Thayer School

WHEN THE Thayer School of Civil Engineering takes over its new building opposite Tuck School next fall it will also put into effect a new "intensive schedule" of study which will abolish semester courses and provide for the student's carrying only two subjects at a time instead of five or six. By this action of the faculty, recently approved by the Committee on Administration and the Board of Overseers, Thayer School returns in part to the system in force there from the founding of the School in 1870 until the semester method was first adopted in 1925.

Also as part of the new system, comprehensive examinations for both the A.B. and C. E. degrees will be given for the first time, thus bringing the senior requirements into conformity with those for seniors in other majors of the College. There will be no semester examination periods, the final examination in each course being given upon completion of the course, but semester and mid-semester grades will be available for first year students so that they may fulfill the eligibility requirements of the undergraduate College. The new system has also been arranged so that there will be no conflicts for students taking work in both Thayer School and the College, a group composed of seniors preparing for engineering other than civil and of seniors taking the newly created combined major in engineering and business fundamentals. Comprehensive examinations for second-year Thayer School students will constitute an enlargement of the oral examinations before the Board of Overseers, which have been required of candidates for the Civil Engineer degree in recent years.

The new "intensive schedule" of study, which will be adopted for both first-year and second-year classes, will add no new subjects to the Thayer School curriculum and will involve no increase in course content or in the amount of work required of the student. "On the contrary," Dean Frank W. Garran has stated, "owing to the greater efficiency of the intensive schedule, the number of hours of student work per week will actually be reduced." The schedule has been called "intensive" by Dean Garran to signify that at any given time the student will be working intensively on two subjects rather than intermittently on six or seven. The Thayer School calendar will conform to the College calendar of vacations with the exceptions, as in recent years, of the earlier opening for the firstyear civil engineering students and the earlier graduation for second-year students.

The new Thayer School schedule was adopted after extensive investigation by the faculty, including consultation with experts in educational theory, with educators in engineering and other collegiate fields, and with men who attended Thayer School under the semester system and others who attended when the intensive system was formerly in use. It is anticipated that the plan going into effect next year will result in greater depth of understanding and increased student interest in the subjects studied.