Fellows Well Met

At Columbia University, months before Sputnik, Dean John Dunning of the School of Engineering confided a pet peeve to Dean Edward W. Barrett of the Graduate School of Journalism. Said Dunning: because most reporters assigned to science stories--and nearly all scientists--are ill-equipped to describe them in dramatic, comprehensible style, the public frequently fails to grasp the importance of scientific developments, such as Columbia's radically new omnirange digital radar (TIME, Aug. 19).

After promises of cooperation from several nearby industrial laboratories and the National Association of Science Writers, as well as from Columbia's top scientific and engineering brains, ex-Assistant Secretary of State, ex-editorial director of Newsweek, Teacher Barrett got a $70,000 initial grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation for a program to improve coverage of science. Barrett's program, announced last week: a series of fellowships that will give selected newsmen one free year at Columbia (plus $550 cash monthly) to broaden their knowledge and sharpen their reporting of the subject. Limited at first to four or five newsmen a year, the program will be expanded, if successful, to provide ten fellowships annually.

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