H looks to compete with CalTech and Princeton

<p>Business Week Magazine:</p>

<p>Harvard: Tops In...Engineering?</p>

<p>As part of Larry Summers' grand plan to reshape Harvard University for the 21th century, the president wants to create a school of engineering with the same status as its prestigious business and law schools. "Technology is so central...[to] what's shaping our world today," he says.</p>

<p>That would be a big change for Harvard, where engineering has been something of an academic backwater. But at the division of engineering and applied sciences (DEAS), for now part of the Faculty of Arts & Sciences, plans are being developed to nearly double the number of full-time-equivalent faculty to 100. That would be on par with top engineering programs at Princeton University and the California Institute of Technology, though far smaller than neighbor Massachusetts Institute of Technology.</p>

<p>Rather than all-encompassing, a Harvard engineering school would focus on "the cutting edge in certain disciplines," says DEAS Dean Venkatesh Narayanamurti. Among them: information technology, bioengineering, and nanotechnology. Summers says the new school would likely be based across the Charles River near the B-school campus: "There is an enormous two-way fertilization there," he says. A plan could be ready in months.</p>