DEPARTmCNT REPORTS. G3 



veiiiences at liaud iu the laboratory, and various siUTOuudiug circum- 

 stances. 



The student should also be expected to obtain a certain amount of 

 manual training which shall give him skill iu the handling of the in- 

 struments of his profession, and it is right and necessary that he should 

 become practically familiar Avith surveying instruments, shops tools 

 and drawing instruments, and should have as much practice as the 

 time at hand will give in those particular branches. 



In my opinion the practical training which is obtained in the shop, 

 drawing room or surveying is valuable to any engineer even though 

 his line of practice may take him into other fields. I believe that an 

 engineer should be trained in as many of the practical branches of 

 the art he is to follow as possible, while he is in college, although it 

 is doubtless that such training could be obtained in greater amplitude 

 after the college days were over, in a practical profession. The col- 

 lege training has the advantage over the special training obtained 

 later that it is geuerall}- broader and more fundamental, and it is given 

 the student as an application of principles which have been enunciated 

 in text books and laboratories. It presents the matter from a field 

 of view different from that of later life and one which is more bene- 

 ficial, since it involves the method of application of theoretical prin- 

 ciples giving a broader and more general culture. 



It is unquestionably desirable for the engineer to know foreign 

 languages, philosophy, economics, history, etc., for the same reason 

 that these studies are desirable for any educated man. These studies 

 will doubtless give him a broader vicAV of life and a culture desirable 

 for an engineer to have and unattainable without them. The practical 

 question which is of great importance respecting this class of studi-es 

 is the amount of time that can profitably be devoted to them. 



The engineering courses as they are at present constituted require 

 four years of. a student's life and have very few of the so-called cul- 

 ture studies as enumerated above. The tendenc}' of recent times has 

 been to reduce rather than increase the number of so-called culture 

 studies because of the pressure to give the student more technical 

 work in his college course. This desire to make the student practically 

 familiar Avith nearly all the apjilications of engineering principles to 

 the various engineering industries has led in late years to the intro- 

 duction of a great many special studies and I am afraid in some cases 

 to the reduction in time which had previously been given to the funda- 

 mental studies, especially mathematics and its application to physics 

 in the broad fields of mechanics and hydraulics. 



My own im}»ression from a long experience with the education of en- 

 gineers is that we have carried this application to special studies 

 somewhat too far in uiiiny instances and by so doing have weakened 

 ralher than slrengthcjx'd the engineering student. It is my opinion 

 that Ihe fundamental studies well and thoroughly taught, together with 

 methods and practice in application to the principal engineering i)ro- 

 cesses, give us better educated and more capable engineers than the 

 forcing of students through a long list of studies of application, to 

 each of which can necessarily be given only a limited time. This 

 raises the question as to whether or not we have imi)roved our sys- 

 tems of engine<ering education. 



