finding enough openings for the students, but it turned out just the other way. Fewer students responded than I had expected, and more employers; so that in a short time I had to write to employers that the supply was exhausted. One reason for the small response of the students was that a great many were obliged to attend R. O. T. C. camps.

In addition to the changes in arrangement of courses just mentioned, we are of course trying to follow Dr. Mann's numerous valuable suggestions in regard to the conduct of the work within each course, such for instance as the use of a good many problems involving commercial considerations.

MODIFICATIONS IN THE ENGINEERING CURRICULA AT THE KANSAS STATE AGRICUL TURAL COLLEGE.

BY A. A. POTTER.

In order to arouse and to maintain the interest of engineering students in their work, the Kansas State Agricultural College will require all freshmen engineering students to pursue certain intensive and concrete courses, closely related to the profession for which they are preparing. Each course will count for two semester units of credit and will consist of six hours per week of combined classroom work, laboratory practice and supervised study. These courses for the freshmen students will be given by the older and more experienced teachers in the several departments. The details concerning these intensive courses follow:

1. All freshmen engineering students will be required to take a two-unit course for one semester in plane surveying and a two-unit course for one semester in shop practice.

2. Freshmen mechanical engineering students will be required to take a two-unit course for one semester in the elements of steam and gas power engineering. This will be a non-mathematical course and will deal with the construction and operation of boilers, steam engines, steam turbines, steam power plant auxiliaries, internal combustion engines, gas producers and power vehicles.

3. Civil engineering students will be required to take surveying during their entire freshman year.

4. Electrical engineering students will be required to take a two-unit course for one semester during their freshman year in electrical machinery and construction. This course will include electric wiring, and the operation and repair of electrical machinery.

The above outline has been tried out during the college year 1918-1919 and those responsible for the curricula feel that these intensive courses, offered during the freshman year, will better prepare the engineering students for the more abstract subjects of the later years, while reducing the mortality among engineering freshmen by maintaining their interest. The course, as given, includes about two hours per week of class room work and four hours per week of laboratory work or supervised study. The teachers feel that a limited amount of supervised study enables the students to work problems independently, while aiding the teachers in making the instruction nearly individual.

In order to make room for the above concrete courses, analytical geometry had to be shifted from the freshman to the first semester of the sophomore year and the course in calculus is given during the second semester of the sophomore year and the first semester of the junior year.

THE NEW COURSE AT TUFTS COLLEGE.

BY G. C. ANTHONY,

Dean of the Engineering School.

The sudden departure from the generally accepted curricula of engineering schools which was made at Tufts College last January requires a word of explanation in that it might appear to have been hastily entered into, and its seeming success one of chance. In reality it was the product of five years of investigation, study and experimenting. This was largely stimulated by the discovery, which I reported several years ago, of the apparently universal lowering of scholastic standards during the sophomore year, and it also appeared that some of the intellectual depreciation was chargable to the curriculum. The freshman program has always been rich in fundamentals, but the vision of the prospective engineer has not been equal to correlating the mathematics, physics and modern language with the ideals which have inspired him to enter the field of technical education; he has not been given the opportunity to orient himself early in his course by direct contact with the applied field of engineering.

In 1913-1914 this topic was made the subject of investigation by several faculty committees and a result of their findings was to recommend: (1) A reduction in the number of subjects pursued at one time; (2) a closer coördination of the several departments, and a consideration of the possibility of a single course in engineering for three years with opportunity for specialization in the fourth year; (3) the introduction of engineering subjects much earlier in the course; (4) the necessity for a closer correlation of theory and practice together

with an inversion of the usual order by introducing laboratory practice previous to the consideration of much theory.

About this time the work of the Joint Committee on Engineering Education began, and Dr. Mann became known to all of us as a seeker after truth as applied to engineering education. Our faculty kept in touch with this investigation and tried out many of the suggestions made by Dr. Mann as well as those made by members of our own school. It is very apparent now that the reason for no greater success in our experiments lay in the lack of unity in action on the part of the faculty; in the failure to obtain a closer coöperation; in the reluctance of the several departments to put all of the subject matter into the educational melting pot; and in regarding the problem as one of professional training rather than of broad educational development.

It required the world war, its demand on all our resources and the doing of the seemingly impossible to overcome these obstacles. Vocational training in untried fields with inadequate equipment, indeed with no equipment whatever, necessitated the abandoning of time honored, but antiquated methods, and the adoption of means, not altogether desirable, but which sufficed to accomplish the desired end.

Previous to this we had tried certain intensive courses which were open to students of high grade who had completed one half of the senior year in high school. One such course was designed to meet the demand for a short cut method in the training of an electrician. The pupils began the course with much laboratory work and little instruction in theory. The latter was considered later when the intellectual appetite had been greatly stimulated by the attempt to overcome obstacles of a practical character. The results, which were largely due to the interest and enthusiasm on the part of the students, far exceeded our greatest anticipation, and this experience stimulated us to seriously consider the adoption of the principle which we had previously declared as good, namely, that more practice should precede theory.