Harvard’s deans and president heard a tentative plan this summer for a new University campus in Allston which called for a science hub and undergraduate housing to be built on the other side of the Charles.

The plan also calls for the School of Public Health (SPH) and the Graduate School of Education (GSE)—two schools cramped in their current locations—to be rebuilt on the University’s vast holdings of formerly industrial land in Allston.

The caveats are many: the plan is far from approval and it leaves details of both the prospective science campus and undergraduate dormitories to be determined.

But sources at the July 15 meeting described a proposal that is the most concrete to date and which was well received by a roomful of the University’s most powerful administrators.

University President Lawrence H. Summers and the deans of Harvard’s schools heard the plan at their annual retreat at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Presidential adviser and Whitehead Professor of Political Philosophy Dennis F. Thompson, who also chairs the University Physical Planning Committee (UPPC), a high-profile committee of professors and planners which spent years hashing over options for Harvard’s new land, presented the proposal to the deans.

Thompson and Summers both declined comment this weekend.

Under the plan, the law school—long considered a prime candidate for a move across the river—is off the hook. This represents a victory for its faculty, which has been dead-set against leaving Cambridge for several years.

Instead, housing and science would anchor the campus.

Possibilities for undergraduate housing in Allston are said to include a relocation of the Radcliffe Quad or the creation of new Houses and expansion of the College (Please see story, below).

The plan for science could entail moving departments of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) and Harvard Medical School, building new interdisciplinary centers, or some combination of the two.

Harvard officials would neither confirm nor deny details of the meeting.

“No decisions have been made,” University spokesperson Alan J. Stone said in an interview. “There will be a great deal of consultation in the fall as we move toward the next stage in the planning process.”

Over the last decade, the University has purchased hundreds of acres of industrial and commercial land across the Charles River and contiguous with Harvard Business School.

Allston planning moved to the front burner with the advent of Summers’ presidency. In his installation adress in October 2001, he pledged that planning and development of a new campus in Allston would be one of his top priorities as president.

The plan presented at the midsummer deans’ meeting was framed as a way to integrate Allston with Cambridge and unite Harvard on both riverbanks.

But some—notably the majority of FAS science professors contacted this weekend—fear that sending some science departments to Allston will lead to divisions between departments, between teaching and research, and between undergrads and professors.

For several months, many FAS science professors have argued against any division.

“Splitting the sciences—that’s ridiculous [and] totally untenable,” Charles Marcus, professor of physics and member of the provost’s Advisory Group on Science—one of several UPPC subcommittees—said in an interview this August.

The Drawing Board

Over the past few years, a coterie of UPPC subcommittees have studied various aspects of Allston planning and consultants have gathered concrete data to fuel decisions.

For the past year-and-a-half, two main scenarios have been on the table—a graduate school campus anchored by the Harvard Law School (HLS) or a science hub with possible tie-ins to commercial biotech.

All plans include graduate school housing and cultural spaces, such as museums.

The plan focusing on science, which comes after the culmination of various reports from McKinsey, the UPPC, HLS and faculty committees, may be based on President Summers’ dream of an expanded biotech campus, but also on practical considerations.

FAS science and HLS, neighboring facilities in the North Yard, have been jockeying for all available turf in recent years.

According to a midsummer interview with Kathy A. Spiegelman, the director of the Allston Initiative and the University’s top planner, consultants found that if HLS were to move to Allston, few of its buildings could be converted into science facilities.

Additionally, 45 percent of the law school’s buildings are considered historic, meaning Cambridge’s preservation rules make drastic renovations nearly impossible.

Consultants also confirmed what many have long argued—that science and graduate student housing will require a lot of room to grow.

Growing Pains

In interviews this weekend, several professors and administrators identified life sciences and the Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences (DEAS) as the most likely candidates within FAS science for a cross-river move.

Associate FAS Dean for Physical Resources and Planning David A. Zewinski ’76 said at a community meeting this weekend that buildings used to teach undergraduates will stay on the Cambridge side of the river.

He added that he thought an Allston science hub would likely focus on life sciences, and would include possible collaborations between professors at the medical school and FAS.

DEAS Dean Venkatesh “Venky” Narayanamurti said last spring that he would be open to moving DEAS—which he hopes can be expanded—to Allston.

Former FAS Dean Jeremy R. Knowles, a chemistry professor himself, wrote a memo early this summer which laid out a case for keeping FAS science in Cambridge.

But the report came late in the game, after a similar report from HLS had long since been completed, and after most Allston committees had long stopped meeting.

Several FAS science professors said they did not know the memo existed.

Professor of Astronomy Alyssa A. Goodman, who served on the provost’s Allston planning committee on Science, said she hoped FAS science would not move because any relocation would cause a plethora of problems, both logistical and academic.

“This barrier of inconvenience is a very big barrier,” Goodman said. “A lot of what goes on in life sciences right now is hugely related to what goes on in physics and chemistry and to sever those things doesn’t make any sense.”

Goodman added that her committee “didn’t think moving science was a good idea.”

But if something in science had to move, she said she thought parts of the Medical School were the best candidates.

“The School of Public Health wants to go to Allston—in any case I think they’ve practically signed up—so it does seem to make the most sense that medically related stuff would go there,” Goodman said. “But that’s hard to define. And so one of the biggest problems that [University Provost] Steve Hyman kept talking about [was] that future science is so interdisciplinary,” she said. “Certainly the boundaries between departments that exist today aren’t going to exist in the future.”

Good News for Grad Schools

Several law professors—long opponents of moving to Allston, who in 1999 voted nearly-unanimously against a cross-river move—could not be reached for comment last night, because they were at a party in the Charles Hotel. It is unclear whether the professors were toasting their apparent victory in the Allston battle or simply celebrating the new term.

“From what I’ve read . . . I am pleased,” said HLS professor Howell Jackson yesterday afternoon. “But nothing is definite yet. I am confident that the final decision will be a good one for the University, with so much careful consultation and planning going into it.”

Professors at SPH seemed excited at the prospect of a more spacious campus in Allston.

“From lots of points of view from the School of Public Health, it would be a wonderful thing [to move to Allston],” said SPH Professor of Bioengineering and Physiology Jeffrey J. Fredberg, who also served on the provost’s Allston planning committee. “We have a severe space crunch . . . it’s a matter even of survival.”

Like the School of Public Health, GSE seems eager to get a larger campus in Allston.

“Generally speaking, we want to move to Allston,” GSE Dean Ellen Condliffe Lagemann said in an interview last spring. “Our physical plant is currently constraining what we want to do. We really need new space.”

—Staff writer Stephen M. Marks can be reached at marks@fas.harvard.edu.

—Staff writer Lauren A.E. Schuker can be reached at schuker@fas.harvard.edu.

—Staff writer Elisabeth S. Theodore can be reached at theodore@fas.harvard.edu.