Campus & Community

I will have to go back to the history books. I’m not sure I’m the shortest [LAUGHTER] living president. Our first president, Master Eaton, had a rather short tenure. He…

The Harvard Graduate School of Education presented six outstanding educators from the Boston and Cambridge public school systems with James Bryant Conant Fellowships on May 31. Each of the recipients will receive one year of study at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE).

Emily Vasiliauskas may be the only undergraduate at Harvard who has learned German specifically so she could read the poetry of Paul Celan.

With his hockey skates strapped on and big pads in place, Kevin Du ’07 looks like any speedy Crimson player, flashing a stick and making the puck dance.

While nearly every college senior can relate to the anxiety of an uncertain future, very few have the luxury (or is that curse?) of seeing how those hopes and dreams unfold on television. Harvard football running back Clifton Dawson, glued to ESPN for a solid weekend this past April during the NFL Draft, is among the select few.

Harvard women’s hockey forward Julie Chu retired from figure skating pretty much before she’d begun. At the tender age of 8, when she was still finding her balance on the ice, Chu opted instead for the rigors of the puck and stick. It proved to be a sage decision. Since swapping out the patterned twirls and regimented routines of figure skating for hockey’s speed and inventiveness, Chu has pretty much gone where she pleases.

Harvard sports will lose a big fan when Jarred Brown graduates today. And the goat roasters at Dunster House will have to find another goat skinner.

Sarah Kinsella is in many ways the kind of young Renaissance woman that a university admissions committee jumps at — an aspiring doctor who will be heading to medical school at Georgetown in the fall, but also a musician and someone deeply involved with both church and family.

How do you celebrate getting into Harvard with your family, if your family has no real concept of Harvard?

“I really don’t have a plan for my life,” says Martin Bratt, who is receiving his master’s in public administration from the Kennedy School of Government (KSG), “but feel that by being who I am I can help break down some stereotypes.” Bratt has seen both sides of the chasm that splits public service and the private sector, and believes his experience will help him build a necessary bridge between the two.

When a friend asked Jacqueline Greer to become a volunteer mentor for city middle school kids, she agreed only reluctantly. After working with the kids a short time, however, their education became her passion.

Sandra Ullman was pining for her younger brother and sister as she ambled around an extracurricular activities fair at the beginning of her freshman year at Harvard four years ago.

The University made extraordinary strides this year in planning for physical and academic growth in Allston. In addition to filing an Allston Institutional Master Plan with the city of Boston, outlining its 50-year vision for Harvard in Allston, the University also made significant advancements in the design and public approval processes for the first buildings planned for Allston, a world-class science complex as well as an art center that would feature public galleries and serve as a permanent additional location for the Harvard University Art Museums (HUAM).

As a toddler, Sarah Skye Eggleston ’07 of Quincy House wore a Harvard jumpsuit — the stuff of parental dreams. It worked.

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.