Thayer School
When Professor Russ Stearns CE'38 went into the hospital last month for some major surgery, he asked me to take over the May edition of his Thayer School news. I am happy to do so but I am even happier to report that Russ's surgery was so successful and his recovery so uncomplicated that I am not sure at this point which one of us should be substituting for the other.
As I sit in my office, going into the Spring Term 1961, the sounds coming through from the adjoining room 202 are surely a sign of the times, for this room, which started out some twenty years ago to be a drafting room, has been converted this term into a substation for Dartmouth's Computer Center and contains 15 automatic desk calculators and a flexowriter. This equipment enables the 40-odd students, enrolled in Thayer School-taught computer courses this spring, to prepare their programs for feeding directly into the LGP-30 which is located in College Hall.
A meeting of the Thayer School Board of Overseers was held at the Dartmouth Club in New York on April 2 to enable Dean-Elect Tribus and Dean-Almost-Emeritus Kimball to exchange views with members of the Board on the future over-all program of the Thayer School and the development of the environmental engineering concept of civil engineering respectively. The meeting was attended by President Dickey, Vice President Hicks, Provost Masland and Overseers J.Hartness Beardsley DC'37, Dean Gordon S. Brown, E. Shaw Cole CE'31, President Jess H. Davis and John C. Woodhouse DC'21 in addition to Messrs. Tribus and Kimball.
Dick Wilson CE'56 visited the School last month in the company of Hank Smith DC'33 and some athlete-engineer prospects from western New York state. Dick is District Sales Coordinator for the New York Telephone Company in the Buffalo area but has retained his professional engineering interest to the extent of recently taking and passing his New York State Professional Engineers Examination. The Wilsons live in a rural area outside Buffalo and are the parents of a three-year-old boy and a one-and-a-half-year-old girl.
Recent letters from Jerry Estabrook CE'41 bring the information that he is Vice President of the Mitchell Industrial Tire Company in Chattanooga, Tenn., and that his son Kent is headed for college next fall.
It was a pleasure to encounter Al Richmond CE'15 at a meeting in Hartford last month of the Connecticut Section of the American Society of Civil Engineers, where I participated as a member of a panel discussing engineering education. Al has recently been appointed Executive Secretary of the Norwalk Citizens' Action Committee. In this capacity, he will coordinate the work of more than a dozen special study committees of that organization. He is a vice chairman of the Citizens' Action Committee of which he has been a member since its organization in 1957. He is also Vice President of the Miller-Stephenson Chemical Company in Norwalk.
The busy recruiting season which extended through the winter term at Thayer School brought many old friends to the campus including Mel Wellstead TT'59, manufacturing supervisory trainee with the Continental Can Company in Chicago. Incidentally, the recruiting season also brought many complimentary comments on the quality of the Thayer and Tuck-Thayer graduating students, reinforced convincingly by plant visit and employment offers. Another Thayer alumnus who took advantage of the recruiting season to visit us was Lansing Reed CE'47 who is manager of the Providence, R. I., sales office of the Aluminum Company of America. The Reeds, with their four children, make their home in Barrington, R. I.
Word has been received from the office of the Dean of Engineering at Penn State University that Gerry Huth '60 who transferred to that institution after completing first-year Thayer work, received his bachelor's degree in Civil Engineering in January and "because of his outstanding record was elected as student marshal and represented the College of Engineering and Architecture in the Commencement ceremony." We are pleased but not surprised.
Leo Cunningham CE'47 has recently been admitted as a partner in the Burns & McDonnell Engineering Company in Kansas City, Missouri.
Prof. Ed Brown CE'35 was recently elected President of the New Hampshire Section of the American Society of Civil Engineers. In this capacity he attended a conference of local section officers in Boston last month where he presented a paper on "The Advantages of Continuity in the Administration of Local Sections."
