Engineering Sciences and Applied Physics

Born of wartime research experiences and the old expanding Engineering Haleness Department, the ingenue Department of Engineering Sciences and Applied Physics offers the scientific-minded Freshman an intensive and exacting field of concentration.

Today's 250 ES&AP concentrators acquire a much broader fundamental understanding of the physical sciences than the pre-war Engin. Sci. mon. They leave the level of "slide rule pushers," and although they may have to ask a lot of questions on their first few jobs, changing situations and techniques won't upset them.

From Math Aa and Elementary Chemistry to the three technical electives taken in the last half of the senior year, the department grounds its students in the "science but not the art" of engineering. Industrial and productive techniques which are better learned on the job take no time from the heavy schedule. The exacting demands of modern industry call for men versed in theory and fundamentals who can adapt themselves to changing methods.

Ten Courses Required

Training those men is the aim of the department's top-notch scientists and engineers, such as Chaffee, Alken, Pierce, Mimno, and Berry, and the members of the Physics faculty which alternates with ES&AP in giving the courses common to both fields. The curriculum covers the whole range of engineering sciences, and covers it well, but ten full courses, eight and a half of them prescribed, must be taken within the department.

This large does of science leaves little room for anything else in the concentrator's schedule. The language requirement must be met, preferably in German; English A and five more distribution electives are degree requirements.

Consequently, most students are forced to carry a program of five courses for five of their eight terms in College, only two of which are entirely free choices. Redeeming factors, however, and the lack of general examinations in the senior year and the possibility of obtaining a degree with honors on the basis of distinctive work in the regular program alone. Tutorial, as such, is non-existent, but laboratory work and the availability of the faculty for individual conferences fill the gap between lecture and textbook.

Four Years Inadequate

A four year program, however, cannot create a full-blown engineer or applied physicist when held in check by an effective distribution system and infused with the increasingly important ideal of teaching basic theory. Some things have to be left out.

On the undergraduate level, therefore, the program is essentially elementary. When the receives his S.B. degree, the ES&AP concentrator has a competent and intelligent understanding of all branches of engineering: electronics, mechanics, unclear physics, thermodynamics, and a strong groundwork in mathematics. But he has done no advanced work or specialization.

In the graduate school, however, an advanced structure is erected on his S.B. foundation. A one-year program leading to the M.S. degree and a two year M. Engin, Sct. curriculum consist of coherent plans of specialization with definite aims. A grasp of the business side of engineering may be acquired by a year of graduate work in business school.

But it's a tough road. Good instruction. Interesting material, fine facilities, and the anticipation of a thorough familiarity with the engineering sciences do not make the program any lighter or give the concentrator a chance to sample other fields.