Thayer School

The summer came and went with the increasing speed your reporter finally accepted as one bit of evidence of advancing years. However, I can call attention to a very busy summer at the Thayer School which in itself made the days rush by.

Writing these notes in early September prompts one to look back at the just finished summer session while, at the same time, planning for the rapidly approaching college year. The summer session for Thayer School, as announced in May, appears to have been most successful. Since I was involved in the Sophomore course ES 21, Inroduction to Engineering, and the NSF sponsored workshop in design for visiting engineering teachers coupled with it, I saw little of the courses taught by Dean Tribus and Prof. Paul Shannon, Prof. Graham Wallis and Prof. George Taylor. While these courses were all one or two weeks long and the students mainly graduate engineers or scientists, ES 21 was a full nine weeks and the students, all non-Dartmouth, were undergraduates, mostly between the freshman and sophomore year.

Prof. Robert Dean, the Director of the Summer Workshop, Prof. Paul Shannon and I were all impressed and pleased by the student projects. The seven visiting faculty, who actually taught the course under our direction, were astonished when their students completed designs and prototypes for three curb-negotiating wheelchairs, a transfer arm for a wheelchair, a vertical lift and transfer device, and a combination hoist, transfer device and stair climber, all for crippled or paralyzed people. It was the conclusion of the visiting faculty that the course would be a great asset at all their home universities. Incidentally, this was the first full, official, summer session course at the Thayer School and it might be contrasted by most Thayer alumni with the old five-week summer session discontinued a few years ago.

It is always a pleasure to look back at this time to the May meeting of the Executive Committee of the Dartmouth Society of Engineers held in Hanover in May. The Thayer School Board of Overseers also met in Hanover the same day, May 20. The Overseers and the Executive Committee met jointly and separately in addition to a visit to the Thayer School for informal discussions with faculty and students. Overseers present included: Robert T. Barr '42, E.Shaw Cole '31, Charles C. Leader, David M. Lilly D'39, Henry J. McCarthy D'31, James H. Wakelin Jr. D'32 and John C. Woodhouse D'21.

D.S.E. officers present were: Gerry Same'51, Tom Barr '50, Rube Samuels '47, SamFlorman '46, Bill Olmstead '39 and JackDevor '42. An excellent get-together and dinner for alumni, faculty and students was held at the Norwich Inn. It is my duty to report that first prize for low net score in the faculty-alumni golf match went to Col. Des Canavan, Thayer School Executive Officer, and the booby prize was accepted by Russ Stearns '38.

Now, a look to the future shows two new faculty members, bringing the total Thayer School faculty to 34. The new Thayer School catalog has just arrived and is available, of course, to all upon request. Associate Professor of Engineering Thomas L. Altshuler received his M.S. degree from Columbia and his Ph.D. from Oxford. His field is metallurgy with a specialty in cryology. Associate Professor of Engineering Percival D. McCormack received his M.A. and Ph.D. at the University of Dublin. He will teach and conduct research in control engineering, instrumentation, and system design.

Two visiting faculty members are Professor Ti Huang from New Mexico State University and Professor A. Ralph Yappel from the University of Arizona who are Ford Foundation Visiting Professors at Thayer School this fall. They are concerned with the development of effective techniques for the teaching of engineering design at the undergraduate level. Thus they will be involved with the Thayer staff in teaching ES 21, Introduction to Engineering, and in developing material based on ES 21 which can be used by engineering professors at other institutions.

Professor Huang is an Associate Professor in Civil Engineering and is currently involved in the Structural Design course sequence at New Mexico. This summer he participated in an NSF Workshop on Computers in Engineering Design at the University of Michigan.

Professor Yappel teaches senior level design courses in the Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering Department at the University of Arizona. Professor Yappel's students also have worked on the design of water desalting systems, as did the students in ES 21 in 1963.

Professors Huang and Yappel are the first of the visiting professors who will visit Hanover to spend ten-week terms at Thayer School during the next two years. It is anticipated that two or three professors from different institutions will be in residence each term. Their work with our staff in a series of projects in engineering education has been made possible by a recent grant to Thayer School from the Ford Foundation.

Next month, these notes will concern themselves, as they should, with the doings of the alumni. Please, therefore, send word of your activities.