GSD Professor Begins New Program, Matches Students With Teaching Jobs

A professor at the Graduate School of Design has initiated a program that will seek to match students, particularly women and members of minority groups, with job openings for teaching on college and university faculties of planning across the country.

Lawrence Mann '54, professor of City Planning, said yesterday his program will help colleges and universities "know whether they are picking the best candidates for their planning faculties.

"Most decisions in the past have been made in the dark," he said.

Mann has sent questionnairs to more than 130 schools of planning in the country, asking about their hiring practices and criteria. He said he has gotten responses from 20 per cent of the schools. He predicted that the study should be available by the end of the year, though it will be updated periodically.

"As far as I know, this kind of report hasn't been done before, in any field," Mann said. He said that he feels it is particularly important because the Department of Health, Education and Welfare has demanded that many schools increase their hirings of women and minority group members.

However, Mann said that he knew of only about six vancancies in teaching positions on college departments of planning in the nation, "though there may be as many as 20."

The study is being financed in part by an initial grant of about $1000 from the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning, but Mann said yesterday that he has applied for a Ford Foundation grant.

Mann estimates that now only about 15 per cent of job applicants are women, and ten per cent are black. In Harvard's department, of 28 faculty members, seven are women and four are members of minority groups, he said. "We're almost irreproachable compared to the other places," he said.