Int'l Office Will Be Disbanded

An international projects office established by former President Derek C. Bok will disband at the end of December.

Established three years ago as part of Bok's effort to "internationalize" Harvard, the office has worked on projects such as negotiating debt-for-scholarship swaps with developing nations and improving the University's recruitment of foreign students.

Although the office is being eliminated, many of the responsibilities it handled will be transferred to other parts of the University's administration, President Neil L. Rudenstine said yesterday in a written statement.

Nancy S. Pyle, an assistant director of the Harvard Institute for International Development (HIID), said that the office was never intended to be a permanent one.

"What we originally set up with President Bok was to do a series of private projects for three years," said Pyle, who served as the former president's assistant on internationalization.

In fact, Pyle said, her staff agreed last summer to stay on for an additional six months during the transition between University presidents.

Now that Rudenstine is in place however, Pyle said she and her co-workers will step aside so that the new president can establish his own structure for conducting internationalization efforts.

"We felt very strongly that he should be free to put in his own team," she said, adding, "There is no question but that he is enormously supportive of the things we began."

Rudenstine said in the statement that he intends to continue and expand on much of the work done in Pyle's office.

"Nancy Pyle and her staff have done an outstanding job," he said. "The issue is now to institutionalize' on a continuing basis a number of activities that really should be lodged in different places."

For example, the funding of research trips abroad by Harvard affiliates should be overseen by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Rudenstine said.

Similarly, he said he would like to incorporate overseas fundraising efforts into regular development office activities.

"I see no change in the current efforts, but mainly a distribution of some different tasks, centered in one office until now, to a set of offices that can carry on those tasks indefinitely," he said.

Original Plan

Rudenstine said that in closing down the office he was merely following Bok's original plan. The office was supported by the president's discretionary fund.

HIID Director Dwight H. Perkins said that no other changes in staffing are currently planned for the center