Rut Mender

U.S. scientists, who seldom used to worry much about such things, have begun to wonder whether they have the social vision to see beyond their warheads. This week Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the nation's top scientific school, welcomed a man who might do something about that feeling. For the first time in its 81 years, M.I.T. picked as dean of stu dents not a scientist but a minister.

Dr. Everett Moore Baker, pink-faced and prematurely white-haired at 45, has been minister of Cleveland's First Unitarian Church (with the denomination's third largest membership) since 1942. Really a New Englander, he was born in Massachusetts, where he was a preacher for nine years. Until he took the Cleveland pulpit, he was vice president of the American Unitarian Association, head of its publications and of a Boston radio program.

In Ohio he soon won a name as a man with the community on his mind. Besides his ministering, Dr. Baker put in long extracurricular hours on welfare, race and labor problems for public and private agencies. Clevelanders warmed up to his quiet but intense manner, rated him a hard worker.

At Cambridge Dean Baker will advise M.I.T. 's 5,170 students. Says Dr. Baker: "Education, even in technical schools, involves more than [the] test tube. . . .

Its primary purpose is to produce self-reliant, socially responsible, community-minded citizens." He adds with a grin: "Too many so-called well-educated people -- including ministers as well as businessmen and engineers -- are channeled in their small ruts. . . ."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.