic World and India, 900-1900,” the Sackler Museum is offering a workshop in Islamic art for children ages 9 to 12.

Although yellow is not often associated with the drab winter months, Community Affairs has gone a long way in helping to change that perception on Harvard’s campus. This early spring, those efforts reach a milestone as Harvard celebrates two decades as a key participant in the annual Daffodil Days fundraiser.

Per University policy, Harvard Real Estate Services (HRES) is required to charge market rent for its housing. To establish proposed rents for 2007-08, HRES performed a regression analysis on three years of market rents for more than 4,000 neighboring apartments, all of which were voluntary postings at the Harvard Housing Office by non-Harvard property owners. The results of this analysis were reviewed and endorsed by an external expert, Jayendu Patel of Economic, Financial, & Statistical Consulting Services. Furthermore, HRES conducted an additional study of private rental market apartments of similar size and quality to HRES apartments. The results of the market research demonstrate that market rents are increasing at a moderate but steady rate and that HRES rents must rise to keep pace.

Harold Amos, scientist, educator, mentor, and avid Francophile, was born in Pennsauken, New Jersey, the second of nine children of Howard R. Amos Sr., who worked in the Philadelphia post office, and his wife Iola Johnson. Iola had been adopted by, and worked for, a prominent Philadelphia Quaker family who home schooled her with their own children. This family remained lifelong friends of Iola and kept the young Amos family well supplied with books, including a biography of Louis Pasteur, which stimulated fourth-grader Harold’s interest in science. Harold did confide that an important factor in his becoming enchanted with microbiology and immunology at such a young age was the combination of Pasteur’s use of goats as experimental animals and his own dislike of the family goat.

The third annual RiverSing, a free and open-to-the-public event celebrating the first day of autumn and the beauty of the Charles River parklands, will be held Sept. 21 along the Weeks Memorial Footbridge linking Allston and Cambridge. Presented by the Revels and the Charles River Conservancy, the theme of this year’s RiverSing is “Bridging the Charles with Voice and Light.”

Six Graduate School of Design (GSD) students have been spending their summer applying design skills that they spend the rest of the year acquiring. In communities throughout the area, from Boston’s Chinatown to Lowell to Hyannis, the students are turning theory into reality as they go ahead with proposals that won them summer funding.

As summer draws to a close and young people across the area begin to think about returning to school, a group of more than 1,000 students ranging in age from 6 to 21 will head back to the classroom having spent another full summer with the Summer Urban Program (SUP) of the Phillips Brooks House Association (PBHA).

University museums as a summer fun destination for kids? At Harvard University they are. For the past several years, Harvard University Art Museums (HUAM) has offered free museum activities for children visiting from Boston-area summer camps.

The free ice cream wasn’t the primary draw of the day, though it was a definite plus. No, on Aug. 9, a jubilant crowd of 100 Cambridge teenagers at Cambridge Rindge & Latin School (CRLS) celebrated first and foremost the successful end of six weeks of summer school.

To meet the increased physical planning and development needs of the faculties and departments on Harvard’s existing campus while simultaneously preparing for first-phase development in Allston, the Harvard Planning + Allston Initiative (HPAI) – the team that coordinated University-wide physical planning – has been reconfigured into two University organizations.