Harvard's New Climate Concentration Launches With Faculty Doing Staff Work After 165 FAS Layoffs
The Energy, Climate, and the Environment concentration, approved 215-3 in April, welcomed its first cohort this fall. Professors say summer layoffs slowed advising, websites and course cross-listing.
Harvard's new Energy, Climate, and the Environment concentration welcomed its first official cohort of students this fall, but faculty leading it say summer staff layoffs in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences have left professors handling administrative work, The Harvard Crimson reported Tuesday.
The concentration was approved in a 215-3 faculty vote in April and spans the FAS's three academic divisions and the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, with four tracks, the Crimson reported. The FAS layoffs over the summer eliminated 165 positions, and in the Social Sciences Division, 30 percent of the staff positions covered by the restructuring were cut, according to FAS disclosures cited by the paper.
"I think the staff layoffs over the summer were a very large challenge for us, among others," said Jason Beckfield, a sociology professor who chairs the Markets, Politics, and Societies track. He said the cuts made it hard to coordinate advising, cross-list courses, advertise the curriculum and support students declaring the concentration. "Let's just say I think we have a lot of work to do," he said.
History professor Joyce E. Chaplin, a co-director of undergraduate studies for the Nature, Ethics, and the Human Imagination track, said "the timing of the layoffs was very bad in terms of our being able to recruit a staff member or move somebody over laterally." An FAS spokesperson did not respond to multiple requests for comment, the Crimson reported.
Faculty described a workaround. Lene V. Hau, a physics professor who chairs the SEAS-hosted Science and Engineering for Sustainable Solutions track, described a "startup spirit," and Beckfield and Robin Kelsey, who chairs the concentration's standing committee, said SEAS and the Salata Institute have offered informal administrative help, according to the Crimson.
Hiring is the longer-term question. Despite a university-wide hiring freeze, the FAS announced 25 tenure-track faculty searches last month, the Crimson reported, and SEAS has posted a search for an environmental science and engineering professor specializing in water technology with an advising role in the concentration. Noel "Missy" Holbrook, who chairs the Climate and Biodiversity track, said uncertainty about federal research funding could complicate hiring for scientists who need labs and equipment.
What remains unknown: how many students have declared the concentration, whether the FAS will fund dedicated staff for it, and how many of the 25 faculty searches are in climate-related fields.
