THURSDAY, OCTOBER 19

THE ASSEMBLY OF THE COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

THE CHAPEL, 9:00 A.M.

THE STUDENT-ENGINEER

W. F. M. Goss, M.S.

Dean of the College of Engineering, Purdue University

In the forty-nine Land Grant colleges of this country, of which the University of Illinois is one, there are today approximately ten thousand students in engineering courses. These students are in most cases mature men. They have come to their present work as the result of careful selection after long courses of preliminary training, and they look out upon their life-work with high aspirations. The studentengineer is in fact a force making for American citizenship, the full significance of which few people yet understand. He is permitted privileges such as the world has never before set before her young men, and it goes without saying that these privileges carry with them responsibilities which are unusual. The character of some of these it is my purpose briefly to discuss.

First of all, the thinking student will not fail to consider the value and extent of the college influence. The varied and dignified exercises of the present week in which you as students of the University of Illinois have had a part, give emphasis to this theme. Here are ample grounds, fine buildings, extensive laboratories and complete equipments—apparatus which in some cases has the delicacy required in the researches of the scientist, and in others the massive proportions necessary in the machinery of the engineer. Here, also, is a staff of distinguished doctors and professors, aided by numerous instructors and assistants all working in an effective organization for the accomplishment of definite results,-men who have come to their present positions after special training, and some of whom have through years of arduous service so well guided the destinies of this institution as to make possible its effective methods and its present high standards. Here, too, are students coming from every part of a great state, from other states, and even from foreign lands; from city and town; from the home of the farmer, the artisan, the merchant and the lawyer, here to live and work as one people, to be animated by a common purpose, each one to give and to receive something from his contact with every other one.

Such a description, embracing the grounds, buildings and equipment, the professors and the students, is often regarded as constituting a description of the University. It represents the materials and persons which appeal to the ordinary visitor. But such a conception

is elementary. It is but a starting point from which properly to apprehend the significance of such an institution. That which lies immediately about us is in fact but a center toward which tend a multitude of interests and activities. Beyond this campus are the people of the State, who, acting through their Legislature, supply with a liberal hand that which is needed for its maintenance and prosperity. The University of Illinois is great because the people are its keepers, and if the people are its keepers, then every tax-payer may claim to be a part of it. Then there are the homes which are represented by its students, out of hundreds of which today come. thoughts of love and interest, of hope and expectation. The father and mother of every one of its students have a vital interest in everything that affects its welfare, and the sympathies of the University must be broad enough to include them.

Again, outside of grounds, in every part of the State, are its manufacturers who are required constantly to be increasing the efficiency of their methods; to proceed by processes which are new; to substitute a higher degree of intelligence in operation, for that which served before. The steel maker, the tile maker, the cement manufacturer, the engine builder, the power plant manager, all look to the college for help. They require men, and the college supplies them; they desire to be informed concerning a scientific fact or application, and they turn to the college and are instructed. The industries of the State and the technical school of the State are in fact but two different parts of the same thing. Each contributes its strength to that of the other, and the college is as large as the industrial activities of the State can make it. These are some of the interests which, having their origin remote from this vicinity, find their center here. They are converging interests, but there are others which diverge. Year by year men trained within these halls scatter to become a part of the bone, sinew and of the intellectual force of the State, establishing homes and building industries. Wherever they go, if they are true to their training, they make things better and prepare a way in which you who are now students may hereafter follow. Certainly, no proper estimate of what constitutes the University is complete which does not include its graduates.

These brief statements but feebly measure the extent of the university interest. The student-engineer finds not only buildings, laboratories and professors awaiting his coming, but he discovers that the support of a great state is behind him, that great interests center in matters with which he is privileged to concern himself, and that hundreds of graduates who, while busy with their own affairs, look back with serious concern to the record which he is making, stand ready to give him a helping hand when he is prepared to receive it.

Turning now from the university to the student-engineer, it is well to remember that the conceptions which one has of his future career are likely to be limited by his past experiences. A boy who thinks of the thing he will do when he becomes a man usually entertains visions which please a boy. There is in fact, nothing in a boy's experience which can serve as a background upon which he can depict the pleasure and the dignity which the opportunities of manhood are to bring him. A New England dame, having passed sixty odd years of pastoral life in a village behind the hills having a stage-coach communication with the outside world, upon hearing by chance some discussion of a project to extend a railway in the direction of her home, quietly remarked that "the cars might come but she should not go out to let the bars down for them." Your observation has, of course, long since taught you that railway trains progress over the country whether the bars are let down or not, but I assume that you are still reaching out toward ideals which your present knowledge and experience but imperfectly sustain. In view of this fact, I cannot do better than to call your attention to some of those qualities and exercises which assist in the development of the student-engineer.

In one's reaching out toward a future goal, he should place a high value upon the dignity of his calling. It is hardly worth while for this institution to lavish its resources upon you or for you as students to subject yourselves to the discipline of a four years' course unless something more than ordinary is to come out of it. Your career as a student is in itself a call to leadership. Whether you achieve leadership or not may be a question, but there should be no mistake concerning your ideals. Such a conception raises the work of the student to a high level. It places beneath his feet everything which is low and mean and even commonplace, for a man selected for leadership necessarily carries the responsibilities of that leadership, and many things which trouble and take the time of men about him give him no concern, for he lives above them. There is nothing egotistical in the acceptance of such an ideal. It is hardly more than a rational business proposition. It is a declaration to the effect that those who enjoy exceptional training must be expected to become exceptional men.

A student who feels the responsibilities of such a call will guard well the disposition of his time. In this day of the newspaper, we hear much of the frivolities of college students, and while it is true. that every large college probably counts among its members some who are careless or indifferent to their obligations, a few who are dissipated, and a still smaller number who may be positively vicious, these things are not characteristic of an American college community. But while we may thus comfort ourselves with the feeling that we are not entitled to much of the criticism that is sometimes laid at our door, we do not, by so doing, set matters right. It is not sufficient that the

college student be better than he is sometimes thought to be; the important question is as to whether the process of the college tends to the upbuilding of his character. The fact is that the student who does not feel that he is progressing in his ideals of simple truth and honesty is on dangerous ground. These are matters, moreover, which he should gauge, not by his ability to keep the law, but by the strength of right impulses which animate him. He should insist upon living in an atmosphere of pure speech, and suppress all practices which result in a waste of time. A disregard of such reasonable requirements is equivalent to a neglect of opportunities or worse, and a student whose attainments are so limited that he does not desire them, is out of place in a college community. In all this, you will notice that I have not set my standard high. There are other and higher grounds. of appeal from which I do not at this time assume to speak. I merely urge upon you the fact that a successful professional career cannot be enjoyed except it is sustained by abiding qualities of manhood.

The student-engineer must of necessity be much absorbed in the technique of his course. Upon first acquaintance, a great bridge is but a bridge to him, but as he pursues his study the bridge resolves itself into foundations, abutments, piers and superstructure, and each of these in turn becomes separated into scores of details, and beyond the details he knows there are methods of analyses, as refined as he may choose to have them, by means of which the size and proportions of every part have been determined. When he understands the methods employed in its building, the bridge becomes a series of logical facts the contemplation of which stirs his ambition and stimulates his interest in principles of design.

In a similar manner the unskilled gaze unmoved where the roar of a waterfall is converted into light, but as the student-engineer proceeds with his study of such an installation, he sees the stored energy of impounded water, wheels for utilizing it, electric generators and rotary converters for making and sending forth the current, and transmission lines leading out to a distant network of service wires tipped with lights which glow like the stars of the firmament. As he proceeds with his examination, he finds that in each one of these elements there is a labyrinth of detail and that every detail is a response, more or less perfect, to the laws with which it is his purpose to become familiar. In a similar way, engineering structures and machines of many sorts must be studied, their functions analyzed, and the theories which have been formulated to guide practice in their construction or operation, studied. The student rarely fails to be attentive to these studies, for he realizes that his whole purpose in attending a technical school is that he may become proficient in them. He is interested in them. He is conscious of the uplift which they give; they serve to increase his knowledge of facts; they promise a

larger degree of intellectual freedom, and he feels that by their use he must sometime prove his value. It rarely happens, therefore, that the student fails to do justice to his technical work, but he makes a mistake when, having done this, be it ever so perfectly, he assumes that he has met the full measure of his responsibilities.

Students who are inclined to shut themselves up with the routine of their course should consider that no man can be an engineer in a large sense who knows only engineering. If in his struggle for attainment he stops with his technical training, he is in danger of becoming merely an animated calculating machine, useful and valued as are the slide-rules and mathematical tables, but shut out from all chance of preferment because of the limitations with which he has unconsciously hedged himself about. Such a one is on the wrong track. The engineer is a man; the technical training but one of his tools. safe and reliable engineer is an honest and conscientious man. An able engineer is a well-trained, far-seeing man, and a great engineer is a man who, possessing all of these qualities in an unusual degree, has achieved success through his work. The student, if he would avoid professional suicide, must regard with care all things which make for a well-rounded manhood.

The schools of engineering offer many things for his upbuilding in addition to the technical work of his course to which he may well give earnest attention. For example, there are the general studies of his course, the literature, history and modern language upon which the student often enters with some reluctance. He sometimes gives expression to a feeling that such general studies are not in line with his ambition; that their trend is away from his purpose, and that in the nature of the case they cannot greatly interest him. Some candidates for engineering honors have been known to drop their college course upon their failure to secure permission to specialize, or, in other words, to go around these general studies. All such objection arises from misinformation and from an imperfect understanding of what it is to be an engineer, and if persisted in will strangle the very qualities of character which the college course is designed to stimulate. None will deny that a full-rounded man should be able to spell, to write a fair hand, to properly capitalize and punctuate his manuscript, for these are rather commonplace accomplishments and certainly should be possessed by one who aspires to leadership in any field. Some knowledge of books, of historic events, and of a language other than his own, constitute information which, in view of the attainments of those with whom the future leaders will need to deal, are hardly less elementary. The student who will fairly and soberly compare the opportunities for instruction in these kindred lines which are offered by schools of engineering, with the need which manifests itself when he compares his own attainments with