Engineering History (2)
Item set
- Title
- Engineering History (2)
- Creator
- Mary J.S. Roth
Items
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When Bergethon first started as President, he 'assumed the duties of dean of arts and science, temporarily performed by Dr. Harold Streeter during the interim presidency. Professor Frederick W. Slantz stayed as dean of engineering for another year. Under these arrangements the president was directly in charge of faculty personnel and budgetary matters for arts and sciences. Professor Slantz continued to manage these concerns for engineering. After a year Dr. Bergethon replaced the dean of engineering with a part-time director of engineering, Professor H. Maurice Carlson, in charge of coordinating the teaching activities of the engineering departments. He took upon himself direct supervision of personnel and budgetary matters for the entire faculty. The president was then, in effect, his own dean of faculty.' (Gendebien, p. 389)
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In 1958-59 'Engineering Council
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In 1957, 'Dr. Harold Streeter was appointed temporary dean of arts and science, and Professor Slantz
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Prof. Frederick W. Slantz was appointed director of engineering effective September 1956 (Gendebien)
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The association with the Abadan Institute ended in 1957. (Gendebien, p. 371)
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'In 1956, a consortium of Iranian Oil Exploration and Producing Companies
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In 1954, Alumni Hall of Engineering was completed and initially housed all engineering disciplines except metallurgical (from Two Hundred Years of Life in Schaffer, Norman G., Alfred Pierce, and Samuel. Two Hundred Years of Life in Northampton Country, PA. Easton: Northampton Country Bicentennial Commission, 1976.)
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'Alumni Hall of Engineering,
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'In the spring of 1953 the faculty decided that the 3-2 plan should be offered to Lafayette students, rather than only to students who transferred from other Presbyterian colleges at the end of their junior year.' However, action on the idea was deferred. They moved instead 'the adoption of an early admission plan for engineering freshmen only, whereby they shall enter the 3-2 Engineering-Arts program leading to one degree: The B.S. in the engineering course they pursue.... The upshot was a study by professors Childs and Watt. They reported that to meet the requirements for both the A.B. and the B.S. in engineering in five years, the only possible majors for the A.B. would be mathematics or physics. A program combining an A.B. degree in mathematics with an engineering degree was established and subsequently two more 3-2 combinations were added: a B.S. in industrial engineering along with a B.S. in business administration, and a program offering B.S. degrees in physics and electrical engineering.' (Gendebien, p. 290)
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In 1951, President Hutchison 'presented the Presbyterian College Engineering Plan, a 3-2 liberal arts and engineering proposal. A student would spend three years at a liberal arts college and two years in an engineering program a Lafayette. He would then receive an A.B. from his original college and a B.S. in the appropriate program from Lafayette. Dr. Hutchison had had experience with such a program during his term as president of Washington and Jefferson College in the form of a cooperative arrangement between MIT and six liberal arts colleges.' (Gendebien, p. 282)
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'In the summer of 1949, Dr. Hutchison authorized the head of the Department of Civil Engineering, Professor William S. Lohr, to survey the educational needs of the Easton area to discover if there were unmet wants that Lafayette could meet. Lohr discovered, after extensive interviews with top officials of forty-one industries in the area employing some seventeen thousand people, that there were some unmet needs
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In 1945-46, President Hutchinson, in discussing the the planning for a new engineering building, expressed his concerns to the engineering curriculum committee that the engineering curriculum overloaded students with courses, that the courses required 'little or no scholarly study and preparation,' and that there was inadequate time for students to provide for 'the humanities and the broader cultural and professional training of engineers.' (p. 249) As a result, the freshman-sophomore engineering program was immediately revised with a new curriculum put into effect for fall 1946. The total number of credits required for graduation and weekly workload was reduced and about 20 percent of students' course work was made available
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'In July of 1943 the first four hundred men in the Army Specialized Training Program (ASTP) came to begin three twelve-week terms of training in basic engineering
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'In the summer of 1941, the college ran another twelve-week program, called Fundamentals of Engineering, for high school graduates who did not want to go to college.' (Gendebin, p. 159) 'In the summer of 1942, the college repeated the Fundamentals of Engineering course for high school graduates, adding a course in elementary engineering drafting for women, along with courses in safety engineering and surveying and map reading.' (Gendebien, p. 160)
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'In the spring of 1941, VENDT was replaced by the Engineering Defense Training Program (EDT), a higher-level twelve-week program of evening courses for qualified men from the community who wanted to upgrade their skills. Professor William S. Lohr, placed in charge, made a study of the needs of local industry and developed the program to meet them.' (Gendebien, p. 159) 'In the fall of 1941, EDT was expanded both in title and substance. It was now called the Engineering Science and Management Defense Training Program (ESMDT) and offered thirty-one courses. The total enrollment in this program, which was taught by twenty-five members of the faculty, was nine hundred fifty-one. The Engineering Science and Management Defense Training Program was continued, after war was declared, as the Engineering Science and Management War Training Program (ESMWT).' (Gendebien, p. 159-60)
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In the summer of1940 'the college also began offering engineering courses to assist industrial preparedness. The program was originally designed to train local high school graduates who did not intend to go to college and employees of local industry interested in sharpening their skills. It was sponsored and subsidized by the United States Office of Education and was call Vocational Education National Defense Training (VENDT).' (Gendebien, p. 159)
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In 1937 Lafayette College engineering curricula was formally accredited by Engineers
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In 1936 Lafayette's engineering programs underwent their first accreditation review by the newly formed (1933) Engineering Council for Professional Development 'On the heels of the anniversary celebration, the accreditation committee of the ECPD visited the campus. The college had requested accreditation for the technical and administrative options in all programs, with one exception. The college did not consider the chemical engineering program to be up to standard in number of faculty and quality of equipment and felt that it was also deficient because no chemical engineer taught in it.' (Gendebien, p. 119-120) 'The accrediting committee raised serious questions in only one field
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Engineering physics was developed under Clarence McCheyne Gordon in 1936. The program ended in 1950 after Professor Gordon's retirement. (from Two Hundred Years of Life in Schaffer, Norman G., Alfred Pierce, and Samuel. Two Hundred Years of Life in Northampton Country, PA. Easton: Northampton Country Bicentennial Commission, 1976)
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'On other recommendation of the ECPD arising out of the visitation was that a position be established for some type of dean or director of engineering to coordinate the work of the various departments. This recommendation seemed to run counter to the general philosophy of the college, namely, that it was an institution governed by one board and administered by one administration, where one faculty taught, and that this was one of the sterling virtues of the college. No action was taken along this line. Coordination among the engineering departments was left up to the Engineering Curriculum Committee, composed of the heads of the various engineering departments.' (Gendebien, p. 120)
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...the college had a special need to publicize and promote its engineering programs in competition with schools such as Lehigh University, which were well known as technical institutes. The educational virtue of the combination of arts, science and engineering had to be advertised
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During the 1930
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Date is unclear
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To cure these ills, for the sake of both the college and engineering education as a whole the engineering departments introduced, in the summer of 1934, an Engineering Guidance Conference for Boys. For two weeks, twenty-one high school students who hoped to go to college gained an insight into the nature of engineering and were offered vocational guidance, including aptitude tests, laboratory practice, and trips to local industries. These conferences continued each summer until the outbreak of World War II. Some students were turned away from engineering as a result of what was probably a sobering experience for them, but others became more interested in the field. In some small way the engineering profession benefited, and in a larger way so did the college as enrollments in engineering increased. In one summer, 1938, of the thirty-eight young men enrolled in the conference, twenty-three became students at Lafayette.' (Gendebien P. 69-70) Summer 1940