About

Mission

The Harvard Summer School makes Harvard’s academic resources—a distinguished faculty, well-equipped laboratories, fine museums, and a world-class university library—available to students of many ages, backgrounds, and nationalities through an intensive summer session of liberal arts courses in Cambridge and overseas.

Our international student body includes Harvard undergraduate and graduate students, teachers, visitors from other colleges and universities, highly qualified secondary school students, and adult learners. Students take summer courses to challenge themselves academically, meet degree requirements, prepare for graduate school, gain college experience, advance their careers, and pursue personal enrichment.

Students who study at Harvard Summer School may reside in a supportive residential environment, commute to campus, complete courses online, or participate in one of the faculty-led programs abroad. Many come to experience the extraordinary environment of Harvard College academics, resources, and residential life.

Harvard Summer School serves the University community by providing faculty with teaching opportunities that allow them to experiment with new materials and teaching methods. Students from many Harvard schools take advantage of the breadth of summer course offerings to meet requirements for concentrations and degree programs, and to create more flexibility within their term-time academic program. Harvard College students take advantage of the summer session to expand their cultural, social, and intellectual horizons by studying abroad.

Student Engagement and Residential Life

The office of Student Engagement and Residential Life known in-house as SERL is one of several offices that comprise the core of the Harvard Summer School (HSS). SERL serves three distinct areas within the Summer School and is made up of the following three teams: the Residential Life team, the Residential Operations team, and the Student Engagement team.

The Residential Life team is responsible for the recruitment, hiring, onboarding, training, and the joint management of residential staff – Resident Directors and Proctors – in conjunction with the Summer School’s three residential programs. Members of the Res Life team work in conjunction with members of the Student Engagement team to recruit, hire and onboard Student Activities Office staff, and with the Residential Operations team to assist in placing all residential and activities staff into housing and onto meal plans. The Res Life team also works in conjunction with the Division of Continuing Education’s Human Resources Office and Payroll team to onboard all residential and activities staff through background checks and for paid positions to be placed onto the payroll.

The Residential Operations team is responsible for working in conjunction with our University partners to establish the available housing for all four of the Summer School’s residential programs. Res Ops works closely with the Summer School’s Accessibility Services Office (ASO) to ensure appropriate residential accommodations, and they work with University partners in building management and facilities maintenance to respond to any issues that occur once HSS begins occupying summer residences. The Res Ops team is also the team that works in conjunction with Harvard University Dining Services (HUDS) providing all data necessary for all HSS program’s meal plans.

The Student Engagement team is responsible for management of the Student Activities Office, and the recruiting, hiring, training, and managing of all student activities office staff. The Student Engagement team plans student activities, works with vendors and partners related to activities, and works with proctors to staff trips and orchestrate student activities and events. The Student Engagement team is also responsible for producing all the events necessary to run and manage all five student arrivals to campus.

While all SERL team members have their specific functional areas, we work together as a whole team to support each other’s specific functions. Under the leadership of our director, we work towards providing the best experience possible for all the students and residential staff, who make up the Harvard Summer School residential community each year.