FEBRUARY 12, 2008
Town Meeting at a glance
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At the Feb. 12 town meeting, Dean Jeffrey Flier discussed
the progress of the Strategic Planning Process with an auditorium
full of HMS faculty, staff, and students.
The Dean’s presentation is available for download here.
To watch a video of today's Town Meeting, click here. (29:53)
Among the highlights he reported were emerging recommendations
in the areas of technology, social sciences, and education:
Emerging Recommendations
Technology
- Develop a standing committee on technology and innovation
that crosses departmental lines and reaches out to some
of the affiliates
- Develop recommendations about how to deploy existing
technologies more effectively
- Create a community for people who are pushing technology
ahead, including new career tracks
- Create an office of tools, technology, and facilities
- to collect and disseminate information about all the
cores in different departments, between departments,
freestanding cores
- to identify new technology platforms for HMS
Social Sciences
- Establish task forces across the University to address
Medicare, the FDA, and other issues across HMS, Harvard
Business School, the Kennedy School of Government, and
the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS)
- Create a new approach to global affairs and global health
Education
- Require all HMS students to complete a scholarly project
- does not mean all students will be in laboratories
- goal is to have a “rotation” in the area
of scholarly activity
- would increase opportunity for mentorship
- option for a fifth year, possibly linked to a Master’s
degree
- Increase size of the MD–PhD program
- Very strong view that something needs to be done about
the cost of medical education
Dean Flier also presented background on the Strategic Planning
Process:
Strategic Planning Background
First phase October–November 2007
- What we want to learn from this process
- look ahead 5–15 years
- rethink the role of human-related research at the
Quad
- e.g., the new Clinical and Translational Science
Center
- how HMS might better relate to University-wide science
planning
- the future of the Allston campus that Harvard University
is building and the role of HMS at that campus
- Four advisory teams formed: biomedical research, tools
and technologies, global health and social sciences, and
education
- working on recommendations
- Steering committee includes chairs of the four advisory
groups
- More than 100 participants on the committees
- members come from the Quad faculty, Quad department
heads, affiliated teaching hospitals, FAS, the School
of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), and the
Harvard School of Public Health
Biomedical Research
- Focusing on organizational structures in the culture
and ways to create a culture that facilitates interaction
and progress
- Looking at specific scientific and academic opportunities
in
- human genetics
- bioengineering (developed jointly by HMS and SEAS)
- computational biology
- therapeutics
- immunology
- neuroscience
Case Studies
- Looking at examples within the Harvard system in which
successful programs have developed in a nontraditional,
non-classical departmental way
- e.g., Dana–Farber/Harvard Cancer Center and the
immunology program at HMS and its affiliates
“We are seeking everyone’s opinion; we will read everyone’s opinion; we will listen to everyone’s opinion; we will incorporate everyone’s opinion; and then some decisions will be made.”
-- Dean Jeffrey Flier
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