GSD Establishes New Chairs

As part of a multi-year plan to expand its faculty, the Graduate School of Design (GSD) has created two professorships in real estate development and architecture, officials announced this week.

The new chairs--which are the fourth and fifth to be endowed this decade--cost $1.5 million each to establish, GSD administrators said.

The architecture post has been wholly financed by a grant from a Japanese corporation and will probably be filled by next year, according to Polly Price, GSD's associate dean for administration. But the chair in real estate development, endowed by 13 individual and corporate donors, will require four to five years of collecting pledged funds before it can be filled, Price said.

GSD Dean Gerald M. McCue said administrators are particularly pleased with the new professorships because they come at a time when the school is actively seeking to expand its faculty despite setbacks.

"We have not been as successful as we had wanted in establishing professorships," McCue said. "There are still some areas we are seeking."

Officials said they hope the school's two newest chairs--particularly the professorship in real estate development--will meet students' growing demand for courses in urban design.

"For about the last seven to ten years, we have sponsored courses in areas like redevelopment finance and land development," Price said. She said that these courses have boasted the highest enrollments at the GSD and have even attracted students from the Business School and the Law School.

The decision to create the professorship in real estate development was made by McCue and President Derek C. Bok about seven years ago, and theGSD's Advisory Committee on Real EstateDevelopment oversaw the post's financing, McCuesaid.

The architecture post was endowed by the KajimaCorporation, a Japanese construction anddevelopment company. Kajima's chief executiveofficer, Shoichi Kajima, is a 1957 GSD graduatewho is particularly interested in the"international significance of the GSD," Pricesaid.

The new chair, which will be named afterKajima, is the school's first to be fundedentirely by one corporation, according to McCue.

The Architecture Department, the GSD's largest,has not decided in what specific area ofarchitecuture, such as legal or historical, toestablish the Kajima professorship, Price said.But the school's Committee on Appointments andPromotions hopes to recommend to McCue a candidatefor the professorship by the end of this academicyear, she said.

The GSD currently employs about 45 full-timeinstructors as well as many visiting part-timepractitioners and designers, all of whom serve inone of the school's three major departments:architecture, landscape architecture and urbanplanning and design, McCue said