Harvard Forest Strategic Plan (2020-2025)

The strategic plan below was developed in 2020 over a 6-month process by working groups of Harvard Forest staff, with frequent, iterative input from the wider community of staff, visiting research fellows, graduate students, and other stakeholders.

Executive Summary

Mission

The Harvard Forest is Harvard University’s 4000-acre laboratory and classroom, with year-round staff dedicated to long-term science and experiential learning.  Our mission is to advance understanding of biological, physical, and human systems in the New England landscape.  We share our research to help guide stewardship of the planet.

Vision

Harvard Forest practices an open, inclusive, and collaborative approach to addressing local and global environmental challenges through excellence in science, education, and engagement with society.

Values

Excellence

• We are committed to excellence in our research, education, outreach, stewardship of our land and physical resources, and our workplace culture.
• We adapt our thinking and practices to meet new challenges and promote equitable opportunities.
• We promote and support professional development and advancement of our staff.

Diversity and Inclusion

• We recognize that our institution is enriched by a wide range of perspectives and experiences and actively seek to create an environment where all feel included and heard.  
• Our community members support, mentor, and learn from one other, promoting respect and empathy in all activities.
• The Harvard Forest is an active part of the local community that intersects with a diverse world; we strive to make our work accessible and relevant to our neighbors and broader networks. 

Learning from the past to inform the future

• We take a long-term perspective by considering the past, present, and future in our research and decision-making.
• We recognize the importance of research contributions from the past and consider how our actions today will impact the future.

Collaboration

• Our collaborations cross time and disciplines. We seek and sustain productive collaborative relationships among and across many groups – staff, scientists, educators, funders, decision-makers, and community partners – to bring diverse ideas and solutions to all our work.
• We embrace open communication within our institution, with the larger Harvard University community, and with our many partners and stakeholders.

Stewardship

• We champion environmental stewardship by managing our own land and natural resources sustainably; engaging with the public about the role of science and human decision-making in solving environmental challenges; focusing our research in local-to-regional contexts with input from stakeholders; and communicating our discoveries in diverse, accessible ways.

Action Plan

Research

Overview

Harvard Forest is an international leader in forest ecology and conservation. Our research is wide ranging but with a focus on long-term studies, New England forests, and participation in national and international research networks (LTER, NEON, Ameriflux, ForestGEO).  While the Forest attracts researchers from across the country and the world with its generous land base and infrastructure support for long-term experiments, a key feature in its success has been its core team of resident senior scientists. Expanding and diversifying this core team would have the greatest single impact on research and could (potentially) advance other areas, including education, outreach, and DIEB. While expensive, some of the cost might be offset by an increase in research grants. Other priorities identified in this plan include increasing the diversity of research staff, collaborators, and resident fellows; strengthening ties with the university; and increasing and broadening sources of funding.

Vision

Harvard Forest will use its knowledge, resources, and social influence to hear and empower stakeholders, create new ways for diverse audiences to utilize and benefit from the Forest’s land base and research findings, and share research results that guide policy, improve livelihoods, inform land stewardship, and address environmental challenges.

Goals and Actions

1. Sustain a large and exemplary long-term research program that involves an increasingly diverse Harvard Forest cohort of world-class scientists, students, and staff using a wide range of approaches, from fundamental to applied and from observational to experimental, and scaling from microbes to macrosystems and from moments to millennia.
2. Sustain scientific excellence through strong diverse collaborations, open science, and leadership within the scientific community
3. Address and help solve societally relevant questions through our research, and be attentive to and accountable for the impacts of our research on social inequities

Education

Overview

Harvard Forest operates several complementary educational programs to provide experiential learning opportunities for students ranging from elementary school to graduate students and beyond.  Our plan seeks to enhance and expand these opportunities by striving to recruit, train, and retain talented and diverse students at various stages of their academic careers. We use our field sites, resources and long-term datasets to engage Harvard undergraduates in immersive courses and field trips. HF supports a diverse population of undergraduates in our long-standing summer residential program, providing training, mentorship and research opportunities. We provide interdisciplinary research and networking opportunities for Graduate students and post-docs. To connect with and inform the next generation of earth stewards, we engage with elementary, middle, and high school teachers and students and provide opportunities for hands-on data collection and face-to-face interactions with HF scientists. 

Vision

Harvard Forest will leverage and develop its educational programs to be an international leader in recruiting, training, and retaining talented and diverse students who will become the next generation of civically engaged ecologists and earth stewards.

Goals and Actions

1. Engage a larger and more diverse cohort of Harvard students in long-term (semester-long or multi-year) research and scholarship using Harvard Forest field sites and resources.
2. Continue to diversify the Summer Research Program and build inclusivity across its focal areas of research, education, and community. Employ the program as a tool and model to expand diversity and inclusion at the Forest, at Harvard, and in the field of ecology.
3. Provide research and mentoring opportunities for more graduate students from Harvard and collaborating institutions.
4. Provide opportunities for K-12 teachers to practice and model authentic science and to engage with scientists from a diversity of backgrounds, so their students can see a place for themselves in the future of ecology.

Engagement and Outreach

Overview

Harvard Forest utilizes a variety of techniques to accomplish engagement and outreach goals in support of science, education and stewardship. At present, our programs reach approximately 2,500 individuals annually through guided and self-guided tours, events, and workshops. Participants include university students, K-12 students, stakeholder/land professional groups, and other public adult groups. We welcome an additional 600 visitors to the Fisher Museum each year and coordinate a team of 40 local volunteers to support the Fisher Museum. This plan seeks to continue and expand many of our current activities, as well as incorporate new engagement goals. Priorities include elevating Harvard Forest’s visibility, leadership, and collaboration within Harvard University, enhancing the reach and impact of the Fisher Museum and conference center, and continuing to offer scientific programming in ecology and conservation relevant to diverse audiences and stakeholders.

Vision

Harvard Forest will use its knowledge, resources, and social influence to hear and empower stakeholders, create new ways for diverse audiences to utilize and benefit from the Forest’s land base and research findings, and share research results that guide policy, improve livelihoods, inform land stewardship, and address environmental challenges.

Goals and Actions

1. Serve as leaders, innovators, and active contributors to wider Harvard University efforts, and ensure that Harvard Forest resources serve a diversity of students, staff, faculty, and alumni.
2. Maintain and increase the impact and visibility of the Fisher Museum and trails as a resource for the engagement and education of all groups.
3. Create a strategic framework for the conference center and tour reservation system to best reach target populations.
4. Inform, engage, and inspire environmental action and ecological literacy among diverse public audiences.

Facilities and Infrastructure

Overview

Harvard Forest’s physical resources include 19 residential units (45,000 sf); 55,000 sf of administrative, lab, museum, library/archive space plus mechanical facilities; a fleet of 17 vehicles and heavy equipment; a multi-spurred primary electrical line running 1.5 miles into the woods to support experiments and facilities operations; 40 miles of woods roads; and almost 4,000 acres of forested land, pasture, ponds, and wetlands. Network resources include a 100 Mbps optical fiber connection to the university, 8 networked buildings, a field wireless network, and a VOIP telephone system. Online resources include the HF website, Data Archive, Document Archive, Bibliography, and administrative database. In 2020, facilities human resources include a full-time team of 5 Woods Crew staff members as well as two part-time temporary staff who care for the land and facilities.  HF staff also support networking, telecommunications, field research infrastructure, and local computers, as well as scientific information management, the administrative database, and the HF website. Our strategic plan includes the continued execution of our land use plan and maintenance on existing facilities while working towards greater accessibility, sustainability, safety, and inclusion. We strive to maintain an adaptable organization and infrastructure to support the growing and changing needs of the research, education, and outreach programmatic areas of Harvard Forest’s mission.  

Vision

Harvard Forest will maintain an adaptable physical and digital infrastructure that supports its research and education mission, balancing stewardship of the past with respectful modernization for safety, accessibility, inclusivity, and sustainability.

Goals and Actions

1. Continue to care for our land base in a manner that allows for flexibility of research and educational uses while protecting current and future research opportunities, and natural and cultural resource, outlined in the Land-Use Master Plan developed in 2008.
2. Maintain our existing physical infrastructure in a state of good repair and provide critical facilities updates to comply with evolving  building and safety codes.
3. Improve the accessibility of campus buildings so disabled people can access the programs and resources of the Forest.
4. Improve the safety of the Harvard Forest campus.
5. Update campus digital infrastructure to improve campus access to the internet and telephone and to support changing work and research needs at the Forest.
6. Support growth and change in Harvard Forest programming by adapting current facilities and infrastructure to new uses.
7. Ensure that our facilities and the way we do business align with our values of diversity, inclusion, equity, and belonging.