The Kennedy School's newest assistant dean begins today his job of creating "a sophisticated career placement operation" for the school's burgeoning student body.

Norman R. Smith, assistant dean and director of career and student services, said yesterday he will construct "a databank of Harvard contacts" for the school's 742 students, adding that recent expansion has made students' previous reliance on individual faculty contacts impractical.

When the school had only 100 students as in the mid-1970s, Smith said, "everyone could get individual help from faculty. But with six or seven hundred people, you have to set up a bonafide operation."

The Kennedy School's merger this summer with the City and Regional Planning Program (CRP)--formerly part of the Graduate School of Design--added about 250 students to the school and made the need for career services expansion "a high priority" for the school. Ira A. Jackson '70, associate dean, said yesterday, adding the school's fourfold expansion within five years is "amazing and crazy."

The career services sector of the school is "in urgent need of professionalization," Jackson said yesterday.

Smith said his databank, which will take about a year to complete, will include Kennedy School and Harvard alumni in government or private employment.

The school will also begin sponsoring frequent "wine and cheese" social gatherings for prominent alumni, Smith said, explaining the affairs, to which Kennedy School students will be invited, will give individual students "face-to-face contact" with the types of prospective employers "they must get to know."

Assistant dean for student and alumni services at the Graduate School of Education from 1977 until yesterday, Smith said his Kennedy School responsibilities are not dissimilar to his Ed School duties.