Astronomy professor Karin \u00d6berg will serve as Harvard\u2019s next senior vice provost for faculty, coordinating faculty recruitment and appointment reviews, the University announced Friday.<\/p>\n
\u00d6berg\u2019s appointment, set to begin in July, comes roughly a week after the University announced<\/a> that current senior vice provost Judith D. Singer would step down from her administrative role to return to teaching at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.<\/p>\n \u00d6berg, who researches the chemistry of planet formation, has already served on several of the University\u2019s most powerful faculty committees \u2014 including the Faculty of Arts and Sciences\u2019 Faculty Council and a University-wide Faculty Advisory Council created<\/a> last spring to advise Harvard\u2019s top brass.<\/p>\n As senior vice provost, she will continue working with some of Harvard\u2019s top administrators to manage faculty recruitment and retention in a year of financial crisis.<\/p>\n Last year, Harvard announced a hiring freeze on faculty and staff, which has not yet officially lifted<\/a>, and a pause<\/a> on merit-based wage increases. The FAS alone, staring down a $365 million budget deficit, has slashed<\/a> non-tenure-track faculty budgets and graduate student admissions<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u00d6berg, who has already advised on tenure cases as a member of the Committee on Appointments and Promotions, also ascends to the vice provost position as Harvard\u2019s system of academic appointment comes under increasing scrutiny.<\/p>\n Her predecessor, Singer, characterized<\/a> parts of the tenure process somewhat clandestine in a 2013 interview with The Crimson \u2014 a description that gained traction in the wake of several high-profile tenure denials<\/a> in the past few years.<\/p>\n In a release announcing \u00d6berg\u2019s appointment, Harvard President Alan M. Garber \u201976 praised her judgment and \u201cefforts to nurture academic excellence.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI am eager for even more members of our community to benefit from her experience and skills. I have no doubt that she will excel in her new position,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n In the release, \u00d6berg said a \u201cflourishing faculty, free to pursue academic excellence, is at the heart of Harvard\u2019s mission.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI am deeply honored and excited at the opportunity to serve the University and support the next generation of scholars in this new role,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n \u2014Staff writer Amann S. Mahajan can be reached at [email\u00a0protected]<\/a> and on Signal at amannsm.38. Follow her on X @amannmahajan<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Astronomy professor Karin \u00d6berg will serve as Harvard\u2019s next senior vice provost for faculty, coordinating faculty recruitment and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":524486,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[79,193],"class_list":["post-524485","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/524485","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=524485"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/524485\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/524486"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=524485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=524485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=524485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}