K-School Expansion Suffers Off Year; Press Politics Center Develops Further

The need to provide space for unprecedented growth in recent years is the main reason for the Kennedy School of Government's current fundraising drive.

In just four years, the number of full-time students has increased eight-fold, and the school now offers short-term special training sessions in addition to normal degree-granting programs.

Research is growing as well, with each of the three policy centers--Energy and Environmental Policy. Health and Policy Management, and Science and International Affairs--becoming more prominent and taking on more projects.

One new center--on business and government--was added earlier this year, and the K-School is already planning to add a fifth--on the Press, Politics and Public Policy.

With the center, the school hopes to cultivate the study of the "interaction between the press and politics"--an increasingly important but largely ignored academic field, according to Jonathan Moore, director of the school's Institute of Politics (IOP).

The center hopes eventually to develop a press curriculum for the K-School. Officials also plan to bring journalists in to teach and take courses.

Though the center has not yet officially been set up, the IOP has just in the past year sponsored several press-policy events, including courses and a few conferences, like the one co-sponsored by the three major television networks held last January.

And the initial efforts have already started to attract financial support. Last summer, the school received its first endowed media-related chair, a $500,000 matching grant from CBS. Late last month, officials announced their first research grant--$225,000 from the Revson Foundation for a three-year study aimed at identifying the ways in which media affect policy-making in the federal government.

In total, the center has raised about $1 million over the past year. The ultimate goal--with no specific deadline--is $5 million.

Despite early successes in research and faculty grants, however, insufficient donations for buying space in the new building may alter plans for the program. Ira A. Jackson '70, associate dean of the K-School, says that because total expansion plans have been scaled down, the research centers will probably receive less space then they had originally anticipated.

Jackson adds that space for the centers will be allocated on a "first-come, first-served basis." Martin A. Linsky, Moore's assistant on the press center, refused to say how close the fifth research facility was to the $750,000 necessary to get new building space.

Officials also decline to set a date or even a funding level at which the center will officially come into existence. No administrative structure has been established.

While most university work in journalism deals with training, the concept behind the center is not completely new--Duke and the University of Indiana have similar programs underway.