Cliffe Turns to Typing, Publishing in Summer

Radcliffe still manages to prevent its independence from Harvard during the summer -- by concessions to the world business. While the Harvard Summer School offers courses to those taught during the school year, Radcliffe its attention to more practice matters. Agassiz House, in Radcliffe Yard, undergoes a information around the first . On the first floor, the ping table is removed, the food are hidden by a , and the Hickox secretary school moves in its equipment and instructors to conduct Radcliffe College Summer School.

The girls come from 42 colleges (among them 14 apiece from Smith and Wellesley and 11 from Vassar) to learn the arts of typing and shorthand. In an intensive seven-week course, the E-Z Alphabetic Shorthand Simplified, Typewriting, Transcription, Secretarial Practice, and the proper use of Office Machine are crammed relentlessly into each student.

Upstairs, the dressing room for the Agassiz Theater is converted into the headquarters of what the editor of Show Magazine once termed "the shortest graduate school in the country."

According to its director, Mrs. Diggory Venn, the Publishing Procedures Course is "a practical course to bridge the gap between the Liberal Arts education and the professional world." Now in its eighteenth year, the course first came into existence when the former director of the Radcliffe appointment bureau, Edith G. Stedman, realized that college graduates were badly equipped to meet the demands of the publishing industry. "A publisher would ask a girl 'what can you do?'" Mrs. Venn relates, "and the answer would have to be 'nothing.'"

Although it is conducted at Radcliffe, the course has gradually become the ward of the entire publishing industry, with lectures, workshops, and instruction being given by representatives of most major publishing houses and leading magazines.

Speakers this season included the director of the Atlantic Monthly Press, the publisher of The New Republic, the vice president of Doubleday and Co., Inc., and the editors of Harper's and the Atlantic Monthly.

Of the six-week program, three weeks are devoted to book publishing and three to the study of magazine production. The book program concentrates on fundamental aspects of the publishing industry, such as layout and general editing. Students are given manuscripts to take home, read, and edit.

A "magazine workshop," in which students utilize these fundamentals to put together an original magazine, occupies the last three weeks. The students are divided into seven groups for the workshop. This year the editorial director of the workshop was Patricia Carbine, assistant managing editor of Look Magazine. Miss Carbine came to Cambridge for four days last week to assist each group in preparing a prospectus and lead article for its magazine. She will return next Monday to offer critiques of the various magazines and to present four bottles of champagne to the editors of the publication voted best by the students.

The only requirements for the magazines are that they be 32 pages long and that they appeal to a readership not currently catered to by American magazines. Past ideas for magazines included Menagerie -- a publication for pet owners, Athena--a magazine devoted to the intellectual needs of the college woman, and Small World-- an "analysis of current affairs in the world of children from 8-12."

This year's projects are designed to appeal to such diverse types as the traveler (Wayfarer), the humanistic scientist (Diameter), the college student (University Magazine), and the underprivileged college graduate (Access).

Access, "a guide for frugal yet creative living for young adults, "is aimed at the college graduate who has a low-income job but doesn't want to deprive himself of the pleasures to which his college years have accustomed him. In addition to a listing of "furnished apartments for $10 and under" and a guide to major cities' forms of free entertainment, the magazine features an article entitled "Freeload of the Month." The Freeload is the success story of someone who has achieved the magazine's primary goal "with nerve and style." For example--the young man who went into a plush restaurant, ordered a drink, ate his fill of the fancy hors d'ouvres, then had a friend call him away just as the waiter came to take his order; thus getting the equivalent of a good meal for the price of one drink. Or the movie fan who went to Cinema One, saw the picture, then sneaked behind the screen into Cinema Two.

Diameter attempts to discuss the impact of science on the everyday world and to establish a link between science and the humanities. The magazine features such articles as "Emily Dickinson Computerized," in which that lady's poetry is analyzed by a computer so that "anyone can write like Emily Dickinson," according to a spokesman for the group.

Wayfarer attempts to present the American traveler with a practical but attractive travel magazine "which is halfway between Holiday and the gas station road map."

Although provision is not made for publication of any of the magazines, two groups have received indications that outside sources might be interested in giving their proposed publications an actual start.

One of these is Diameter, which reportedly has caught the interest of the Harvard Program on Technology and Science. Inside Opportunity, designed as "the voice of the War on Poverty", would present relevant information to volunteers for the program. A spokesman for the group said that the Commonwealth Service Corps (the State version of the national Office for Economic Opportunity) had expressed interest in their project and that the group was presently contacting Sargent Shriver, director of the national program.

Although the course is heavily oversubscribed, there is always a female-male ratio of seven to one. According to Mrs. Venn, many men cannot quite accept the idea that a Radcliffe course is not limited to women.

The girls come from 42 colleges (among them 14 apiece from Smith and Wellesley and 11 from Vassar) to learn the arts of typing and shorthand. In an intensive seven-week course, the E-Z Alphabetic Shorthand Simplified, Typewriting, Transcription, Secretarial Practice, and the proper use of Office Machine are crammed relentlessly into each student.

Upstairs, the dressing room for the Agassiz Theater is converted into the headquarters of what the editor of Show Magazine once termed "the shortest graduate school in the country."

According to its director, Mrs. Diggory Venn, the Publishing Procedures Course is "a practical course to bridge the gap between the Liberal Arts education and the professional world." Now in its eighteenth year, the course first came into existence when the former director of the Radcliffe appointment bureau, Edith G. Stedman, realized that college graduates were badly equipped to meet the demands of the publishing industry. "A publisher would ask a girl 'what can you do?'" Mrs. Venn relates, "and the answer would have to be 'nothing.'"

Although it is conducted at Radcliffe, the course has gradually become the ward of the entire publishing industry, with lectures, workshops, and instruction being given by representatives of most major publishing houses and leading magazines.

Speakers this season included the director of the Atlantic Monthly Press, the publisher of The New Republic, the vice president of Doubleday and Co., Inc., and the editors of Harper's and the Atlantic Monthly.

Of the six-week program, three weeks are devoted to book publishing and three to the study of magazine production. The book program concentrates on fundamental aspects of the publishing industry, such as layout and general editing. Students are given manuscripts to take home, read, and edit.

A "magazine workshop," in which students utilize these fundamentals to put together an original magazine, occupies the last three weeks. The students are divided into seven groups for the workshop. This year the editorial director of the workshop was Patricia Carbine, assistant managing editor of Look Magazine. Miss Carbine came to Cambridge for four days last week to assist each group in preparing a prospectus and lead article for its magazine. She will return next Monday to offer critiques of the various magazines and to present four bottles of champagne to the editors of the publication voted best by the students.

The only requirements for the magazines are that they be 32 pages long and that they appeal to a readership not currently catered to by American magazines. Past ideas for magazines included Menagerie -- a publication for pet owners, Athena--a magazine devoted to the intellectual needs of the college woman, and Small World-- an "analysis of current affairs in the world of children from 8-12."

This year's projects are designed to appeal to such diverse types as the traveler (Wayfarer), the humanistic scientist (Diameter), the college student (University Magazine), and the underprivileged college graduate (Access).

Access, "a guide for frugal yet creative living for young adults, "is aimed at the college graduate who has a low-income job but doesn't want to deprive himself of the pleasures to which his college years have accustomed him. In addition to a listing of "furnished apartments for $10 and under" and a guide to major cities' forms of free entertainment, the magazine features an article entitled "Freeload of the Month." The Freeload is the success story of someone who has achieved the magazine's primary goal "with nerve and style." For example--the young man who went into a plush restaurant, ordered a drink, ate his fill of the fancy hors d'ouvres, then had a friend call him away just as the waiter came to take his order; thus getting the equivalent of a good meal for the price of one drink. Or the movie fan who went to Cinema One, saw the picture, then sneaked behind the screen into Cinema Two.

Diameter attempts to discuss the impact of science on the everyday world and to establish a link between science and the humanities. The magazine features such articles as "Emily Dickinson Computerized," in which that lady's poetry is analyzed by a computer so that "anyone can write like Emily Dickinson," according to a spokesman for the group.

Wayfarer attempts to present the American traveler with a practical but attractive travel magazine "which is halfway between Holiday and the gas station road map."

Although provision is not made for publication of any of the magazines, two groups have received indications that outside sources might be interested in giving their proposed publications an actual start.

One of these is Diameter, which reportedly has caught the interest of the Harvard Program on Technology and Science. Inside Opportunity, designed as "the voice of the War on Poverty", would present relevant information to volunteers for the program. A spokesman for the group said that the Commonwealth Service Corps (the State version of the national Office for Economic Opportunity) had expressed interest in their project and that the group was presently contacting Sargent Shriver, director of the national program.

Although the course is heavily oversubscribed, there is always a female-male ratio of seven to one. According to Mrs. Venn, many men cannot quite accept the idea that a Radcliffe course is not limited to women.