Dear Students,

Welcome back to a new academic year! I hope you had a relaxing summer, and that you are as excited as I am for the year ahead. After some downtime this summer, seeing your smiling faces and having your energy back on campus, is a reminder of how much better Harvard is with you here.

Last year at this time, I shared my areas of focus for the year ahead. In that same spirit, I want to share some of the things that have been on my mind this summer and my goals for the College in the year ahead.

Community bonds

Harvard is a great university built around the creation and preservation of knowledge and the accumulation of specialized expertise. How do we adapt to a world where technology makes knowledge more accessible than ever, and trust in experts is in decline? I believe that one answer is to invest more deeply in Harvard College as a learning community. Many of the most important skills, habits of mind, and moral virtues are best learned from the people around us. Our teachers help us weigh competing points of view, give and receive constructive criticism, and explain concepts so that others can understand them. Navigating interpersonal conflict with peers helps us earn trust, maintain our integrity, and understand concepts like justice and fairness. This kind of learning can only happen in community, and more than ever it should be our guiding purpose.

That’s why we are building academic and social community across the College, with initiatives like dining hall meal swipes for faculty and staff to eat with you, enhanced celebratory dinners, and more social events throughout the fall. We have also redesigned services at the College to make them more responsive and accountable and are asking staff to be more physically present when you are on campus. I ask for your patience as we roll out these changes. I also ask you to build and invest in personal relationships with faculty and staff, because human connection is part of your learning in this wonderful multigenerational community.

AI use policies

One of my goals last year was to understand how AI was affecting teaching and learning at Harvard College. This year I believe we must act. My goal is to produce a set of advisory guidelines on AI usage in Harvard College courses by the end of the academic year. This will require extensive consultation and input from faculty, staff, and students, both because faculty have the expertise to judge what is best for their class and because this is a fast-moving landscape and no one has all the answers.

Still, in the spirit of starting the conversation, here are my initial thoughts based on emerging research and many conversations with our faculty. I favor a “barbell" approach to AI in the classroom: actively encouraging AI usage where it can deepen learning, and at the same time, AI-proofing assessments that are designed to demonstrate mastery.

Many larger classes with take-home problem sets may want to shift more grading weight toward in-person quizzes and other supervised assessments. We may want to give more seated “blue book” final exams: three-hours, with pen-and-paper. Take-home exams and problem sets are no longer a sustainable way to assess mastery, and when coupled with unenforceable AI bans they create a difficult dilemma for students who don’t want to cheat but also fear falling behind to their classmates. Just as Odysseus bound himself to the mast, we must build restraints in examinations to avoid temptation.

Many other classes at Harvard are writing-intensive and/or project-based, and a different approach is needed for papers and other assignments that are too meaty to fit within a proctored exam window. Here I would modestly suggest AI acceptance, or even encouragement. We would all benefit from getting out of the AI-detection business because it damages trust between faculty and students. We might instead go further by asking you to “embody” the expertise you’ve developed, perhaps through a presentation or oral defense for classmates, teachers, and clients.

Let me say again – these are thoughts, not statements of policy. I offer them in the spirit of moving us toward a mission-aligned AI use policy at the College by the end of the academic year.

Strengthening the first year

This summer I announced that we are bringing back the First-Year Dean’s Office (FDO) at the College. I was also very pleased to announce that Tom Dingman, who served as Dean of Freshmen for 13 years until his retirement in 2018, has agreed to come back in an interim capacity while we conduct a national search for his permanent successor.

Harvard’s great strength is the intermingling of academic, co-curricular, and residential services and communities to support the entire student experience. We see this through the success of the House system, where students live alongside resident tutors and full-time faculty in communities that are caring, responsive, and accountable. Student satisfaction with the House system is high and rising, and this is the model we seek to emulate with the FDO. 

In addition to seeking a leader who can help rebuild the FDO and chart the course forward, we are also investing in the first year by expanding after-dinner hours in Annenberg Hall so that freshmen can study and socialize together, developing the Queen’s Head space and the ground floor of Memorial Hall as a dedicated area for first-year students, and increasing academic and social programming in the FDO more broadly.

As always, I want to hear from you.

There is a form on the Dean of the College website where you can make an appointment for my office hours, and I will make regular appearances in Annenberg and House dining halls. If you see me, come say hi!

I look forward to seeing you around campus and staying in touch throughout the semester.

With gratitude and Harvard pride,

David

David J. Deming
Danoff Dean of Harvard College