In a meeting with faculty and staff members last week, University officials unveiled plans for a substantial administrative overhaul of the College. The changes would include staff cuts and a more consolidated organizational structure that David Deming, the Danoff dean of Harvard College, described in an interview with Harvard Magazine as “leaner” and “more responsive” to student needs.
Also included in the plans is a requirement that College staff work on campus five days a week beginning on September 2, a proposal that has generated significant pushback from employees and the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers (HUCTW).
The changes are part of a wider restructuring of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) intended to address a $350 million structural deficit. In webinar meetings with faculty and staff in June and July, division leaders outlined the broad strokes of that restructuring, which would centralize many administrative functions and is projected to include widespread layoffs—reportedly as much as 25 percent of FAS staff.
FAS officials have said they expect to implement these changes during the summer but have not given a specific timeline. Deming, too, said that he could not specify a date when the College’s reorganization will take effect—and that he could not discuss details about potential layoffs. The College employs roughly 300 staff members. First-year students begin registering for courses on August 11, and the College’s preorientation programs begin in mid-August.
Asked about the potential for disruption in campus life, given the timing and magnitude of the changes, Deming said he understood the concern. “The highest priority in my mind as we make these difficult decisions was to do it in a way that preserves the student experience,” he said. “If we have to make cuts, how do we do it in a way that is responsible and is conservative, in the sense that it doesn’t take too many risks with what is ultimately a really great education.”
Some faculty and staff members, though, have expressed doubts, especially about cuts to staffing. “Some work is just not going to get done,” said one staff member who attended last week’s meeting and asked to remain anonymous. “There’s real concern about the disconnect between the sources of information that decision-makers are using, versus what actually happens in the job. I’m not sure the organizational charts they are using map onto actual practices.”
Carrie Barbash, the director of communications and former president of HUCTW, voiced a similar concern. “The work our members do is so much more complex than the way they’re talking about it,” she said of College leaders. “It’s true that our members’ work is often invisible—it’s behind the scenes to faculty and students, certainly—but it’s all of the things that allow all of their work to function. It’s not separate. It’s not just a nice-to-have.”
The reorganization plan has been in the works for months, and Deming said that as part of the planning process, he held nine lunches with College staff members, which were attended by almost 100 people in total. “I spent a lot of time trying to get as much feedback as I could, about what was working and what wasn’t” in the College’s operations, he said. “I feel confident in our plan.”
The new College structure, which Deming presented to faculty and staff last week, would consolidate the school’s central functions—encompassing academics, housing, student life, and administration—into five umbrella offices under the dean. Three of those offices already exist (although some of the operations they house will shift): the dean of students office, the administration and finance office, and the office of undergraduate education. The plans also lay out two new offices: the secretary of the College and the freshman dean’s office.
On Tuesday, the University announced that Lauren E. Brandt ’01, A.M. ’04, Ph.D. ’09, would begin work on July 21 as secretary of the College, responsible for policies and procedures related to student discipline and academic integrity, Title IX, and antidiscrimination and anti-bullying. That change, Deming said, is intended to bring academic policy and student discipline operations closer to his office while also integrating them more fully into residential life, since the secretary will “work very closely” with resident deans (formerly known as resident tutors) and academic coordinators. The new role, Deming said, is “unifying a bunch of functions that are really core to the academic and residential mission of the College.” Currently the College’s associate dean of students, Brandt has also served as a resident dean of Leverett House.
Meanwhile, the freshman dean’s office will oversee orientation, academics, advising, housing, and student life programming. This role, too, Deming said, is meant to blend first-year students’ academic and residential lives, in a way that mimics the more integrated experience that sophomores, juniors, and seniors receive in the house system.
“This is kind of a parallel version of that, but devoted to freshmen,” Deming said, “because beginnings matter. Freshmen need extra attention, and they’re scattered in different buildings across the Yard where it can be easy to get lost.” Deming said the University will soon begin a national search for a candidate to lead the freshman dean’s office.
Deming framed some of the organizational changes, including staff reductions, as a return to the College’s recent past. The school previously had a Freshman Dean’s Office, before it was disbanded in 2018 in an earlier restructuring effort. College leaders have said that the College staff size has “grown significantly” over the past several years, while the size of the student body hasn’t changed.
“When you have to make difficult choices and be leaner, you have to ask, what is a responsible way to do that?” Deming said. “One way is to go back to a model that we know we can do, because we did it not long ago.”
Another return to the past that has become a particular flashpoint of disagreement is the proposed requirement for staff to be on campus five days a week during term time. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, hybrid models, in which staff work remotely two or three days a week, have become more standard. Deming said he believes it’s important to the College’s mission to transition back to the norm of in-person work.
“What we’re selling is an immersive residential experience,” he said, in which students are meant “to be surrounded by dedicated professionals who care about their educational journey.” In contrast to the more administration-heavy FAS, he added, nearly all College staff are student-facing.
“Our job is highly relational,” he said. “You are not serving students as well from behind a Zoom screen at home.”
Deming said that the on-campus requirement is “not punitive” and will come with flexibility. “Work in person doesn’t mean nine to five, Monday to Friday,” he said, emphasizing that administrators will make accommodations “as best we can” for staff members’ family commitments and other circumstances. “But the point is, because our students are here in person...the College staff have to be here, too, because that’s what the job requires,” he said, adding, “We’ve set up a bunch of processes to help accommodate people and make it palatable.”
Barbash disputed Deming’s assessment that students require, or want, entirely in-person contact with College staff. Undergraduates solicit staff help with everything from course planning to fellowship applications to navigating administrative procedures. Staff members often help students obtain copies of their class grades or graded exams, and they help coordinate letters of recommendation. Barbash said students and faculty typically choose to meet with staff members remotely, even when given the choice of meeting in person. “It’s disingenuous to suggest there’s a big push for in-person interactions,” she said.
HUCTW’s contract requires the University to consult with union leaders before instituting an in-office work mandate (although it does not require union signoff before going ahead with the change), and Barbash said that the union opposes the mandate and will fight it. “It’s just going to make people miserable,” she said, adding that 85 percent of all HUCTW members currently work a hybrid schedule. “It’s going to be demoralizing, on top of the layoffs,” she said.
