Student Experience
Background Video of South asian countries and their people
Intellectual Vitality is a student-led effort to make the Harvard College experience more meaningful – by fostering a culture of deeper engagement across classrooms, residential spaces, and social settings.
Founded in the principles of rigor, charity, and open exploration, this approach thrives on viewpoint diversity and the shared belief that exchanging ideas across differences isn’t just encouraged – it’s a defining strength of our community.
Explore how Intellectual Vitality is beginning to take root across Harvard College.
Perspectives for First-years
Explore how first-year students build critical conversation skills and connect across differences through our Intellectual Vitality initiatives.
Student Advisory Board
Harvard stands at a crossroads. Political scrutiny and public mistrust challenge the university from without. Inside our gates, students balance pre-professional ambition with intellectual exploration in a climate where genuine disagreement is hard to sustain.
Intellectual Vitality has emerged to meet these challenges on the premise that open, rigorous and charitable inquiry is not simply a tradition to uphold, but a culture to actively cultivate. That cultivation happens not only in classrooms and lecture halls, but in every other area of campus: the dining halls, residence life, and student clubs and organizations.
The Student Advisory Board (SAB) is the primary student body responsible for shaping and sustaining this culture. Working in close partnership with the Director, Faculty Advisory Board, and Harvard’s academic leadership, the SAB ensures that Intellectual Vitality is not imposed from the top down, but instead, grounded in the real perspectives, needs, and aspirations of students themselves.
Structure and Focus Areas
SAB Members come from all corners of campus life – the arts, athletic teams, student government, public service organizations, religious communities, and more. What unites them is not their background or academic interests, necessarily, rather, the group is brought together over their shared mindset.
Members are selected for their:
- Engagement in intellectual and civic life of the College
- Demonstration of maturity, humility, and respect in their communication with peers, faculty, and administrators
- Insight they possess onto the cultural, academic, or social spaces they inhabit—and a desire to make those spaces more conducive to serious thought
- Willingness to mentor their peers, be mentored by faculty, and help shape the future of Harvard’s intellectual culture
- Ability to remain constructively critical, in being able to affirm Harvard’s mission while challenging the ways the College may fall short of it
Membership on the SAB is selective and demanding. It is also one of the most meaningful ways for students to influence the future of Harvard College through thoughtful, sustained, and strategic participation in the College’s communal and educational life.
The SAB is organized into three core focus areas:
Funding and Program Proposals
This group oversees the disbursement of an annual budget for initiatives that promote Intellectual Vitality across campus. It reviews proposals from academic departments, student organizations, Houses, and centers, and periodically revises funding criteria in consultation with the Director and Faculty Board.
Academics
In collaboration with the Faculty Advisory Board and the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning, this group advances a culture of Intellectual Vitality in the classroom. Members contribute to teaching evaluations, review curricular offerings, and engage with faculty and administration on academic policies.
Events and Student Experience
This group designs and facilitates events (i.e. lectures, panels, dinners, dialogues, etc.) that model and promote intellectually vital conversation. It also leads collaborations with key campus organizations and plays a central role in orienting first-years to the spirit of Intellectual Vitality.
Student voices
Hear first-hand why it matters.
Get Involved.
Want to join the conversation? Reach out to Camila Nardozzi to bring Intellectual Vitality to your student group, organization, or department.
Student Advisory Board
Through the SAB, the College will foster the bottom-up adoption of intellectual vitality in the different student spheres or activities at the College.
Fellowship in Values Engagement
The Edmond & Lily Safra Center for Ethics, in partnership with Harvard’s Dean of Students Office, is piloting the new Fellowship in Values Engagement (FiVE) program. The goal is to foster intellectual vitality among undergraduates by promoting ethical reflection and civil discourse.