At the undergraduate level, the task forces urged the creation of a summer research program for undergraduates, which the University hopes to have in place by the summer of 2006, according to Mariangela Lisanti ’05, co-chair of a working group that reported to the Task Force on Women in Science and Engineering.

The working group also recommended study centers for undergraduates enrolled in science courses.

The University said on May 16 that it planned to act immediately on a number of the proposals in the task force reports and to provide training on leadership and diversity for top University administrators during their annual summer retreat.

A Transition Committee—composed of Grosz, Professor of the History of Science and African and African American Studies Evelynn M. Hammonds, chair of the Task Force on Women Faculty, and Drew Gilpin Faust, dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study—will work with administrators to figure out how to implement the rest of the task force recommendations and delegate responsibilities, according to the reports.

YEARS IN THE MAKING

Faculty members have urged administrators for years to take action on behalf of female faculty members.

In 1991, Grosz chaired the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) Standing Committee on Women, which produced a report on women in the sciences at Harvard that foreshadowed some of the recommendations released by the task forces last month. The 1991 report expressed concern over how departmental environments affect female faculty members and graduate students and focused on the problems that accompany women along the career pipeline in the sciences.

“Harvard is justly proud of the achievements of its faculty, but has yet to adapt its appointment processes and departmental structure” to take into account competition from other universities and new expectations regarding family and professional responsibilities, the 1991 report read. “If Harvard is to be successful in senior appointments, it must attract and retain the best young women as junior faculty members.”

Grosz says that while some of the recommendations of the 1991 report were implemented—including an emergency child care program for faculty members—many of the recommendations, such as mentoring programs for junior faculty members, fell by the wayside as departments lost sight of the proposals’ importance.

“The 1991 report recommendations were implemented initially, and then memories faded,” Grosz says.

Grosz says her experiences with the 1991 report were important in informing her work this year.

The 1991 report was not the only past call for administrative consideration of the problems women in the sciences face.

At the Jan. 14 NBER conference, a few hours before Summers’ speech abruptly returned Harvard’s—and the national media’s—attention to women in science, Grosz presented a report on women in science and engineering at Harvard, in which she mentioned the same pipeline problems that appear in the May task force reports.

And Faust says the task forces began their work with the assumption that they would recommend a senior position to oversee faculty diversity, based on suggestions that the Standing Committee on Women made to Summers after his remarks.

“One of the [Standing Committee’s suggestions] was to have a person in the central position....Part of the task force charge was to explore what that position should be,” Faust says.