to give them some of the usual entertainments provided by the Y. M. C. A. But at the close of this little school all of the men seemed to have been very much enthused by their work; and I think that it was just because their interest was aroused in all of the courses that they took.

It was not entirely elective work, although the students elected the general lines along which they were to study. But every man, no matter what his qualifications, was required for one thing to take a course in practical English, as we called it. He was supposed to receive instruction-and I think he did receive effective instruction-in practical English in the writing of letters and the correction of errors.

E. J. McCaustland: Mr. President, for a number of years educators have been demanding that more importance be attached to the fundamental training underlying engineering education. It appears to me that at the present time the tendency is too much in the other direction, due to an insistent call from the War Department for the establishment of various units. In one institution at least there has been a flood of communications from various quarters, different branches of the army, to establish special units. Administrative officers in some universities are desirous of attempting to do everything that may be asked. They do not like to be left out of any scheme that may be developed.

I believe that this body of engineering educators should give some attention to the possible danger that may come from this

source.

R. H. Danforth: I am very much interested in three or four points that have been brought up.

Starting out with Dean Marston regarding the question of fixing our courses to meet the needs, I would like to call attention to the fact, as the last speaker suggested, that military needs are only a comparatively small fraction. They may be the most pressing ones at the present time. But they are comparatively small, and the probability is that they will absorb a practically small fraction of our graduates.

Regarding the case method, we apparently got the jump on some of the other organizations a little while ago for this very thing: We got together about sixty of our prominent graduates from the Cleveland district and had a pow wow with them. Most of them are employers that are employing our own men, and others were in a position where they could advise us, and we have gotten them to agree to form a sort of an alumni organization which shall advise us to the best of their ability as to what the demands of the country for engineering graduates will be five years after each class graduates, because we feel that five years after the man graduates is about the time when he begins to work on his own initiative; so that that means we are trying to look ahead into a period of ten years and forsee as well as we can the needs of the country, and the needs of the people who are going to hire our men at that time.

Now, that has not gotten into effect yet where I can give you any definite data on it, but I am offering it as a suggestion that we have got to train our men to meet the requirements of the world, the world of employers, and by just so well we meet that need do we make good as engineers and engineering organizations.

Of course there is a great deal to be said about the head of the department who has men, specialists in a line, and who is supposed to know the needs of the world in his line. But the mere fact that he is a specialist frequently vitiates that to a large extent; and that is why I suggest going after the alumni.

1

CHANGE IN COURSES AT UNIVERSITY OF

FLORIDA.

BY J. R. BENTON.

My only excuse for taking your time to describe what is being done at one of the smallest of engineering schools is that our problems at the University of Florida are probably similar to those of a good many other engineering schools at institutions remote from industrial centers.

The appearance of Dr. Mann's report has been the occasion of an effort to realize a number of the changes suggested by him, which we had already regarded as desirable, but which we had not introduced before, either through inertia, or for fear that we would deviate too much from what had been customary in other institutions. The changes we are making take effect next fall.

Dr. Mann's first suggestion is that the number of required credit hours per week should be less than eighteen-preferably sixteen. In discussing this, we found the credit hour so unsatisfactory a unit that we abandoned it, and used clock hours, as was done during the S. A. T. C., and as is done at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. For each course we noted the clock hours required for class-room work, for expected outside study, and for laboratory, field or drafting room. The hours of outside study for each hour in class were usually two, but were varied for different subjects. Next we tried to discover what quantity of work per week would produce the greatest results. And we did not do this by any arbitrary statement that an engineering student ought to be willing to put in fifty-four hours a week, or any other arbitrary number. Instead, we looked up a little industrial history, and verified the fact, doubtless familiar to you all, that

reduction in working hours in factories-down to eight per day-has generally brought the employers a pleasant surprise in increased output-not increased output per hour, but increased total output. We also noted that our own experience had been that we could not, without getting brain-fag, keep up as intense mental effort as we wish our students to make, for as much as eight hours a day every day. Then we asked the professor of psychology to give us an unbiassed statement as to what amount of mental work per day, for long periods, would produce the greatest results in a normal college student. He replied seven hours of assigned work requiring close attention, with an hour or two of light reading such as current magazines or general literature.

We accordingly undertook to rearrange our curriculum so as to require, in addition to military drill and required gymnasium, not over forty-two clock-hours per week of hard study, or its equivalent. We recognized that laboratory, field and drafting-room work call for less nerve energy than study or class-room work, properly conducted; of the former eight or nine hours a day is not too much; accordingly in making up our total, we counted each hour of laboratory, field or drafting-room as equivalent to seven-eights or seven-ninths of an hour of purely mental work-the ratio varying according to the nature of the work.

To bring our curriculum down to forty-two clock-hours per week (not continuous military work) we had to leave out all electives, and also the modern language, of which two years had been required. A part of the time which had been given to it will in future be devoted to economics and the human side of engineering. We hope that the students will also gain some humanizing influences through better opportunity to join in general student activities, which has been hardly possible in the past without loss of standing in their studies.

While it is generally agreed that engineering courses in the past have been too crowded, we recognize that we may be now going too far to the other extreme, and we expect to be very

watchful of the results of our new curriculum, with a view to adding more subjects if it should turn out to be too easy. The engineering courses have been considered the most difficult ones on our campus, and we wish them to retain that reputation.

Dr. Mann's second suggestion, that the number of subjects studied simultaneously be limited to five, could not be followed throughout, on account of the fact that a number of the general courses such as chemistry, English, and mathematics, are given in common for other colleges of the university, besides the college of engineering. A number of other courses are common to students of civil, electrical, mechanical, and chemical engineering. These conditions interfered greatly with freedom in arranging the sequence of work in the course in any one branch of engineering.

We are introducing orientation lectures for the first semester of the freshman year, one hour a week. We did not find it feasible to introduce any technical engineering subjects (except drawing and shop) into the freshman year, but we are trying to bring as many engineering examples as possible into the freshman mathematics and physics.

We regard participation in real industrial work as very important. Situated as we are in a rural community in a state with comparatively few industrial establishments, anything like the Cincinnati coöperative system is hopelessly out of the question. Our best solution seems to be by vacation employment of engineering students, and we are trying to develop that to the point where we can guarantee opportunity for engineering employment in vacations to every student, and then make a certain amount of such work a requirement for graduation. To make a beginning in this direction, I pointed out to all of our engineering students, about two weeks before our session closed, the desirability of their taking summer employment, and at the same time I sent out a circular letter to about one hundred and fifty possible employers in Florida. I had supposed that the difficulty would be in