B-School Gets Grant For Roxbury Program From the Merrill Fund

The Merrill Trust, a charitable foundation, has granted the Business School $100,000 as part of a half-million dollar program to improve the business skills of blacks in Roxbury. This money, in addition to $20,000 of the Business School's own funds, will pay for faculty time spent on the new project.

The New England Community Development Corporation (NECDC) has received $400,000 to start the operation, called the Roxbury Institute of Business Management (RIBM), which will open June 1.

Charles E. Johnson, lecturer on Business Administration and the only black faculty member at the Business School, will devote half his time to directing the newly founded RIBM. Other faculty members have expressed strong interest in teaching in the program.

"We will experiment with teaching partly in the classroom and partly in the businesses themselves, arranging our classes in such a way that our students will have as much on-the-job involvement as theoretical exposure," Johnson said.

Joint Teaching

"There will be joint teaching of classes," Johnson explained, "where a white professor or businessman will lead a class with a black instructor working with him."

The business schools of Boston College, Boston University, M.I.T., and North eastern will also participate. In addition, the Institute has received offers of assistance from the local black business community and major businesses elsewhere in the city.

When NEDC decided it wanted to sponsor a Roxbury institute, it tried unsuccessfully to get grants from Model Cities and the Ford Foundation. Johnson said that out of the blue came the desire of the Merrill Trust to invest $1 million for a community program in upgrading ghetto businesses." Stanford University will receive $250,000 from the Merrill Trust.

"The Business School has wanted to be involved in the community for a long time." Johnson said. "We had to convince the School that the Roxbury Institute was the best way to be involved." he explained, "and we had to convince the Merrill Trust."