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Revision as of 06:03, 28 May 2014

Harvard College
File:Harvard shield-College.png
TypePrivate
Established1636
DeanRakesh Khurana
Location
Cambridge
,
Massachusetts
,
United States
CampusUrban
Websitecollege.harvard.edu

Harvard College is one of two schools within Harvard University granting undergraduate degrees (the other being Harvard Extension School). Founded in 1636 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, it is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States[1] and one of the most prestigious in the world.[2]

History

Main article: History of Harvard University
View of freshman dormitories in Harvard Yard

The "New College" came into existence in 1636 by vote of the Great and General Court (colonial legislature, second oldest in British America) of the Massachusetts Bay Colony—though without a single building, instructor, or student. In 1638, the college became home for North America's first known printing press, carried by the ship John of London.[3][4] Three years later the college was renamed in honor of deceased Charlestown minister John Harvard (1607–1638) who had bequeathed to the school his entire library and half of his monetary estate.

Harvard's first instructor, schoolmaster Nathaniel Eaton (1610–1674), was also its first instructor to be dismissed—in 1639 for overstrict discipline.[5] The school's first students were graduated in 1642. In 1665, Caleb Cheeshahteaumuck, (c. 1643-1666), a native/indigenous American, "from the Wampanoag ... did graduate from Harvard, the first Indian to do so in the colonial period."[6]

Lt Gov William Stoughton, (1631-1701), Colonial Governor: 1694-99, 1700-01; circa 1700 overlooking one of the buildings of Harvard College

At the time of Harvard's founding (as today) the "colleges" of England's Oxford and Cambridge Universities were communities within the larger university, each an association of scholars (both established and aspiring) sharing room and board; Harvard's founders may have envisioned it as the first in a series of sibling colleges which, on the English model, would eventually constitute a university. Though no further "colleges" materialized, nonetheless as Harvard began granting higher degrees in the late eighteenth century it was increasingly styled Harvard University—even as Harvard College (in keeping with emerging American usage of that word) was increasingly thought of as the university's undergraduate division in particular.[citations needed throughout]

Today Harvard College is responsible for undergraduate admissions, advising, housing, student life, and athletics – generally all undergraduate matters except instruction, which is the purview of Harvard University's Faculty of Arts and Sciences. The body known as The President and Fellows of Harvard College retains its traditional name despite having governance of the entire University.

Academics

About 2100 students are admitted each year, representing between six and ten percent of those applying; of those admitted approximately three-quarters choose to attend.[7][8][9][10] These figures make Harvard one of the most selective, and most sought-after, colleges in the world.[citation needed] Very few transfer applications are accepted.[citation needed]

Midway through the second year, most undergraduates join one of fifty standard fields of concentration (what most schools call academic majors); many also declare a secondary field (called minors elsewhere). Joint concentrations (combining the requirements of two standard concentrations) and special concentrations (of the student's own design) are also possible.[citation needed]

Most Harvard College concentrations lead to the Artium Baccalaureus (A.B.), normally completed in four years, though students leaving high school with substantial college-level coursework may finish in three. A smaller number receive the Scientiarum Baccalaureus (S.B.), normally requiring five years. There are also special degree programs, such as a five-year program leading to both a Harvard undergraduate degree and a Master of Arts from the New England Conservatory of Music.

Undergraduates must also fulfill the General Education requirement of coursework in eight designated fields:

  • Aesthetic and Interpretive Understanding
  • Culture and Belief
  • Empirical and Mathematical Reasoning
  • Ethical Reasoning
  • Science of Living Systems
  • Science of the Physical Universe
  • Societies of the World
  • United States in the World

Each student's exposure (via "Gen Ed") to a range of intellectual areas, while pursuing a chosen concentration in depth, fulfills the injunction of Harvard past-president Abbott Lawrence Lowell that a Harvard "man" should know "a little of everything, and one thing well."[11]

In 2012, dozens of students were disciplined for cheating on a take-home exam in one course.[12] The university does not have an honor code.[13][14]

The total annual cost of attendance, including tuition and room and board, for 2009–2010 was $49,000.[15] Under financial aid guidelines adopted in 2007, families with incomes below $60,000 will no longer pay anything for their children to attend, including room and board. Families with incomes between $60,000 to $80,000 pay only few thousand dollars a year, and families earning between $120,000 and $180,000 will pay no more than 10% of their annual income.[16] In 2009, Harvard offered grants totaling $414 million across all eleven divisions;[further explanation needed] $340 million came from institutional funds, $35 million from federal support, and $39 million from other outside support. Grants total 88% of Harvard's aid for undergraduate students, with aid also provided by loans (8%) and work-study (4%).[15]

House system

Lowell House in autumn.

Nearly all undergraduates live on campus, for the first year in dormitories in or near Harvard Yard (see List of Harvard dormitories) and later in the upperclass Houses—administrative subdivisions of the College as well as living quarters, providing a sense of community in what might otherwise be a socially incohesive and administratively daunting university environment. Each house is presided over by a senior-faculty Master, while its Allston Burr Resident Dean (usually a junior faculty member) supervises undergraduates' day-to-day academic and disciplinary well-being. The Master and Resident Dean are assisted by other members of the Senior Common Room—select graduate students (called tutors), faculty, and University officials brought into voluntary association with each house. Many tutors reside in the House, as do the Master and Resident Dean. (Terms such as tutor, Senior Common Room and Junior Common Room—the House's undergraduate members—reflect a debt to the residential college systems at Oxford and Cambridge from which Harvard's system took inspiration.)[17]

The Houses were created by President Lowell in the 1930s to combat what he saw as pernicious social stratification engendered by the private, off-campus living arrangements of many undergraduates at that time. Lowell's solution was to provide every man‍—‌Harvard was male-only at the time‍—‌with on-campus accommodations throughout his time at the College; Lowell also saw great benefits flowing from other features of the House system, such as the relaxed discussions (academic or otherwise) which he hoped would take place among undergraduates and members of the Senior Common Room over meals in each House's dining hall.[18]

The way in which students come to live in particular Houses has changed greatly over time. Under the original "draft" system, Masters negotiated privately over the assignment of "rising sophomores" (that is, current freshmen, who will be sophomores in the coming academic year) considered most—or least—promising.[citation needed] From the 1960s to the mid-1990s each student ranked the Houses according to personal preference, with an impersonal lottery resolving the oversubscription of more popular houses. Today groups of one to eight freshman form a block which is then assigned, essentially at random, to an upperclass house.

South of Harvard Yard, near the Charles River, are the nine River Houses:

3

The construction of the River houses was financed largely by a 1928 gift from Yale alumnus Edward Harkness who, frustrated in his attempts to initiate a similar project at his alma mater, eventually offered 11 million dollars to Harvard.[19][20] Two of the new houses, Dunster and Lowell, were completed in 1930.[19]

Construction of the first River houses began in early 1929,[19] but the land on which they were built had been assembled decades before. After graduating Harvard in 1895, Edward Waldo Forbes (grandson of Ralph Waldo Emerson) found himself inspired by the Oxford and Cambridge systems during two years of study in England; on returning to the United States he set out to acquire such land between Harvard Yard and the Charles River as was not already owned by Harvard or some associated entity. By 1918 that ambition had been largely fulfilled and the assembled land transferred to Harvard.[21][22]

The three Quad Houses (in the Radcliffe Quadrangle) enjoy a residential setting one-half mile (800 m) northwest of Harvard Yard. These were built by Radcliffe College and housed Radcliffe College students until the Harvard and Radcliffe residential systems merged in 1977.[23] They are:

3

A thirteenth house, Dudley House, is nonresidential but fulfills, for some graduate students and the (very few) undergraduates living off campus, the administrative and social functions provided by the other twelve houses to their residents.

Harvard's residential houses are paired with Yale's residential colleges in sister relationships.

Athletics

Main article: Harvard Crimson

By the late 19th century critics of intercollegiate athletics, including Harvard president Charles William Eliot, believed that sports competition had become over-commercialized and took students away from their studies, and they called for reform and limitations on all sports. This opposition prompted Harvard's athletic committee to target 'minor' sports—basketball and hockey—for reform and regulation in order to deflect attention from the major sports—football, baseball, track, and crew. The committee made it difficult for the basketball team to operate by denying financial assistance and limiting the number of overnight away games in which the team could participate. Several losing seasons, negative attitudes toward the commercialization of intercollegiate sports, and the need for reform contributed to basketball's demise at Harvard in 1909.[24]

Today Harvard, one of the eight members of the Ivy League, claims[clarification needed] to have the largest Division I intercollegiate athletics program, with 41 varsity teams and over 1,500 student-athletes.

Begun in 1852 the Harvard-Yale Regatta is the oldest intercollegiate athletic rivalry in the United States. Better known is the annual Harvard-Yale football game—"The Game", to insiders—first played in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1875, and now played on the Saturday before Thanksgiving, making it one of many significant games played on "Rivalry Day."[clarification needed]

Undergraduate organizations

Harvard has hundreds of undergraduate organizations.[citation needed] Every spring there is an "Arts First week," founded by John Lithgow during which arts and culture organizations show off performances, cook meals, or present other work; in 2005 over 40% of students participated in at least one Arts First event. Notable organizations include the student-run business organization Harvard Student Agencies, the daily newspaper The Harvard Crimson, the humor magazine the Harvard Lampoon, the a cappella groups the Din & Tonics and the Krokodiloes, and the public service umbrella organization the Phillips Brooks House Association (PBHA).

Publications and media

Many Harvard undergraduate publications and productions are distributed worldwide.

The Harvard Lampoon's "castle" features anthropomorphic eyes, nose, mouth, and bow-tie.

Service

  • The Phillips Brooks House Association, an umbrella community service organization operating in Phillips Brooks House of Harvard Yard, consists of 78 program committees and over 1,800 student volunteers, and serves close to 10,000 clients in the Cambridge and Boston area.
  • Harvard for Haiti[27]
  • Harvard for Japan[28]
  • Harvard for Pakistan[29]
  • Harvard for the Horn[30]

Political

Performing arts

Opera companies
  • Dunster House Opera, the entirely undergraduate opera company, performs one opera each year, in English.
  • Lowell House Opera, the oldest continually performing opera company in New England.
  • The Harvard-Radcliffe Gilbert and Sullivan Players, founded in 1956, performs comic opera by Gilbert and Sullivan and by others.[33]
Choral groups
A cappella groups
  • Harvard Din & Tonics, an all-male jazz a cappella group founded in 1979
  • Harvard Krokodiloes, an all-male a cappella group, Harvard's oldest
  • Harvard Opportunes,[34] Harvard's oldest mixed vocal a cappella group
  • Harvard LowKeys, mixed vocal, both male and female
  • Harvard-Radcliffe Veritones, mixed vocal, both male and female
  • Harvard Callbacks,[35] contemporary mixed vocal, both male and female
  • Radcliffe Pitches, all-female a cappella group founded in 1975
  • Harvard's Under Construction, a mixed vocal Christian music a cappella group founded in the early 1980s
  • Harvard Fallen Angels, an all-female a cappella group founded in 2000
  • 'Cliffe Notes- the contemporary a cappella subset of the Radcliffe Choral Society (Harvard's premier women's chorus est. 1899)
Orchestras and bands
Theater and dance
  • The Harvard-Radcliffe Dramatic Club connects smaller campus theater groups and supports all campus productions.
  • Hasty Pudding Theatricals, formed in 1795, is known for its student-written burlesque musicals.
  • The Immediate Gratification Players (IGP), On Thin Ice (OTI), and Three Letter Acronym (TLA) are Harvard's three undergraduate improvisational comedy groups.
  • Harvard blackC.A.S.T. (Community and Student Theater) is Harvard's theater group dedicated to black theatrical production and fostering a black theater community on campus.
  • The Harvard-Radcliffe Dance Company
  • The Harvard Ballet Company
  • The Harvard Ballroom Team, one of the largest national collegiate ballroom teams
  • The Harvard Ballet Folklórico de Aztlán
  • Harvard Deepam performs Bharatanatyam
  • The Harvard Intertribal Indian Dance Troupe performs Native American powwow dances.
  • The Harvard Pan-African Dance and Music Ensemble is dedicated to raising awareness of the depth and diversity of African expressive culture through the performance of dance and music from all over the continent.
  • The Harvard Crimson Dance Team
Other
  • THUD (The Harvard Undergraduate Drummers), founded in 1999, known for their creative percussion performance with plastic SOLO cups, brooms, and traditional instruments
  • The Noteables, a non-audition group that performs revue-style musical theater

Academic organizations

  • Dynamo[36]
  • Harvard College Engineering Society[37]
  • Harvard College Stem Cell Society A student group dedicated to raising awareness about the ethics, politics, and science of stem cell research.
  • Women in Science at Harvard-Radcliffe

Pre-professional organizations

  • Harvard Student Agencies, a $6 million non-profit company—students gain practical business experience while running divisions as varied as linen service, advertisement distribution, computer programming, and tutoring.
  • Harvard College Consulting Group provides businesses with trained student analysts with term-time consulting projects.[38]
  • Veritas Financial Group helps prepare students for careers in finance
  • Harvard Smart Woman Securities
  • Harvard Undergraduate Women in Business
  • Harvard Financial Analysts Club[39] uses management of its own investment funds as a teaching vehicle.[40]
  • Harvard Investment Association educates on investing and financial markets and provides opportunities[clarification needed] for investing experience.
  • The Harvard College Business Club uses online social networks to connect[clarification needed] undergraduates with business leaders and potential employers.
  • The Leadership Institute at Harvard College provides leadership training
  • Harvard College Engineering Society participates in competitions and promotes cross-disciplinary collaboration.[41]

Unrecognized student groups

Religious life

Chabad House

The Chabad House at Harvard is a community center for Jewish students operated by the Orthodox Jewish Chabad movement. Presently headed by Rabbi and Mrs. Hirsch and Rabbi and Mrs. Zarchi, it was founded in 1997.[42] According to Professor Ruth Wisse, its success is due to the personality and energy of Rabbi Zarchi.[43] The rabbis live at the Chabad House with their young children, which contributes to a warm family atmosphere at their Friday evening Shabbat dinners for students.[44] In April 2010 it placed a bid of $6 million to purchase the building of the former DU Club located at 45 Dunster Street from the Fly Club. The bid was reportedly more than twice the tax-assessed value of the building and land.[45]

Notable alumni

See also: List of Harvard University people

Fictional alumni

Footnotes

  1. ^ Rudolph, Frederick (1961). The American College and University. University of Georgia Press. p. 3. ISBN 0-8203-1285-1.
  2. ^ Keller, Morton; Keller, Phyllis (2001). Making Harvard Modern: The Rise of America's University. Oxford University Press. pp. 463–481. ISBN 0-19-514457-0. Harvard's professional schools... won world prestige of a sort rarely seen among social institutions. (...) Harvard's age, wealth, quality, and prestige may well shield it from any conceivable vicissitudes.
    Spaulding, Christina (1989). "Sexual Shakedown". In Trumpbour, John (ed.). How Harvard Rules: Reason in the Service of Empire. South End Press. pp. 326–336. ISBN 0-89608-284-9. ...[Harvard's] tremendous institutional power and prestige (...) Within the nation's (arguably) most prestigious institution of higher learning...
  3. ^ "The instrument behind New England's first literary flowering". Harvard University. Retrieved 2014-01-18.
  4. ^ "Rowley and Ezekiel Rogers, The First North American Printing Press" (PDF). Maritime Historical Studies Centre, University of Hull. Retrieved 2014-01-18. {{cite web}}: line feed character in |title= at position 43 (help)
  5. ^ Samuel Eliot Morison, Three Centuries of Harvard, 1636-1936 (1986)
  6. ^ Monaghan, E. J., 2005, p. 55, 59
  7. ^ Worland, Justin (31 March 2011). "Harvard Accepts Record Low 6.2 Percent of Applicants to the Class of 2015". The Crimson. Retrieved 13 April 2011.
  8. ^ Jan, Tracy (30 March 2009). "Harvard admission rate dips to 7 percent". The Boston Globe. Retrieved 13 April 2011.
  9. ^ Yield Holds Steady For 2013 — Harvard News Office
  10. ^ A record pool leads to a record-low admissions rate — Harvard News Office
  11. ^ Full text of "The story of Harvard". Archive.org. Retrieved on 2013-09-07.
  12. ^ Perez-Pena, Richard (February 1, 2013). "Students Disciplined in Harvard Scandal". The New York Times. Retrieved September 15, 2013.
  13. ^ Hu, Melody Y.; Newcomer, Eric P. (March 24, 2010). "Administrators Discuss College Honor Code". The Harvard Crimson. Retrieved September 15, 2013. "...one thing remains certain: many College administrators are looking for a way to combat academic dishonesty at Harvard—which Harris recently called a real problem"...
  14. ^ Harrington, Rebecca (September 14, 2012). "Song of the Cheaters". The New York Times. Retrieved September 15, 2013. "...an honor code, a system ... Harvard has long resisted
  15. ^ a b "Tuition at Harvard Schools: FY1990 – FY2010" (PDF). Harvard University. Retrieved August 28, 2010.
  16. ^ Rimer, Sara; Finder, Alan (December 10, 2007). "Harvard Steps Up Financial Aid". The New York Times.
  17. ^ Harvard College Office of Residential Life (2008). "History of the House System". Retrieved 2008-04-20.
  18. ^ Morison, Samuel Eliot (1936). Three Centuries of Harvard: 1636–1936. pp. 476–478.
  19. ^ a b c Bethell, John (1998). Harvard Observed: An Illustrated History of the University in the Twentieth Century. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. pp. 102–103. ISBN 978-0-674-37733-2.
  20. ^ "Gifts - 1928-1929" (Press release). Harvard University News Office. June 20, 1929. HU 37.5, Harvard University Archives, Cambridge, Mass. "This figure [of gifts and legacies received during the year] includes $5,444,000 received from E. S. Harkness to defray the expenses of constructing the first Harvard houses."
  21. ^ Lowe, Charles U. "The Forbes Story of the Harvard Riverside Associates: How Harvard Acquired the Land on which Lowell House was Built," February 20, 2002.lowell.harvard.edu
  22. ^ Sacks, Benjamin J. "Harvard's 'Constructed Utopia' and the Culture of Deception: the Expansion toward the Charles River, 1902-1932," The New England Quarterly 84.2 (June 2011): 286–317.[1]
  23. ^ Sofen, Adam A. "Radcliffe Enters Historic Merger With Harvard, April 21, 1999.[2]
  24. ^ Marc Horger, "A Victim of Reform: Why Basketball Failed at Harvard, 1900-1909," New England Quarterly 2005 78(1): 49-76,
  25. ^ Harvardyearbook.com
  26. ^ "Magnetic Fields". Spin Magazine. August 2006. Retrieved 2011-10-26.
  27. ^ "Harvard for Haiti". Retrieved 7 Feb 2012.
  28. ^ "Harvard for Japan". Retrieved 7 Feb 2012.
  29. ^ "Harvard for Pakistan". Retrieved 7 Feb 2012.
  30. ^ "Sound the Horn". Retrieved 7 Feb 2012.
  31. ^ Official site
  32. ^ HCS.harvard.edu
  33. ^ The Harvard-Radcliffe Gilbert & Sullivan Players Retrieved 22 October 2012
  34. ^ (http://harvardopportunes.com/ The Harvard Opportunes)
  35. ^ The Harvard Callbacks
  36. ^ HCS.harvard.edu
  37. ^ HCS.harvard.edu
  38. ^ Harvard College Consulting Group
  39. ^ Harvard Financial Analysts Club
  40. ^ Tara W Merrigan. "HFAC Gets Green Investment Grant". Retrieved 02-05-2010. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
  41. ^ Harvard College Engineering Society
  42. ^ Heilman, Samuel, and Friedman, Menachem, The Rebbe: The Life and Afterlife of Menachem Mendel Schneerson, Princeton University Press, 2010
  43. ^ Fishkoff, Sue, The Rebbe's Army: Inside the World of Chabad-Lubavitch, Random House, 2009
  44. ^ Steinberg, Avi, "Bringing comfort, joy to Harvard," A Boston Globe, December 12, 2004
  45. ^ Kolin, Danielle and Srivatsa, Naveen, "Fly Club May Sell Space Leased to the Bee", Harvard Crimson, April 28, 2010
  46. ^ Thomas S. Kuhn (2000) The Road since Structure, edited by James Conant and John Haugeland. Chicago: University of Chicago Press

General references

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Harvard University.

42°22′26″N 71°07′01″W / 42.374°N 71.117°W / 42.374; -71.117

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