Tufts University - Jumbo Yearbook (Medford, MA)

Page 26 text:

To Ashley S. Campbell a teacher’s most impor¬ tant job “is to communicate his own enthusiasm for the subject.” In addition, it is vital that he com¬ municate “that the subject involves a method of thinking that can be important outside the subject. . . . Facts are less important than procedures. The engineering student must be prepared to assimilate new knowledge generated after he graduates.” Campbell, while Dean of the College of Engi¬ neering, still teaches in mechanical engineering. A unique feature of his courses is an occasional essay exam — a radical departure from the slide rule ap¬ proach common to engineering courses. As he ex¬ presses it, “I don’t think that learning formulas is a very profitable way for a student to spend his time. It certainly doesn’t happen that way in real life.” In fact, engineering examinations are especially dif¬ ficult to produce. What can you do in two hours to measure the work of sixteen weeks ? “Oneidea, then, is to ask a student to tell you how to solve a prob¬ lem. . . . You’ll then know a lot more about what he knows. There is no such thing as ‘slinging the bull’ in engineering. It’s quite impossible for the student to fool himself, so rather difficult to fool the professor.” Indeed, “Successful manipulation of numbers does not convince a reader the way the manipula¬ tion of words does.” The Dean comments that “engineers are lousy at putting numbers into mean¬ ing. ” Thus, there is a need for training in com¬ munication. In this connection, Dean Campbell explains the reasoning behind the elimination of re¬ quired freshman English for engineers: “Part of the notion here is that one learns to write only in Eng¬ lish 1-2. In fact, English 1-2 does not purport to be a writing course. It is an enormous help in becom¬ ing facile with words, but other courses are too. Writing and communication should pervade the whole engineering curriculum.” While some teachers lament their students’ at¬ tention to non-academic pursuits, Dean Campbell sees these as invaluable. “We graduate two kinds of students: most graduate from the classroom, while a few graduate from the college. Only a few have had enough significant extra-classroom activity to help them in the adult world. Students are clamor¬ ing for more responsibility, so we ought to provide all the opportunity we can for them to develop responsibility. We have not done very much. . . .”