Faculty
Industrial management recently made faculty news which provided further evidence that the grove of academe is not nearly so isolated as it was just a decade or two ago.
Prof. Alvin O. Converse of the Thayer School, in a paper delivered to the IEEE International Convention in New York, proposed creation of a pre-professional undergraduate major in "macroengineering" to meet the increasing demands for management of technology. Citing the successful campaign to discontinue development of the SST, and others to abandon stockpiles for chemical and biological warfare and curtail herbicide and pesticide use, he noted the increased interest in the effect of technology on society.
"As our inventory of equipment increases in potency as well as amount, it is only natural to become concerned with its management, particularly in light of the many side effects and the decline in the space to absorb such side effects as we crowd ourselves with larger populations," Professor Converse said.
In response, he suggested the development of a pre-professional undergraduate major designed to prepare people to contribute to the management of technology. He described macroengineering as a field in which "one seeks an understanding of a technological society, or system, in terms of descriptions of the individual processes and devices that make up that system."
Objectives of an undergraduate program in macroengineering would be to give relevance to subsequent specialization; serve as a basic undergraduate major to those interested in the wide Use of technology but who will not go on to engineering graduate programs; and provide a set of elective courses dealing with the wise use of technology.
Contents of a major in macroengineenng might include prerequisite courses in environmental studies, finite mathematics, and the philosophy of human nature. The actual major might consist of courses in technical development of case studies, functional and structural analysis of human habitats, urban and economic analysis, pollution abatement, regulatory law, technological assessment, and policy formation.
Acknowledging that such a program of study runs counter to the present commitment to specialization, Professor Converse maintains that criticism of the program "undervalues the contribution of integrating knowledge with purpose in the synthesis of a wise act."
On another industrially related matter, Paul E. Queneau, a retired vice president of International Nickel Co. and an authority on the use of natural resources, has been appointed an Adjunct Professor at the Thayer School.
He retired last year from International Nickel after 36 years' service and is currently completing his doctoral studies at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands where he holds the academic rank of senior scientific officer. He earned two bachelor degrees and a master's degree at Columbia and did postgraduate work at Cambridge before joining the company in 1934.
The Thayer School's increasing effort in the field of environmental technology will be enhanced by Professor Queneau's experience in mining and extractive metallurgy. He developed processes which increased the recovery of valuable by-products from such operations.
An increasing number of corporate executives are "retiring" to faculties throughout the nation. It is a trend of considerable importance, benefitting both the individual and the institution, although probably the greatest benefactors are students concerned with the relevance of study to their future lives in "the real world."
Hans H. Penner, Associate Professor of Religion, is the author of an essay entitled "Is Phenomenology a Method for the Study of Religion?", published in the current issue of the Bucknell Review.... Donald W. McNemar, Assistant Professor of Government, presented a paper entitled "A UN Model for Controlling Internal and International Wars" at the Northeast Political Science Association meeting in Philadelphia. Earlier he was an observer at the World Youth Assembly at the United Nations held in conjunction with the UN's 25th anniversary celebration and he is currently writing a report on youth participation in the UN.... The Pi Sigma Alpha Award for the best paper presented at the 1969 annual meeting of the American Political Science Association was presented to Richard Winters, Instructor in Government, and Brian Fly of the Stanford faculty for their paper entitled "The Politics of Redistribution."
Prof. James W. Fernandez of the Anthropology Department has embarked for Northern Spain where for the next 18 months he and his wife, Renate, will study community vitality in several rural towns. Several undergraduates will later join them as assistants in the research project sponsored by the National Science Foundation and the Social Research Council.
"We are trying to understand the impact of differences in ecology, administration, and economic structure on inhabitants of two sides of the Cantalerian Mountains, known as the Peaks of Europe. Four centuries ago these people had a common origin in Asturias, but the two sides of the mountains are now remarkably different," says Professor Fernandez.
He and his wife have spent the last ten years studying the response of black Africans to rapidly changing times. They have focused on revitalization movements and the results of this research formed a photographic exhibition on Black African Revivals which was displayed at the College Museum last fall and is now on tour.
"Throughout the rural Mediterranean, the countrymen are experiencing the malaise of rapid change in life style. We will keep in mind the African response to such change in our Iberian research. The relation of vitalization processes in communities to ecological, economic and social variables are critical questions throughout the world, and hopefully, our work will contribute to understanding the nature of community vitality," he said before leaving Hanover.
Professors Gene M. Lyons and Laurence I. Radway of the Government Department are contributing authors to The Military Establishment, published by Harper and Row. It was edited by Prof. Adam Yarmolinsky of the Harvard Law School.
Professor Radway has also been appointed chairman of the American Political Science Association's committee to award the Leonard D. White Prize. It is given to the best Ph.D. dissertation in public administration.
Dean David V. Ragone of the Thayer School has been named chairman of the Advisory Committee on Advanced Automotive Power Systems to the President's Council on Environmental Quality.
The panel will be responsible for evaluating and advising the President's Council on the status of various advanced automotive power systems which might serve as alternatives for the internal combustion engine.
Dean Ragone, who is also chairman of the Panel on Automotive Fuels and Air Pollution for the Commerce Department's Technical Advisory Board, has done extensive work in the field of automobile" fuels, air pollution, and electric cars.
Last year he served as head judge for the widely publicized "Clean Air" transcontinental auto race in which college students drove prototype models of low-polluting engines.
Present urban land use and clues to future modifications in the Boston area are furnished in a map compiled by College geographers from data gathered by devices flying at 60,000 feet.
The project is one of two prototypes for a 26-city mapping program, employing some of the most sophisticated technology, to determine the speed with which an expanding population is "consuming" the land. Washington, D.C. is the other experimental area in the project financed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration through the Department of the Interior.
Robert B. Simpson, Associate Professor of Geography, is chief investigator for the New England Test Site, so designated by NASA for its Earth Resources Aircraft Program. Also participating in the project is David T. Lindgren, Assistant Professor of Geography.
Techniques tested in making the urban land use map of the Boston region will help provide guidelines in planning projects for the unmanned Earth Resources Technology Satellites scheduled for orbiting in 1972 and 1973 and the four manned Spacelabs to be launched in 1972.
"It is exciting, dramatic and even productive to bring back a bucketful of rocks from the moon. But we are approaching the day when we will have unmanned earth-orbiting satellites whose sole job is to look back at the earth and help solve more earthbound problems," says Professor Simpson.
Such backward looks from earth orbit will undoubtedly use variations of techniques used by College geographer in the 10-mile high overflights of Greater Boston. These included conventional photography using filters to screen out different bands of the spectrum, thermal infrared scanners, and side-looking radar detectors. Such high-level imagery has many uses. It can be used by geologists to detect mineral deposits; by agriculturists to predict crop yields; by foresters to locate diseased trees; by hydrologists to locate pockets of fresh water in salt water bodies; by geographers to study problems of urban growth.
The urban land-use maps being produced by these various imagery techniques and census data for the 26 city areas will be used in various ways. In addition to descriptions of current land use, the data can be analyzed with the aid of computers.
Prof. W. Lawrence Gulick of the Psychology Department is the author of a fascinating new book, Hearing: Physiology and Psychophysics published by the Oxford University Press, which describes the role the ear plays in the process of translating sound into hearing.
It was long believed in the field of auditory perception that the human ear was a purely mechanical receptor. However, the bulk of recently accumulated evidence is that the human ear actually converts sound energy into electrical energy.
Professor Gulick has created a novel laboratory demonstration using the inner ear of an anesthetized cat as a microphone to illustrate the conversion of sound by the ear to an electrical potential. He has taped a recording of the Brandenburg Concerto No. 1 by Bach. A long-playing record was used to play the music for the cat, and Professor Gulick with special electrodes recorded the electric potential produced by the inner ear of the cat. This potential was then recorded on tape after suitable amplification.
He says the demonstration is not particularly important in the overall research into the role of the ear in triggering the auditory nerve. He believes his most important work in the field of hearing to be related to the perception of loudness. What he has found, through his joint study of the Physiology of the ear and auditory perception, is that for all tones regardless of pitch, their perceptual loudness is determined by the Size of the electrical trigger from the ear rather than the intensity of the sound.
