When Harvard's presidential search committee asked its final choice candidate, president-elect Lawrence H. Summers, how he would revitalize the University's undergraduate education, he responded with an ambitious agenda for Harvard's faculty.

Summers has proposed hiring 200 new professors as well as promoting significantly more junior professors to tenured positions, according to The Boston Globe. If implemented, these changes would represent strong shifts in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) from its current student to faculty ratio and traditionally stern reluctance to tenure from within.

But the goal of increasing the size of the faculty is far from revolutionary--it has been one of Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles' top priorities for years. And the mention of total faculty size in Knowles' annual letter--a roughly flat line over the last 30 years--may indicate that Summers' sweeping vision for a larger, younger faculty could be a long time coming.

Professors say that Summers' commitment to the project carries some weight in and of itself, and the University presidency has certain roles in the recruitment and appointment process that the former professor could expedite. But the drawn-out and labor-intensive nature of the appointment process may make Summers' task difficult.

A Decentralized Process

The chain of command in FAS has frequently been described as "every top on its own bottom"--meaning that departments have a great deal of autonomy even when FAS-wide initiatives are attempted.

The search process is no exception to this rule. According to Dean of Undergraduate Education Susan G. Pedersen '82, FAS searches are authorized by Knowles but conducted by the individual departments who select the candidates.

But this process requires large amounts of time and effort on the part of already-understaffed departments, exacerbating the dearth of resources available for teaching and research.