Happy shopping week! I hope you and your loved ones are healthy and safe!
This term I will post all the important FYI's first and my letter after so you have the info you need right away!
Let me say it now: WE STILL DO NOT KNOW WHAT THE ACTUAL POLICY WILL BE THIS TERM FOR SIMULTANEOUS ENROLLMENT. If you email me or Sarah asking I will repeat this. As soon as I know we will absolutely be in touch. I am really flattered that you think we have it together enough to have this answer for you right now.
UPDATE FROM THE REGISTRAR'S OFFICE! -- https://us11.campaign-archive.com/?u=1bc007f7e873895cbe5328871&id=a4afaf88df
Check for schedule conflicts!
Each of your courses will require your attendance at some point every week. (You can get this information from the course's Canvas site). Make sure that the courses you choose don't conflict with one another before committing to a schedule.
From the Office of Undergraduate Education!
As you think about what courses to take, please think carefully about your schedule. You'll find that some faculty will permit you to engage asynchronously with some components of the course (most commonly, by watching a recorded lecture) while requiring you to engage synchronously with other components (most commonly, by attending section in real time). Other faculty will require you to participate in all components of the course live. (You should be able to determine what a particular course requires by checking the Canvas site and the syllabus; if you're still unsure, you should email the faculty directly -- not your resident dean -- and ask about taking asynchronously and what that might mean for your ability to thrive in the course). Faculty set these requirements based on their experience of what enables students to do their best work, and so it's important that you meet whatever requirements they set. As you settle on a schedule, please confirm that there are no conflicts that would prevent you from engaging with all your courses as your instructors require.
I. ACADEMICS
This week instructors have been asked to provide information about their courses so that you can pick your schedules by the deadline to register on August 26. Here are important dates to keep in mind:
Aug 17-21: Shopping week. Explore options and learn about classes through Canvas sites, course syllabi, recorded introductions, office hour Q&As, and mini-lectures or discussions. Each course will handle things slightly differently, but unlike past years, this is not the actual first week of classes, so I do not anticipate any assignments being given.
Aug 21: Students need to declare their interest in large courses by this date, usually by requesting instructor approval in the Crimson Cart. Check whether your prospective courses have lotteries, and if so, what the process is to enroll.
Aug 26: Deadline to enroll in classes through the Crimson Cart in my.harvard. After this date, students can still add and drop courses through the Fifth Monday (Oct 5).
Sept 2: Actual first day of classes.
If you are looking for courses to shop, check out below that are taught by Winthrop staff:
Faculty Dean Stephen Chong will not be teaching this term but Faculty Dean Kiran Gajwani will be leading a section of Econ 985 (Senior Thesis Research).
Resident Tutors Irfan Mahmud will be Head TFing Econ. 1010a: Intermediate Microeconomics and Benny Goldman will be TFing EC2450A — Public Economics I (this is primarily for PhD students but hey maybe he'll share some tips)
Join me in AAAS 131Y: Black Women and the #MeToo Era (Thursdays, 12-2:45pm EST). Through extensive reading and tough discussion this class examines the current discourse around sexual harassment and assault from the #MeToo movement through the informed lens of Harriet Jacobs’s slave narrative Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Both “texts” involve navigating spaces of subjugation and supremacy and yet one voice has remained steadily ignored in mainstream audiences. We will also look at the intersection of race and gender that Incidents reveals and trace how these remain intact or not through today. The course fulfills the Arts&Humanities distribution requirement. FYI this tends to get overenrolled and there is a lottery but the good news is I teach it every term.
II. WINTHROP
Sophomores! Sophomore Orientation for you all is on Friday, August 28th, 2-4pm EST on Zoom (https://harvard.zoom.us/j/9707459385). Our amazing resident tutor and sophomore academic coordinator Grant Jones has planned this unique event for all of you including a welcome from your new Winthrop family, community building activities and strategizing for the upcoming year. Please plan to attend!
And here we are, it is August. AUGUST.
You all have been through A LOT. From announcements about changes to more announcements telling you there will be more announcements and now a new way of being, a new way of being a student at Harvard.
And it is not going away anytime soon.
Recently I was in a panic about how to make my class this fall look attractive in our new remote environment: Zoom breakout rooms! Virtual whiteboards! Tik Tok classes! You Tube! Zoom on Youtube! Youtube on Zoom! Panopto! (I still don't understand what Panopto is) and I was actually starting to hyperventilate out of shear overwhelm.
And then I stopped. I took out my phone and posted a brief intro to my class using just the camera. Here is what I said:
We are in a global pandemic and, nationally, we are in an existential crisis. And while I do believe in striving for excellence in challenging times as is the Harvard way I cannot support any more the pretense that we are not among the masses. That we, right here in this gilded space, are not part and parcel of the very problems and the solutions. Indeed, I would argue that we, collectively, are here in this critical moment, in part because there's been way too much of this pretense that we have nothing to do with whatever is going on over there. "Over there" being beyond Harvard. We, Harvard, are very much a part of this moment and maybe if we allow for this notion we can start making some headway towards real change.
So my class will not be fancy -- though I commend all professors who have spent just months learning how to teach remotely, I'm telling you they have worked incredibly hard to give you the best learning experience possible!
My stance as your dean and as a teacher will be one of radical acceptance and inclusive criticism. You'll see more of what that looks like as time allows. But, in the meantime here is what I will expect of you and how I will support you:
I expect you to be safe, to be well and to put your well-being above everything else. That's it, that's my main goal this term.
I need your help though to support you in this critical effort. I need you to read actively, I need you to triage -- not just glance over -- your emails. I expect you will continue to be overwhelmed as the term goes on -- we only know how to reach you via email and so we send a lot. So I need you to parse out and triage what it is immediate versus important -- what can wait and what needs addressing in real time. I need you to remember that messaging from your advising team (that's me, your sophomore advisor, your concentration advisor, your resident tutor...) and your House team (that's also me, but more importantly, that's your Academic Coordinator Sarah Caughey and House Administrator Paris Sanders) are vital communications about your ability to thrive at (and graduate from) Harvard.
I need you to be patient and I will be patient with you. I need you to trust me. I certainly trust yall, can I just take a moment to express the humbling yall have put me through in the enthusiasm, grace and maturity you have demonstrated in this moment?
And, finally, I need you to (continue to) manage your expectations because of and in spite of what you may be told by the powers that be ;)
Ever yours,
Dean Chavers