A 38-year-old black architect has been named associate dean of the Graduate School of Design.

Jerome W. Lindsey Jr., an associate professor of Architecture who came to Harvard from Howard University last year, will assist Dean Maurice D. Kilbridge in the administrative duties of the school.

Lindsey says that he will have three major duties in his new job-to improve relations between the faculty and students, including students as much as possible in the operation of the school; to head a committee of faculty, students, and outside experts which will choose a new chairman for the Department of City and Regional Planning; and to update the City Planning curriculum in response to student needs.

The City Planning Department has been a center of controversy at the GSD for several years. Students in the department vigorously protested last year the department's decision not to renew the teaching appointment of Chester Hartman, an assistant professor involved in a people-oriented urban renewal program.

The City Planning program has also had difficulty in recruiting new students. Last year, seven out of the nine applicants who were accepted at both Harvard and M.I.T. chose to go to M.I.T.

Lindsey, who received his bachelor's degree in architecture from Howard, has master's degrees in both architecture and city planning from M.I.T. Hedenies that there is any conflict between architects and city planners at Harvard. The departments, he says, are "close and interlocking, they complement each other."

Lindsey is active in environmental planning for low income areas through his firm, Jerome W. Lindsey Associates, in Washington, D.C.