The new academic year brings a number of new beginnings for GSAS and for Harvard. First of all, earlier this year Dean Xiao-Li Meng announced his decision to step down from the role as of June 30, and I was honored to be asked to continue serving GSAS students as dean. Over the past five years, Dean Meng has made important advances at GSAS, which include the expansion of professional development resources for students and strengthened ties with our global alumni. I am eager to continue improving the graduate student experience and getting to know more of you, especially in learning about your time at GSAS and your professional lives as alumni.
While I take up the deanship, Harvard takes up new leadership with the appointment of Larry Bacow as president. In addition to holding a master’s degree from Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) and a JD from Harvard Law School, President Bacow also earned his PhD in one of GSAS’s interfaculty programs, in public policy with HKS. You can read more about him in Conversation, on page 8.
This academic year also marks milestones for two new programs at GSAS. First, GSAS and Harvard Business School have launched a new PhD in business administration that will accept applications beginning in September. This interfaculty PhD program will prepare students for careers in academia and at research institutions around the world by grounding them in disciplinary theories and methods for application in academic research.
Also, the new master’s in data science will enroll its first cohort this year. While the program may engage students primarily with faculty at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, it is by its very nature interdisciplinary, crossing many boundaries in its multiple applications.
While not specifically focused on data science, each of the three features in this issue of Colloquy relies in some way on data—whether in predicting the deterioration and movement of sea ice, informing algorithms that impact our lives, or preserving potentially ephemeral memorials—as well as the themes of continuity and change. As you will read, our students and alumni are not confined by the boundaries of their disciplines, but are open to whatever helps them advance their work.
—Emma Dench, Dean of Harvard Griffin GSAS
