Harvard Endows Fellowships

Harvard will establish a fellowship fund for local public school teachers to study and teach at the Graduate School of Education as its gift to the community in honor of the College's 350th birthday, University officials announced yesterday.

The James Bryant Conant Fellowship Fund, with an initial endowment of $700,000, will provide for up to 6 year-long fellowships to be divided annually and equally between Boston and Cambridge public school teachers.

The program is named for Harvard's 23rd president, who served from 1933 to 1953.

"This is our 350th birthday, and in celebrating it we don't want to lose track of Cambridge and Boston's participation in it," said Harvard President Derek C. Bok at yesterday's press conference. He praised the cities' contributions to Harvard, and apologized for "the various loud noises and other annoyances we have produced over the past 350 years."

"This is a program we hope will long outlast the 350th," said Harvard Vice President for Government and Community Affairs John Shattuck. "We have often--too often--taken for granted what the community means to us."

Boston School Superintendent Laval S. Wilson and his Cambridge counterpart Robert Peterkin, who were involved in the planning of the program, joined University officials at the podium.

"We've gone through a period of about 10 yearswhere education has been under attack from allsides," Wilson said. He said he hopes the programwill "say to educators, 'you are important andeducation is important.' "

Patricia A. Graham, dean of the Graduate Schoolof Education, said the benefit from thefellowships would be mutual, combining theteachers' practical experience with more detachedforms of educational theory.

Peterkin also said that a group of areabusiness leaders, University administrators, andcity officials are trying to unite their effortsto aid the public schools in a group to be calledthe "Cambridge Partnership for Public Education."

Under the proposed plan, the business communitywould offer after-school employment opportunitiesand on-the-job training to area students, andHarvard might contribute use of its athleticfacilities, said Timothy Toomey, a member of theCambridge School Committee.

Harvard already reserves a small percentage ofspots in its freshman class for qualified localstudents and aids the creative writing program ofthe Cambridge School District.

The new fellowship fund was named after Conantin memory of the former Harvard president'scommitment to public education and to "ourresponsibility as a corporate citizen.