Faculty Passes Proposal to Decentralize Dean's Office

The Faculty of Arts and Sciences yesterday approved a plan to shift most of the Dean's Office into the Houses. Part of the Report on Advising at Harvard College--the Bender Report--the proposal eliminated the three assistant deans for upperclassmen, the Senior Tutors in the Houses, and the Commuters' Graduate Secretary.

Many functions now performed in the Dean's Office will be transferred to eight Senior Tutors with new powers who will be attached to the seven Houses and to the Commuters' Center in Dudley.

Provost Buck said last night that the new system was "a recognition of the maturity of the House system."

The new Senior Tutors will have these duties:

1. Advising students in Houses on individual problems.

2. Serving on the Administrative Board to consider major disciplinary cases.

3. Working closely with the faculty departments to arrange tutorial and departmental advising.

4. Working closely with Housemasters and House staffs to develop House social, athletic, and educational programs.

Student records now kept in University Hall will be moved to the appropriate House and kept in the Senior Tutor's office there.

Assistant Dean was a full time job but the Senior Tutors will be expected to carry a half-time teaching and research load during the five-year term they hold the post.

The Committee on Educational Policy which worked on the plan with the Committee on Houses, told the Faculty it considered the new post open to anybody from Instructor to Professor, though it noted it did not expect many men with permanent tenure to be interested. Assistant professors will probably be the norm so far as standing in the Faculty hierarchy is concerned.

With this half of the Bender Report recommendations out of the way, the Faculty will now have to consider the other major provision, which asked extension of tutorial, perhaps by means of groups, far beyond the number of students who now receive tutorial.

A report on how this proposal could operate has been submitted by Myron P. Gilmore, associate professor of History, to the Educational Policy Committee and that body will consider it soon.

A central Dean's office will still operate under Delmar Leighton, Freshman Dean, who will become Dean of Students in September. Dean Bender will become Dean of Admissions.

In his report of last year, Bender urged decentralization of the the Dean's Office because he felt the office in University Hall, responsible for 4,600 undergraduates, was becoming too far removed from the students with which it was working.