Defining the Engineer

Thayer School Reaffirms Founder's Liberal Concept In Both Content and Direction of Newest Programs

THE academic year 1962-63 may prove to be one of the most farreaching in the ninety-year history of Dartmouth's Thayer School of Engineering. And the most interesting and central thing about the recent and continuing developments at the School, including the arrival of Myron Tribus as Dean, is that they all add up to a reaffirmation of Thayer School's founding principles. Certainly there are many ways in which the events of the last five years offer remarkable parallels to the beginnings of the Dartmouth program in engineering education in the 1870's.

The initiation of engineering studies at Dartmouth was a pioneer step made possible by the gift of $70,000 from General Sylvanus Thayer, Class of 1807. "The Father of West Point," as General Thayer is remembered in American military history, was superintendent of the academy on the Hudson River for sixteen years, 1817 to 1833. His term of service as an educator was eminently successful, as his posthumous reputation attests, and this experience, along with his subsequent career as a practicing engineer, gave General Thayer very definite opinions about the education of the engineer.

General Thayer's plans for the School stipulated two very "exacting programs. The following description of the course he set is from the College Bulletin of 1873:

By a donation of seventy thousand dollars, the late Gen. Sylvanus Thayer of Braintree, Mass., made provision for establishing, in connection with Dartmouth College, a special course of instruction in Civil Engineering. The venerable donor, himself a distinguished officer of the U.S. Corps of Engineers, was moved to this munificence not only by a regard for his Alma Mater, but also by a desire to provide for young men of ability, an exclusively professional training. The Department is essentially, though not formally, post-graduate. The present design is to give thorough and systematic instruction in fundamental principles and operations pertaining to all branches of science, without aiming to impart, in detail, a technical knowledge of special branches. The capable and faithful student is thus qualified for responsible positions and difficult service, by a training which prepares him to readily acquire a minute knowledge of his "specialty" of the profession to which he may subsequently direct his mind.

General Thayer's approach to engineering education is being advocated today in more elaborate terminology, but what "the venerable donor" espoused is the very heart of the dynamic concept of engineering education for which Dartmouth's Thayer School of Engineering is one of the foremost champions. As it has throughout Thayer School's history, Dartmouth today seeks to produce an engineer rooted in liberal learning with a training that allows him both a particular competence in areas of special concern to him and the flexibility that saves him from the limitations of a too-narrow exposure.

To carry out the program he had in mind for Dartmouth's second and newest associated school General Thayer searched several years and examined the credentials of many fine engineers and educators before choosing a young West Point graduate of the class of 1868, Robert Fletcher, as the School's first Dean. The General wanted a man who would be one with the purpose he had fashioned for the school. He chose well. Dean Fletcher was to give Thayer superb leadership for 47 years.

Dartmouth in the mid-20th century again found itself in a position of seeking the man to guide Thayer School along a path that was well defined. That the path was so well defined is a credit to William P. Kimball '2B, Dean of the Thayer School from 1945 through 1961. He headed the ad hoc committee of Thayer School and College faculty members who recommended the far-reaching Engineering Science Program approved by the faculty in 1958. The complete study of the Thayer School program had begun in 1954 at the direction of the Trustees Planning Committee.

When Dean Kimball asked to be relieved of his administrative duties to devote his time to developing a new educational concept of "environmental engineering," the College was faced with a task nearly identical to that which faced General Thayer and the Dartmouth of 1870. However, it wasn't long before the College placed on its list of candidates a young professor of engineering at U.C.L.A., Dr. Myron Tribus. Other institutions were also looking his way.

That Dartmouth should be interested in Tribus was not too surprising. Many of the points he brought out in a 1957 article, "Engineering: the Art of Using Science," in the Pacific ElectronicsMonthly might well have been said by a modern-day Sylvanus Thayer or included in the Trustees Planning Committee report that gave new force to the Thayer School academic program.

Here are several proposals from that 1957 article:

The relinquishing of the notion that engineers can be turned out in four years. The best that can be done is to turn out men who are prepared to learn to be engineers.

Continued emphasis on synthesis during all levels of instruction.

A strong grounding in the basic sciences.

An introduction to the problems of world resources and the engineer's role in their utilization.

It was also natural that Tribus should take an immediate interest in Thayer School and Dartmouth. Recalling the moment now, he gripped the Thayer catalogue and gestured pointedly with it. "I read this catalogue and found my own objectives in engineering education already being implemented. I felt I had found the right school." And Dartmouth certainly saw "the right man" in Tribus, for he was soon on the job in Hanover.

It wasn't long before it became apparent that Dean Tribus was not only a very vocal and competent spokesman for the Thayer School approach to engineering education but also capable of going in all directions at one time. The Thayer administration and faculty set immediately to the task of making the curriculum even more meaningful for the times; new significance was placed on Thayer's relationship to its engineering alumni; additional emphasis was given to faculty research; and the enrollment program was given special attention. But, of course, the most dramatic development was the announcement last June of the grant of $1,000,000 to Thayer School by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

The grant, one of five providing equal amounts also to Brown, Johns Hopkins, Princeton, and the University of Rochester, was made by the Sloan Foundation in response to reports of a serious shortage of engineers with a broad education in the basic sciences and mathematics. Through its grant the Foundation hopes to encourage more able students to enroll in engineering courses.

In commenting on the grant Dean Tribus was quoted by The New YorkTimes as saying that at Dartmouth the grant would be used to provide a model in engineering education to include "a strong background in liberal learning, a firm grounding in the physical sciences, and a graduate level treatment of engineering which emphasizes creative design, innovation, optimum use of resources, and the logistics of management."

Dean Tribus told the Times reporter that Thayer's program would lead to degrees of Bachelor of Engineering, Master of Engineering, and the Doctorate. He also stated that he expected undergraduate enrollment in engineering science to double, graduate studies to be strengthened, and the faculty increased as a result of the grant.

The Board of Trustees of the College formally approved the degree of Bachelor of Engineering last June and recommendations have been made for graduate degrees at a higher level along the same lines. The Bachelor of Engineering program, offered by the College and taught by the Thayer School faculty, is designed specifically to serve the student whose interests cannot be met by the programs for Bachelor of Civil, Mechanical, or Electrical Engineering. This new degree is the very heart of the new, dynamic Dartmouth apprpach to engineering education at this level, and at the higher graduate level too. Thayer School continues to offer its B.M.E., E.E., and C.E. degrees for work in the specialty fields, but the emphasis is on the new B.E. and the graduate areas leading from this basic concept.

There are no specific course requirements for entrance to the B.E. program other than that the student must complete the equivalent of Dartmouth's undergraduate major in Engineering Science. This major is administered by representatives of the Departments of Engineering Science, Mathematics, Physics, and Chemistry. It is designed to provide a firm foundation in science and liberal arts as a basis for professional study in engineering in the fifth and subsequent postgraduate years.- There is, however, great flexibility, allowing the undergraduate to follow a natural bent toward physics, chemistry, and mathematics. The program is even designed to fill the needs of the student who is equally interested in government or languages.

The freshman year for the student in Engineering Science is similar to that of most of his classmates with the exception that two math courses and one physics course are expected of him in fulfilling his distributive requirements. He continues his math and physics in his sophomore year and gets his first taste of engineering through Engineering Science 21, an introduction to engineering analysis.

Dean Tribus considers ES 21 to be one of the most important courses in the undergraduate engineering program, and he and his faculty have given it the imaginative attention such importance rates. 'Most high school graduates who are intent on engineering tend to want engineering and nothing else, and knowing Dartmouth's emphasis on liberal arts, they go to the technical institutions," the Dean said. "The students we see are less single-minded. In the entering class there are many students who think they are interested in engineering, but are not really sure. We are concerned because too many in the past have dropped engineering for the wrong reasons."

Engineering Science 21 the undergraduate's first course in engineering, is designed to give him a good idea of what engineering is all about. Dean Tribus means to be sure that the boy is aware that engineering is not simply science, but the art of using science. This does not mean that it is apart from science, but that it grows out of science.

One way Thayer School attempts to get this point across to the young man interested in engineering is an all-class project that gives the student the opportunity to think and do as an engineer. This year, for instance, the problem for the class is to determine if it is possible to build an energy-storing device on a bicycle which would have a useful purpose and find a useful market. Variations in design must be explored. Bikes must be tested to determine rolling friction, stress, and dynamic analysis. What might it look like? Who would want it? What about previous patents? How much would it cost to produce? Many questions are obvious. Many other questions, not so obvious, are generated by the excitement of the project. And such a project can be exciting to the students, as. the sophomores learned last year when they competed with each other in designing and building structures of balsa to specifications to see which could withstand the most pressure.

How do the sophomores take to this approach? "They're having a ball!" says Dean Tribus. With this start the student choosing the engineering major goes on to more mathematics and chemistry and to courses in engineering analysis by analog and numerical methods, analysis of structural elements, introduction to circuits, introduction to thermostatics and thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, properties of materials, active and nonlinear circuits, electricity and magnetism, and others of his own choosing.

Having completed his work in Engineering Science, the basic sciences, and other areas of the liberal arts, the student at the end of his four years has both Dartmouth's A.B. and the background for meaningful postgraduate study. In the fifth year those students choosing one of the specialized fields have their schedule of studies fixed, but for the young men embarking upon the Bachelor of Engineering program there are no specific course requirements. Each B.E. student must designate his course selections for himself. He understands, however, that he will be required to demonstrate that the program he has designed will lead to certain proficiencies by the end of the fifth year.

Specifically he will be expected to demonstrate the following:

An ability to do analytical and experimental work in engineering or a relevant field. (For example, chemical processing, or biomedical experiment design, or automatic controls.)

An ability to do creative design.

An ability to analyze and propose a suitable organization for the carrying out of an engineering task.

Although the obvious emphasis of the program is on engineering as the logical extension of science, and not on science itself as has been the trend in engineering education since the rapid-fire developments in science during World War II and after, Dean Tribus is confident that this curriculum is comparable to or better than others in its science requirements. "Students in the Thayer classes are studying many scientific areas not touched in other engineering schools until the graduate level," he says.

The relationship of the engineer to basic science is one that is of great concern and interest to Dean Tribus and his faculty, and they seek to pass this concern along to their students. "A degree in engineering cannot be exclusively a degree in science," the Dean states. "To train an engineer in that way would be similar to training a man in chemistry or biology and then expecting him to be a physician."

Tribus believes Thayer School must impart to the student an understanding of what it means to contribute to a discipline so that he will be tolerant of those who commit themselves to such a choice. Because the engineer commits himself to action (toward application of the disciplines), he may find himself under attack by separate disciplines committed to basic research, the Dean tells his students. But he is quick to point out that the final judges of the engineer's work are not the scientists.

Scientific works are paid for by the general public but judged by scientists, he states, but engineering works are always judged by laymen who will decide whether or not they will pay for them. "If the water from your tap doesn't taste right," he notes wryly, "you judge it yourself. You don't call in a scientific commission."

There are many teachers of engineering at much larger institutions who wish to innovate, Dean Tribus reports, but they have long since discovered the difficulties of changing curricula in such schools. Thayer School can never produce in large numbers the properly trained engineers so desperately needed in American industry, government, and business. But Thayer School can become a pilot plant to determine what needs to be done in making engineering education exciting to students and meaningful to the world which must rely on these men. Thayer's potential for this task has been firmly endorsed with $1,000,000 by a foundation that is known for its sharp evaluation of such matters.

To carry out a program of such note requires not only dynamic direction and a well-conceived curriculum but a faculty of able teachers who are vitally involved in their own engineering and scientific projects. It also requires a faculty that is directed toward a common purpose. This point is emphasized in a recently written report on the School's proposed "Unified Engineering Program."

The breadth of the engineering function requires the cooperation and understanding of the entire faculty of an institution engaged in teaching engineers. It is not conducive to our goals to have an environment which is the sum of entirely different faculty interests. Each faculty member must be aware of the institutional task and make his contribution in support and in consideration of that objective.

It is clearly recognized that a faculty will have specialists responsible for teaching separate parts of the engineering spectrum, but a teacher of mechanics, for example, or of management, must be aware of other considerations, besides his own, and enter an engineering decision.

Thayer has an able faculty which has been strengthened this year by five newcomers to the School's instruction force: George A. Colligan, Ph.D. University of Michigan; Robert H. Edgerton, Ph.D. Cornell University; Robert B. Evans, M.S., U.C.L.A.; Sidney Lees, Sc.D., M.1.T.; and Graham B. Wallis, Ph.D. Cambridge University.

Some of the current faculty research projects sponsored by government agencies and private industries are: Wallis' studies in the mechanism of two phase flow and heat transfer (basic information necessary for the design of nuclear reactors and rockets), Prof. Robert C. Dean's investigation of the anode sheath region of current-carrying plasma flows, Colligan's work on the super cooling and solidification of metals and alloys, Lees' research on control systems, and Tribus' research on the uses of information theory in thermodynamics. Other faculty projects on photo circuits, thin film, and analog computers are also going on. One of the largest and certainly one of the longest research projects (begun in 1948) is Prof. Millett G. Morgan's radio physics group's concentration on problems concerning the ionosphere and magnetosphere of the earth, and specifically with the observation of "atmospheric whistlers." One of the highlights of this Thayer School group's "whistler" study in 1963 will occur when a Polar Orbiting Geophysical Observatory, a so-called "streetcar satellite," is sent aloft with a Thayer "whistler" receiver in it.

A major feature of the faculty research projects at Thayer is that students are given the opportunity whenever possible to participate in them. From Engineering Science 21 to Thayer's highest level graduate programs students are "doing," using what they have learned. They are in a very real way learning the art of using science, otherwise known as engineering.

In the historical development of engineering education based on a broad background in liberal learning, basic science, and "engineering" itself, Thayer has a proud record. The School also has vitality derived from a new, imaginatively conceived program. But in higher education to be fully satisfied is to be one step off the pace, and it's obvious that Dean Tribus and his faculty are well aware of this for in their current report on the "Unified Engineering Program" they address themselves anew to the question: "What is the proper education for an engineer?"

The answer in 1962 reflects a firm conviction first planted in Hanover soil by Sylvanus Thayer and nourished by Dartmouth College since:

"Our concept of education embraces the total development of the individual. We are concerned not only with his acquisition of knowledge and essential human skills, but also with the development of personality, habits of integrity, and responsibility, and with the image of himself and his role in the world. It is not sufficient for our purposes merely to consider the content of technical courses. We must also consider the total environment of the institution and all of the experiences the student has in it."

If that's shooting for the moon, so be it. The first American on the moon may not be an engineer, but it will be an impressive accumulation of engineering know-how that puts him up there.

Laboratory work in soils mechanics (left photo) and methods engineering enliven Thayer School studies for, Ito r, Frank J.Killilea Jr. '60, Charles J. Baumann '62, David M. Peters '62, Peter B. Lothes '62, and Clifton C. Smith '62.

Laboratory work in soils mechanics (left photo) and methods engineering enliven Thayer School studies for, Ito r, Frank J.Killilea Jr. '60, Charles J. Baumann '62, David M. Peters '62, Peter B. Lothes '62, and Clifton C. Smith '62.

Dean Myron Tribus' roleat Thayer is a three-wayone: Dean, researcher, andclassroom instructor.

Forrest R. Martin '65 of Seattle, Wash., left, and Charles M. Atkins '65 ofTeaneck, N. J., learn what engineering is all about by working on the all-classEngineering Science 21 project to develop a bicycle with an energy-storing unit.

Prof. Miles V. Hayes is the instructor for this class in "Engineering Analysis by Analog and Numerical Methods."

Edward W. Pearson '61 of WashingtonDepot, Conn., uses a T-2 theodolite ona surveying problem. Prof. Edward S.Brown Jr. '34 is the course instructor.