$20 Million From Campaign to Finance 'Missing Link' in Four Grad Schools

When the idea for the Harvard Campaign first germinated in University offices, planners called it "the core drive"--not because some of its proceeds would fund the Core Curriculum, but because it would seek money for the "core" of the University, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

Harvard planners felt only one non-undergraduate need was urgent enough to include in the campaign--$20 million for four graduate schools' programs to train public officials.

President Bok called public training "the great missing link in American higher education today" at the kick-off of the campaign last week.

While a whole network of College alumni committees will work with the University development office to raise the Faculty's $250 million. Bok and the deans of the four graduate schools will be the prime fund-raisers for the public policy programs.

"The individual deans will have to be the spark-plugs for this effort," Thomas M. Reardon, director of development, says.

The money will endow professorships and fellowships at the Kennedy School of Government and the public-policy-related programs at the Graduate Schools of Design. Education and Public Health.

"Despite the complexity of the issues our leaders face, despite the difficulty of managing our public institutions, we have had no tradition of serious, careful preparation for positions of public leadership comparable to the preparation provided for those entering our great private professions," the Harvard Campaign brochure states.

Officials in the four schools say they have already developed their academic programs in public policy under Bok's leadership, and now need endowment money to keep them going.

No plan for dividing the $20 million among the schools yet exists. "The hope is that each school will raise as much as it can, and that each school will get at least $5 million," Reardon says.

"President Bok has made it clear that the University will not just hand the money to us, but rather the school has the opportunity to work to raise these funds in the period of the drive," Graham T. Allison, Jr. '62, dean of the Kennedy School, says.

Howard H. Hiatt, dean of the School of Public Health, says the school now has no endowment specifically for professorships or student support in the field of public management.

"We're not as advanced as the College part of the campaign," Howard R. Hall, director of development for the School of Design, says. "It's all sort of nebulous."

He says he expects most cash contributions to come from foundations and corporations. Alumni will donate their time and energy but "by the nature of the profession they're in, they don't have the income to make big contributions," he adds.

However, Dominic C. Varisco, associate dean for development of the Ed School, says he expects more contributions from alumni and friends than from foundations. "Most foundations don't give for endowment," he says.

Allison says the Kennedy School has conducted its own fund drive for several years. Its current endowment is approximately $25 million.

"As the idea of the school has become clearer, and the idea of its mission becomes larger, more people of wealth have been thinking about what they can do to support it," Allison says, adding that the school has attracted many gifts from people without close Harvard connections.

Reardon says the public policy segment of the campaign is likely to interest non-alumni, foundations and corporations more than the Faculty part. Officials, however, say they have no foundation grants or major advance pledges to announce yet