Harvard’s Graduate School of Design(GSD)today announced asubstantial revision of its Master in Design Studies(M.Des.)program.The new curriculum is designed to encourage multidisciplinary study and to address the changing real-world needs for design.The new program replaces former eight concentration areas with four“domains,”all designed to address the interaction of design with landscape,ecology,infrastructure,and other environmental concerns.The domains are:ecologies,which explores the connection of design with landscape and infrastructure;mediums,taking up innovative design methods to engage the public and social realms;narratives,centered around the social,technical,cultural,and political contexts of design;and publics,focusing of the relationship between the built environment and its surroundings.More than adozen possible“trajectories”will be offered across any of the domains for greater flexibility,allowing students to design his or her own program.“We are not changing to solve aproblem with the program.We’re changing to expand the influence of the program,”K.Michael Hays,program director and Eliot Noyes Professor of Architectural Theory,said this week.“When this program started in the’80s we had four subject areas,which exactly mapped the curriculum.It was very efficient and solid,but very boring.“Over the past 10 years we’ve built up areas that were more topical—art in the public domain,what we call critical conservation,risk,and resilience.These address concerns which don’t fall strictly within the profession but can be addressed by collaborative design practices.This has made the program successful.It draws students who have abackground in design but want to work outside and across the limits of their profession.”Hays said this heightened desire for acurriculum that was more urgent and useful inspired the decision to widen the lens.“The need for further expansion came directly from aconcern about the climate,given the past government administration’s rollback of regulations and denial of climate change.This was something we thought design could and should address.The Black Lives Matter movement also had very direct impact on our curriculum.Students rightly demanded more courses that address issues of social equity in spatial terms.Also,there are various ways design could address racial and gender equity.These events directly impacted our curriculum and we felt like we needed to add more areas.”The idea that the curriculum should be linked to larger social issues has grown over time.“That’s aphilosophy or attitude that has developed.I don’t think it was solely the product of achange of deanship or achange of administration,”Hays said,referring to Sarah Whiting’s installation as dean last year,following the 11-year tenure of Mohsen Mostafavi. 查看详细>>

This is part of our Coronavirus Update series in which Harvard specialists in epidemiology,infectious disease,economics,politics,and other disciplines offer insights into what the latest developments in the COVID-19 outbreak may bring.Harvard researchers examining the common cold for hints about how the COVID-19 virus might behave said that summer may not save us and that repeated periods of social distancing may be needed to keep serious cases from overwhelming the hospital system.The findings,published online in the journal Science on Tuesday,were produced by scientists from the Harvard T.H.Chan School of Public Health’s Departments of Epidemiology and of Immunology and Infectious Diseases.Researchers led by postdoctoral fellow Stephen Kissler and doctoral student Christine Tedijanto used close genetic cousins of SARS-CoV-2—the virus that causes COVID-19—to model how it might behave in the coming months. 查看详细>>

What does an academic CV look like?Is it important to join ascholarly association?How do travel grants work?The skills and information graduate students need to succeed extend far beyond what they learn in their classes.In anew course designed and taught by Robin Bernstein and offered by the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences(GSAS),newbies learn the“hidden curriculum”of graduate school and how to navigate the singular world of academia.“There’s no reason that anybody should be expected to know anything that they haven’t been taught,”said Bernstein,the Dillon Professor of American History and professor of African and African American Studies and of studies of women,gender,and sexuality.“Whenever aperson is expected to pick up something magically,that’s asure sign that power is working in insidious ways and asure sign that elitism is afoot,in the case of academia.The goal of this course is to democratize the knowledge that is needed to succeed in graduate school and in academia.” 查看详细>>

In 2018,Harvard announced that it would seek to become fossil-fuel free by 2050,and set an interim goal of becoming fossil-fuel neutral by 2026.The University community has taken steps toward this goal—literally and figuratively—with their commuting habits.The CommuterChoice Program reported that 84 percent of Harvard employees commute to work via asustainable mode of transportation.The survey showed that 36.2 percent take public transit,25.7 percent walk,15.3 percent ride bicycles,and 3.7 percent carpool.(Another 3.1 percent telecommute.)This commitment shows that Harvard is not just adestination but also alattice of green pathways connecting its diverse communities.These photographs celebrate faculty,staff,and students who save energy and resources by sustainably commuting together across town or from the far corners of New England to arrive here each day. 查看详细>>

Autism and related disorders—a constellation of neurodevelopmental conditions affecting one in 59 children in the U.S.alone—have joined the ranks of modern medicine’s most confounding mysteries.The conditions are believed to arise from the complex interplay between genes and environment,yet their basic biology remains largely ablack box.Now,a new research effort at Harvard University led by Harvard Medical School(HMS)is poised to identify the biologic roots and molecular changes that give rise to autism-related disorders with the goal of informing the development of better diagnostic tools and new therapies.Harvard has received a$20 million gift from philanthropists Lisa Yang and Hock Tan,M.B.A.’79,to establish the Hock E.Tan and K.Lisa Yang Center for Autism Research at Harvard Medical School.The latest gift brings the total autism-related research funding Yang and Tan have provided to nearly$70 million.The center will serve as the hub that brings together the diverse expertise of scientists and clinicians working throughout Harvard University,HMS,and the Harvard-affiliated hospitals. 查看详细>>

he Harvard Innovation Labs(HIL)is thrilled to announce the student-founded ventures that will participate in the 2019 Fall Venture Incubation Program.The Harvard Innovation Labs’primary purpose is to provide experiential education—helping students,faculty,and select alumni explore innovation and entrepreneurship across industries and stages.The 176 teams who are part of the Fall Venture Incubation Program are working to solve problems across industries,and the startup founders come from all 13 Harvard schools—very much in keeping with the university innovation center’s focus on fostering collaboration and connection across the entire Harvard community. 查看详细>>

Harvard researchers were pleased when apilot program,done in collaboration with school officials in Syracuse,reduced student absenteeism in early grades by 15 percent.Now the researchers are looking to help rural schools devise their own answers to serious problems,aided by the kind of methods and tools used in Syracuse,ones not typically available to smaller communities.Harvard researchers who are taking part in the newly created National Center for Rural Education Research Networks(NCRERN)will team up with 60 rural schools,30 in New York and another 30 in Ohio,in an effort to reduce chronic absenteeism and improve college readiness.It’s an important mission,said Thomas Kane,the Walter H.Gale Professor of Education and Economics at the Graduate School of Education who leads the center,along with Douglas Staiger of Dartmouth College and Christopher Avery of Harvard Kennedy School.Due to their small sizes,rural school districts have often been overlooked,said Kane,despite the fact that 20 percent of elementary and high school students across the country attend them.Rural students often face greater challenges than those in urban schools,ranging from lack of resources to teacher shortages to limited early education programs. 查看详细>>

Harvard’s Growth Lab today launched Country Profiles,a unique data visualization tool that guides users on an interactive journey through acountry’s economic structure and dynamic growth patterns ultimately revealing the strategy necessary to achieve greater prosperity.This first-of-its-kind platform—built into the Atlas of Economic Complexity—revolutionizes how to think about economic strategy,policy,and investment opportunities for more than 130 countries.“The launch of Country Profiles is acritical step in the evolution of the Atlas of Economic Complexity,”said Ricardo Hausmann,director of Harvard’s Growth Lab and professor at the Harvard Kennedy School(HKS).“We learned that navigating 50-plus years of global trade data and 6,000-plus products was challenging for certain users of the Atlas,but with Country Profiles,the data and analysis are summarized within 10 visualizations.Users get astep-by-step explanation of where acountry is coming from and,most exciting,where it may go.” 查看详细>>

Say you teach Slavic languages and literatures,write about literature and political power,and are adevotee of roots music and French New Wave films.When you log into the new Harvard Link,an online app developed by the research arm of the Office of the Vice Provost for Advances in Learning(VPAL),it will create apersonalized dashboard for you,secured by HarvardKey,that will recommend news stories about your academic or geopolitical interests;events like concerts,screenings or lectures;and suggestions on which faculty,staff,centers,initiatives,programs,and organizations work in fields related to yours so you can find out more about what they’re working on—and possibly even whether they would be interested in acollaboration.The best part?The application does much of this on its own.Harvard Link funnels publicly available University-related information about the campus,faculty,and staff into acentralized database.It creates suggestions based on auser’s personal,professional,and research interests,which the system automatically collects and individuals can update.The system also tells faculty members what courses their students are taking before,during,and after enrolling in their class.They can learn who teaches those classes and download syllabi.This is meant to provide professors with aclearer understanding of their students’academic interests and encourage faculty to connect with colleagues with whom they share students.Link also lets faculty know about other courses at the University that may be related to their own subject. 查看详细>>

Tyler Hester cried into astack of buttermilk pancakes at an IHOP in Pasadena,Calif.It was two months into his teaching career,and he was already feeling overwhelmed and ineffective.“I’ll never forget this,”he said,recalling the breakfast with his mother.“The pancakes had just arrived and she asked me,‘Tyler,how are you doing?’My eyes welled up and atear drop literally rolled onto the pancake in front of me and Ijust said,‘Mom,it’s so hard.’”A decade later,that low point led Hester,now in the final year of adoctor of education leadership program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education,to an idea:create an initiative to offer struggling new teachers emotional support.The need for such aprogram was apparent to Hester not just because of his own experience,but because of the nation’s high rates of teacher burnout and turnover.But how to find the support and guidance to take his idea and turn it into an actual program?Hester turned to Operation Impact,a program launched last year by the Office of the Vice Provost for Advances in Learning and its Harvard Initiative for Learning and Teaching that supports budding entrepreneurs in education innovation.Operation Impact has funded almost 200 students working on more than 80 projects around the country and the world.Ventures have included aschool readiness app for incoming kindergartners,a medical case-logging system for surgeons,a workforce training program for youth in Indonesia,a support program for adolescents living with acaregiver or family member who struggles with mental health issues or addiction,and amobile app that helps match students and mentors.The program awards small seed grants for pilot projects,typically$200 to$500 up to four times ayear,and provides access to software from its corporate sponsors that can help the groups get their projects off the ground.Limiting the size of the awards allows Operation Impact to spread the grants around more widely. 查看详细>>