Roger B. Porter, IBM professor of business and government, has been named director of the Center for Business and Government at the Kennedy School, Dean Joseph S. Nye Jr. said Thursday.

Porter, a senior scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars at the Kennedy School, was a top domestic policy adviser in the Ford, Reagan and Bush administrations.

He is best known among undergraduates for co-teaching Government 1540: "The American Presidency."

"Roger Porter represents an ideal combination of economic expertise, government experience and scholarly accomplishment to lead the Center for Business and Government," Nye said in a press release. "I hope and expect that he will significantly further the Center's work to explore the connections and interdependencies between the private sector, the public sector and the academic world."

The Center for Business and Government researches a wide range of issues affecting both the public and private sectors, offers instruction to graduate students at Harvard and sponsors fellowships to bring leading business executives and scholars to the Kennedy School, the press release said.

Porter's teaching and research focus on the presidency, the relationship between business and government, strategic management and economic policy, both domestically and internationally.

"I am excited to work with an outstanding group of colleagues," Porter said in the press release.

He added that he looks forward to interacting "with interested business executives and government officials in seeking solutions to a wide range of domestic and inter- national economic policy issues and in examining the most appropriate roles for the public and private sectors."

A 1969 graduate of Brigham Young University, Porter received his M.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard. He also received a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University.

Porter is the author of two books on economic policy, Presidential Decision Making and The U.S.-U.S.S.R. Grain Agreement.