Rose Hulman Institute of Technology - Modulus Yearbook (Terre Haute, IN)

Page 27 text:

It was Dr. Thompson who fixed upon the Institute that uncompromising ad- herence to the rule of impartiality in the judging and classifying of students. There was never to be, and there never has been favoritism ; rich and not so rich, sons of workmen and sons of benefactors of the Institute were to fare and have fared alike. Dr. Thompson had a strong leaning toward the classics of literature. He was fond of Horace, he loved Burns; he gave his children literary training, and had he remained with the school, it is probable its literary side would have been more fully expanded. DR. MENDENHALL. Tuomas C. MenDENHALL came to the Institute in 1887, and immediately cap- tured all hearts. His genial presence has hardly yet disappeared from the halls of the Institute, and it is scarcely fair to ask us to pass a word of judgment upon him. He is still of us and among us. Dr. Mendenhall is essentially a scientist ; whatever abilities he may have pos- sessed as a teacher, and we are not likely to underrate those, he was yet still more eminently a scientist than a pedagogue. Clear and exact science, accurate concep- tions, for every thought a picture in the mind and a model in the hand, these are characteristics of the kind of thought in which he delighted ; the hazy, the mystical, the metaphysical, he therefore avoided. His thought was rapid, his judgment quick and remarkably correct. Even in the judgment of character he seldom erred, yet, we are bound to say, in this, we think, he proceeded rather by intuition than by clearly defined methods. He had not any great tendency to Emersonian charac- ter analysis. He was accustomed to lecture on meteorology, on earthquakes, on almost anything that was outward, clearly defined and not to be mistaken. There is no mistaking the value of his influence upon the school. It was in the direc- tion of exactness. Science is based upon a system of exact weights and measures,