Tuesday, December 02, 2014

Yet More Good News, Harry Lewis Edition

As mentioned previously, our current Dean for the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Cherry Murray, will be stepping down at the end of the year.

The good news out today is that Professor Harry Lewis will be stepping up to serve as the Interim Dean.  To those in the outside world, you may know Harry for his blog, his books (CS books like Elements of the Theory of Computation (2nd Edition) and Data Structures and Their Algorithms, or more popular books like Excellence Without a Soul: Does Liberal Education Have a Future?, Blown to Bits: Your Life, Liberty, and Happiness After the Digital Explosion, and Baseball As A Second Language), or his time as the Dean of Harvard College. 

For those of us who have been students (or professors, or both) at Harvard, we know Harry as a mentor, a guide, a wise man to come to for advice, and an inspiration.  (Both Salil and I frequently mention Harry Lewis and CS 121 at Harvard as reasons why we ended up as computer scientists.)

We are very fortunate that Harry stepped up to take on this important role, and his work will let SEAS -- and CS at Harvard -- continue to flourish.  As Harry says in the Crimson article above, "“The future of engineering at Harvard has never looked brighter than it does today."  And as FAS Dean Michael Smith says, “He brings to the deanship a thorough understanding of SEAS culture and academic life, exceptional insight into the undergraduate experience as a former dean of Harvard College, and the intellectual and administrative agility needed to effectively guide SEAS during this interim period.”

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