The Rudenstine Vision

Every 20 years or so, a new president takes the helm of Harvard University with visionary plans to build or strengthen one of the institution's pillars.

Abbot Lawrence Lowell, the University's 22nd president, sought to restore the "collegiate way of living" by building the College's house system.

Outgoing President Derek Curtis Bok is credited with overseeing the dramatic growth of the Kennedy School of Government.

But the vision of Neil Leon Rudenstine--who will soon become Harvard's 26th president--doesn't involve an individual piece of the University. His self-assigned mission is not to build up any particular part of the institution.

Instead, the president-designate wants to strengthen the entire University by building the linkages and connective tissue between and within the separate faculties.

"It seems to me we have a very, very strong institution in all sorts of ways, but if you step back, the one part where we perhaps are not putting enough of our muscle is in terms of how to integrate the institution as a whole," he says.

Rudenstine says that encouraging this institutional integration on as many levels as possible is one of the most significant challenges he will face during his presidency. Greater integration and communication has become more necessary as Harvard has grown larger and more complex, he says.

"We're getting to the point where we're beginning to replicate in different places some of the same kinds of programs and some of the same sorts of appointments, because we don't have enough capacity to know what each other is doing," he says.

He says that scientific research and education at the University is illustrative of the problem, pointing out that similar scientific work may be in progress at the Medical School, the School of Public Health, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) and the FAS Division of Applied Sciences.

"Right now we just don't have the capacity to think about the intersections across the board," he says.

In addition to saving resources, he says, greater integration will mean more progress. Rudenstine says that a collaborative effort by several schools may yield promising results in areas such as primary and secondary education, health care and the environment.

By utilizing the resources and perspectives of several different faculties, Rudenstine says the University as a whole can have a tremendous impact on these issues.

Opportunities for Linkage

Rudenstine sees opportunities for such linkage existing in many places other than the classroom and the lab. For instance, he suggests that the University might improve relations with the local community this way.

"When it comes to overall physical planning, land usage, et cetera, et cetera, we can't just operate as if we were one school over there doing what it wants to do and another school over there," he says. "More and more, we are being asked, 'What's the University's master plan?'"

Rudenstine also sees possibilities for improving student life by coordinating the University's efforts. There are aspects of the house system, for instance, that University officials would like to modify, he says.

"Right now, while we have masters over here and deans over here and communities over here and so on, there's not enough of an academic administrative capacity working with the house masters and students to be able to put the pieces together," he says.

But Rudenstine emphasizes that his model of the University is not one of centralization.

"You would build an enormous bureaucracy and that's not what you want," he says. "I guess I see the alternative as being this kind of linked, collaborative system, where you integrate selectively and in the best sense, opportunistically, i.e. where the promising linkages look like they are."

Rudenstine recognizes that it will be necessary to preserve a considerable amount of autonomy for each of the various faculties in order to keep them "sufficiently vital and self-sufficient and healthy."

"You begin to get the parts to think that they are active parts of the whole as much as they are parts and you find ways to get them more engaged when that looks fruitful," Rudenstine says. "And then you let them go their own ways programmatically when it doesn't look fruitful to get them engaged."

Harvard's traditional "Every tub on its own bottom" approach to fundraising will still have to change slightly, though.

"You don't kill 'every tub on its own bottom,' but you do modify the concept to make it kind of 'every tub on each other's bottom,'" says Rudenstine. "In some sense the schools do their own fundraising, but where you can find the linkages and where you can find University-wide priorities and opportunities, you fundraise that way."

By that process, he says, the schools may be able to raise more money, allowing more funds to be allocated to benefit more of the schools.

"I don't myself believe in the kind of efforts to transfer resources from a well-endowed school to another by taxing one more than another," he says. "I think it's the upside you want to concentrate on. If you can identify those things where people can collaborate, you'll find donors who will want to give money."

Bok says he thinks his successor's concept of integration is sound and perhaps somewhat overdue. "It has the virtues of decentralization--the virtues of voluntary cooperation, managed cooperation, encouraged cooperation--and it will be good for Harvard," Bok says.

"The deans will enjoy it," predicts Bok. "It will give them more of a sense of not only serving their faculties primarily but also of being important leaders in the entire University."

But bringing about this kind of integration will be no small task at a university whose nine faculties have traditionally been fiercely protective of their administrative, academic and financial autonomy.

On the other hand, Rudenstine's job is easier because he currently has the opportunity to appoint deans at several of the faculties and he is not likely to choose people who disagree strongly with him.

In addition, several officials predict that the University community will welcome Rudenstine's effort at internal collaboration.

"I think a lot of people yearn for [greater integration]. I think he's going to be able to capture a general feeling that a lot of people want," says Vice President Sally Zeckhauser.