Thayer School

By the time you read these notes, the annual meetings of the Thayer School Overseers and the officers of the Dartmouth Society of Engineers will be past. On May 23 the feature event of the two-day meetings will take place in Alumni Hall. The Thayer School faculty, students, D.S.E. officers, and the Overseers, at their annual dinner, will honor Dean Myron Tribus and Sue. Myron by that time will have two months of Washington under his belt as Assistant Secretary of Commerce, for Science and Technology. The effects of his presence there are already being felt for today (May 1) we had detailed conversations with a representative of the National Bureau of Standards about our work, and theirs, in applications of operations research and systems analysis to city and town problems and decisions. As always, a visit to the Kiewit Center and the time-shared computer system made a tremendous impression on our visitor.

Also at the dinner on May 23, Abbie Metcalf and Ross Hunter will be honored on the occasion of their retirement. Abbie, known to most Thayer alumni for her deep, personal interest in our varied problems and dedicated service toward solving them, retires after almost 25 years as Thayer School librarian. Ross will leave the hectic atmosphere of the metal processing shop where students and faculty regularly pressure him for impossible completion dates and product precision and innovation beyond the call of duty. However, we all know the job gets done on time, and accurately. We will miss Abbie and Ross.

Next September there will be some shuffling of course assignments, since Professor of Engineering Joseph Ermenc and Associate Professor of Engineering Alvin Converse will be on leaves for the fall term. Joe will remain in Hanover for most of the time writing papers for his popular course, Development of Technology. These comprehensive articles deal in depth with specific milestones in the development of technology from ancient to modern times. Examples include Alexandrian technology, the development of the gas turbine, the Xerox process and company, and frozen orange concentrate. Al Converse is on his way to Australia for seven months in residence at the University of Queensland in Brisbane. He will be Guest Professor from May 1 to November 30, 1969. Al also plans to do research on the technical-economic development of Queensland.

Malcolm Lewis, D.E. candidate, is spending the spring term with Levitt and Sons in Lake Success, N. Y. To quote Malcolm, " - the largest homebuilders in America. They are now in the initial phase of their design and evaluation of industrialized building methods, and I will be working with them in those efforts. This will provide me with a unique opportunity to gain at firsthand the knowledge and insight into the building industry which is necessary for my own work." The object of his thesis work is to develop a solution for the low-income rural housing problem of northern New England (especially Vermont), an outgrowth of his 30-day, D.E. qualifying exam. From July to December he will be attending the 14th International Course on Planning and Building in Rotterdam, sponsored by the Bouwcentrum, a private, non-profit institute for building research in Rotterdam.

Carl Stormer, M.E. '67, who is a Civil Engineer with the Alaska District, Corps of Engineers, writes from Anchorage: "Next week I will be going to Bethel, Alaska which is on the Kuskokwin River to help present the design of a navigation channel which I did. This will be my first experience in the bush. During May, June and July Amchitka Island on the Aleutian Chain will be my home. The assignment will be a testing laboratory (concrete, asphalt, and soils) and inspecting a runway overlay. The contract calls for the use of an asphalt plane to smooth off the high spots. It should be interesting." With all the activity and excitement on the Northern Coastal Plain in the search for oil, one would expect that Carl might end up on a road, railroad or pipeline project along the shore line of the Arctic Ocean. He should visit the While Hill region, north of Umiat, which is fascinating.

Joe Wattleworth, M.S. '60, who was last reported moving from Texas to Washington, D. C., has been named Vice President of the Kelly Scientific Corporation, and a member of the Board of Directors. Joe will have responsibility for the company's technical activities in transportation system analysis First Lieutenant Ward Hindman '68 has been awarded U.S. Air Force silver pilot wings at Sheppard AFB, Texas. Ward has been assigned to McConnell AFB in Kansas for flying duty with the Tactical Air Command. He was commissioned at Dartmouth through the Air Force ROTC, which reminds us that the College, particularly the faculty are, at this writing, in the middle of a long' difficult discussion over ROTC at Danmouth. This issue of the ALUMNI MAGAZINE should present the decisions resulting from our deliberations.

We at Thayer School wish you a fine summer, including, we hope, a visit to Hanover and Thayer.