awarded, on the recommendation of the Faculty of Columbia College, to students who have completed the first year in the Schools of Mines, Engineering and Chemistry following three years in Columbia College. The new Bachelor of Science degree, awarded on the recommendation of the Faculty of Applied Science, provides the proper degree for those students who have completed the two-year pre-engineering course in Columbia College and two years in the Schools of Mines, Engineering and Chemistry. The graduate who leaves college on attaining this Bachelor of Science degree will go out equipped with an excellent engineering training, differing from the ordinary four-year engineering course in a greater emphasis upon general studies and the fundamental sciences, and less upon some subjects of engineering technique, which in the Columbia course are reserved for the last year of the engineering curriculum, upon the completion of which the student receives the appropriate engineering degree. The two options open to the student entering Columbia College with the expectation of going on through the Engineering School are, accordingly, as follows: I The student enters Columbia College without special restrictions as to subjects offered for admission. Student takes three-year preengineering course, with 12 points of general electives. at Student enters Schools of Mines, Engineering and Chemistry beginning of fourth year. End of fourth year: Bachelor of Arts degree, under Columbia College Professional Option Plan, attained on completion of first year's work in three-year course of Schools of Mines, Engineering and Chemistry. At end of the sixth year the student receives the degree of Engineer of Mines, Metallurgical Engineer, Civil Engineer, Electrical Engineer, Mechanical Engineer, Chemical Engineer, or Master of Science (in Industrial Engineering). II On entering Columbia College the student includes in his offering for admission Elementary Chemistry, Elementary Physics and Advanced Mathematics. Student takes pre-engineering course of two years and one sixweek summer session. Student enters Schools of Mines, Engineering and Chemistry at beginning of third year. End of fourth year: Bachelor of Science degree attained on completion of two years' work of the three-year course in the Schools of Mines, Engineering and Chemistry. At end of the fifth year the student receives the degree of Engineer of Mines, Metallurgical Engineer, Civil Engineer, Electrical Engineer, Mechanical Engineer, Chemical Engineer or Master of Science (in Industrial Engineering). —Under administration of Schools of Mines, Eng. & Chemistry Graduate The admission prescriptions for students entering the Schools of Mines, Engineering and Chemistry from colleges other than Columbia College remain unchanged. The new provisions as to admission through Columbia College, which involve no changes in the engineering course itself, provide a desirable flexibility in the university type of engineering train ing which Columbia University offers. Having been duly approved by the University Council and by the Trustees the changes go into effect at once. In my report for 1923, reference was made to the serious and wide-reaching study of Engineering Education in which the Society for the Promotion of Engineering Education was seeking to enlist the cooperation of all engineering schools and of several educational foundations. This undertaking has been greatly forwarded by the Carnegie Foundation through its action in appropriating funds to meet the expenses of a director and a central office and staff. While this central office will do much work on its own account and will correlate results obtained by the engineering schools and other agencies, it is expected that the central office will, in the main, assist the engineering schools to investigate their own problems and serve as a clearing house for the facts brought out in such investigation. The director of this study is Mr. William E. Wickenden, an electrical engineer and teacher of electrical. engineering, who has for some time directed the employment of engineering graduates by one of our largest corporation employers and has studied engineering schools through the records of their graduates. Definite statistical information about alumni of engineering schools is obviously called for in order that the accomplishments or shortcomings of graduates in engineering may be studied in relation to the type of instruction given in the schools and the school records of students. Columbia University has an opportunity to cooperate actively in this work and the organization of this cooperation should engage the attention of the Faculty early in the Winter Session. It would seem particularly desirable for us to gather information as to our alumni since, not only in the past seven years when we have had a three-year professional course based on three years of graduate study, but also in the former four-year course, our curriculum has been sufficiently different from that of other engineering schools to make of special value comparative studies of the records of graduates and the courses of instruction as between Columbia and other institutions. The action of the Trustees providing at the May meeting for the immediate erection of a new laboratory for physics to stand on the Green along 120th Street near Broadway and for an addition to the laboratory for chemistry, consisting of an extension to Havemeyer Hall northward along Broadway to the Mapes Gate, will do much toward relieving, not only the general University pressure for room, but in particular the need of more room in some of the Engineering Departments. Chemistry and Chemical Engineering will fill completely, at once, the new extension to Havemeyer Hall. Since, however, it will obviously be necessary to build a physics laboratory much larger than the immediate needs of that department, which has been held down for years in its development by lack of laboratory space, the new physics building will provide temporarily much class room and laboratory space that can be shared by other scientific departments. For example, it is planned to accommodate some of the research work in Chemical Engineering in the physics building until the construction of the new Chemical Engineering Building can. be carried out. It is planned to have the physics building, which will be about 180 by 62 feet, run up twelve stories. This will be a novel type of laboratory building but it seems to be the most practicable way of getting the floor space necessary. Tests made with sensitive instruments in many buildings in the vicinity indicate that the disturbance from vibration in a properly constructed building of this height will not be seriously worse than in any building on Manhattan Island. The construction of the physics building will make useless the present small astronomical observatory, hence a dome for an equatorially mounted telescope and a room for a transit instrument is to be provided on the top of the physics building. For both the chemistry and physics laboratories, departmental committees have with the architects been planning the laboratories after close study of the best laboratories elsewhere. It is hoped that construction can proceed rapidly in the fall. These buildings and the development of research that they will make possible, will mean a new era for these two fundamental sciences as represented in this University. At the beginning of the year, the Trustees were able to set aside a fund of $25,000 to be expended for scientific instruction and research on the authorization of the President and the Committee on Education of the Trustees. Through the expenditure of this fund, there have been or are being added to each of the engineering departments new apparatus of first importance. Among some of the items may be mentioned a liquid air plant of about 10 liters an hour capacity for the Departments of Physics and Chemistry, two refrigerating machines for the Department of Chemistry, a steam jacketed still, electrolytic hydrogen apparatus and a steam driven vacuum pump, for the Department of Chemical Engineering; a complete Thomas Standard Air Meter for the Department of Mechanical Engineering; a string galvanometer with complete camera equipment for the Department of Electrical Engineering; X-ray crystal analysis apparatus for the Department of Geology and Mineralogy; assay balances, microscopes, mechanical screen shaker, optical pyrometer, electric furnaces and grinding laps for the Department of Mining and Metallurgy. Expenditures were also made from this appropriation for the Departments of Botany and Zoology. This fund has enabled each department to add expensive pieces of apparatus which the yearly appropriations have not so far enabled them to purchase and it therefore has added very greatly to the facilities for instruction and research. There has been, and justly so, great pressure brought upon industrial establishments to provide safety measures in connection with all machinery and equipment in connection with which accidents might occur. In order that the University may set the proper example to its students who are going out later to engage in engineering undertakings, attention is constantly given to questions of safety. A prominent firm of safety engineers engaged to inspect thoroughly all our laboratories, with the cooperation of the professors in charge, reported in full last summer as to additional safety measures that might be carried out. The recommendations of the report |