What Is "New" in the Program?
DEAN OF THE THAYER SCHOOL
As the editors correctly state in the accompanying article, Dartmouth has a new department, the Department of Engineering Science. And throughout the story, mention is made of the "new" engineering program at Dartmouth. Reading this, the inquiring mind is likely to ask "What's new?" and "How new?" and research is likely to produce some rather interesting answers.
For many years, visitors to my office have seen a framed quotation from Sir Francis Bacon which says in part, "I had no hankering after novelty and no blind admiration for antiquity." The planners of our new engineering program seem to have been guided by Bacon's words.
Thanks to the perception of General Sylvanus Thayer ninety years ago and to Thayer School's determination ever since then to adhere to his philosophy, we have found much of the "old" to be indispensable to the new engineering program.
For example, one of the purposes of the Engineering Science Department is to enable Thayer School to offer professional engineering education at the postgraduate level, where education for other professions such as law and medicine is customarily found, rather than as an undergraduate curriculum according to almost universal American practice. This arrangement coincides with General Thayer's, whose admission requirements of 1867 were so comprehensive in the humanities and social studies as well as in the sciences that no one could qualify for entrance into Thayer School who had not already received Dartmouth's bachelor's degree; and it wasn't until 1893 that students were admitted to Thayer School for their senior year at Dartmouth. Here we find in the new engineering program recognition that the demands of the future will call for a new broadening and strengthening of the pre-professional studies.
Another purpose for which the new Engineering Science Department was created is to provide the means for interdepartmental cooperation and for coordination of the efforts of the science and engineering faculties. This is an essential characteristic o£ engineering education in this day of scientifically oriented curricula in all fields of engineering. That General Thayer was aware of the importance of basic science is clear from the requirements which he established in 1867 for admission to Thayer School. In fact, Dartmouth was hard pressed to provide all the instruction in "geometry, descriptive geometry, analytic geometry, calculus, fundamentals of chemistry, physics" and other sciences which he required. Our new program brings this scientific element up to date and introduces the vital new factor of coordinating science and technology.
The tradition that the engineer should be a broadly educated man rather than a narrow specialist is continued and strengthened by the engineering science major which will be offered by the new department. The new aspect of breadth is in the areas of basic and engineering science where we find an increase in the common core subjects with a corresponding decrease in courses pertaining to a special branch of engineering.
The establishment of an undergraduate department in engineering is not without precedent either. The Chandler Scientific Department was established as such in 1865 and led to the Department of Graphics and Engineering which offered courses in engineering drawing, descriptive geometry, surveying, and some engineering subjects until the early 1950's. Indeed for some time it was possible for students to major in Graphics and Engineering under the direction of this Department which was essentially a separate operation from the Thayer School. The very important new element in the Engineering Science Department is that it is composed of members of the Thayer School faculty, again providing for and emphasizing the coordination and integration of the undergraduate work in basic and engineering sciences with the postgraduate professional engineering studies.
The new Department of Engineering Science thus brings together in modern dress the Thayer School traditions of professional education at the postgraduate level, scientific orientation, the broadly educated engineer, and an undergraduate engineering-oriented department.
In addition, it offers a new undergraduate major program—the Engineering Science major—which is attuned to the realities of twentieth century living. It provides Dartmouth undergraduates with another pre-professional study opportunity in the total engineering science curriculum and it offers all undergraduates individual electives which are appropriate liberal arts courses in this age of automation, fission, fusion, and satellites.
At the same time as it brings the resources of the associated school into the undergraduate program, it places Thayer School as an Associated School in its proper relation to the College: as a postgraduate adjunct to Dartmouth's undergraduate liberal arts program.
And finally, all the features which have been mentioned above as strengthening Dartmouth's engineering program also strengthen the Thayer School itself. Preparation for the professional studies of fifth year will be provided by members of the Thayer School faculty, serving in the Engineering Science Department, together with all members of the Dartmouth faculty in their respective departments. This groundwork will enable Thayer School to offer professional engineering education consistent with its tradition and at the same time cognizant of the new requirements of modern engineering.
The next step was the appointment by Provost Morrison of a third committee of Mathematics, Physics and Thayer School faculty members, under the chairmanship of Dean Kimball, to implement the program approved by the Trustees. This committee worked throughout 1956-57 and made the recommendations, including a new Department of Engineering Science, that were approved successively by the Division of the Sciences, the Committee on Administration of the Curriculum, the Executive Committee of the Faculty, the full Faculty of the College, and finally the Board of Trustees.
ONE of the notable features of the new engineering program is the interdepartmental nature of the effort to develop the integration of basic science studies with engineering courses. The interests of science and engineering science students have been carefully observed in determining both the content and the sequence of subject matter in the new mathematics courses of freshman and sophomore years and a fifth course, "Advanced Techniques of the Calculus," was developed by a joint Thayer-Math Committee. In addition to the topics in analytic geometry and calculus commonly offered to engineering students, special features of the mathematics courses are the tabular solution of integral and differential equations in second term of freshman year; set theory, probability, logic, and vector algebra in the first term of sophomore year; and Laplace transform, partial differential equations, and finite differences in the first term of junior year.
The Chemistry Department will prepare, for introduction in 1960-61, a new first course which, coming in junior year instead of freshman year, will take advantage of the students' previous courses in physics and mathematics. The reduction of time required to treat such subjects as atomic and nuclear structure, covered in previous courses, will make it possible to introduce material in physical chemistry and other subject matter of concern to the engineering student which cannot be included in the freshman course.
The freshman physics courses will continue to provide a two-term fundamental physics sequence appropriate for and common to all science, engineering science and pre-medical students. The sophomore courses will treat the structure of matter, a subject of common interest to physics and engineering science students, extensively at an intermediate level. At the advanced undergraduate level, the Physics Department offers courses in mechanics and in electromagnetic field theory which are included in the engineering science curriculum.
The engineering science courses will present subject matter from areas broadly defined as the mechanics of solids, liquids, and gases, properties of materials, and electrical phenomena. This subject matter will be presented in a sequence of integrated courses rather than in disconnected or unrelated courses. No conventional courses will be included in engineering drawing and descriptive geometry but the important means of graphical communication and ability in space visualization will be developed as tools in engineering analysis. In this new form will be presented the essential matter from such traditional courses as statics, mechanics of materials, dynamics, fluid mechanics, thermodynamics, properties of materials, and electric circuits.
Briefly summarized, the engineering science major over the four-year period will consist of as many as seventeen courses in the social sciences and humanities and twenty Science Division courses, of which seven or eight will be offered by the new Engineering Science Department. Under the three-term, three-course program beginning next year, the student will carry nine courses a year, with Great Issues in the senior year making a 37th course.
Members of the Class of i960 (juniors next year) will be able to elect the engineering science major, to be carried as a regular two-year major program. Engineering students who will be seniors next year will have the usual fourth-year program at the Thayer School, but this will be modified somewhat in keeping with the new plan of engineering education. Students in next fall's freshman class will be the first to take the full four-year engineering science major, and except for taking chemistry in freshman rather than junior year, engineering students in the Class of 1961 will also cover the full program of the new major.
Dean Kimball confers with a student.
An electrical engineering student works on his special project, a differential amplifier.
In the work simplification laboratory Tuck-Thayer students take movies of industrial production methods in order to study and improve techniques increasing productivity.
