SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXIX. No. 753 



to hold one of the leading positions in the 

 progress of engineering education. It is 

 much easier for a new organization to de- 

 velop along new lines than for an old or- 

 ganization to learn new ways. 



In order to utilize well this great oppor- 

 tunity it is important that we should have 

 a reasonably well-defined ideal toward 

 which to strive. The ideal should be one 

 from which effective working plans may be 

 developed. To work without an ideal is 

 to invite disaster from the changing cur- 

 rents of general tendencies and of personal 

 opinions, and the strong deep currents of 

 prejudice, or to invite disaster upon the 

 shallows of undirected effort. To choose 

 too high an ideal, one toward which we 

 can not make considerable progress in our 

 approach, is to provide for the formation 

 of working plans which will be ineffective, 

 discouraging to the Avorkers, wasteful of 

 effort and resources. 



We might take it as our task to convert 

 the high-school graduates who come to us 

 as freshmen into men who will leave these 

 grounds five or six years later as engineers 

 fully trained and completely equipped 

 mentally for their life work. This ideal 

 can not be even approximately attained. 

 To adopt it would lead to misdirected effort 

 and to wasted opportunities. 



Instead, our ideal shoiild be so to train 

 these young men in college that they will 

 be capable of becoming engineers, and will 

 have a tendency to become great engineers. 

 "We may hope to make a reasonably close 

 approach to this ideal. We may hope to 

 lay such a foundation of motives, of meth- 

 ods of thought, of principles which have 

 been mastered, and of acquired informa- 

 tion, that our graduates may, with accumu- 

 lated experience and strength acquired by 

 effort, become good engineers ten years 

 after commencement, and in the unusual 

 cases become great engineers within twenty 

 of service. 



Having this as our ideal, some of the 

 general features of our working plans wiU 

 follow naturally. 



As it is not our purpose to attempt to 

 graduate fully equipped engineers, we need 

 not attempt to give each student special 

 training in the particular narrow branch 

 of engineering which he expects to follow. 

 We need not attempt to teach the future 

 raibyay engineer all the minutise of that 

 ocdpjpation. We need not try to give to 

 the future sanitary engineer all the specific 

 information needed in his chosen line. As 

 our purpose is to equip the graduate for 

 unlimited growth as an engineer, rather 

 than for the greatest immediate usefulness, 

 it is obvious that we should put the em- 

 phasis in our teaching strongly upon the 

 fundamentals which are the basis of the 

 specialization in engineering, tipon mathe- 

 matics, chemistry, physics and mechanics. 



So, too, in selecting the purely engineer- 

 ing courses which are to be given, each 

 should be examined to ascertain the extent 

 to which it is fundamental, the extent to 

 which it deals with principles of broad 

 application, rather than with principles 

 applicable in a narrow field only, or with 

 mere engineering information. A selection 

 among engineering courses must be made, 

 for it would probably require at least eight 

 years in college for any one student to take 

 all of the different courses now offered to 

 undergraduates in colleges of engineering. 



In teaching the broad principles which 

 imderlie engineering, in passing to the stu- 

 dent that well-organized knowledge con- 

 tained in the text-books and treatises on 

 engineering which has aptly been called 

 concentrated experience, the college has 

 great advantages over the school of experi- 

 ence. On the other hand, skill, special 

 knowledge and that familiarity with details 

 which is a part, but not all, of experience, 

 may clearly be best obtained outside the 

 college, in the practise of engineering. 



