Campus & Community

William (Ned) Friedman, director of Harvard University’s Arnold Arboretum, took the whimsical concept of a flash mob — a social media–driven spontaneous gathering — and applied it to outreach to the public to encourage interaction with the scientists, curators, and horticulturalists who work on the Arboretum’s 265 acres. The next Tree Mob is July 25 at 5:30 p.m.

Adam J. Bass, assistant professor in the department of medicine at Harvard Medical School and assistant professor of medicine at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, has won a Doris Duke Charitable Foundation 2012 Clinical Scientist Development Award.

Grzegorz Ekiert, professor of government at Harvard and longtime affiliate of the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies (CES), has been named director of the center.

The Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Sciences (KFAS) has given $8.1 million to Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) to support the continuation of the Kuwait Program at HKS’s Middle East Initiative.

The Institute of Politics at the Harvard Kennedy School has announced its resident and visiting fellowships for this fall.

The Faculty of Arts and Sciences and Harvard College announced plans to launch the systemwide effort to renew the University’s 12 undergraduate Houses. The announcement unveils Dunster as the first full House to be renewed, along with the location of “swing” housing, and the pacing for the project.

Harvard University today announced plans to undertake a wide-ranging construction program that will result in the creation of nearly 3,600 local construction jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars in new local economic activity while ultimately funneling approximately $10 million into Cambridge city coffers in permitting fees alone.

House Masters and former students discuss learning outside the classroom and how the housing system enriches life and community at Harvard.

Gerald Chertavian, founder and CEO of Year Up, a national program that trains urban young adults and places them in internships, visited Harvard to celebrate the achievements of seven Year Up participants who just completed the program.

Silhouetted against the morning sun, a House crew hoists its boat high overhead at dockside, ready for a practice row on the Charles. Inside a master’s residence in Quincy House, amateur artists expand their creative horizons at a “paint bar,” working side-by-side with fellow students, offering encouragement and critique. High in the tower of Lowell House, a small group of yoga devotees stretches skyward in unison as a thin beam of late afternoon sun slices across the room, adding a mystical touch.

Harvard will be well-represented at the upcoming 2012 Olympics in London, as nine athletes and one coach will compete at the games beginning July 27.

The National Academy of Education named four Harvard graduate students 2012 Spencer Dissertation Fellows.

Suzanne Hall Vogel, a psychotherapist at Harvard University Health Services for 27 years, died on June 19.

The Harvard Museum of Natural History has launched a summer-long program called Spider Sense! Scavenger Hunt, designed to entertain fans of the comics character and natural science alike.

Nawaf Obaid joins Belfer Center as visiting fellow

Harvard and Radcliffe will send five crews to the third day of the Henley Royal Regatta after three boats won for the second straight day and the Radcliffe heavyweight varsity eight opened with a victory June 28 on the Thames River.

Harvard Kennedy School Shadow Initiative Program

Students are gathering in Harvard Yard on Tuesdays this summer to take free martial arts lessons, as part of the University’s campaign to encourage use of common spaces.

Wrapping up an arboretum internship, students from Norfolk County Agricultural High School visited Harvard Yard to learn about Harvard Landscape Services’ recent switch to organic methods and materials.

This academic year, Harvard celebrated the 375th anniversary of the founding of Harvard College in 1636. To mark this milestone, the University launched a yearlong series of programs and activities, beginning with a celebration in Harvard Yard in October.

Harvard welcomed back farmers’ markets in Allston and Cambridge.

Harvard President Drew Faust was awarded an honorary degree by Oxford University in a ceremony marked by traditions four centuries old on a campus at least twice as old as Harvard’s.

Harvard hosted a Step UP/Project TEACH event for students and parents from the Hennigan Elementary School in Jamaica Plain and the E. Greenwood Leadership Academy in Hyde Park. The effort is part of a program to show young students what college is like, particularly in the sciences.

Eight professors were named 2012 Cabot Fellows to honor their excellent publications.

HMS faculty Kenneth Anderson, Paul Richardson, and Alfred Goldberg are three of four researchers being honored for their research and development of a pioneering cancer drug.

Harvard Executive Vice President Katie Lapp and Provost Alan Garber have shared the next steps in resuming development on the University’s Health and Life Science Center in Allston. Read the report.…

Harvard President Drew Faust toured scientific sites at the Harvard Forest last week in a visit that marked the first time in decades that a Harvard president visited the 3,500-acre experimental forest site.

Rakesh Jain received the 2012 Science of Oncology award from the American Society of Clinical Oncology, recognizing his three decades of pioneering work in the field of oncology.

“Frontiers in Ophthalmology,” a comprehensive report of the Department of Ophthalmology at Harvard Medical School, won a national design competition for its 2012 publication.

Professor Jeffrey Quilter will be the next William and Muriel Seabury Howells Director of the Peabody Museum, effective July 1.