Worcester Polytechnic Institute - Peddler Yearbook (Worcester, MA)

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We have some extraordinary faculty. They are able and they ' re being killed. If you look at the PLAN ... we wrote it for 1500 undergradu- ates . . . There ' s a limit to how much they can do before they just collapse. . . I worry about these people because they are superb and at the end of the year I see them absolutely ex- hausted. — John van Alstyne f ;i J John Van Alstyne Bolz: I think it ' s an exceptional faculty in its devotion to undergradu- ate education. Roadstrum: For a lot of good faculty, they ' re neglecting their own professional development. Picha: The argument can be made that faculty members can only stay abreast ... of technological change by doing doctoral level re- search ... I am not persuaded that other ways exist for maintaining faculty professional growth. It can be argued that faculty members working on real industrial and government problems with very bright seniors and masters students can stay alive intel- lectually and grow professionally. Reed: There is reduced oppor- tunity for consulting because of the time demands of the Plan, aggravated by a salary structure which lags be- hind comparable institutions. Picha: . . .it might be that WPI might begin to lose its valuable faculty members to industry. (Industrial start- ing salaries for BS students are once again equal to Assistant Professor ' s sa- laries.) Reed: Some faculty feel under- recognized. They put in extraordinary effort, yet seldom hear a word of praise or recognition. Roadstrum: ... some of the old professors . . . accepted the PLAN, but that acceptance and real gut ac- ceptance are two different things. We all tend to go on in our old way. In effect the PLAN is being subverted by the very people who are running it. Mazlish: A lapse into compla- cency, or worse, the emergence of a counterrevolution cannot be entirely discounted. Pake: The PLAN ' S continuing success hinges crutically on faculty conscientiousness, effectiveness, and stamina . . . Reed: I see faculty overload as the overriding problem of the Plan. Other problems, such as advising, projects, competency exams, seven- week term, all stemming from the newness of the Plan, can be corrected given the availability of adequate faculty time. Bolz: Some professors will al- ways advise more projects. They shouldn ' t be expected to then carry a heavy course load. . . . It ' s like a foot- ball team — every player doesn ' t have to do everything well . . . Reed: So why is the Plan work- ing so well at this stage? . . . The an- swer lies in the faculty ' s willingness to put in extraordinary effort, dedication, and long hours way beyond the call of duty. Mazlish: While we have all been worrying about the overload on the faculty ... we have slighted the fact that the administration is really also very overloaded. Anderson: I would hope there would be some way of getting rid of people or at least discouraging them. Wagner: Do we have any way of getting him out? They could just sit around here and be nothing — be vegetacles. 1 hat ' s not the way it should work to me . . .We suggest to them — Why don ' t you leave here — you ' re not doing very well. . . . Well, that ' s not the way it is out there. If 12

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Bolz: Distinction tells a student that . . . the faculty member thinks the student has accomplished the ob- jectives of the course in a distin- guished way. Van Alstyne: For off-campus projects seven weeks is about the right amount of time. Bridgeman: We had more flexi- bility in presentation under the semes- ter system. We find in Chemistry that laboratories are very difficult thing to work into the seven-week format. I think it ' s more the inflexibility of the one-third unit that creates a problem than the seven-week term as such ... I think there ' s something to digestion of the subject. Anderson: You try to get one- third of a student ' s time and they yell Seaberg: It ' s been misinterpreted by too many people as an open door to WPI. That simply isn ' t the case. Grogan: It ' s consistent with the PLAN in its theoretical base but it wasn ' t part of the PLAN. Seaberg: There is no possibility that we could have negotiated admis- sions without the PLAN. If we think that it ' s totally unreal- istic for you to come to WPI, we are going to tell you that and we intend to be damn firm about it. Mazlish: If one had known ahead of time the problems to be en- countered, one would have wisely de- clined to begin the Plan at all. Yet faith seems to have overcome or dealt with almost all of the problems . . . the re- sult was not a house built on cards; as each part of the Plan became increas- ingly operational it provided a solu- tion rather than a dismissal of the problems we had encountered earlier . . . This is not to say that all of the difficulties with the Plan are over once and for all. Reed: . . . there are problems . . . one major problem and a series of minor (ones) . . . The major problem is cost. The Plan represents education inherently more expensive than the traditional format. I don ' t know how much more expensive — my estimate: 30% to 50% — nor do I know how WPI will pay for it. The excess cost stems directly from the Plan ' s need for substantially more faculty per student. The early success of the program has been made possible by a burst of faculty dedication and effort which cannot be sustained for the long haul. Van Alstyne: We have some ex- traordinary faculty. They are able and Wilbur Bridgman they ' re being killed ... by the amount of work they have to do. If you look at the PLAN ... we wrote it for 1500 undergraduates. And we have 50% more than that now . . . There ' s a limit to how much (the faculty) can do before they just collapse ... at the end of the year I see them absolutely exhausted. Wagner: . . . due to this system (the Plan) the time we have to put in is far, far, far greater than we ever had to before. We can ' t even be the stu- dents we used to be. We can ' t be the teachers we used to be ... I hear everybody complaining about it. That they . . . don ' t have time enough to prepare their lectures the way they used to . . . They ' re just running at full tilt all the time. Anderson: for thinking. ' There isn ' t any time Wagner: When we voted this Plan in . . . we were supposed to get three new professors. Which we didn ' t get. And plenty of shop help . . . right across the whole campus . . . plus . . . graduate student help so that we can give all this individual attention that we have never really gotten around to. In turn, the student body — a number of years ago — went roughly from 400 per class to 600 per class . . . And do you know how many profs we went up by? (ZERO) 11 The courses themselves are long, narrow corridors of knowledge ... in real life situations you constantly have to synthesize ideas . . . our program provided virtually no opportunity to do that — ev- erything was all in little boxes. — Bill Grogan Bill Grogan

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you ' re not doing your job well you ' re going to get kicked man! So you better face it. Anderson: With the PLAN we ' ve gained something and we ' ve lost something. Gained some flexibility but lost some rigor. We ' ve lost essen- tially all of our laboratories . . . It ' s too expensive. Wagner: It ' s (PLAN) made for the person who ' s a good go-hard — a devoted person, but there are many slough-offs who can hide behind it Bridgeman: . . . he has more of a tendency to drift along and not necessarily come out with as well rounded an education as he might re- ceive (under a program) that ' s more traditional . . . The danger is the stu- dent just concentrates in his areas of interest and doesn ' t get as broad an education. He ' s got the opportunity to get a broader education than before. But what I see, is that a great many students just concentrate in the par- ticular things that . . . have value for their specialty. Riesman: And everything de- pends, of course, on a continued flow of students . . . the general fate of pri- vate colleges for the long-r un future seems to me bleak, so much so that WPI ' s survival and even growth in en- rollments seem to me as much to the credit of the PLAN as to the general revival in the market for graduates with a B.S. in engineering, particularly if the baccalaureate degree is in a spe- cialty in demand at the moment. Bridgeman: I think for the mo- ment we ought to stay with what we ' ve got and just improve the opera- tion of it. Get all the bugs out of it. Can ' t make any radical changes at this time — it would just bring us more new problems to solve. I think only a long term experiment — not . . . what the students have done in four years but what the students (are) doing in 10-20 years that . . . will tell us (if) the PLAN works or doesn ' t. Pake: . . . the WPI Plan pro- duces a superior product at a higher academic cost. My subjective judg- ment is that the product increment proportionately exceeds the academic increment . . . This leads to the ulti- mate question: as WPI settles down to this effective experimental learning program, can resources be found to re- lieve the faculty overload and sustain the program? In the very long run the hope may have to rest on industrial support, presuming that industry will recognize that it hires a more useful and effective graduate when he comes from WPI. This challenge is squarely before the administration, because of the fickleness of public and private foundations with respect to support of solid programs once their innova- tive lustre wears off . . . Mazlish: ... I must conclude that the WPI Plan is an exciting and successful innovation that bodes well to become a prototype of future devel- opments in scientific and engineering education. Van Alstyne: The Class of 1978 is the first class that has had very little influence from non-PLAN student. It ' s the first class that makes me convinced that the PLAN is going to work Bridgeman: Your education is something that has to continue. Look at your life as an opportunity to keep on growing mentally, physically, and spiritually. Roadstrum: development. Guide your own Ray Bolz Seaberg: The problem is . . . can we leave the next generation a world better than that left to us by our forefathers. We don ' t mean better washing machines, better televisions — it has to do with the quality of life. It wasn ' t hard to do in 1850 — it ' s much harder now. Bolz: We ' re geared in our class- room teaching to one mode and we have to change — I see a fascinating challenge. 13 Fred Anderson