Thayer School
We are pleased to welcome Dean MyronTribus as guest editor of the Thayer Schoolalumni notes. In the following paragraphshe gives us his impressions and future plansas they relate to engineering education atDartmouth.
The education of a freshman, be he Dartmouth '65 or the Dean of Engineering, has much in common with the development of a photograph. There is first of all a requisite exposure to an illuminating scene. Then there is a time for development of the image, and finally one "gets the picture." For this freshman these last six months have been a most pleasant and satisfactory introduction to Dartmouth and Hanover. To sum it up - we like the picture; in total, and in detail. We like the way things have developed.
What attracted us to the Thayer School was the unusual combination of a professional school and a four-year liberal arts college. In recent years leaders of engineering education in the U.S. have been suggesting that this is the direction that must be taken by all schools. In August 1961 the National Science Foundation sponsored a conference on engineering education at Boulder, Colorado. Professor of Civil Engineering William P. Kimball CE'29 and the writer were in attendance. There we were gratified to hear representatives from the leading schools extol the virtues of the plan of education that has been in effect at Thayer since 1871.
After the conference, out of curiosity, I began to read the files relative to the establishment of the Thayer School. It is clear that Sylvanus Thayer (who started the school with his gift of $70,000) and Robert Fletcher (who served as Dean from 1871 to 1918, and was Professor of Civil Engineering Emeritus, 1918-1936) were almost a full century ahead of their time in their conception of what an engineering education should be. They left their stamp upon the school and for this we should all now be grateful.
Readers of this column may not be aware of how the Thayer School of Engineering differs from other engineering schools, even if they have been in attendance at Thayer. After all, we are, most of us, privileged to be undergraduates but once and usually only on one campus. So it may be of interest to see Thayer through the eyes of a newcomer.
First of all there is the liberal arts influence. It is especially important to an engineer that he have an appreciation of human values. In 1820 Sadi Carnot wrote, . . to know how to discern the more important of those which are only accessories; to balance them properly against each other, in order to obtain the best results by the simplest means: such should be the leading characteristics of the man called to direct, to coordinate among themselves the labor of his comrades, to make them cooperate towards one useful end, of whatsoever sort it may be." If this view of the engineer's task - scientist, planner, manager, leader - was true in 1820, it is more so today. Graduates of the Thayer School five-year program have had one full year more of liberal education than the accreditation requirements of the Engineers Council on Professional Development. Few, if any, engineering schools in the U.S. match this. Most schools do not quite meet the suggestions of the American Society for Engineering Education.
While the students are in the College, they major in Engineering Science, a four-year pre-engineering program that is acknowledged to be "tough." Graduates of this program are eligible to enter Thayer for the fifth year of professional work.
The first four years are devoted to the fundamentals. Graduates of years ago are shocked to learn what undergraduates of today must study, for the list of subjects mastered by the E. S. undergraduate major includes much of what was (and in many schools, still is) graduate level work. Our students all study the fundamentals of finite mathematics, probability theory, quantum mechanics, statistical mechanics, vibrations of solids, electronic computers, linear systems analysis, as well as more familiar topics in structures, fluids, circuits, and mechanics.
As Russ Stearns CE'38 remarked in last month's column, this program has recently been reviewed by the Board of Overseers who met with President Dickey and Provost John W. Masland last December 1 and 2. They agreed that the number one problem of Thayer School has been and continues to be enrollment. The nationwide enrollment in engineering is down and Thayer is not alone in its difficulties. Other schools (Cal Tech, MIT, etc.) report similar trends. A brochure has been prepared for distribution to high school students. The Dartmouth Society of Engineers, under the leadership of Bob McIlwain TT'51, has organized a group to cooperate with the National Enrollment Committee. A movie is in planning and preparation. This year the number of freshmen indicating engineering as their objective was down to 89. The Overseers agreed that we would like to have about twice that number.
The new curriculum poses new problems for our faculty. Assistant Professor Carl Long is studying this year at Yale. Professor Kimball is on sabbatical leave at Northwestern. Professor Joseph Ermenc has just been awarded a National Science Foundation fellowship and will study for a year in Eng- land and on the Continent. The modernization of the curriculum proceeds at such a rapid pace that the faculty has a hard time keeping up! These sabbaticals are a necessity — not a luxury!
Some changes in fifth-year instruction have been instituted to take advantage of the new, stronger science and mathematics backgrounds the students bring. Most interesting to alumni will probably be the changes in the laboratories. The emphasis in the fifth year is to be on creative individual projects. The electrical motor laboratory (originally installed in the 1940's) is being dismantled and will be replaced by a laboratory devoted to numerical controls. Professor of Engineering Science Myles Hayes has designed the new laboratory and is supervising its installation. The mechanical engineering laboratory is being converted to a "projects laboratory" in which the students may carry on their individual projects.
To support student activities research contracts have been negotiated with various agencies of the government. Thus far we have received a contract to cover two students to study heat transfer in arctic dwellings from the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory now located in Hanover, a contract to study decision theory applied to reliability engineering, several contracts to study radio propagation in the ionosphere, a contract from the Army Ground Corps to test a Ground Effects Machine designed and built by two seniors, BruceJohnson ME'62 and Peter Stone CE'62, a contract to run for two years covering research into plasma arc heat transfer. Several other contracts are pending. Each is expected to provide financial support for one or more students in his fifth year.
Plans are underway to present to the Overseers and Trustees a proposal for doctoral level work at Thayer School. We shall report on this matter in a later column.
Five Thayer School graduates of last June won recognition in the Industrial Management Society's Methods Improvement Competition. Trophies were awarded duringthe Society's Silver Jubilee Management Clinic held in Chicago. Ralph Landes of theWestern Electric Co., presented awards to (l to r) Barry MacLean '60, Wayne Givens'60, and Robert Fogarty '58. MacLean and Givens combined with Thomas Brock '60for second-place honors with a method of assembling ball bearings. Fogarty andArthur Pritchard '60 developed a method of processing printing machine type whichearned them honorable mention, and which will save workers many hours.
