Peace Corps to Select Juniors For Summer Training Program; Shriver Will Speak in February

The Peace Corps will operate a new program to train selected college juniors this summer at six colleges and universities across the country. About one-sixth of the juniors who have applied to the Corps will be made eligible for this special summer training.

Under the program, operating as a pilot project this year, juniors will continue their preparation by taking courses related to their Peace Corps work in their senior year. They will begin active duty immediately after graduation from college.

In addition to interesting more juniors in the Peace Corps, the program is designed to raise the quality of the training program. Special emphasis will be laid on increased facility in foreign languages.

R. Sargent Shriver, Director of the Peace Corps, will visit the Boston area in February to recruit applicants for the regular program and participants in the special project, Michael Shinagel, associate director of the Office for Graduate and Career Plans, disclosed last night. Shinagel speculated that Shriver "may make a major policy speech at Harvard."

One advantage of the program, according to Shinagel, is that it will eliminate the doubts seniors now have about whether or not they will be accepted.

By providing additional opportunity for preparation, the new system solves a problem the Peace Corps has been faced with since its inception, explained Dean Monro. He said that the program could act as a "sort of Peace Corps ROTC."

The project is expected to place a total of almost 300 students in six different programs at different schools. Dean Monro stated that Harvard has not been contacted about holding one of the programs here.

Peace Corps officials stressed that the students chosen to participate in the pilot project would be picked at random from those eligible; the other eligible candidates would still participate in the regular program. If the project is successful, the program will be expanded in 1965 and may eventually include all college juniors who have applied.

The six programs will provide the same basic training as all other Peace Corps programs. They will specialize in secondary school teaching in English-speaking and French-speaking Africa, community development projects in urban and rural areas of Latin America, teaching English as a foreign language, and "exotic" languages, such as Thai.

Harvard alumni have a record of high participation in the Peace Corps, providing more volunteers than any other university except Berkeley. One of the first Peace Corps training programs was held here in 1961.