Ed School Faculty Approves Plan For One-Year Masters Program

The Graduate School of Education faculty has shortened the length of its Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) Program from two years to one, starting with the next class to be admitted.

At a meeting yesterday, the faculty decided to drop the second half of its present MAT Program-which consists of one year of academic work and one as a school intern. As interns, ed students have worked for salaries under the guidance of trained teachers in Boston-area schools.

Paul A. Perry, assistant dean of the School of Education, said that the main reason behind dropping the second year was a shortage of qualified classroom supervisors in the Boston area.

"There are not enough local supervisors," Perry said, "who can spend enough time and have the training to provide supervision acceptable to Harvard."

Perry added that the new single-year program will include some class training to make up for the lack of internship. However, he said that recent MAT candidates have brought much more teaching experience with them than students have in the past. "Five years ago we got dewy-eyed Wellesley graduates who wanted to change the world," he said.

Cambridge Project

At the end of the meeting, Noel F. McGinn, lecturer in Education, presented a report calling for specified changes in the Cambridge Project before Harvard considers joining the policy board of the Defense Department-funded program.

The Ed School faculty will discuss the Cambridge Project-which uses Harvard and M.I.T. computers for social and behavioral science research-at a meeting on December 10.