Pusey Outlines $58 Million Plan To Improve Harvard Med School

"Harvard's next great effort" will be a $58 million Program for Harvard Medicine. President Pusey announced the drive to strengthen the Medical School Faculty and construct a new library yesterday in New York.

The Program's chief objective will be to bolster the Medical School Faculty by providing for more full-time tenure appointments, increased salaries, and a larger amount of unrestricted capital for teaching and research. The only building included in the Program is the $7.5 million Francis A. Countway Library, which will house the Harvard and Boston Medical Libraries.

Ridley Watts '23 has been named general chairman of the Program. Much of the $21,627,838 already in hand or in sight--including the $7.5 million cost of the library--was provided through the Harvard Medical Center Fund, under the chairmanship of William M. Rand '09.

President Pusey stressed the nation's need for doctors and medical scientists in his announcement, and pointed out that this shortage is due in large part to the lack of medical school teachers. "Our appeal," Pusey said, " is to the nation, so that we may serve the country better during the present crisis in medical education."

One-fourth of the full-time teachers of professorial rank on the faculties of the nation's 85 medical schools were educated at the Harvard Medical School, Dean George Packer Berry noted, and the 550 post-Doctorate research and teaching fellows at Harvard are one-third of the country's total. By 1975, medical schools in the U.S. will have to produce 3,500 more doctors a year just to maintain the present ratio of doctors to population, Berry said.

Besides the Countway Library, the Program will seek funds for the following areas:

For the basic sciences--$14.5 million. About a dozen new professorships in the medical sciences will be created, and present departmental staffs will be augmented. Research exploration in such fields as the neurosciences, genetics, and biophysics will be supported.

For the behavioral sciences--$2.5 million. Endowed programs and five or six new professorships will be established in the areas of experimental and social psychology, cultural anthropology, and sociology.

For the clinical departments--$33.5 million. The Program funds will endow at least 12 professorships, and more clinical teachers will be employed on a full-time basis. Development of medical and surgical specialties will be emphasized.