Practice Overview
| Practice Name | Advisory Committee on Research Sustainability (ACRS) |
| Description | The ACRS is an approach to shared governance that has created meaningful opportunities for faculty input on strategies for research sustainability, emphasizing academic-administrative partnership for shared understanding and collaborative problem-solving. The model combines ongoing advisory committee engagement with targeted, time-limited tiger teams that develop recommendations on complex issues. |
| Participants | The ACRS standing committee includes approximately 18 members including Harvard Medical School faculty across multiple departments, department chairs, administrative leaders, and subject matter experts. Participation is expanded through small, nimble tiger teams that bring in additional faculty and administrators with relevant expertise and perspectives. |
| Frequency | The ACRS generally meets once or twice monthly, with meeting frequency adjusted based on institutional needs. Tiger teams meet periodically during focused project periods. |
| Modality | Combination of virtual and in-person engagement. ACRS meetings are primarily virtual, while tiger team work is generally conducted in person. |
| Resources | Time from staff, administrator, and faculty to plan, manage, and participate in the ACRS and tiger teams. |
Introduction
In 2024, Harvard Medical School began examining the long-term sustainability of its research enterprise amid rising financial pressures and evolving challenges affecting academic research. School leaders convened a time-limited task force composed of faculty and senior administrators to identify guiding principles for decisions related to research sustainability.
As financial and external pressures intensified in 2025, Harvard Medical determined that a more sustained approach to faculty engagement in research strategy was needed. The task force evolved into the Advisory Committee on Research Sustainability (ACRS), a standing committee designed to connect faculty expertise with institutional decision-making. The ACRS uses a tiered model that allows different issues to receive different levels of attention. Some topics are addressed through committee discussions that provide advice or facilitate information sharing. More complex challenges are assigned to tiger teams, small working groups charged with developing recommendations that include ACRS committee members and additional faculty and administrators with subject matter expertise. This structure helps the medical school gather broad input while ensuring that critical decisions can move forward in a timely manner.
“One of the principles coming out of that task force was to create more sustained mechanisms for faculty engagement on decision making … at the intersection of resource allocation and research.”
— Aili Lewis, MSc, MPP
Goals and Objectives
The goals of the ACRS are to:
- Strengthen faculty participation in institutional decision-making related to research sustainability.
- Create structured opportunities for meaningful engagement between faculty and administrators.
- Provide the dean and institutional leaders with recommendations and faculty input to support decision-making.
- Promote communication and transparency around issues affecting the research enterprise.
- Support timely decision-making while avoiding governance bottlenecks.
Promising Practice Overview
The ACRS serves as a standing advisory committee to the dean and works closely with department chairs and administrative leaders. Its charge is to engage faculty and institutional leaders in addressing complex challenges affecting the research enterprise and to provide input and recommendations that inform institutional decision-making. The standing committee includes approximately 18 faculty members, department administrators, and department chair representatives. The inaugural committee was formed primarily from members of the Research Sustainability Task Force, with additional faculty and administrators nominated by department chairs to broaden departmental representation. The committee is co-chaired by a department chair and a tenured faculty member.
The ACRS was designed to complement, rather than replace, existing governance structures. The committee reports to the dean and works closely with the preclinical department chairs, who have served as a long-standing leadership group that advises the dean on a range of institutional issues. Department chair representatives from across the institution serve on the ACRS, and formal checkpoints allow chairs to provide feedback on tiger team charges and recommendations. This structure helps ensure that faculty perspectives developed through the ACRS can be integrated into existing decision-making processes while avoiding duplication of governance functions.
During its first year, the ACRS generally met every other week, primarily in a virtual format. As institutional conditions stabilized, meeting frequency became more flexible, with some months requiring only a single meeting. Virtual meetings have been particularly effective for the committee because they allow broad participation while minimizing demands on faculty schedules.
ACRS topics may be raised by committee members, department chairs, school leaders, or administrative units. To ensure that topics receive the appropriate level of review and stakeholder engagement, the ACRS operates through a tiered model consisting of three functions:
- Appraise. Create opportunities for transparent communication without delaying action. Applies to issues that primarily require communication, education, or shared awareness.
- Advise. Provide rapid input on high-impact decisions. Applies to topics that would benefit from stakeholder input but do not require extensive analysis.
- Recommend. Conduct deep-dive analysis. Applies to complex issues that require extensive analysis, multiple perspectives, or formal recommendations.
"We wanted to create a standing committee that allowed for engaging the faculty in a meaningful way, but based on the type of decision that needed to be made.”
— Aili Lewis, MSc, MPP
Most ACRS work occurs through the standing committee, using the appraise and advise functions. Examples of topics addressed by ACRS include budget updates, administrative changes, research compliance issues, facilities planning, research continuity funding, and PhD program enrollment targets. When an issue requires extensive analysis, additional expertise, multiple perspectives, or the development of formal recommendations, the ACRS activates the recommend function through the creation of a tiger team. Tiger teams are small, time-limited working groups charged with examining specific institutional challenges and developing actionable recommendations for ACRS and school leadership.
When a tiger team is convened, the specific charge is developed by the standing committee leadership and reviewed by the committee and department chairs. Membership is selected based on the expertise needed to address the issue under review. Teams typically include at least one faculty member and one administrator from the ACRS, along with additional faculty, administrators, and subject matter experts who bring relevant expertise and perspectives. Tiger teams are chaired by a lead for the particular program or function that is being addressed. This approach allows tiger teams to engage individuals who are best positioned to contribute to a particular topic while broadening participation beyond the standing committee.
Most tiger teams meet six to eight times over approximately four to six months, although timelines vary depending on the complexity and urgency of the issue. The meetings are generally conducted in-person to support discussion, trust-building, and collaborative problem-solving. Teams establish a work plan, identify intended deliverables early in the process, and ultimately report their recommendations back to the ACRS and institutional leadership.
Results and Impact
The ACRS tiered governance approach has successfully created an efficient structure that allows difficult institutional issues to be discussed by a broad set of stakeholders and advanced to leadership for action. The model has produced actionable recommendations including proposals for faculty career flexibility and strategic industry engagement, alignment on cost-cutting decisions, and prioritization of research infrastructure investments. Leaders have demonstrated they value these recommendations, as evidenced by chairs and leaders actively seeking out ACRS input and the dean prioritizing conversation with ACRS leadership.
This tiered approach has expanded faculty participation in shared governance, with approximately one-third of Harvard Medical’s employed, tenure, and tenure-track faculty participating in the ACRS or a tiger team over the first year of implementation. Faculty members have gained greater visibility into areas such as institutional finance, operations, and resource management, creating a more informed foundation for future decision-making. Program leaders have observed a positive impact on morale and community as a result of the program and attribute this to the collaborative approach that involves faculty and administration in decision-making regarding limited resources.
The medical school continues to explore how to measure the long-term financial and organizational impacts of the committee's work. While many recommendations involve issues that will unfold over multiple years, leaders view the ACRS as an important mechanism for aligning strategic priorities, faculty perspectives, and institutional resources.
Resources Needed
Implementing the ACRS model requires dedicated staff leadership, project management support, and sustained engagement from faculty and administrative leaders. The primary resource investment is the time required to plan, coordinate, and participate in ACRS and tiger team activities. The Office of Institutional Planning and Effectiveness played a central role in launching and coordinating the initiative, while additional staff and project managers helped facilitate tiger teams and manage workflows. In the first year of implementation, ACRS co-chairs and program staff held monthly planning meetings to identify priorities and guide committee activities. As the program has matured, these meetings have transitioned to a quarterly schedule.
Leaders noted that effective facilitation was particularly important for keeping discussions focused, ensuring equitable participation, and moving groups toward actionable recommendations. To expand the institution's capacity for time-limited, collaborative problem-solving, Harvard Medical is investing in facilitation training.
Challenges and Lessons Learned
Implementing a new governance model required substantial trust-building across faculty, administrators, department chairs, and school leadership. Establishing clear communication pathways and ensuring that stakeholders understood their respective roles were critical to the program's success.
Key lessons learned include:
- Provide forums for transparent discussions on current challenges, including data-driven presentations from senior administrative leaders to ensure faculty have appropriate context on key institutional challenges.
- Provide strong staffing, facilitation, and project management support.
- Invest in relationship-building and communication between meetings.
- Clearly define the scope of each initiative, the topic being addressed, and the level of engagement required to ensure that issues are addressed efficiently.
- Use tiger teams selectively, as they provide significant value but require considerable institutional resources.
Moving Forward
Harvard Medical plans to further formalize committee operations, strengthen communication pathways between ACRS participants and the broader faculty community, and continue refining its approach to transparency and confidentiality. Leaders also hope to strengthen the role of committee members as representatives of their departments and colleagues by supporting them in sharing information, soliciting feedback, and helping more faculty engage with institutional decision-making.
Acknowledgements
This case study is based on an interview conducted with Aili Lewis, MSc, MPP, chief institutional planning and effectiveness officer on July 13, 2026. Additional context was provided by ACRS faculty co-chairs, Susan Dymecki, MD, PhD, George Fabyan Professor of Genetics in the Field of Comparative Pathology and incoming chair of the Department of Genetics; David Ginty, PhD, Edward R. and Anne G. Lefler Professor of Neurobiology and chair of the Department of Neurobiology; and Megan Halligan, strategic projects manager in the Office of the Executive Dean.
Medical School Statistics
| Name of Institution | Harvard Medical School |
| Location | Boston, Massachusetts |
| School Size as of 2024: Number of medical students Number of full-time faculty |
8291 10,5342 |
| Public/Private | Private |
1Source: 2025 AAMC FACTS Table B-5. Enrollment includes the number of students in medical school, including students on a leave of absence, on Oct. 31 of each year shown. Enrollment does not include students with graduated, dismissed, withdrawn, deceased, never enrolled, completed fifth pathway, did not complete fifth pathway, or degree revoked statuses. Accessed July 29, 2026.
https://www.aamc.org/data-reports/students-residents/data/facts-applicants-and-matriculants.
2Source: AAMC. Faculty Roster: U.S. Medical School Faculty, 2025. Accessed July 29, 2026. https://www.aamc.org/data-reports/faculty-institutions/report/faculty-roster-us-medical-school-faculty.