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tion in the closest touch and harmony with the College of Arts and Sciences from which indeed that School draws the very breath of its life and without which it would infallibly degenerate into a mere simulacrum of red tape and ignorant methodology.

The new and larger plan now inaugurated for the training of teachers is a natural development and expansion of the work which Cornell University has carried on for many years. And it is satisfactory to report that the existing pedagogical department was never more successful than last year, when 114 different persons registered for courses, to the number, on the average, of two apiece. The other agency for the liberal education and professional training of teachers at Cornell University is the Summer Session, which Professor Bristol administers with a skill and energy that could not fail of success and with a devotion to scholastic ideals not easily surpassed. In the summer of 1907 the School enrolled the unparalleled number of 755 earnest students, of whom 288 were undergraduates of last year and 302 were teachers. Of the teachers in attendance 22 were engaged in teaching in colleges, 18 in normal schools, III in high schools, 120 in grammar or elementary schools, and 17 in private schools, while 14 were engaged in superintendence and supervision.

TECHNICAL EDUCATION

No institution in the world has done more for technical education than Cornell University nor does any other enjoy a higher reputation. The great harvester, Death, has claimed the pioneers in this movement, but younger directors have taken their places, the faculties have been enlarged, class-rooms and laboratories have been multiplied, courses have been adapted to the engineering and industrial conditions of the day, and students in ever increasing numbers

come to avail themselves of the opportunities and advantages of technical education which the University affords. There are still improvements to be made; for more and better endowed professorships are still a desideratum, and, with all the recent increase in rooms, there is still need of a new building for the shops in mechanic arts and of a new laboratory in civil engineering, especially for the experimental work in concrete and reinforced concrete, which is coming to be of vital importance in modern constructions. But, despite these remaining deficiencies, the institutions of technical education at Cornell University have in the last few years been markedly strengthened and improved. They are also in better correlation with the industrial world. Indeed, in the reorganization of courses, the guiding principle has been a desire to meet the demands which that industrial world is to-day making of schools of engineering and applied science, without sacrifice of the work in pure science on which the solution of the most practical problems in construction and in manufacture will be found ultimately to depend. So that whether regard be had either to the scientific or to the practical character of the technical education given at Cornell University, it does not, within the field it now covers, seem susceptible of much improvement (always excepting the reinforcement of the teaching staff already mentioned as desirable).

The time seems to have come, therefore, to inquire in what way, if at all, further improvement is to be effected. Engineers themselves generally answer that question by pointing to the field of independent work and research. And even in institutions organized primarily for instruction as the technical colleges of Cornell University are, it is a matter of great importance both to students and professors to have investigations constantly under way. Accordingly in Sibley College during the past two years an investiga

tion for the accurate determination of the specific heat of superheated steam has been carried on in which results have been obtained of great value in connection with the design of modern steam turbines. And the College of Civil Engineering, having almost completed a survey of the Fall Creek watershed, now plans by the construction of a measuring weir to obtain data regarding the run-off from the watershed, which will be of great value to the engineer. ing profession in making estimates for water power development in any locality in central New York. Such investigations might be multiplied without limit so long as teachers have time, or students are qualified, to conduct them. But teaching remains the primary function of the Faculty. Cornell University has no ambition to transform its schools of technical instruction for undergraduates into laboratories of research for graduates.

There is another way to improvement at Cornell University which the President believes should now be seriously considered. Before outlining it, he desires to cite a passage from Director Smith's report which tersely describes the existing conditions:

"The need of the modern engineer for a training much broader than that given by purely technical study is now quite generally recognized. The difficulty of giving anything in a four years' technical course besides technical work is also recognized."

The Director hopes that at least the best students may broaden out their education by electing subjects in the liberal arts in addition to the prescribed curriculum in engineering. Occasionally this will happen, and the President is personally acquainted with a senior in engineering who last year elected a course in metaphysics in which too he did excellent work. Such men derive incalculable benefit from arts subjects, not only because they are capable, earnest, and studious, but also because they are already well

grounded in physical science. The pity of it, however, is that the number of them is so small. Nor can more be expected so long as they are required to take, besides these arts subjects, a technical course which occupies the full time of the undergraduate.

The courses in engineering require either 17 or 18 hours a week for each of the four terms of the first two years, or 70 hours in all. In Civil Engineering 38 of the 70 hours are in Arts and Sciences and in Mechanical Engineering 34. In the junior year the Civil Engineers also take a course in political economy of three hours a week throughout the year-a course which the President has urged should be prescribed also for Mechanical Engineers (for whom next year, at any rate, the Faculty have prescribed a one hour course). If this course of six hours for the two terms be added to the foregoing figures, the Civil Engineers will have 44 hours in Arts and Sciences and the Mechanical Engineers 40.

Excellent as the courses in Arts and Sciences which are taken by freshmen and sophomores in engineering are and have been, and valuable as the education they furnish is, both the courses and the education suffer, from the point of view of general or liberal culture, from the disadvantage of being exclusively in the field of mathematics and physical science. And the modern engineer, if he is to be truly educated, needs a training broader than physical science and technical study. He too, because he is a man, needs the culture of the humanities-that liberalizing and expansion of mind which comes from the study of literature, history, and philosophy. This, however, he can no longer secure in a four years' technical course. With the constant increase of professional subjects rendered necessary by the advance of engineering science and the practice of modern engineering, the curriculum of the four year course has

grown more and more technical, and less place than ever now remains for any of the liberal arts. The result is that, all over the country, men are graduating in the engineering courses with an ignorance of literature, history, and the other liberal arts so dense that no proficiency in science and technology can save them from the charge of being uncultured, especially, when, as so often happens as a necessary result of their limited reading of literature, they are unable to express themselves, either in speech or writing, in correct English prose.

Has not the time arrived when the period of study for students in engineering should be extended beyond four years so that students may be required to study the elements of a liberal education before entering upon their strictly technical work? The President believes that along this line the next step is to be taken for improving the education of engineers at Cornell University.

Two methods are open, though perhaps only one is feasible at the present time. Either one year or two years of study might be prescribed in addition to the present curriculum of four years, and the time thus gained devoted by the student mainly, if not indeed exclusively, to the humanities. Of technical study he already gets enough in the last two years of the course and of pure science he has enough in the first two years. It has already been shown that of the 70 hours prescribed in the engineering courses for the first two years from 40 to 44 hours are taken in the College of Arts and Sciences, of which all but six in economics are in physical science. What the engineering student needs, therefore, to broaden his horizon and to humanize his culture is the study of literature, history, and other humanities. And he would derive unusual advantage from those studies since, while taking them, he would also be studying the mathematics, physics, and chemistry

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