Cherry Murray seeks impact for next-generation global leadership

Cherry Murray took up physics basically on a dare, but her plans for Harvard University’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences are anything but accidental.

Beginning her tenure as dean six months ago, Murray immediately immersed faculty in developing a 10-year strategy for meeting the educational needs of the next generation of global leaders.

Her ultimate goal? “Real societal impact,” she says. The eight strategic plan task forces Murray has assigned are due to report their findings at the end of this month.

In the meantime, Murray has already undertaken a collaboration with Olin College to add more hands-on design into the curriculum.

Within Harvard, she is working on a collaboration between SEAS, the medical school and the school of public health to start a new bachelor’s degree concentration in bioengineering, to start this fall.

As well, an entrepreneurship concentration for engineers is in the talking stage with the business school.

With her own personal funding , Murray has asked SEAS staff, faculty and students for proposals for grants on community building, so as the school grows, cohesion remains.

Joint efforts, such as the Harvard University Center for Energy and Environment and a just-forming Harvard water program for providing clean drinking water at various regions around the world, are also under her watchful eye.

And Murray is in the midst of lining up a dean’s lectureship series to bring visibility to SEAS and its accomplished alumni.

All of this is on top of taking the time to introduce herself and confer throughout the Harvard community since her official start on July 1, 2009.

Murray has always avidly pursued her interests. Expecting to become an artist, she spent much of her youth painting and placing her work in exhibits.

Both of her parents were artists, and her father also split his time between the U.S. diplomatic corps and the Army.

As a result, Murray spent six years, at different times, in Japan; three years in Pakistan; two years in Seoul, Korea; and some time in Indonesia.

“I went to third grade in the States, and then two years of high school,” she says. In her freshman year of high school in Virginia, Murray was so inspired by her advanced chemistry teacher that, by her sophomore year, she had changed her life focus.

“I thought that instead of being an artist and having an interest in science, it would be easier to be a scientist and have an interest in art,” she says.

A flip remark by her older brother – that she would never be able to survive MIT and certainly not physics (he was an MIT physics grad student at the time) – was a challenge she couldn’t let slide.

“He doesn’t remember saying that,” Murray relates, laughing, “but I do.”

Murray more than survived MIT and physics – she thrived. Following up a bachelor’s with a Ph.D., Murray in her second year of grad school sought out a summer internship in industry.

At the completion of her Ph.D., Murray was so enthralled with her internship at Bell Laboratories that she found the lab’s offer of a technical staff position the most compelling of her many offers.

At Bell Labs, Murray focused on fundamental research in condensed matter and surface physics until she was asked to become a department head. Then she led research and development in wireless technology, semiconductor technology, optoelectronics and optical networking.

By the end of her 27 years there, and working through various spin-offs and mergers, Murray was senior vice president at Lucent Technologies when Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory recruited her to lead science and engineering.

Several years later, Harvard approached her about taking on SEAS. (In fact, the Harvard Physics Department had long pursued her for a faculty position.)

The offer to become a dean of engineering and applied sciences turned out to be the right job at the right time.

“The thing that excited me most about coming to Harvard is that the university is really serious about bolstering engineering and applied science,” Murray says. “It’s a chance to build a bridge between fundamental science and the professional schools.”

The School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, formerly a department within arts and sciences, has been its own school since 2007. Murray is continuing its growth and development. Over the past 10 years, faculty numbers have increased from 40 to 90. Murray is looking to attain critical mass.

“If you look at the quality of the faculty, SEAS is No. 1 in citations,” she says. “We’re just very small and we need to be a little bit bigger.”

In fact, what’s needed to attain critical mass is one of two primary questions Murray has asked her strategic plan task forces to answer.

The second question asks what forms of education and kinds of knowledge are necessary for 21st century leaders. More than memorizing facts and figures, Murray believes critical thinking skills take top priority.

“There’s a real challenge of putting enough hands-on design learning into the curriculum and teaching both undergraduate and graduate students, who will be our next global leaders, how to address problems they’ve never seen before and make headway,” Murray says.

“Being the small school that we are, we have the opportunity to completely and easily revamp the way we’re teaching.”

Murray, obviously, hasn’t experienced much culture shock in transferring from industry and research to education.

Bell Labs, she notes, operated on excellence and academic-like qualities. Along with serving on more than 80 national and international scientific advisory committees, she has also been involved in numerous universities’ review committees, so she understands the complexity of academia.

And Murray is eager to bring real-world experience as well as top recognition – outstanding achievement as a woman physicist, recognition for R&D leadership and listing in Discover magazine’s “50 Most Important Women in Science” – to leading SEAS forward.

The strategic plan, she says, will not see any time on a shelf. “I’m an implementer. Along with the strategic plan, I’m also getting a business plan for the school to see how much money I have to raise in order to accomplish what we set out to do. Part of the 10-year plan is how to accomplish it.”

No doubt, the plan will happen. The remaining question is, with all that she has spun into action, is Murray able to pull off her long-ago thought of art as a hobby?

“I have to admit that I’m pretty consumed right now,” she says, “but when I go to visit my father in Tucson, he has a studio. I do some painting and drawing then.”