Campus & Community

As a young girl, Viviany Taqueti followed her doctor father as he made rounds in the two hospitals he built in the jungles of Brazil. Sitting on the banks of the muddy, mighty Amazon River, Taqueti decided that she wanted to be like him, a person who improves the lives of others and who believes that you can do anything you set your mind to.

When Raul Ruiz was a teenager, some of his teachers realized he had potential. But most, he says, recommended he apply to a vocational school; it would be a big step toward the American dream for a first-generation Mexican-American boy whose migrant-worker parents had never finished high school.

Students coming into universities today are “digital natives” and fundamentally different in their use of technology than the “digital immigrants” who teach them, according to John Palfrey, executive director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society.

The University and the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical workers (HUCTW) are have announced that they have reached agreement on the terms of a new three-year contract that includes wage and benefit changes; an emphasis on career development, education, and training for staff; and a renewed commitment to the labor-management partnership. The new contract, which must be ratified by the union’s members before it becomes official, will go into effect on July 1, 2007.

Reunion classes have contributed critical unrestricted funds for Harvard College and funded three professorships, two junior professorships, and some 15 scholarships. To date, four campaigns have exceeded $20 million, with a little less than a month remaining in the fundraising year.

To the Members of the Board of Overseers, Ladies and Gentlemen, I have the honor to present my annual report for 2006-07.

As Commencement crowns another year of Harvard history, here is a brief backward glance at some of the year’s highlights.

Harvard confers 6,871 degrees and 138 certificates

Since its founding in 1636, Harvard has moved through many great historical dramas. History as a listing of events — as chronicle — has its uses, but often more insight is gained through personal accounts. Great events and small can often be better understood in the light of private recollections.

Before long, Charles Joseph McNamara ’07 will be with Teach For America in a rural Mississippi high school.

The ROTC commissioning ceremony began in a quietly festive mood in the roped-off area around the statue of John Harvard that sits before University Hall. There, 11 young men and women of the graduating class of 2007 took their oaths privately for the service of their choice — Army, Navy, Air Force, or Marines — before moving on to a stage in the Yard’s Tercentenary Theatre for the public ceremony. Before and after the cadets took center stage, the vicinity buzzed with an almost partylike atmosphere.

In his Class Day speech on Wednesday (June 6) Bill Clinton remarked that the great lesson he learned from the human genome project, which was brought to completion during his presidency, is that genetically all humans are 99.9 percent identical.

Harvard interim President Derek Bok bid the Harvard College Class of 2007 farewell Tuesday (June 5), urging graduating seniors to consider the true roots of happiness in life, and cautioning that while society values wealth, for most people money does not equal satisfaction.

Just after 10 Tuesday morning (June 5), crowds of Harvard seniors in black cap and gown gathered outside Harvard Hall. Family and gowned faculty mixed in, and cameras were soon clicking portraits against backdrops of tree and lawn and brick. The rain held off.

A joyous peal of bells will ring throughout Cambridge today (June 7). In celebration of the City of Cambridge and of the country’s oldest university — and of our earlier history when bells of varying tones summoned us from sleep to prayer, work, or study — this ancient yet new sound will fill Harvard Square and the surrounding area with music when a number of neighboring churches and institutions ring their bells at the conclusion of Harvard’s 356th Commencement Exercises.

A pioneer in computer science, an anthropologist who has revised our view of primate behavior, a Renaissance scholar who served as Harvard’s 26th president, and an economist who has helped ailing nations recover economic health received the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Centennial Medal on Wednesday (June 6) at the Harvard Faculty Club.The medalists are Frederick P. Brooks Jr. Ph.D. ’56, mathematics; Sarah Blaffer Hrdy A.B. ’68, Ph.D. ’75, anthropology; Neil L. Rudenstine Ph.D. ’64, English and American literature and language, L.L.D. ’02; and Jeffrey D. Sachs Ph.D. ’80, economics.

The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study announced that author and Nobel laureate Toni Morrison will be awarded the 2007 Radcliffe Institute Medal at the annual Radcliffe Day luncheon on Friday (June 8) at 12:45 p.m. Drew G. Faust, president-elect of Harvard University and dean of the Radcliffe Institute, will provide opening remarks and present the medal. Morrison will give the keynote address.

Michael D. Smith, a distinguished computer scientist, admired teacher, and skilled administrative leader, will become the new Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences this July, President-elect Drew G. Faust announced today.

Six men and three women received honorary degrees at this morning’s 356th Commencement Exercises. Biographical sketches of the honorands appear below.

You might not know Jason Luke ’94, but you know his work. He’s associate director for custodial and support services at Harvard’s Facilities Maintenance Operations. That makes him the Commencement superintendent who every June transforms the campus into a well-oiled machine for merriment (and solemnity).

Kate Loosian is a senior project manager with Harvard Real Estate Services, where she keeps an educated eye on building renovations at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. (She has a bachelor’s degree in architecture from the University of Notre Dame.)

In the offices of the Harvard Green Campus Initiative (HGCI), there is everything you would expect from that arm of University Operations Services: no-glue carpeting, energy-efficient lighting, high-tech windows, and sensors that adjust ventilation by measuring CO2. But in plain sight, next to one of the recycled cubicles, there is also a toilet. The bowl is packed with bottles of water — a reminder of how much H2O is wasted with every flush of a conventional commode.

If you could fly in a small plane over Harvard, looking down wouldn’t tell you much about the University’s sustainable buildings.

Michelle Gray, who has had careers as a cooking teacher and social worker, is a customer service manager at Harvard’s Dunster-Mather combined kitchen operation. One day not long ago, she used a handheld clicker to count the number of people she talked to. The answer: almost 300.

He’s only 31, but Nathan Gauthier has had an adventurous life so far. He spent two years with the Peace Corps in Ecuador, studied red snapper in the Gulf of Mexico, shot underwater video for NASA, and worked as a fisheries biologist in Washington state and Hawaii.

Meghan Duggan knows her way around sustainability. The marine engineer with a master’s degree in facilities management can talk easily about kilowatt hours, solar panels, cogeneration, renewable wood, and high-efficiency lights.

In 1999, the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) made plans to move its offices to the Landmark Center, a converted Sears, Roebuck and Co. warehouse in Boston. Danny Beaudoin — the School’s manager of operations, energy, and utilities — was asked to look into sustainable design for the renovation: a realm of low-emitting paints, abundant natural light, and high-efficiency lighting and ventilation.

Dear Members of the Harvard Community, Harvard has an important role to play in environmental stewardship. Through research, education, and the planning and development of our campus, Harvard contributes every…

May 1976 — Before an overflow crowd in Sanders Theatre, Senior Professor John H. Finley Jr. — the legendary 72-year-old Eliot Professor of Greek Literature Emeritus — gives his final Harvard lecture in “Humanities 103: The Great Age of Athens.”

Following are some of the incidents reported to the Harvard University Police Department (HUPD) for the week ending May 28. The official log is located at 1033 Massachusetts Ave., sixth floor, and is available online at http://www.hupd.harvard.edu/.