Just today Harvard issued recommendations speaking to how science research and education might be improved within its associated institutions. (Click here for the recommendations). My first pass through the long document looks good. Very good. They address 6 main points with a few more speaking to how it might actually be accomplished.

Some obvious (and much welcomed) bits relate to improving diversity, modernizing undergraduate education to include more first-hand research, and to removing barriers within and between graduate programs in order to allow students to choose from a much wider array of laboratories for their thesis work. Well done.

What I also find notable are the comments on creating ways to encourage more cross-disciplinary research, including smoothing out the way things work between the Harvard affiliated teaching hospitals. This is suggested to come together in a few different ways including establishing a new oversight committee to promote collaborative projects between programs, departments, and schools (the Harvard University Science and Engineering Committee or HUSEC). At first glance, suggesting that the creation of more bureaucracy could help in some way seems way off base. However, the power in this punch comes from the suggestion that control of 75 FTE’s (full-time efforts or jobs) as well as some space would belong to the HUSEC. The proposed Allston campus appears to play pretty heavily in these plans as well and is described in a recommendation all its own.

Harvard is taking commentary on the recommendations through the summer and fall with plans to finalize the report by the end of 2006.