6. Elimination of two highly specialized engineering courses from undergraduate curriculum and elimination of non-essentials in all engineering courses.

7. Broadening of aim in engineering courses with special reference to problem of construction and operation as well as design.

8. Introduction of brief courses in Freshman and Sophomore years to promote interest of the student in engineering, to acquaint him with work of different branches and to show him how principles and methods studied during first two years will be used afterward. (First two years common for all engineering students-part of third also.)

8. Transference of all courses in mechanics, including mechanics of materials, to a new department of engineering mechanics to which Professor Tilden has been called as head of department.

10. Reduction of hours of required work to a maximum of forty-five, at the same time raising the standard which must be attained by the student.

DISCUSSION.

A. A. Potter: I just want to say one word in reference to Major More's statement as to the meaning of teaching. I believe he is wrong. The word teach means to draw out. The

English word take comes from that.

G. R. Chatburn: Educate means to draw out.

G. L. Anthony: May I correct one misapprehension in the teaching I have described here, and that is that the shop work has disappeared. By no means; it is still there; it does not appear, but it is part of the departmental work. Also that although specialization does appear in the senior year there is absolute freedom for change.

E. H. Rockwell: Mr. President, the time is altogether too limited to go into any extensive discussion of this scheme which Dean Anthony has so well explained in relation to the new work at Tufts College.

I should just like to add a word of testimony as to the result. Last December Dean Anthony and myself both explained what we had in mind for the future. At that time. we were the only members present which we have here this morning, and he detailed some of the projects.

I think at the present you can tell a good thing about accomplishments. We actually have accomplished what we wished to do in a normal year, because we have done this work in relation to the introductory course in an intensive way from the first of January until the first of July by adding brief periods. The Freshmen have actually met their instructors in the introductory course for fifteen hours a week.

This method seems to me very similar to the case method or the project method, or any of these various methods which have been discussed in which the actual problem is given to the student for study; and it strikes me that a great deal of the discussion has centered around this change in our attitude in relation to the method of teaching.

Now, I do not know that it is any more difficult whether theory or practise should come first. History seems to show that practise or art has come first and then science followed, as has been stated by a previous speaker this morning. Perhaps some testimony in relation to the course can be given in the form of reaction upon the students.

Now, as I have stated, they have actually put a tremendous amount of time at their disposal, and they have given up all their afternoons from one thirty to five thirty every day of the week, and those Freshmen are enthusiastic in support of the class, and the upper classmen seem very much peeved, to use a slang phrase, not to be given an opportunity which they think should be theirs.

Two Freshmen from the civil engineering department went into town and looked for a job that was advertised. It happened to be an engineering job in connection with the construction of a building in Cuba, and they went to the office and showed the work they had done. They talked it over,

and told what they were doing in previous years, and were offered one hundred and fifty dollars a month on the condition that they would stay at least one year; and both Freshmen refused the job. And they came to me afterwards and told me that they felt that they could not afford to give up any course which gave them so much opportunity.

This matter of the reversal of our usual practise in teaching is not a matter of snap judgment at our institution. There are at least five or six members of the faculty who have given a great deal of time to what may be called extensive teaching to men who are engaged in engineering practise. These periods of time extend from fifteen years of such work down to a period of two years; and I think there are at least five or six members of the faculty who have done that kind of work. That work has been done very largely by this method. And I believe that the outside teaching done by these members of the faculty has been productive of considerable breadth of view on the part of the faculty in relation to the methods of teaching.

I would add only one word and say that when it appears to me that the dean and the faculty and the students are enthusiastic about this thing, there must be something in it.

Professor Hickerson: I would like to ask the Dean of Tufts College why so little is given in highway construction? So many institutions offer new courses in this subject. It certainly is one of the biggest fields in civil engineering at present. I notice you only give three hours a week as part of the course as railroad and highway engineering. How much time is devoted to construction?

Dean Anthony: Mr. President, I will say in answer, that there will be more opportunity for it in the senior year. That subject will be touched upon in departmental work also. In the senior year work we propose to give a man very great freedom in any line we are teaching in college.

THE UNCONSCIOUS PLAGIARIST.

BY G. I. MITCHELL,

Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering, University of Pittsburgh.

The honor of the technical profession is always high; the technical man guards his statements with jealous care and is generally careful to acknowledge the source of any idea not his own. But what are we to think of the authors of technical books who permit matter to appear in their pages that has been taken from copyright material already in existence?

Take the case of the college professor who, let us say, is the head of the mechanical engineering department and is teaching machine design. Not being satisfied with the machine design texts already in existence, perhaps because the order in which the work is arranged does not agree with his opinions of the subject or because the various relations developed do not meet with his approval, he gets together a set of notes, has them mimeographed and hands a set to each of his students.

Because these notes have been arranged according to the professors particular notions he finds that they just suit his fancy, he can teach the subject with less friction and with less effort on his part-he does not have to correlate his ideas with those of another. He seen comes to be a firm believer in the fact that he has hit upon an ideal method of teaching his subject and condescends to have his notes published as a textbook that others may have the benefit of his broad intelligence.

Very good. He has been actuated by the best motives. But let us see how these wonderful notes have been collected. Did he sit down at his desk and evolve them from his own mind? The chances are very few that he did. No, he consulted every published text that he could get his hands on and picked out the parts that best suited his own ideas, one part

from one author and another part from a second and so on. Page after page of his notes was copied verbatim from other men's books, the professor merely running in a few words here and there to avoid a too abrupt change from one authority to another. Since he was simply compiling these notes for his own use he was not careful to give references to the men who were responsible for the subject matter.

After the lapse of a few years the professor has forgotten just whom he consulted, has forgotten just how he got these notes together, so that when he makes up his mind to publish his text he simply bundles the pages together and sends them off to his publisher. When the book appears it is submitted to the public as a "new and better" text in machine design. It finds its way into schools, the men from whom the author cribbed various parts read the new text and are somewhat surprised to find page after page of their own material. Letters begin to pour into the office of the publisher, causing the publisher much discomfort. But what can the publisher do? He has printed the text in good faith, depending upon the integrity of the author to prevent unpleasantness of this nature, but the publisher is more or less responsible, and to say the least, is in a bad position. The author himself looses caste and is regarded as a thief by his brothers.

The remedy is easy to find. Let every author of a book of this kind search his notes with care and wherever questionable material is found let full credit be given or let him give the old material new treatment so that it will appear in his new book in the author's own words. If the book is worth while it is certainly of the utmost importance that the writer keep his escutcheon clean, with his name placed high in brilliant letters on the roll of his profession.