Stories of Impact
Local Partnerships Research & Impact
Featured Stories
Creating Community through Public Art
A group of artists and public art professionals joined a community conversation about the importance of public art, how communities are addressing public art that may no longer reflect community values, and what the future of public art looks like.
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Exploring Harvard's History
In March 2020, the Harvard Visitor Center was confronted with a new challenge: "How can we welcome people to Harvard in the passionate way we have so far, with these new circumstances?" Together they created the virtual student-led tour.
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The exploration never stops
In the middle of summer vacation, local students excitedly hopped onto Zoom ready to explore topics from biodiversity, to the seasons through art, to theatre and acting through the Harvard Ed Portal’s Summer Explorations program.
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Summer in the Arts
The Harvard Ed Portal has geared up for multiple arts and culture offerings for all ages throughout the summer, including activities for youth, concerts, an interactive mural, and public art exhibits.
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Folding Chair Book Club
The virtual series invites members of the Allston-Brighton and Cambridge communities to join together and discuss a common book.
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A Trip to the Museum, Virtually
Harvard student archaeologists virtually join grade school classes to bring students on a "field trip" from their computer screens.
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Memory, Social Justice, and Mindfulness
Hosted by the Harvard Ed Portal, Memory, Social Justice, and Mindfulness was a re-imagined one-off course based on a four-part Ed Portal program hosted last year.
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Health and Wellness for the Community
Recognizing the challenges around staying active and practicing self-care, the Harvard Ed Portal began to look for ways in which to be a resource for those seeking health and wellness opportunities.
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Community Education
Public art has the potential to make a community a more vibrant and welcoming place. Free and accessible to all, it also has the power to provoke debate about our shared cultural experience. As engaged citizens call for the removal of certain public monuments that evoke harmful systems, the conversation about the role of public art in our communities gains momentum.
This panel, including City of Boston Chief of Arts & Culture Kara Elliott-Ortega, Harvard Graduate School of Design professor Sara Zewde, and Cambridge-based artist Katherine Megumi Shozawa, came together for a discussion (moderated by Art in Between co-founder Brian Hone) focused on the future of public art and its potential to express our collective public values.
A year into the coronavirus pandemic, Allston-Brighton and Cambridge small business leaders and nonprofits gathered to examine how they've managed to preserve the vibrant mosaic of businesses that characterize their communities, and consider what the future will look like.
This panel, led by Karen Gordon Mills, Harvard Business School Senior Fellow and former Administrator of the U.S. Small Business Administration, featured opening remarks by Ayanna Pressley, U.S. Representative for Massachusetts’s 7th congressional district, and included Joseph Charles, owner of Rock City Pizza; David Maher, President & CEO of the Cambridge Chamber of Commerce; Aidan McDonough, Executive Director of Brighton Main Streets; and Rachel Miller Munzer, Big Dipper Hospitality (State Park, Mamaleh’s, Café du Pays/Vincent’s Corner Grocery).
Days before Election Day 2020, a powerhouse group of local women leaders gathered to discuss the importance of civic engagement, local participation, and why voting matters.
The panel, led by Danielle Allen, James Bryant Conant University Professor and Director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University, included Cambridge Mayor Sumbul Siddiqui, Michelle Tassinari, Director and Legal Counsel of the Secretary of the Commonwealth’s Elections Division, Eneida Tavares, the Interim Commissioner for the City of Boston’s Elections Department, and Tova Wang, a Democracy Visiting Fellow at the Ash Center at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.
Read More in the Harvard Gazette
Local Partnerships
An Asylum in Allston
Harvard University welcomed Artisan’s Asylum, a local nonprofit arts collaborative, to Allston, where it will make medical gowns used as personal protective equipment (PPE).
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Harvard's Chef Hayde Cooks for the Community
Harvard's Chef Akeisha Hayde has turned her culinary skills towards feeding some of Boston’s homeless community.
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Harvard Chan students connect with isolated local seniors
Amid the pandemic, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health students are connecting with seniors at Roxbury Tenants of Harvard.
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COVID-19 Dispatch: Karen Mills
Harvard Business School Professors Bill Kerr and Joe Fuller talk with HBS senior fellow and former Small Business Administration director Karen Mills, about the effects of COVID-19 on the future of work.
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A Joyful Sorrow
Rev. Erica Rose Long, MDiv ’16, and Sarah Byrne-Martelli, MDiv ’02, discuss being on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic, partnering with doctors and nurses, and providing comfort and support both to Coronavirus patients and those who care for them.
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A time of need and a desire to help
The COVID-19 crisis has brought disruption, loss, and jarring change, but it has also fired in many students the desire to help and inspired creative ways to make a difference. New initiatives include Feed the Frontlines NYC, CovEducation, and Bike Harvard.
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Helping to feed the community
Harvard continues to donate food for distribution in Cambridge and beyond.
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Research & Impact
7 million face shields and counting
The Wyss Institute produces face shields at a pace of up to 400,000 per day, and over 7 million face shields have been shipped both locally and nationally for use in the health care, food service, manufacturing, and academic research communities.
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$16.5 million awarded to projects to fight COVID
A scientific consortium formed to fight COVID-19 has awarded $16.5 million to 62 research projects focused on aspects of the pandemic ranging from vaccines and treatments to explorations of immunity to divining its still-unknown reach across society.
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Volunteers juice COVID testing at Beth Israel
An outpouring of volunteers and equipment from the Harvard medical community have helped a Harvard hospital testing lab meet COVID-19’s challenge.
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How MBAs are bringing PPE to Boston Hospitals
PPEople First—a group of Harvard Business School students who are bringing critically needed PPE to Massachusetts healthcare workers—has successfully connected the PPE supply in China with the demand in Massachusetts.
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GSD begins PIH design & fabrication alongside ongoing PPE efforts
As of May 7, the Harvard Graduate School of Design's Fabrication Lab was able to produce 2,200 face visors via 3-D printing, and 3,194 shields via laser-cutting for Mass General Hospital.
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Pilot Project for COVID-19 Testing in Nursing Homes
The City of Cambridge announced a partnership with the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard on a pilot project to test for COVID-19 in nursing facilities.
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Design School turned 3D printers into PPE producers
With more than 100 3D printers, fabrication technologies, and expert guidance, the GSD is creating PPE for frontline medical personnel.
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Harvard to
help track
the virus
Students from Chan School are helping to boost the volunteer public health workforce.
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Organized to fight the pandemic
To stem the coronavirus crisis, Harvard Medical School scientists forge ahead on six key fronts.
Alumni Making a Difference
A COVID-19 battle with many fronts
Alumni spearhead public health campaigns, data visualization maps, and outbreak plans for Native American tribal leaders.
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In the trenches
Harvard alumni Judy Salerno, S.M. ’76, M.D. ’85, S.P.H. ’85, Tony Dajer ’78, and Mallika Marshall ’92 are among the thousands of medical professionals working nonstop to care for patients as the COVID-19 pandemic sweeps the nation.
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Global race to a COVID-19 vaccine
Harvard's coronavirus vaccine efforts by alumni and beyond join the race to develop a vaccine that could help end the coronavirus pandemic.
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From a care of souls to the care of bodies
Kevin Cranston, M.Div. ’86, and his team of epidemiologists and lab scientists are working hard tracking cases of COVID-19 and helping advise local and state officials on policies to best mitigate its spread.
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Computer Skills Program Helps Teens Navigate Digital Platforms
The Harvard Ed Portal’s High School Computer Skills Program became more essential than ever this year in the Cambridge and Allston-Brighton communities.
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Serving Up Job Training
Staffed by homeless youth, Breaktime Café prepares, delivers meals to vulnerable amid pandemic.
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From Hands-On to Virtual
A group of area high school students spent the past year learning how to be scientists through the Harvard-MIT Science Research Mentoring Program (SRMP).
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Local Students Explore Street Art and Community
Moving online didn't stop the Harvard Ed Portal’s Mural Club: Street Art & Community from being a success.
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27 Allston-Brighton Nonprofits Awarded Emergency Response Grants
Harvard University announced 27 Allston-Brighton nonprofit organizations and community groups were awarded emergency response grants for their continuing efforts in responding to COVID-19 related community needs.
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Exploring From Home
Virtual field trips through the Harvard Ed Portal have taken youngsters to five of the 10 wonders of the world—all without leaving their home.
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University Community Rallies to Deal with COVID-19 Crisis
Harvard faculty, students, researchers, and staff are working alongside hospitals, first responders, state and city leaders, and many more across Greater Boston to support the response to the coronavirus pandemic. The Gazette recently spoke with some professors and administrators about the research, projects, and collaborations the University has undertaken amid the unprecedented global health crisis.
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Harvard and MIT donate $500,000 to Cambridge
Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have made matching donations of $250,000 each to the city of Cambridge to cover costs associated with the creation of a temporary emergency shelter at the War Memorial Recreation Center, Field House, and garage.
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How Can Law Students Help in the Midst of COVID-19?
Harvard Law School's Lee Mestre discusses the opportunities for students, other members of the Harvard Law community, and the Commonwealth to be of service during COVID-19.
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HLS Clinics Fight for Most Vulnerable Amid COVID-19
The Harvard Law School's Clinical Program has moved to working remotely with new urgency and challenges.
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Free-Cycling from COVID-19
Harvard students made thousands of donations of non-perishable food, supplies, clothing, and household goods to nonprofit organizations like Habitat for Humanity, Furnishing Hope, the YWCA, and the Allston Brighton Food Pantry.
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At Harvard Graduate Schools, Reinvention on the Fly
Harvard School of Dental Medicine is providing emergency dental care to patients, and also seeing patients via teledentistry virtual visits, alleviating ER cases that might otherwise go to hospitals.
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Mobile Clinics Finding Their Place in Pandemic
Although Harvard Medical School's Family Van is temporarily grounded, it is hosting call-in hours, contacting clients directly, and distributing pamphlets and other handouts put together by the COVID-19 Health Literacy Project.
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Waste Not, Want Not
Harvard Law School's Food Law and Policy Clinic steps up its efforts in time of pandemic.
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Harvard Guarantee Workers' Pay, Benefits Amid COVID-19 Disruptions
Harvard announced it would guarantee pay and benefits through May 28 to its employees and contract workers who have experienced job disruptions since March 10.
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Option to Serve
This year's graduating Harvard Medical School students have been given an early degree option to help in COVID-19 fight.
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Labs Donate Protective Equipment to Healthcare Workers
As University facilities have shut down, faculty and staff gathered gear to pass along amid a nationwide shortage.
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Harvard School of Dental Medicine: Faculty Q&As
HSDM Faculty have participated in Q&As offering expertise on a variety of topics such as Putting Public Health First and Weighing the Risk of Smoking during the COVID-19 Pandemic.
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Facing a Pandemic, Broad Does a Quick Pivot
How the institute converted a clinical processing lab into a large-scale COVID-19 testing facility in a matter of days.
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Harvard Gazette: In the Community
Explore more stories in The Harvard Gazette about lifelong learning, shared achievements, and opportunities on Harvard's campus and surrounding communities.