ical energy into heat or electrical energy, or the reverse. Though electro chemistry, including the subject of electric batteries, is usually placed in the department of electrical engineering, there is little more reason for placing it there than there would be for placing industrial chemistry in the department of heat engineering because most chemical operations either absorb or give out heat. Then, too, electrochemical processes require for their direction a greater knowledge of chemistry than of electricity.

It is difficult to decide what subjects to place in the department of civil engineering on account of its being the parent of the other departments. Here it is limited to the subjects of surveying and the transportation of materials.

The department of machine and structural design is made a combination because most machines, traveling cranes for example, have to be designed as static structures as well as machines.

The department of mechanics includes both mechanics of materials and hydraulics because they are both merely extensions of analytic mechanics.

The department of drawing should include drawing in all its branches: machine, map and structural, both free hand and instrumental, for these subjects are fundamental and are used by all students.

The department of mechanical practice should include, in addition to the use of tools, a discussion of shop organization and the cost of production; which are subjects usually neglected.

Of the departments in other schools only those of physics and chemistry will be mentioned. The placing

of thermodynamics and electrodynamics, including alternating currents, in the department of physics is due to the fact that they are both fundamental subjects required by students in several departments. The same reason exists for separating the department of chemical engineering from that of chemistry that there is for separating electrical engineering from physics, viz., that one concerns itself with the application to engineering problems of the principles studied in the other.

There may be some objection to this grouping from the standpoint of laboratory equipment; however a careful study will show that if the laboratories are all in use at one time, very little can be saved in equipment by having the common combination of heat and mechanical; and electrical and physical laboratories, while the disadvantage of having the laboratory instruction in a different department from the book work is very great, as has already been mentioned. At first thought it might seem that power might be taken from the same line shaft for the different laboratories, but this is not advisable on account of the difficulty of speed regulation. Better results can be obtained by having a separate source of power, either engine or electric motor, for each laboratory. One strong point in favor of a common laboratory is the question of repairs, where the laboratory is large enough to employ the whole time of a mechanician. This need not put the separate laboratories at a disadvantage, however, if there are one or more mechanicians employed regularly by the department of mechanical practice; in fact, this may prove advantageous on account of the opportunity

which it gives students to see how work is done in the shop.

Very little can be said regarding the personnel of the teaching force without entering upon a discussion of the relative sizes of the various classes and the schedule of studies; both of which are outside the scope of this paper. The executive head of the school would be the dean, under the president of the university. Each department would have a professor at its head, of whom the dean would be one, with as many assistant professors and instructors under him as the number of courses and students required. The number of persons giving instruction should be such that no one is required to spend more than fifteen hours per week in the lecture room or twenty-five hours in the laboratory; furthermore, no division should have more than twenty-four students in it except for lectures, when two or more divisions may be profitably combined.

DISCUSSION.

PRESIDENT MCNAIR: The paper is before you for discussion.

SECRETARY KETCHUM: I have a written discussion from Professor Magruder, which I will read.

PROFESSOR WM. T. MAGRUDER (by letter): I would suggest that the subject of machine design and structural design be separated and given to different instructors; or else that machine design be made a part of the department of heat engineering and that bridge and masonry design be made subjects in the department of civil engineering.

I would advocate the transfer of thermo-dynamics

from the department of physics to the department of heat engineering (usually called mechanical engineering), unless it can be taught by a steam engineer. Thermodynamics, as a culture study, doubtless belongs to the department of physics, but when taught as an engineering study in an engineering college, it surely belongs in the department of mechanical engineering. This point can be elucidated by reference to the textbooks now in print and in use on this subject in this country, and to their authors.

PRESIDENT MCNAIR: Is there further discussion? I understood Professor Ford to say that part of the work was given in physics which had to be taken by every engineer outside of electrical. I want to ask if the civil engineer could not take the course.

PROFESSOR FORD: The speaker would reply that the quantitative side of alternating current phenomena is inadequately taught in, or entirely omitted from, most courses in physics, thereby requiring that the subject be taught in the electrical engineering department.

PROFESSOR MARBURG: The same objection had occurred to the speaker in regard to hydraulics which should be taught by the man who teaches hydraulic engineering. In my opinion the course in structures, in connection with mechanical engineering, should be entirely different in scope from that for civil engineering, and the same observation applies to other subjects. I desire to call attention also to the omission of reference to the study of the materials of construction, including testing.

PROFESSOR FORD: The testing of materials is included in mechanics of materials, under mechanics. There is

no intention to limit each subject given to one course, but the idea is to have each subject taught in one department only; instead of having hydraulics, for example, taught in the mechanical, electrical and civil engineering departments as each has use for the subject.

PROFESSOR WALDO: I want to make one suggestion, possibly a criticism. I think that most people who come in contact with our mathematicians of to-day and understand the mathematical value of geometry, agree in saying that a serious defect in the mathematical courses in our schools of the liberal arts is the fact that descriptive geometry is not as a rule taught there as a mathematical subject. Now, my feeling in reference to that subject, having taught it for a number of years in technical schools, is this-that probably the best results to the student from the study of geometry will come by that subject being handled by a mathematical department. Whether that agrees with the feeling of the engineers or not I cannot say, but I have had students come to me many a time after a course in mathematics which included descriptive geometry, in which they said that descriptive geometry as thus taught coordinately with other mathematical work was the subject from which they received the greatest help.

There is one other suggestion and that is this: I think if you study the development of Ann Arbor, for instance, or any other of our western universities where the engineering departments are being worked out side by side with schools of the liberal arts, the tendency is beginning to appear to separate the mathematical department into two departments, the engineering mathematics and mathematics for the liberal arts