Campus & Community

First-generation students bring lessons to Harvard ― of resilience, perseverance, and of talent’s universality.

Harvard art and architecture history professor Alina Payne has been named the director of the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies at Villa I Tatti in Florence, Italy.

On Feb. 25, the Faculty Council approved a concentration in Theater, Dance, and Media. They also discussed a conflict of interest policy for centers and course scheduling.

Jodi Goldstein has been appointed the Evans Family Foundation Managing Director of the Harvard Innovation Lab.

Acclaimed actress Eva Longoria was presented the 2015 Harvard Foundation Artist of the Year award at the 30th annual Cultural Rhythms festival in Sanders Theatre on Saturday.

Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital Professor Emery N. Brown, who also holds appointments at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was named to the National Academy of Engineering in early February.

Deval L. Patrick, who recently concluded two terms as governor of Massachusetts, will be the principal speaker at the Afternoon Exercises of Harvard’s 364th Commencement in May.

The reimagined Harvard Ed Portal, a 12,000-square-foot space devoted to teaching and innovation, opened its doors Feb. 21 at Western Avenue and North Harvard Street in Allston.

Matthew DeShaw ’18 writes about making room for his passions, and listening to mentors, in his shopping-week decisions.

The Rev. Jonathan Walton spent close to two weeks in January taking part in the Mamelodi Initiative, an education and community-enrichment program co-founded several years ago by Harvard graduate Richard Kelley ’10. The program helps prepare students for college.

Photo gallery: Harvard staff members keep the campus running throughout record snowfalls.

Actress , businesswoman, and philanthropist Eva Longoria has been named Harvard University’s 2015 Artist of the Year by the Harvard Foundation.

On Feb. 11, the Faculty Council voted to approve legislation regarding the affirmation of the honor code and heard a proposal from the Standing Committee on Dramatics to establish a concentration in Theater, Dance, and Media. They also met with Provost Garber to ask and answer questions as representatives of the faculty.

Rulan Chao Pian was a true cosmopolitan, a woman who crossed boundaries with quiet courage and grace. Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, during a period when her father, the Chinese linguist and composer Yuen Ren Chao, taught at Harvard, she spent most of her childhood in various cities in China as well as in Paris, returning to the U.S. at age 16.

The newly renovated Barker Arts Café, brainchild of Diana Sorensen and the Humanities Project, aims to be a bohemian locus of student activity and conversation around the arts and humanities at Harvard College, and it is succeeding. Miles Hewitt, a sophomore English concentrator in Pforzheimer House, is a student musician who performed his original work at the café.

The renewal process is beginning for Winthrop House, one of Harvard’s oldest undergraduate dorms.

Around Harvard these days, the talk among administrators and facilities managers isn’t about the last snowstorm, as punishing it was. And it isn’t about the one before that, or the one before that. It’s about the next one.

Hasty Pudding Theatricals honored Chris Pratt on Friday as its 2015 Man of the Year.

The Harvard Campaign has raised $5 billion as of the end of last year to support the University and its programs.

The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard presented the I.F. Stone Medal for Journalistic Independence to documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras, and the I.F. Stone Lifetime Achievement Award to broadcast journalist Amy Goodman.

Harvard student comics just flew in from the coast, and, man, are their arms tired.

A record 37,305 students have applied for admission to Harvard College’s Class of 2019.

Amid festivities, Harvard Skate opens its popular outdoor rink for another season.

Undergraduate and graduate students took part in jDesign, a four-day, hands-on Wintersession workshop that harnessed student energy and creativity to tackle real-world design problems — in this case, the loss of dishware from the University’s dining halls.

Harvard unveiled its initial design concepts for the new Richard A. and Susan F. Smith Campus Center during two open houses.

Here’s a sound and snapshot sample of Wintersession classes in action.

Harvard’s Clowes Professor of Science Robert P. Kirshner ’70 will share the 2015 Wolf Prize in Physics with Professor James Bjorken of Stanford University. They will split the $100,000 award.

Jeffrey Hamburger, the Kuno Francke Professor of German Art and Culture and a world authority on the religious art of the Middle Ages, is among this year’s recipients of the Anneliese Maier Research Award.

On Jan. 28, the Faculty Council met to change the status of the Standing Committee on Ethnicity, Migration, Rights to an instructional program committee.

The fifth annual Harvard College Wintersession featured a host of events, from print-making on clay tablets to yoga classes to programming featuring prominent alumni.