Monro Foresees Harvard Building Nigerian School

If the "wild dream" is the minds of several University administrators and a memorandum being circulated among directors of the Peace Corps become a reality, Harvard may help build and staff a high school in Western Nigeria by next year.

The idea is still extremely tentative, according to Dean Monro, but it may take more definite shape once the pressure of the 1961 training and placement program is out of the way. Monro hopes that money will become available to defray the construction of costs of a new secondary school, to be staffed by the University, but to be directed by local Nigerian authorities.

Coincidentally, a similar proposal was recently made to Peace Corps authorities in Washington. A field representative of the African-American Institute, Patrick Murphy, has circulated a memorandum written from Tanganyika discussing the feasibility of private agencies helping to establish schools in Africa.

The school could serve as a placement outlet for students who now are scattered among a bewildering array of agencies. Monro said that it might also serve as a vital contact for Nigerian students who wish to study at the University. If the plan works out, he added, the "John Harvard School" might open its doors in 1962.

Training Here Not Definite

Meanwhile, "urgent discussions" among Monro, Judson T. Shaplin '42, Associate Dean of the Faculty of Education, the Corporation and R. Sargent Shriver, Jr., director of the Peace Corps, still have failed to produce a definite decision to hold Peace Corps training seminars at the University.

According to Monro the decisions still have to be made, first whether to administer the training centrally--possibly at Penn State--or locally, and second whether to include Harvard if the latter approach is taken. The University has reportedly been attempting to work out a suitable program.