Spence Considering Final Drive Proposal

As Harvard's multi-billion dollar fundraising drive enters into the final planning stages, Dean of the Faculty A. Michael Spence is fine-tuning his budget priorities and said yesterday he hopes to formulate a finished proposal by fall.

Armed with a two-hour audiovisual presentation aimed at prospective alumni donors, Spence has met with both the Faculty Council--the Faculty's steering committee--and several department chairs in the past two weeks. Spence also made his presentation to the Board of Overseers at their meeting in December.

Although Spence said yesterday that the slide show in its current form will probably not be used in actual presentations outside the Harvard community, he added that he hopes it will serve as a tool for internal campaign discussions.

"It's not ready for the public yet. The whole thing will get more defined," Spence said.

"It was a pretty straightforward presentation of the financial needs of Harvard," said Associate Professor of Astronomy Mark Birkinshaw, who attended Wednesday's council meeting. "Basically it just described where Harvard gets its money, and where it spends its money. It's a soft sell. It sells by informing."

The Spence presentations are just one part of a mounting effort to establish fundraising goals and priorities for Harvard's planned $2 billionplus capital campaign. The fundraising effort, which administrators now say they hope to launch formally by the fall of 1991, would be higher education's largest drive ever.

It would also mark the first time that Harvard has conducted a fundraising effort uniting different faculties, each of which has traditionally been responsible for its own capital campaigns.

The details of exactly how Harvard's different schools would fit into the massive fund drive are still be worked out, a fundraising source said yesterday, adding that the seven member Corporation, the University's chief governing board, has not formally approved the effort.

Spence said his slide show covers much the same territory as the budget letter he presented to the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) last December, which delineated his general priorities for the FAS portion of the proposed fundraising campaign.

That letter targeted internationalization, an expansion of the faculty, faculty office and laboratory space, funding for graduate education and new library facilities as fundraising priorities.

Professors who attended the council meeting said yesterday that the dean's presentation focused on general long-range goals rather than on specifics.

"It does not address the more controversial issues at Harvard, like minority faculty," Birkinshaw said. "The presentation said we need more professors, but didn't say what kind ofprofessors."

"A few people had some comments," saidProfessor of Government Roderick MacFarquhar,another council member. "But the idea was not toshow us the merits of the presentation, it wasjust to keep us informed about how the fundraisingcampaign is going.