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NEW BUREAU TO BE HEADED BY PUTNAM

Large Increase in Non-Educational Employees and Recent Difficulties Account for Creation of Office

The continued growth of the number of people employed by the University in non-educational purposes has led the Corporation to establish a new office of Personnel Relations to be headed by Augustus Lowell Putnam '20 as its director.

The office probably will be established this spring but will hardly take full effect until next year. In the statement given out at University Hall it was intimated that the office will stand in an advisory rather than a compulsory relationship with the various departments. A study of personnel bureaus in other institutions has apparently been made, since the newly created Harvard office will-attempt to combine the experience gained from the observance of other universities and apply it to the Harvard needs.

According to the release it will "seek to understand the problem of those departments (the various Harvard departments) and to suggest methods which represent a combination of experience elsewhere with the needs of particular departments here."

Mr. Putnam, the newly created head, is at present the Consultant on Careers for the University with offices in Wadsworth House. He has been occupant of this position for one year. The problem of choosing a successor for him is at present being considered but no announcement has been made as yet.

It is hardly only the rise of the number of non-educational employees but also recent difficulties with these employees and with their administrators that has accentuated the move to establish the new office. The number of employees has risen in recent years from 1200 to approximately 2500. The most recent trouble over the men and women engaged in the non-educational service of the University has been the now famous scrubwoman case which brought the University much unfavorable publicity.

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