Yale Project Plans Boost In Aid to Negro Colleges

A Yale-based project for aiding instruction at Southern Negro colleges decided this week to draw on other universities, including Harvard, for its teaching personnel, Archie Epps disclosed yesterday.

Epps, a tutor in Leverett House, was appointed an Assistant Dean of the College during the summer. He represented Harvard in New Haven last Saturday at a meeting of the project, which is called the Yale Southern Teaching Program.

The organization, founded by a group of Yale law students, last summer sent 55 teachers to 13 Negro colleges. The program paid the transportation and living expenses of the teachers out of a $17,000 fund supplied by several philanthropic foundations.

Full Year Teachers

This year the Program hopes to receive grants totaling $100,000 in order to include in the Program many more of the South's 120 all-Negro colleges. In addition to summer jobs, the Program will now make positions available to students who wish to spend a full year in the South.

Epps related that a report on the experiences of the student teachers in the South last summer termed the project "very successful," but also noted difficulties.

Among the problems mentioned in the report were inadequate library facilities and a reluctance in the colleges to employ modern teaching methods. "The main problem," Epps said, "was to overcome the authoritarian atmosphere and the tradition of rote learning."

Emphasis on Science

The Program plans to emphasize science in its future aid to the Negro schools. Graduate students and a few exceptionally qualified undergraduates will be accepted into the Program in 1965.

"We must prepare Negroes to take their place in a world in the midst of a scientific revolution," explained Epps.

Dean Monro, who designated Epps to attend the meeting, yesterday expressed strong support of the Yale project. "Yale is doing an excellent job co-ordinating this program," Monro said.