Campus & Community

Astronomers may have lucked into the ultimate in cosmic baby pictures: a voracious black hole fresh from its violent birth…

People who start smoking marijuana before they turn 16 may damage their brains more than people who start later, according to a small study from McLean Hospital…

Forty-six faculty members have elected to take advantage of Harvard’s faculty retirement program, with longer phased retirement options the most popular choice.

A portrait of Chester Middlebrook Pierce ’48, M.D. ’52, was the latest to be unveiled in the Harvard Foundation’s Portraiture Project.

For many undergraduates, Winter Break (Dec. 22-Jan. 23) will be a welcome opportunity to recharge after the fall semester. At the same time, students looking for something to do between semesters will find plenty of exciting activities offered by Harvard and its alumni, on and off campus.

The Institute for New Economic Thinking has selected James Robinson, David Florence Professor of Government at Harvard, and his research partner Steven Pincus of Yale University, to be awarded a project grant through the institute’s Inaugural Grant Program to research the events leading to the British Industrial Revolution.

Michael Tinkham, the Rumford Professor of Physics and Gordon McKay Professor of Applied Physics Emeritus at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and the Department of Physics, passed away on Nov. 4.

At its sixth meeting of the year on Nov. 10, the Faculty Council heard updates about plans for Jan. 2011, the Rockefeller funds, and study abroad.

Harvard Kennedy School’s Future of Diplomacy Project has announced new resident and nonresident fellows for fall 2010.

Taking his audience on a musical journey through time, Harvard music professor Thomas Kelly explored the first performance of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony at the Harvard Allston Education Portal.

The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study has named Alison Franklin director of communications.

The Harvard Shorts Film Festival is open for submissions until Feb. 4.

As it emerges from the worst of the global financial crisis, Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) is renewing its focus on priorities ranging from House Renewal to innovative pedagogy. With the release of the 2010 FAS annual report, Dean Michael D. Smith, John H. Finley Jr. Professor of Engineering and Applied Sciences, spoke to the Gazette about his goals for the year.

At a Meeting of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences on October 19, 2010, the Minute honoring the life and service of the late David Turnbull, Gordon McKay Professor of Applied Physics, Emeritus, was placed upon the records. Turnbull was a pioneer in the development of multi-disciplinary materials science.

Drag Night in Adams House lets its residents really strut their stuff.

At a Meeting of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences on October 19, 2010, the Minute honoring the life and service of the late Fakhri A. Bazzaz, Mallinckrodt Professor of Biology, Emeritus, was placed upon the records. Bazzaz was an ecologist who greatly influenced scientific thought and public policy on climate change.

A Harvard College senior discusses the difficulties of explaining her senior thesis in the sciences, particularly since the topic can make people cringe.

Nature watchers around campus, open to the hard-to-see creatures nearby, deliver a message of attention and affection.

Harvard graduate and Food Literacy Project administrator Dara Olmsted loves working with food and helping others connect to the environmental and nutritional implications of what they eat.

Dominant. That’s the only word to describe the Harvard women’s basketball team over the past 25 years. The team has won 11 Ivy League championships since 1986 — a little less than one every other year — and 70 percent of its games in interleague play.

In 2004, Harvard announced an initiative to make the University more accessible to low-income families by expanding recruitment and eliminating parental contributions for eligible students. Since then, 1,900 students have taken advantage of the Harvard Financial Aid Initiative. Here’s how the program changed the lives of some of its first alumni.

Harvard College Dean Evelynn Hammonds and Swanee Hunt, Eleanor Roosevelt Lecturer in Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School (HKS), received the Outstanding Women Award from the YWCA Cambridge on Oct. 29.

Cambridge residents, University students vote at two campus locations during midterm elections.

Harvard hosts a Halloween “Treat and Greet” celebration and open house in the Barry’s Corner section of Allston, a get-together that drew flocks of costumed local residents and children.

Pirates, witches, ninjas, and skeletons invaded Harvard Yard Friday (Oct. 29) as part of the Phillips Brooks House Association’s (PBHA) Halloween Party. PBHA organizers host the extravaganza each year, inviting students from their after-school and in-school programs to campus for an afternoon of crafts projects, tasty treats, and face-painting fun.

Harvard’s 20/20/2000 initiative, the University’s 20-year, $20 million, low-interest loan program to help create low- and middle-income housing in Boston and Cambridge, helped to fund the Doña Betsaida Gutiérrez Cooperative on the Blessed Sacrament campus in Jamaica Plain. The ribbon-cutting ceremony for the project was Oct. 30.

Seventeen percent of affordable housing projects built or renovated in Cambridge and Boston over the past decade are the result of Harvard’s 20/20/2000 affordable housing initiative.

Trays, a student publication at the Graduate School of Design (GSD), and GSD student group Social Change and Activism, have collaborated to create the first annual compendium on socio-cultural awareness in design titled DO!: Design Opportunity.

The Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences’ deans of undergraduate education awarded an unprecedented 510 certificates of distinction and excellence on Oct. 26 at Harvard’s Center for Government and International Studies.

Members of the New England Higher Education Recruitment Consortium (HERC) — which assists member institutions in recruiting and retaining faculty and staff — worked on strategies for a host of challenges during the organization’s general assembly, held at Harvard University.