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The Faculty of Arts of Sciences is a place of visionaries, a unique learning community that embraces and cultivates innovation, discovery, and transformation of the world around us.

Harvard continues to innovate even in a time of shrinking resources. On Sept. 15, 2009, Dean Michael D. Smith announced that prudent planning, budget reductions, and strong current-use fundraising results have allowed the FAS to make significant short-term progress in responding to the financial crisis. Through these efforts, we engineered a $36 million positive swing – from a $30 million deficit projected last spring to a $6 million surplus – in our operating budget during fiscal year 2009 (FY09), which ended June 30.

The FAS budget for the current fiscal year (FY10) includes $75 million worth of expense reductions announced last May and revenue enhancements developed over the past half year, and it assumes that we will maintain the $36 million in gains achieved in FY09. Under this plan, we project a FY10 unrestricted deficit in the FAS Core (i.e., the faculty, College, and Graduate School) of $20 million.

Although it is possible for us to reach a balanced unrestricted budget in the FAS Core in FY10, we must continue our work to eliminate the large budget gap projected for FY11. Our work so far has cut the projected FY11 deficit in half, but $110 million of the estimated $220 million FY11 budget gap remains.

The improved short-term financial picture – combined with growth in FAS reserves – will give the FAS community the time it needs to thoughtfully and creatively devise necessary solutions to these long-term budget problems.

The six working groups appointed by Dean Smith in April continue to meet in order to generate recommendations that will help drive our efforts to reshape FAS.

Commencement

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