Two new mid-level deans--one of whom is entering a newly created position--are joining the Graduate School of Design (GSD) this month, the University announced recently.

Polly Price, the former head of a local organization which develops cultural programs for schools statewide, will take over the reins as associate dean for administration, serving as the school's chief financial, personnel and administrative officer. Price will manage a staff of about 80 and a $7 million budget.

Lawrence Watson, an assistant dean at Cornell's College of Arts and Sciences, will assume the new post of assistant dean of academic programs. GSD spokesman Mary E. Dolden said Watson will oversee the budgets and operations of the GSD'S three academic departments--architecture, landscape architecture and urban design.

The administrative changes come as the GSD has finally weathered a storm of academic and financial disasters.

Following the University's 1980 transfer of the GSD's City and Regional Planning Program to the Kennedy School of Government--taking 35 percent of the Design School's tuition income--the GSD ran three years of deficits totalling more than $900,000.

But last year, the GSD ran its first balanced budget in four years, registering a $2000 surplus. Dean Gerald M. McCue has launched a major effort to refocus and revitalize the school's academic curriculum, particularly through the strengthening of a new urban planning program and adding new master's degree programs.

The school in also seeking to bolster its $30 million endowment by raising $18.8 million through a decade-long fundraising drive.

McCue has credited much of the successful turnaround to Kate Rooney, who stepped down as associate dean for administration in September. Rooney came to the GSD from a hospital administration job in 1980, the same year as McCue.

Price, who replaces Rooney, has served as executive director of the Cultural Education Collaborative (GEC) in Boston. The GEC, founded in 1975, develops curriculum related cultural programs for schools around the state, as well as adult education and cable television shows.

An assistant dean at Cornell since 1977. Watson has acted as dean of seniors in the college, co-managing an undergraduate academic advising center and co-directing a minority education affairs progra