Alumni Oration

"Cultural Side of Engineer’s Education Stressed by Orator" Daily Gleaner (14 May 1937). (UA Case 67a, Box 2)

I count myself fortunate in that I was privileged to have spent my early student years in this University which now has had a continuous existence for 137 years. Its elevated site commands a charming landscape that is a cherished memory of the alumni. Here the Saint John River after having been forced in upon itself by narrowing hills, spreads out to border the City of Fredericton where the Cathedral, the Parliament Buildings, the Library and the University form an ideal environment for student life—a time of life indeed when ideals are fresh and impulses are generous. Passages from noble writings, learned by heart, as we used to learn them, had then their special rhetorical appeal but as Cardinal Newman has said, in later life they come back with their supporting reality.

In my time we were fortunate, also to have been close to teachers who could form and inspire young life. Paul Bourget in his story "L’Etape" describes the function of a teacher as follows: (in translation)

"This apparent inconsistency will be understood by all those who have encountered a real professor like the former, one of those midwives of intelligence absorbed in a taste and a passion for the development of young talent. Educators of a high type, upon discovering in a seventeen year old scholar the first signs of a coming superiority, experience the emotions of inventors and artists. Clearly to outline, to hasten the completion of this rough sketch, to foster the blossoming of this noble human flower, to identify himself with this miracle, the formation of a fine intelligence, such are the delights of these masters who remain usually unknown."

Instructors of the Past

Students of my day hold in memory the well organized and clear lecturers of Dr. Loring Bailey, lecturers that did not need a laboratory permanently to fix the basic principles of science, particularly in Biology, Physics and Chemistry.

A love for, and a taste in, literature was developed by Professor Stockley, an end that obsession with grammar alone may fail to reach.

We were conscious also of the delicate precision of the Latin and Greek classics when they were construed in the classes of Professor Bridges, reaching there a training of mind which must be useful also in the equipment of an engineer.

Where at the present time, in so many of our overgrown and over-organized universities can this combination of environment and of teachers be found? I am confident that these roots are alive in the University of New Brunswick to-day.

Personally I count it a fortunate happening of my pre-university education also, that I was brought into contact with teachers of the ability of C.G.D. Roberts, himself a poet, but also strong of arm to which I can personally testify, and into contact also with the gently and poetic personality of Bliss Carman, and with George R. Parkin of Rhodes Scholarship fame who made Virgil’s Aeneid a living thing as well as a disciple.

Education of an Engineer

I have chosen to take as my topic for this occasion, in a rather incomplete and suggestive manner no doubt, some conclusions of mine on the education of an engineer, for the reason that the greater part of my life has been spent in the practice of the engineering profession and its directing the training of students in engineering.

During this time the educational process and the curricula of courses of study have been under adjustment to meet a rapidly changing industrial organization. I do not forget that Engineering curricula were established at the University of New Brunswick in 1889 and that more than 400 graduates in Engineering have received their diplomas.

Universities Under Critical Discussion

I well know that confusion exists in the ideology of general education. However, I believe that ideals and practice of educators of engineers are much less confused since they are held to a common objectives by the demands of industrials, who in increasing numbers, sent scouts to the technical schools to recruit graduates for entrance into industry. At Purdue University for instance, during the past year more than 78 industrial organizations sent scouts to the University for this purpose. These representatives of industry assume that graduates will have developed the necessary skill in the use of the tools of their profession, such as surveying, drawing mathematics and mechanics, but they particularly scrutinize candidates on the basis of scholarship and personality. The University itself devotes increasing attention to the development of desirable personal traits in its students.

It is because of the demands of industry upon engineering schools that we are likely to find a common basis of curricula in the engineering schools of France, Germany, England and America, but with varying objectives, depending upon national conditions.

Systematic Engineering Training

In the pioneer days there was always some one in the community who was competent to build a suitable bridge, construct a road or drain the land. The sums involved were small. At present these things "run into money." For example, the Road Supervisor in a county in Indiana will spend annually $125,000 for maintaining roads, or trying to maintain them against traffic increasing rapidly in volume and weight. The public receives good and economical service in road maintenance through trained officials and not through political preferment.

In the field of Railroad Engineering, likewise, less frequently we find telegraph operators rising to staff positions. The complexity of railroad organization, which has relations with the public and with other competing transportation facilities, demands men who have been well trained in methods of analysis. In nothing this trend toward the use of definitely trained men I do not forget the examples of the men of my day in the University of New Brunswick who have risen to distinguished positions in engineering without such specific training in an engineering school. Among others, Barbour, ’88, who is one of the leading Sanitary Engineers of the United States, and Cushing, ’84, who was a distinguished Railway Engineer of the Pennsylvania Railroad. But I believe it to be increasingly evident that entrance into the engineering profession now advises graduation from an engineering school of accepted level. In a recent survey of over 50,000 professional engineers by the Bureau of Labor, it is reported that 70 per cent of these engineers had received a first degree in Engineering.

Engineering schools should not confine their efforts to satisfying a demand for special service to industries through special training in particular skills. They should at the same time supply a background of general culture that will fit a man to take his place in the life of the state. A civil engineer for example, who desires to introduce modern sanitation in a community must be adept in Human Engineering, so called.

Cultural Background

As a corrective to technical narrowness, often met in engineering students, it is my conviction that what have been taught as strictly technical subjects may be taught also against a background of culture. A course in Masonry, Construction, for example, sweeps through the materials and buildings of the civilizations in Mesopotamia, in Egypt, in Greece, and of Roman and Gothic times. A building itself mutely testifies to the science, the philosophy and the religion of the period. The masonry of a Gothic Cathedral is an example of material economically placed to meet loads, but its beauty is enhanced by an intelligent appreciation of the skill of the architect.

Likewise in the study of Applied Mechanics the personalities of such men as Hooke, Vicat, Poisson, Navier, Euler, Bernoulli, DesCartes, Wohler, St. Venant, may become to the student more than names on paper. These men illuminate their times and the history of the development of science.

Fundament Subjects and Skills

Whether the path of a student is toward the field of Civil Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering or Chemical Engineering at least one-half of his time should be spent in fundamental studies—English, Economics, Mathematics, etc. These subjects should not be confined to the first two years of the course, but should spread throughout four years.

In the 50 per cent of time in the curriculum there should be an opportunity for the selection of courses in Psychology, Business, Law, Banking, Corporation, Scientific Management, so that the graduate may not be dismayed in entering into a real world.

In addition to this general cultural objective, our modern scientific approach to conclusions should be a part of an engineer’s equipment, that is, a method by which conclusions are reached through factual data; and analyses made clear through charts. An untrained mind leaps to conclusions. For example, in public speeches following the tremendous floods that occurred during the past year, our orators often leaped to the conclusion that these floods may be prevented merely by growing trees or grass on hills, and that reservoirs at the head waters of the streams may be used at the same time for flood water detention and for power development.

Mr. Arthur E. Morgan, Chairman of the Tennessee Valley Authority, has recently written his description of the necessary process of the mind of an engineer in these words:

"The habit of thoroughgoing comparison of all possibilities should be associated with the habit of restless, imaginative inquiry which persists in becoming aware of every possible method and combination of methods, and which insists, also on ferreting out all facts and conditions that might have a bearing on solutions. Lack of these obvious habits, rather than technical limitations, are the chief handicaps to a high order of engineering design in this field." (From article entitled "Control of Great Floods" by Arthur E. Morgan. Engineering News-Record, March 18, 1937).

Let us consider certain studies related to the skills expected of engineers.

Drawing

Training in drawing should begin with elements of Mechanical Drawing in the Freshman year and find special application throughout the upper years. Drawing is the special language of the engineer—one in which he can express his thought in a design. It has been suggested that ability in drawing was a common medium through which Da Vinci designed canals in Northern Italy, Michael Angelo the dome of St. Peter’s and Brunelleshi the dome of the Cathedral in Florence. I would suppose that through drawing an architect reaches a composition of the elements of his design.

Surveying

Surveying is considered by many educators to be a fundamental in all engineering curricula, since it is a training in accuracy of observation and neatness and clearness of system in records, and also since surveying reinforces the teaching of Mathematics, Surveying does possess all these values. However, as a matter of economy in time and expense there is a distinction between such training as will enable a Mechanical or an Electrical Engineer to level a foundation or align a shaft, and, on the other hand, that lengthy and arduous training of the Civil Engineer in topographic methods and in precise and geodetic surveying. The crowded condition of curricula advises summer practice in surveying throughout ten weeks, preferably at a site remote from the campus when the by-product is often as important as skill in practice.

Mechanics

The subject of Mechanics is also basic and, to my mind, should always be developed from a standpoint of things rather than of books, from the concrete rather than the abstract. For example, the Laboratory for Testing Materials is a kind of a guided experience in the action of the forces of nature upon materials, both mechanical and physical forces. The laboratory also furnishes the formulas of systematic mechanics with a background of reality and brings judgment to the designer when he determines the proportions of structural elements in buildings. Through this training in Mechanics as related to nature we will find fewer building failing and more of them build with economy.

It is an interesting fact that several of our distinguished mathematicians of the past were experimenting with crude testing machines in order to develop the physical data underlying their mathematical analyses, thus leading them to a correct description of the distribution of strains in structure. If Galileo in 1636 had measured the strains in the bottom and top of a beam his meditations, without experimental data, upon the laws of mechanics as applied to beams would not, perhaps, have postponed the correct analysis which Coulomb in 1773 developed from such measurements. I have read somewhere an opinion that the Greek Philosophers would have found their way further into nature if they had had the instruments of measurements of modern science.

Mathematics

The teaching of Mathematics should be considered in its service relation to engineers. Refinements of mathematical logic should be left to advanced courses, which have relation to the intricate analyses of structural mechanics, such analyses as were necessary in the design of the Boulder Dam. That structure involved much more than dumping concrete to fill an opening between hills.

However it is questionable if a training in the analytical methods of higher mechanics is required by the general practitioner in the engineering profession especially when the natural resources of a country are under development.

This is not the place more than to mention the view expressed, principally after the World War, that teaching of Mathematics and Physics for example, should be attached together to a "situation" rather than that each subject should be taught within its own fence. Those who have tried this "situation" method of teaching have realized its value but have regretted that its application is quite generally impracticable in a rigid University organization. It requires also an uncommon type of teacher, not ordinarily available.

Likewise there would be certainly an advantageous arrangement of a student’s programme if he were able intensively to pursue a subject for one-half semester and then pass to another subject. This transfer is difficult to accomplish because of the specialized knowledge of a professional teaching staff whereby a teacher may be idle, as far as class duties are concerned for one-half a semester. On the other hand it is not thought to be to the advantage of a student that the teaching staff should be composed of a reservoir of instructors one of whom might be piped to any subject. I am not willing to take the position apparently held by some of our educational psychologists, that all that is required is an expertness in methods of teaching without a special knowledge of a subject.

Functional Training

Perhaps this will be a suitable time to discuss functional training in engineering; that is, to select by the methods of physiological science before the Senior year, from the candidates for a degree, those students seemingly fitted by nature and taste for one of the functional fields of engineering work, as for example; design of structures and machines demanding faculty in complicated mathematical analysis, or, secondly, for construction especially in Civil Engineering, demanding the ability to assemble equipment for a construction plant and to direct men, or, thirdly, to manufacture and market commodities. A difficulty confronting such functional division of the curriculum is a change in the present practice which confers a general degree indicating that the graduate is prepared for these several functions.

Changing Design of Curricula

The design of a curriculum cannot be static or frozen. New applications of science in engineering demand attention.

For example the growing importance of Highway Engineering has displaced some of the time formerly given to Railroad Engineering. Courses such as Aeronautics, and design of air conditioning equipment, engage the interests of the students and bring problems for solution by University administrators. The youth of to-day respond so quickly to what seem to be opportunities for successful lives. When Lindbergh flew the Atlantic ocean there was a rush of students to study Aeronautical Engineering in spite of the fact that it takes only a few engineers to design such equipment; Chemical Engineering students flocked to that curriculum when they read about the success of DuPont Companies, or to air conditioning when they have read the advertisements of that rapidly developing industry. Buildings and equipment and teachers become out of adjustment because of this quick response of youth. Thus the framework of the University becomes distorted because of a wave of freshmen into a subject or to a special curriculum, especially when a graduate from a High School finds an uninterrupted path to the State University.

Shall we do as in France, for instance, only admit one student out of every ten, after a very stiff examination, providing an elite in the profession, and then organize sub-professional schools or so-called Technical Institutes? It would seem that some study should be given to the relation of analytical studies to the mental capacity of the student to avoid wasted effort in the Junior of Senior years. Certain institutions attempt to interrupt further training by comprehensive examinations at the end of the Sophomore year. After all at the end of the Sophomore the student equipped for immediate usefulness in sub-professional activity through training in Mathematics, Drawing and Surveying. If he is given some form of certificate, he may avoid the embarrassment of returning to his home with a sense of having failed entirely.

Graduate Study

Under our present system technical schools attempt to develop during four years, as best they can, a well rounded individual. Then they provide advanced study and research during a fifth or graduate year. Many attempts in the United States have been made to establish five and six year undergraduate curricula. No one of these, as far as I know, has been successful in attracting students. After all it seems to some of us that a student of ordinary powers who ahs been in an academic atmosphere throughout four years might then become attached to reality.

To summarize what I have tried to bring to the attention of this audience by drawing a picture that might seem to be too neat an ideal, too near a counsel of perfection. Whatever the application of my discussion of these matters may be yet I believe we may conclude that since modern life has become increasingly technological in character the training of an engineer in a technical school of accepted scholastic level is an excellent preparation for usefulness in business or industry, whatever his choice of one or the other branches of the profession.

Tennyson’s Lines

In conclusion I hope I may be permitted to depart from the subject matter of this address and recall the quotation from Tennyson’s poem "Oenone" which George R. Parkin was accustomed to read to us in Grammar School. This follows:

"Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control;
These three alone lead life to sovereign power."

And I venture to expand these two lines of verse.

The self-reverence, that feels the stain upon honor like a wound, the most potent force in keeping a man from the degradation of body and soul, which follows grave lapses from decent conduct.

The self-knowledge, coming through experience, and self-analysis that teaches a man how far it will be safe for him to go, what things are for him disorganizing and what are recreative of his energy.

The self-control added to self-knowledge, that keeps mind and body in unified action, that keeps the quick-tongued man from biting remarks, the uncharitable from cruel misjudgments and from slander.

Has not Tennyson wrapped up much wisdom in two lines of verse?