• How Things Work at Harvard, February 24
• Glass Flowers and Other Wonders: A Tour of the Harvard Museum of Natural History, March 24
• Book Group: Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution – and How It Can Renew America, March 30
• Walking Tour of Harvard Yard…And Slightly Beyond, April 8
• Followership: How Followers are Creating Change and Changing Leaders, April 15
• From Seed to Sauce: How to Plant, Grow, Preserve, and Cook Tomatoes, April 29
• The Orienting Express: A Guided Van Tour of Harvard University, May 5
• Emerging Trends in Communication Technology, May 14
• Book Group: Wandering Star, May 19

How Things Work at Harvard
Presenter: Susan Shefte, Office of the Vice President for Administration

What is the Corporation and what does the Board of Overseers do? How is the endowment managed, and who decides how to spend it? How are budgets set? This program will unravel many of Harvard’s mysteries in an hour. Learn about the relationships between the schools, Central Administration and Mass Hall, about how big decisions are made, and about how Harvard’s finances work. Feel free to bring your lunch; drinks and dessert will be provided.

Glass Flowers and Other Wonders: A Tour of the Harvard Museum of Natural History

The Harvard Museum of Natural History is the most visited attraction at Harvard. Its collections focus on the understanding and appreciation of the natural world and the human place in it. The docent-led tour will begin with an overview of the history of the world-renowned Ware Collection of Glass Flowers and a discussion of the techniques used to craft the models. The experience will continue with a guided "walk through time," focused on specimens in the galleries that reflect the history of life on earth and will include time in both the gems and minerals collection and the zoological collections.

Book Group
Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution – And How It Can Renew America, by Thomas Friedman

Best-selling author and New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman’s new book takes a look at two of the largest challenges we face today: America’s surprising loss of focus and national purpose since 9/11 and the global environmental crisis, which is affecting everything from food and fuel to forests. He explains how global warming, rapidly growing populations, and the expansion of the world’s middle class through globalization have produced a planet that is “hot, flat, and crowded.” The book shows how these huge problems are linked, and he argues that in addressing them, we can restore the world and revive American leadership as well (adapted from Amazon.com). Complimentary copies of this book will be sent to participants upon registration.

Walking Tour of Harvard Yard…and Slightly Beyond
Presenter: Susan Shefte, Office of the Vice President for Administration

Whether you are new to Harvard or a veteran employee who has not ventured too far beyond your own office, you can benefit from learning more about Harvard’s campus. Join us for a walking tour that will take you through Harvard Yard, over to the Science Center and down to the River Houses. You will learn what offices are currently housed in the buildings on the tour and pick up some interesting tidbits from Harvard’s past. Tours will include information and vouchers for a wide range of fun/interesting things to do at the University. This will be a great chance to orient yourself to the University, no matter how long you’ve been here.

Followership: How Followers are Creating Change and Changing Leaders
Presenter: Barbara Kellerman, Harvard University Kennedy School of Government

Barbara Kellerman will discuss key points from her most recent book, Followership: How Followers are Creating Change and Changing Leaders, which addresses the role of followers in relation to their superiors and in their effects on organizations. In this deliberate departure from the leader-centric approach that has dominated standard thinking on leadership and management, Kellerman considers the way in which followers (subordinates with less power and influence than their superiors) can adapt their response to their rank, their managers, and their specific situations. As the Wall Street Journal’s review of her book put it, “Kellerman argues that a big organization’s fate can be surprisingly dependent on how well it understands thousands of low-ranking employees and makes them more effective.” Barbara Kellerman is the James MacGregor Burns Lecturer in Public Leadership at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government.

New VPA Sustainability Series:
From Seed to Sauce: How to Plant, Grow, Preserve, and Cook Tomatoes
Presenter: Martin Breslin, Harvard University Dining Services

What is better than locally grown? How about grown on your own! In this lunchtime program, you will learn the basics of tomato seed planting and caring. But what to do with all those tomatoes? Martin Breslin will show you how to can and preserve, them, as well as share ideas for creating homemade sauces and other tomato-based recipes. Participants will all receive already-started heritage tomato plants and will plant one of their own.

The Orienting Express: A Guided Van Tour of Harvard University
Presenter: Carl Tempesta, University Operations Services

If you can’t quite place the Quad, the Law School or the site of the proposed science building in Allston, you are not alone. Harvard is large and sprawling, and most people have some buildings – or entire schools – they cannot place. In this hour van tour, we will travel from Holyoke Center, past the River Houses and Blackstone, through the proposed Allston sites, and back to the Business School, the Quad, Radcliffe, the Law School, the museums – and everything in between. Carl Tempesta of UOS will provide an entertaining commentary throughout the tour and participants will come away with maps, history, and interesting facts about the tour sites.

Emerging Trends in Communication Technology: Help or Hindrance in the Workplace?
Presenter: Kishan Mallur, University Information Systems

In the last forty years, the biggest change in the communications world was the advent of email, both as a tool and as a game changer in terms of business etiquette. The past decade, however, has seen an explosion of other technologies that could change the communication/collaboration landscape even more dramatically. In this presentation, participants will be introduced to concepts and tools – including blogs, wikis, RSS, mashups, social search, social networking – that claim to simplify or remedy communications issues in the workplace today and consider whether they will truly help or further complicate the workplace environment. The program will conclude with a discussion about the imminent invasion into the workplace of technologies that are already wildly popular in the consumer world – and how to plan for this.

Book Group
Wandering Star, by J. M. G. Le Clezio

Wandering Star, the winner of the 2008 Nobel Prize for literature, tells the story of the Holocaust and the establishment of the state of Israel through the lives of two young women – Esther, a Jewish girl who survives Nazi Germany, and Nejima, a displaced Palestinian refugee. Each girl’s life has been marked by suffering, misery, and despair; each places whatever hope remains in a quest for a new life in “the promised land.” While Le Clezio certainly includes historical and political perspectives, the real story of this critically-acclaimed book is the persistence of the human spirit (adapted from a review by the American Library Association). Complimentary copies of this book will be sent to participants upon registration.