THURSDAY, JULY 3, 1969
Convention Stimulates Speech-Making
The American Society of
Engineering Educators held
their 77th annual meeting at
the University last week.
Following are some excerpts
from speeches given during
the convention by a number
of the educators:
Eric A. Walker, University
president, said last week that
American colleges and
universities must free
themselves from outmoded
tradition if they are to keep
pace with the real needs of
their students.
t Addressing the awards din
ner of the American Society of
Engineering Educat.)..s meet
ing at the University, Walker
sa,d. "It seems to be that a
part of the problem on our
campuses has been created
because we have paid all too
much attention to the question
of what we teach ani not
enough to the question of how
to teach it.
"In spite of innovations in
traditional teaching methods,
and in spite of the constant ad
dition of new material and new
techniques, the traditional pat
tern prevails.
"We have modified and
adapted our programs and
methods but we have laded to
question th e fundamental
validity of many of our basic
concepts."
Walker, who also is president
of the National Academy of
Engineering, told the dinner
that ; American higher
education had done a
remarkable job i n ac
commodating growing scores
of students without any loss in
the quality of instruction.
Yet, he continued, despite
repeated adaptation, review
and revision of the college cur
riculum, a major complaint of
students today is the im
personality of their college
lives.
"A student can spend four
years at a large university and
never really get to know a
single one of his instructors
well," Walker said.
"He registers for th e
prescribed courses, attends his
classes at specified times,
takes the scheduled ex
aminations and • adds a a few
more credit hours to the total
he needs for graduation.
"The charge he makes that
he has become a number on an
IBM card has some
justication. -
"In spite of our growing
recognition of individual dif
ferences .among human be
ings...we have nevertheless
continued to try to force our
students into a pattern design
ed in many respects for a
mythical average student.
'Many of our practices are
based upon time-honored con
ventions-tWe allow them to
hem us in for no good reason.
It is merely - that we have
always done things this way in
the past.
"I think we would do well to
ask ourselves whether the
changes we have made in
adapting our education al
system to the demands made
upon it in recent years have
been adequate—whether we
have indeed kept pace in our
colleges with the real needs of
our students."
Among the basic concepts of
higher education questioned by
Walker were:
The four-year curriculum—
"ln general we take four nine-
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Engineering Educators Discuss Social and Technological Change
month years to accomplish our
purpose. Is there anything sac
rosanct in' this? Isn't it time
we ask ourselves very serious
ly whether we are right in
trying to tie everybody to a
standard f our-year cur
riculum?"
The credit sy s t em—
" Somehow or other every
course has to be measured n
numbers of credit hours or
courses... The trouble is that
the digits we are trying to use
for measurement of credits are
not the same size. It scem'i to
me that all too often such a
system restrains us from doing
what we really ought to do."
Lectures— "Too often, it
seems to me, lectures are pret
ty wasteful devices by which
symbols are transferred from
the notebook of the lecturer to
the notebook of the student
without leaving much im
pression in the heads of either
one. Since all kinds of copying
machines are now generally
available, I see no reason why
students can't be given copies
of the professor's notes and
thus avoid the distracting and
useless work of writing by
longhand a set of . symbols
which...are often meaningless
anyway.
Regimentation ','What can
regiment students more than
forcing them to attend class
with 100 or 25 or even .10 other
students listening to lectures in
exactly the same detail, taking
exams in unison, and marching
on to the final day when each
will be given a grade. There is
no freedom for the learning
process here..."
Productivity "In the total
private economy, man-hour
production has almost doubled
since 1947. But where has been
the increase in productivity in
American education? The ans
wer is that there has been
very little. In higher education
we are still teaching at the
ratio of about 15 students for
each faculty member and us
ing methods that have long
since been outmoded."
Walker said there is enough
talent, intelligence and
creativity in American higher
education to devise a system
tailored to meet the individual
needs of students if educators
would just take on the task.
- "Isn't it about time someone
applied the innovation,
courage, money and freedom
from tradition to try to do
things differently?" he con
cluded.
• It's up to engineers to solve
the ills of today's society
because social and behavioral
scientists have failed to do the
job, said Melvin H. Snyder.
"The students in engineering
schools today will shortly be
reshaping the world and they
must become aware that their
task is to apply science for the
good of mankind:" maintained
Snyder, pr of es s,o r ' of
aeronautical engineering at
Wichita State University.
Snyder called on a 1l
engineers to apply themselves
to social problems, especially
those created by technology.
"The economists, the
politicians, the humanists and
the religionists have failed in
this undertaking," he said.'
"Technology can attack most
social ills—food, shelter, corn-1
munication, transpor
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tation—and is capable of solv
ing many of them."
To achieve thiS redirection in
the field of engineering. Snyder
urged major changes in the
humanistic-social stem of the
engineering curriculum in col
leges and universities.
In particular, hit Uht, the ob
jectives of these (.....ut.,;s must
be re-defined and courses be
relevant to engineering stu
dents.
"Engineering educators
must join with their colleagues
in the social sciences to offer
more interdisciplinary courses
relevant to today's problems,"
he said. "Education in the
humanities and in the social
and behavioral sciences must
be improved both in the stem
of the engineers' education and
in liberal arts education.
"This may seem
presumptuous on my part, but
there is a vital need for
courses in technology for non
technical persons," Snyder
concluded. "Students in liberal
arts colleges and other colleges
study science, but they don't
study technology. They learn,
for instance, that Darwin was
a scientist and he discovered a
certain principle, bu t they
never heard of Bessemer,
although the Bessemer pro
cess, which made available
structural steel at low cost,
has affected their lives much
more than Darwin's discovery
of the process that he ascribed
to evolution."
Fired by increasing dif
ferences among college stu
dents both in mental ability
an d scholastic backgrounds
and their stiffening resistance
to required courses, a
revolution in instruction has
begun.
"The last three decades of
the 20th century will witness a
drastic change in the business
of providing instruction in
schools and colleges, - Harold
E. Mitzel said.
The recipient of th e
Division's Eminent Lec
tureship Award. Mitzel, who is
assistant dean for research in
the University's College of
Education, believes that adap
tive education is the wave of
the future:
Progress toward adaptive
education—the tailoring of sub
ject matter presentations to fit
the special requirements and
capabilities of each learn
er will be the big difference
between our best schools and
our mediocre ones by the year
2,000, Mitzel said.
"With- society's new
awareness of the inequality in
higher education, university
entrance standards will have
to be lowered for sizeable
groups of blacks who have
been poorly educated in the
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HAROLD E. MITZEL, assistant dean for research in the
College of Education, tells members of the ASEE that en
trance standards will have to be lowered to admit sizeable
groups of blacks to Universities.
nation's secondary schools.
This lowering o.f entrance
requirements will inevitably
increase the heterogeneity of
scholastic skills which make
the traditional teaching job so
difficult," Mitzel said.
Among the changes that the
instruction revolution will
bring, Dr. Mitzel predicts new
grading practices. "If our job
- is to help each of our students
to achieve mastery over some
operationally defined portion of
subject matter...how much
more relevant it would be if we
could say, on the basis of ac
cumulated evidence, that John
Jones has achieved 95 per coat
of the objectives in Engineer
ing 101, rather than say that
John Jones got a "B" in
Engineering 101."
He also suggested that a
good way to begin - adapting
instruction to the students
capabilities is to allow him to
pace the rate of nis own
instruction.
"In the current wave of stu
dent unrest," .Mitzel concluded,
". . . lies one big issue which
the students themselves haven't
spelled out very clearly. This
is the issue of the relevance of
contemporary c ol le gi a te
instruction for students' lives.
It seems' to me students are
saying, albeit not very clearly,
that they want some • adult to
care about them, to pay at
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tention to them and to guide
them."
"War in the future, on any
appreciable scale, will be vir
tually imposible because it
will be too costly. toolleviitat
ing and there will be no vic
tory," said Arthur B. Bromicll,
dean of engineering at the
University of Connecticut in a
panel during the convention of
the American Society for
Engineering Education.
"The scientists and
engineers who have created
the diabolical instruments of
war also are forging the essen
tial conditions of w orld
stability and peace," Bronwell
said. "Science and engineering
have lifted western civilization
to a creative life that the world
has never known before."
However, Bronwell cautioned
that the nation was woefully
short of the number of s:•ien
tists and engineers needed to
combat the problems of the
world.
'To rebuild our nation's
cities, lift the people in the
ghetto's to respectable housing'
and education, rebuild our
decrep t urban and interurban
transportation s y s t e in s
develop the limitless economic
promises of the oceans, carry
on research in interplanetary
and interstellar space. decon
taminate our lakes, rivers end
ocean fronts, as well as the air
we breathe, and at the same
time provide vigorous
leadership on all fronts in
scientific, technological and in
dustrial research will require
far more scientists an d
engineers than w edre educa
ting today." Bronwell said.
All too often today's special
education programs arc geared
toward Negroes and Indians
with white middle class
backgrounds instead of those
whose experience is all "black
and red," said Bert Avery.
assistant director of th e
University of Oklahoma's
School of Chemical Engineer.
ing.
"We are educating the wrong
people if we want to effect
social change in today's
society", Avery said. "Blacks
and Indians with white mid
dleclass and up backgrounds
can't communicate with the
Slacks and Indians who have
an all black or red background.
"Yet these are the Blazkx
and Indians we should be
educating, the ones whose ex
perience is black and red, not
just those who can interfnce
with the white community.-
Speaking as part of a special
panel discussion on "Engineer
ing Programs Designed for
Minority Groups." Avery said
that it is not enough "just to
increase numbers, fill federal
decrees, or sati s f y con
sciences."
"We must effect ..octal
change through all forms of
education through special ao
missions and special support."
he said.
Industry needs to place black
engineers and scientists in the
South to make j o h op
portunities more visible to
black youngsters, said L. C.
Dowdy, president of North
Carolina Agricultural a n d
Technical State University.
- The visibility in many
Southern small towns is just
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the same as 20 years ago,"
Dowdy said.
"High school children in the
South still sec the black pre
acher, the black doctor, maybe
an occasional black lawyer.
They never see black engineers
or physicists or chemists,"
Dowdy said. "So when they go
to college, they train for the
same old jobs.'
Calling
Calling for a partnership bet
ween business, industry and
government. Dowdy suggested
they begin by helping provide
work experiences o r in
ternships for students.
"How," he asked, "can a
black youngster who spent his
accounting internship in a cor
ner grocery store making
change from a cigarbox com
pete with a white student
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The owner (who does all the
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Commercially prepared food
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PAGE FIVE,,
working at a large Eastern
bank?"
Wider experience, in the
form of summer job programs,
is also essential for black
faculty members, Dowdy
believes. Some professors are
not convinced that expanded
job opportunities exist.
"If you aren't convinced
yourself, you can't start a fire
burning in young people."
Dowdy said.
"We think too much of per
fection. If we are willing to
take a chance on heart
transplants, to spend millions
on a space program before
seeing concrete results, we can
afford to take a chance on ad
mitting a few high risk stu
dents to our schools or offering
minority groups jobs.