Graduate May Receive MPA Deanship

The Kennedy School of Government next week may offer a newly-created assistant deanship of the Master of Public Administration Program to a student who will receive his MPA in graduation ceremonies today.

Leon R. Tarver Jr., a former Secretary of community affairs for Louisiana, may become the first black faculty member of the K-School. Tarver is the "likely and leading candidate" for the post, Ira A. Jackson '70, associate dean of the K-School, said Monday.

"If I were chosen I would look forward with a great deal of enthusiasm to joining a group of deans at the Kennedy School," Tarver said yesterday.

Tarver said he is particularly interested in having the K-School develop a more comprehensive approach to its specialized programs within the MPA curriculum. The specialized nature of such programs as business and governmental relations, or state and local policy management, is unique among MPA programs, Tarver said.

Jackson said that with Tarver and Thomas C. Schelling, Littauer Professor of Political Economy, directing the MPA program, the program should have sufficient resources to keep pace with the K-School's Master of Public Policy program. Over the past decade it had not been expanding as rapidly as the MPP, he added.

Tarver said that because he is black, he could bring to the post "a responsibility and sensitivity to the school's consideration of trying to provide opportunities for various ethnic minorities to participate in the future of the school."

K-School administrators have been searching for a candidate for six to eight months, Jackson said. They are a week away from the legal deadline for selecting a candidate, he added.

If Tarver becomes assistant dean and director of the MPA program, he will assume the post July 30.

New Man

Tarver is a former Louisiana state secretary of the Department of Urban and Community Affairs. He also has worked as the executive director of the Commission of Intergovernmental Relations in Louisiana.