North Carolina State University - Agromeck Yearbook (Raleigh, NC)

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leak of confidence in, and dissatisfaction with, our whole establishment. This revolution, and it is a revolution, has profoundly affected American education. When Russia sent the first sputnik into orbit, it produced the shock this country needed to awaken us from a long held complacent sense of superiority. The day of the egghead had arrived with a feverish realization of the importance of science and education to survival, and the lot of the scientist and the professor was raised several notches in our society ' s scheme of things. During these recent years substantial changes have taken place in the rigor and quality of our educational process from the grammar school through the universities . Gone from most campuses is the old easy going Joe College attitude and students are challenged and taxed to a greated extent than ever before. Many feel the educational standards have been raised too high too fast, with resulting unwholesome tension building up in many students leading to a narrower education with less emphasis on how to live and how to be a well rounded citizen in a democratic society. The free world, in its struggle to survive against oppos- ing ideologies in this nuclear age and to solve the pressing problems brought about by the knowledge explosion, has been turning more and more to the universities to solve the more difficult problems. Federal, state and city agen- cies as well as industry have sought the assistance of the trained minds available on the universities ' campuses, often with substanital finding. As a result many of the most qualified faculty members have assumed increasing re- search responsibilities and in place of their more easily pacer, individually selected research projects have turned to practical problem-solving programs. This was and is deemed in the nation ' s interest, really a patriotic and commendable trend in these troubled times. Further the research programs have been greatly enlarged as funds in, until in some instances students felt their needs and importance had been relegated to a secondary note. This growing dependence on the universities in tack- ling the nation ' s problems has been a major cause of recent campus unrest. The more competent the faculty member, the more burdened he is apt to be, the less time he has for an intimate relationship with his students, and the less time he has for contemplative, creative thinking. Universities become like corporations, where pressures for answers cause priorities which preclude the easy, in- formal practices of the past. Never have universities been so relevant to the needs of their society as they are today. Never has society so needed such relevance. Gone is the image of the pro- fessor as the long-haired, fuzzy-thinking idealist (one wonders if this has been transferred to his students). I ' m not sure the loss of this image is all to the good as I wonder if the pressured life of today ' s productive pro- fessor, with its pragmatic demands and lack of time for creative contemplation, can produce another Albert Einstein. Be that as it may, and contrary to an often voiced criticism, I suggest that the university today is highly relevant to society ' s needs. Indeed, is it not too relevant?

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Dean Fadum engineering If it is possible to define the role of a university in one sentence, it might be said that its prime purpose is to serve as a repository and dispenser of knowledge and of the techniques of applying know ledge to serve the needs of man. To these ends, it prime functions including teach- ing, research, and extension. First priority must go to teaching. The university serves society collectively by preparing its constituents not only how to better earn a living but equally importantly how to better enjoy living. Those of us who are engaged in engineering education are especially concerned as to how we can best prepare our students to meet the needs of the future, a future in which technology is developing at an ever-accelerating rate. The types of problems that confront us today and loom in the future are complex, multi-dimensional prob- lems, the solution of which require consideration of social and political dimensions as well as physical features. The problems with which the students of our engineering schools of today will be confronted during their practice cannot now even be predicted. The technology for their solution has therefore not yet been developed. There is