He also wants to extend the school's interdisciplinary culture to the classroom. He asked his faculty to create new technology courses for students who are interested in, say, medicine or economics. At the same time, the engineering school is reviewing its curriculum to incorporate more hands-on learning.
Lynn Andrea Stein approves of the move. On sabbatical at Harvard, she is a professor of computer science and engineering at the Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering, in Needham, Mass., a new school that has gained attention for its innovative curriculum [see ”The Olin Experiment,” IEEE Spectrum, May 2006]. She adds, though, that Harvard shouldn't simply try to replicate Olin's ideas. ”A lot of the questions that motivated the creation of Olin are also motivating changes at Harvard, and Harvard will have its own unique response,” she says.
Narayanamurti sees the ideal graduate from his school as a renaissance engineer, one with a grounding in both technology and societal issues. ”Those who want to be pure technologists should go to MIT,” he says. ”At Harvard we want to create people who know how things work but also how the world works.”
Farther down Massachusetts Avenue, at MIT, people aren't completely oblivious to Harvard's expansion plans. It's just what MIT needs, one professor commented, ”a sharp kick in the butt.” Not so, predicted another: after a few years Harvard will just settle for being a very good but very small school of applied sciences, like those found at a lot of other liberal arts colleges.
Nobody at Harvard seems ready to concede just yet, and in fact, the school is already thinking about its long-term prospects. In January 2007, the university created a committee to advise Harvard's president and governing bodies on how to boost collaborative efforts in science and engineering. The committee, of which Narayanamurti is a member, should shape major expansion plans, including the Allston Initiative.
Having exhausted its land on the Cambridge side of the Charles, Harvard now intends to build a second campus in the Allston neighborhood of Boston. At press time, the university was set to begin construction on a $1 billion science complex. It's been suggested that the engineering school, in whole or in part, could move to Allston one day, but no concrete plans have been made. It's clear, however, that engineering and applied sciences will be a central part of the new development.
As for Narayanamurti, what's next? In mid-February, he announced he would step down as dean and return to teaching and research. And this time he means it. But he plans to stick around to see the changes he helped initiate. ”It's going to be one of those things that you don't notice day to day,” he says, ”but when you come back in five years or so, it will be a tremendous change.”
With additional reporting by William Sweet in Cambridge, Mass.
