Featured series 
Tag: Education
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Campus & Community
BSC announces spring schedule
The Bureau of Study Counsel (BSC) will be offering morning and afternoon sessions of its spring-term “Reading and Study Strategy” course beginning Feb. 12.
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Science & Tech
‘Usable Knowledge’ Web site delivers research to educators
The Harvard Graduate School of Education on Dec. 6, 2006, launched a new Web site aimed at connecting the research of its faculty with educators in the field. The Usable Knowledge Web site features a diverse set of media – text, video, and audio – to make the leading research of its faculty accessible to…
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Campus & Community
KSG’s Kistefos fellows focus on public service work
Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government (KSG) recently announced the establishment of the Kistefos Public Service Fellowship. The fellowship will be funded through a donation of more than $1 million from Kistefos AS, one of Norway’s leading privately owned investment companies.
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Campus & Community
Eleven grad students are Cooke Foundation Scholars
Eleven incoming Harvard graduate students recently joined 66 other scholars from across the globe to receive scholarships from the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation. These graduate scholarships cover tuition, room, board, fees, and books — up to $50,000 annually — for up to six years. The scholarships are among the most generous academic awards offered in…
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Campus & Community
Bok talks about current projects, new initiatives
It has been 35 years since Derek Bok was sworn in as Harvard’s 25th president and 15 years since he left office. This July he assumed the presidency for a second time, the only person ever to do so.
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Campus & Community
Harvard to eliminate early admission
Beginning next year Harvard College will eliminate its early admission program and move to a single application deadline of January 1, the University announced today (September 12). The change in policy, which builds on Harvard’s efforts over the past several years to expand financial aid and increase openness in admissions, will take effect for students…
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Campus & Community
PBHA program turns kids into counselors
As summer draws to a close and young people across the area begin to think about returning to school, a group of more than 1,000 students ranging in age from 6 to 21 will head back to the classroom having spent another full summer with the Summer Urban Program (SUP) of the Phillips Brooks House…
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Campus & Community
Sackler smacks of fun for Boston-area kids
University museums as a summer fun destination for kids? At Harvard University they are. For the past several years, Harvard University Art Museums (HUAM) has offered free museum activities for children visiting from Boston-area summer camps.
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Campus & Community
Summer Academy renews commitment
The free ice cream wasn’t the primary draw of the day, though it was a definite plus. No, on Aug. 9, a jubilant crowd of 100 Cambridge teenagers at Cambridge Rindge & Latin School (CRLS) celebrated first and foremost the successful end of six weeks of summer school.
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Campus & Community
Government reps visit campus, learn from researchers
As a part of the Office of Government, Community and Public Affairs program to introduce individuals involved in federal funding activities to Harvard researchers, a delegation from the National Science Foundation and the House Appropriations Committee spent this past Monday (Aug. 21) on campus.
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Campus & Community
DEAS researcher takes turn training future African scientists
Elisabeth Moyer knows that planeloads of relief supplies arrive regularly in Africa. She knows that African and international workers struggle to provide food and to fight diseases such as AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, and polio. But lost amid the continent’s immediate needs and concerns are its scientists, who Moyer and a growing number of others believe…
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Campus & Community
Sweeping changes in life sciences education approved
Professors at Harvard University have overwhelmingly approved a plan that will reinvent the experience of the University’s undergraduate life sciences students, broadening degree options to better track modern biology and its related fields as it is practiced by scientists while boosting student advising and strongly encouraging undergraduate research. Following a Tuesday (April 18) vote by…
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Science & Tech
Child enrichment program still pays off after 15 years
Researchers have detected the lasting benefits of early childhood education 15 years after the program ended. What may have seemed like three years of fun and games at the time for the low-birth weight, premature infants translated into higher achievement scores in math and reading for the intervention group at age 18. They also tended…
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Campus & Community
Stem cell researchers collaborate across continents
In order to advance its mission of promoting stem cell research across the scientific community, five junior Harvard stem cell researchers last week (March 9-11) hosted five of their University of Cambridge (UK) counterparts for three days of research presentations and discussions about possible collaborations. The goal of the meeting, explained Faculty of Arts and…
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Campus & Community
Neuroscientist Buckner named professor of psychology
Randy L. Buckner, a neuroscientist noted for his innovative use of new imaging techniques to map human memory formation and retrieval, has been named professor of psychology in Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, effective Oct. 1. Buckner is also affiliated with Harvard’s newly formed Center for Brain Science. Buckner, 35, comes to Harvard…
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Science & Tech
Student makes cableless cable
Matthew DePetro ’05 earned top honors for his senior design project, “Wireless Cable Television.” The first-prize entry “untethers” standard cable TV and even eliminates the need for a wall outlet. “All of the rooms that I have lived in at Harvard have such crummy standard TV reception that something as simple as watching the 11…
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Science & Tech
High school AP courses do not predict college success in science
A survey of 18,000 college students enrolled in introductory biology, chemistry, and physics has found little evidence that high school Advanced Placement (AP) courses significantly boost college performance in the sciences. The study by researchers at Harvard University and the University of Virginia (UVA) found the best predictors of success in college science courses to…
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Science & Tech
Charter schools get high grades
For many parents, educators, and policy-makers in the United States, charter schools – innovative public schools that are free from much bureaucratic oversight but must “compete” for students in order to retain their charters – have held out enormous promise as a public alternative to failing traditional schools. So when the American Federation of Teachers…
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Science & Tech
China’s one-child policy comes of age
When the Chinese government dictated that families limit themselves to one child each, it was a huge change: Chinese women averaged six births a piece in 1970, and parents traditionally relied on a large number of offspring to provide an economic security blanket. The purpose of the initiative, says Harvard Graduate School of Education Assistant…
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Science & Tech
Monsters, tooth fairies and germs!
Harvard Graduate School of Education Professor Paul Harris argues that children as young as preschool age can discern whether or not they’re hearing the truth, even in a domain for which they have no previous knowledge, by accurately judging the reliability of the person who’s telling them. “Particularly among 4-year-olds, but also among 3-year-olds, they’re…
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Science & Tech
Researcher Mia Ong finds physics ‘glass ceiling’ intact
If you’re anything other than a middle-aged white guy, your appearance matters profoundly in physics, where appearances aren’t supposed to matter, found Graduate School of Education researcher Maria “Mia” Ong. Ong’s research emerged from a much larger study of physics undergraduates and graduates at a large research university. While conducting interviews with these students, she…
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Health
Study shows medical schools lack end-of-life training
A study, published by Dana-Farber researchers in the September 2003 issue of the Journal of General Internal Medicine, suggests that increasing medical students’ opportunities to learn about end-of-life care will require not only curriculum changes, but a re-examination of some of the unspoken rules that govern medical education. “The tremendous growth of hospice and palliative…
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Science & Tech
Federal tax credits for higher education fail to increase enrollment and access to college
An analysis conducted by Harvard Graduate School of Education Assistant Professor Bridget Terry Long suggests that tax credits encouraged many states to increase the prices of public colleges where students were the greatest beneficiaries. Long’s study finds no evidence of increased college enrollment among students eligible for federal tax credits, despite the tax credit’s primary…
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Health
Stricter alcohol policy enforcement may curb college drinking
A study consisted of 11 public schools, including three state university campuses and eight state colleges that fall under the purview of the Massachusetts Board of Higher Education (MBHE). In each of the 11 schools, the dean of students, chief of campus security, and a representative sample of students completed surveys about their campus’ alcohol…
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Science & Tech
Who goes to college?
According to the College Board, people with a bachelor’s degree will earn, on average, $1 million more throughout their lifetimes than those with only a high school diploma. Yet with the average tuition price of private four-year colleges nudging $20,000 per year and their public counterparts charging, on average, more than $4,000, access to that…
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Campus & Community
Groups, like people, can be intelligent
Few of us work or learn completely alone. And almost all of us who work in groups – offices, project teams, committees, classrooms – could do it better. Harvard Graduate School of Education Professor David Perkins puts forth his observations and suggestions in the new book “King Arthur’s Round Table: How Collaborative Conversations Create Smart…
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Science & Tech
Painting a new picture of how we learn to read
The research of Tami Katzir, an assistant professor at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, centers on reading development and reading breakdown. Her interests revolve around three connected areas: The first represents an effort to link different developmental perspectives on the breakdown of written language. The second attempts to connect converging lines of research from brain-imaging…
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Science & Tech
Nanotechnology: Big issues from small stuff
Discoveries in nanotechnology could change the future. Where will such discoveries most likely to take place? Don’t assume it’ll be the United States, cautions Mallinckrodt Professor of Chemistry George Whitesides. Japan’s and Western Europe’s investments in nanotech R&D are on par with the United States, and China is coming up quickly. “We don’t yet know…
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Campus & Community
Surveying students to understand school reform
Since the fall of 2001, Pedro Noguera, who is the Judith K. Dimon Professor in Communities and Schools at the Graduate School of Education, and a team of research assistants have been interviewing 10th-graders in 10 Boston Public Schools and gathering their insights on which practices are effective and which are not. “So much of…