Campus & Community

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  • Harvard University to offer groundbreaking doctoral program for education leaders

    Harvard University today announced the launch of a new, practice-based doctoral program to prepare graduates for senior leadership roles in school districts, government agencies, nonprofit organizations, and the private sector.

  • Guidance Office: Answers From Harvard’s Dean: Part 3

    In today’s installment, William R. Fitzsimmons discusses how the admissions committee considers extracurricular activities (as with anything in admissions, there is no one-size-fits-all approach), as well as the importance of teacher and counselor recommendations. (Such references, the dean writes below, are sometimes projected onto a screen during committee deliberations, so that all can see them.)

  • Harvard ed school offers 1st new degree since 1935

    Citing what it calls a “leadership deficit” in the nation’s schools, Harvard University is introducing a doctoral education program aimed at attracting top talent to transform the U.S. education system by shaking up the status quo.

  • Harvard to offer a doctorate in education leadership

    The Harvard Graduate School of Education will announce today that it will offer a new, tuition-free doctoral degree in education leadership, its first new degree in 74 years.

  • Is all that scanning putting us at risk?

    Last year, when Dr. Aaron Sodickson and his colleagues counted the number of medical scans patients underwent in the emergency room at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, some patients clearly stood out. One 45-year-old woman with a history of kidney stones had 70 CT scans over 22 years.

  • Is Happiness Catching?

    Nicholas Christakis began taking a new look at this question in 2000 after an experience visiting terminally ill patients in the working-class neighborhoods of Chicago.

  • Grazing rights

    In honor of his retirement from the Divinity School’s Hollis Chair, Harvey Cox exercised his right to graze a cow in Harvard Yard.

  • Deep into Harvard’s roots

    Fall 2009 archaeology dig in Harvard Yard kicked off with a ceremony involving regional Native American leaders.

  • Harvard unleashes a historic sacred cow

    Retiring Harvard professor Harvey Cox, who for 44 years has held the oldest endowed chair at a US university finally lay claim to the Hollis Professor of Divinity’s centuries-old right to graze his cow in Harvard Yard, which a colleague of his said was the equivalent of parking privileges in the 1700s.

  • The first tailors? Researchers find ancient fiber

    “Making strings and ropes is a sophisticated invention,” said Ofer Bar-Yosef, a professor of prehistoric archaeology at Harvard University. “They might have used this fiber to create parts of clothing, ropes, or baskets — for items that were mainly used for domestic activities.” The fibers were discovered in an analysis of clay deposits in Dzudzuana Cave in what is now the country Georgia, Bar-Yosef and co-authors report in Friday’s edition of the journal Science…

  • Guidance Office: Answers From Harvard’s Dean, Part 1

    Over the last two days, The Choice has fielded nearly 900 questions for William R. Fitzsimmons, the longtime dean of admissions and financial aid at Harvard.

  • Harvard Management Company announces fiscal 2009 results

    Harvard University’s endowment declined 27.3 percent during the fiscal year ending June 30, 2009, one of the most challenging periods in modern times for financial markets.

  • Fundraising results signal continued strength

    Despite a global economic downturn, Harvard University raised $602 million through fundraising efforts in fiscal year 2009.

  • Does Infection Boost Prostate Cancer Risk?

    In the new study, Jennifer Stark of the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston and colleagues analyzed blood samples from 673 men with prostate cancer who participated in the Physicians’ Health Study, a large, ongoing study examining a variety of health issues.

  • Business not ready for flu, study says

    Many American businesses are unprepared to deal with widespread employee absenteeism in the event of a swine flu outbreak, a Harvard School of Public Health study says. The survey, released yesterday, found that two-thirds of more than 1,000 businesses questioned said they could not maintain normal operations if half their workers were out for two weeks. Four-fifths expect severe problems if half are out for a month.

  • Seasonal flu vaccine available at UHS

    Taking early action to prepare for flu season, University Health Services (UHS) has begun administering the seasonal flu vaccine free of charge to Harvard students, faculty, and staff.

  • Severe problems in forecast for H1N1 outbreak

    Four-fifths of businesses foresee severe problems maintaining operations if significant H1N1 flu outbreak occurs.

  • Strong effort by Crimson not enough

    Mikaelle Comrie, Taylor Docter, and Anne Carroll Ingersoll each had 14 kills on Sept. 8 against UConn, but the Crimson still fell to the Huskies in five sets by a score of 3-2.

  • Donations to cancer institute hit $1b

    A Dana-Farber Cancer Institute fund-raising campaign has hit the $1 billion mark a year earlier than expected – despite the ragged economy – setting what is believed to be a record for New England health care institutions. The drive’s success, which will be announced today, appears to have few national parallels, although at least one other cancer center has embarked on a similar campaign…

  • Harvard students fight foreclosures

    Harvard Business School students have joined the fight against foreclosures. The Homeownership Preservation Foundation has teamed up with Harvard MBA students to support the nonprofit’s mission of preventing foreclosure and preserving homeownership.

  • Sharing ‘Justice’ with the world

    Harvard University has teamed up with WGBH Boston to produce a new television series and interactive Web site that will take viewers inside one of the University’s most popular courses. “Justice” will premiere on public television stations nationwide in mid-September.

  • Hasty Pudding Club Forms at Harvard: September 8, 1795

    On this day in 1795, 21 Harvard students gathered in a dorm room and formed a secret social club to cultivate “friendship and patriotism.” Members agreed to take turns providing a pot of hasty pudding for the meetings. Thus did the Hasty Pudding Club, the nation’s oldest dramatic institution, get its name…

  • Insured, but Bankrupted Anyway

    Dr. David Himmelstein is an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and a primary care doctor at the Cambridge Hospital in Massachusetts. “Our most recent study found that nearly two-thirds of Americans who declared bankruptcy cited illness or medical bills as a significant cause of their bankruptcies. And of the medically bankrupt, three-quarters of that group had insurance, at least when they first got sick….”

  • Being young, here, now

    Harvard’s Humanist Chaplaincy, a community for agnostics, atheists, and the nonreligious, started a free, open-to-all group this year that practices different forms of meditation, including Buddhist and Quaker, said Zachary Alexander, 26, the group’s founder.

  • Oklahoman’s book project archive Harvard-bound

    The university’s Houghton Library recently purchased the archive he developed for his 1989 book, “What Should We Tell Our Children About Vietnam?” “It is still hard for me to believe that something that came from my head and hands will end up being preserved forever between the walls of such a great institution,” said McCloud, himself a Vietnam War veteran…

  • PCB risk feared at older N.E. schools

    “It’s contradictory . . . because you don’t have to test, but if you do and you find it over 50 parts per million, then this whole cascade of regulatory requirements kicks in,’’ said Robert Herrick, senior lecturer at the Harvard School of Public Health…

  • Welcoming Gen Ed

    In a celebratory forum in Lowell Lecture Hall Sept. 3, Harvard President Drew Faust and others explain and extol Harvard’s new General Education requirements, which take effect this year with the Class of 2013.

  • Harvard opens its research repository

    Harvard University this week unveiled its open database of faculty research, with more than a third of its arts and sciences faculty members participating so far. Since the faculty of the main undergraduate college voted in February 2008 to support the system known as Digital Access to Scholarship at Harvard, in which professors’ scholarly works are automatically included in the online repository unless they specifically opt for them not to be, Harvard’s law, government and education schools have also agreed to participate.

  • Medical grants a boon for Mass.

    Massachusetts biomedical researchers are seeing a windfall from federal stimulus money, with the state receiving more in grants from the National Institutes of Health than all others but California.

  • Louis Byington Barnes, 81, Harvard professor, author

    Louis Byington Barnes’s practice of focused attention to speech was probably born out of his lengthy and accomplished teaching career, a legacy built on his personal mantra that teaching is, “the discipline of listening extra carefully before making interventions in the discussion.’’ He died Aug. 22 at Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor.