Harvard University announced today that Rita E. and Gustave M. Hauser have given the University $40 million to support excellence and innovation in learning and teaching at Harvard.
The gift will launch an initiative for learning and teaching and serve as a catalyst for transforming students’ educational experiences University-wide. The fund will enable the University to marshal its considerable intellectual resources to engage a new generation of students with pioneering teaching practices, building on the long history of educational reform at Harvard. The new gift combines the Hausers’ passions for technology, a global outlook, and teaching and learning with a desire to make an impact on both a University-wide and global scale.
“Dramatic developments in technology and research aimed at understanding how people learn are radically changing the practice of teaching, offering instructors new and exciting ways to engage with students,” said Harvard President Drew Faust. “This remarkable gift from the Hausers will allow us to support the efforts of our enormously creative faculty and provide a framework for making excellent teaching and engagement between faculty and students the touchstone of the educational experience at Harvard.”
“Our gift is intended to support Harvard’s leadership at a very significant moment in higher education,” said Gustave Hauser, LL.B. ’53. “There is a whole generation of new students who require new teaching and learning methods. This project focuses Harvard’s enormous resources on making higher education more effective.”
“This is in line with the philosophy of our giving,” said Rita Hauser, Harvard Law School ’58. “We are giving a sizable gift, which is just the beginning … This is really a startup if you like, and we hope it will be a catalytic gift.
“We hope that this gift will be one that will touch all places in the University and help to bring the University together. We also hope that other people are going to see the potential of this gift, and in ways that none of us can contemplate. Innovative teaching and learning is the future, not just for Harvard, but for universities in general.”
The new initiative will advance a range of projects, beginning with a University-wide conference in February that will bring together top thinkers, from both within and outside Harvard, in a range of fields related to pedagogical practices and the science of learning. Harvard will also use this funding to enhance classroom spaces for use by Schools across the University through designs that will allow for experimental teaching methods and the flexible use of a variety of technologies.
In addition, the initiative will include a grant program to support innovative teaching projects across Harvard’s Schools. The grants — available to University faculty, deans, administrators, and students — will, over time, support both innovative ideas from individuals and structured projects that are central to the curricular planning and pedagogy of Harvard’s Schools. For more information on grant guidelines, please visit harvard.edu/sites/default/files/content/HILT-guidelines_111018.pdf.
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