Mount Holyoke College - Llamarada Yearbook (South Hadley, MA)

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The future progress of civilization, indeed its mere survival, may depend upon the capacity of nten and women of disparate disciplines somehow to resolve the dilemma created by the need to specialize and. simultaneously, the need to per- ceive and to communicate the relevancy of specialized knowledge to the more general problems of man. The professor (ami student) of literature, for example, is aware that only the most skillful analysis of a poem will enhance rather than destroy its whole. The biolo- gist often consciously destroys the whole in order to analyze its parts, and. though Ik might be successful in gaining a degree of understanding of the parts by this approach, he sometimes loses sight of the fact that untierstanding of the isolated parts does not automatically by summation gain the whole. The problems of learning and of teaching in any area arc not unique to that area. An awareness of this may serve as one kind of reminder of the need to seek unity rather than to deplore diversity. Kathryn M. Eschenberg Of the research in physics that is done in connection with educational work, the vast majority is carried on at large uni- versities, where a professor teaches one or (at most) two courses and devotes the rest of his time to research, where in most eases his real interest lies. It is difficult for a physics professor to maintain his “respectability among re- search physicists and still be really con- cerned about teaching. In liberal arts col- leges (including Mount Holyoke) each teacher is assumed to do a full-time job of teaching. Any research is done on top of this load. It is obvious, then, that the atmosphere and operation of a small college present serious drawbacks to a person with re- search ambitions. On the other hand, the liberal arts col- lege is a good place for exercising one's interest in the relationship between phys- ics and other disciplines, for relating physics to all other possible aspects of life, and for enquiry into the history and meaning of the ideas of physics. It is this more general aspect of the work of the college teacher of science that leads many good physicists to choose the role of the teacher and relegate to a second- ary position any ambitions for research. Homer C. Wilkins

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Unfortunately, the words physical educa- tion lack clarity in denoting the nature of a field of inquiry or discipline. Because of the physical educator’s concern with human movement, his field is frequently understood to be activity itself rather than a domain of knowledge. Actually, activity is a means to an end. and physi- cal fitness, frequently thought to be that end. is a desirable by-product. The physical educator sees human move- ment in terms of its relation to the wholeness of man. Man is a biological organism. Man must act. His movement is expressive or functional. It is governed by physical laws and is described in terms of force, time, and space. Physical education is. in a sense, an applied field, concerned with the complex interplay of sensory, perceptual, and psychological variables which must be simultaneously involved in both gross motor learning and highly skilled performance. At Mount Holyoke College one is chal- lenged to provide experiences which will realize the full potential of the remarka- ble human body to the end that it might approach its best in health, in skill, and in joy, and function as a bulwark for its creative and intellectual endeavors. Jessie Lie

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The -conflict between teaching and research activity ■ no. only necessary. Mount Holyoke provides a very happy batllcground forth»“““• The students are intellectually alert and challenging and are as -ntpatent »dh mcdhatrilv as they arc appreciative of excellence. Thus there is ample cumulation : performance as a teacher. On the side of research l cnequjd encouragement. When I first arrived at Mount Holyoke. I found a legacy r m several iterations of distinguished predecessors in the h ogKal sc.cnce ckp t- ment in the form of laboratory facilities and equipment. a superb library but most important, a tradition of research accomplishment which was respected and sup- ported by the administration. For me there is no conflict between research and leaching, since I see creation and communication of scientific knowledge as two ends of the same P J hen ' stand beside an honors student as she discovers some little fact about b ochemical mechanism that no one has ever known before, am I a teacher or a co-d.scovcrcr . Curtis Ci. Smith