University of Virginia Library

University of Virginia

DEPARTMENT OF ENGINEERING

General Plan of Study.

At the University of Virginia engineering is studied as a
learned profession, just as law or medicine. Care is taken in
the first place to secure honest, thorough, and adequate preparation
on the part of the entering student. This having been accomplished,
a four year course has been organized, in which
the student's whole time is devoted to his professional studies,
including in these the fundamental sciences, which lie at the
basis of all sound knowledge of engineering practice. No attempt
has been made to create a place for courses in the
humanistic branches—courses which in the majority of cases
are fragmentary and ineffectual, arousing little interest in the
student, and securing for him even less of benefit. On the
other hand the scientific and technical courses are so taught as
to make them true instruments of liberal culture; conceived on
broad grounds, prosecuted to high ends, and followed in the
right spirit, they develop competent engineers and not mere
skilled craftsmen.

Entrance Requirements.

The standard for entrance has been fixed at the completion of
the four year course of a first class high school. This course
must include the full curriculum in mathematics (algebra,
plane and solid geometry, and plane trigonometry). It must include
at least three year's work in English (grammar, composition,
rhetoric, and the normal course of reading in English
prose and poetry). In addition to these 6½ prescribed units
(3½ in mathematics and 3 in English) at least one unit in
history is prescribed. The remaining 6½ units are elective, and
may be offered in ancient or modern languages, or in history, or

in science, or in drawing or shop-work. In all cases the full
requirement of 14 units must be met; only 2 conditions are allowed
and they must be made up within twelve months after
matriculation.

Courses of Instruction.

The work of every good school of engineering must be based
on such entrance requirements as have been defined above, carefully
formulated and rigidly observed. Inadequate preliminary
training means always and everywhere inadequate and ineffectual
work in the college course. An intelligent boy should be ready
for the high school at the age of thirteen; four years later he
should enter college. Earlier entrance upon a course of engineering
studies is not desirable; the younger student has
neither the maturity nor the steadiness of purpose demanded
for success. The Freshman year in the University of Virginia
is the same in all the engineering courses. Thereafter specialization
begins, and the student's time is absorbed more and more
each year by the technical studies needed in his chosen field for
professional work. In addition to the prescribed studies the
candidate for a degree must elect a certain number of engineering
courses outside his special field. The young engineer obtains
thus a broader conception of his professional work and an
enlarged usefulness.

Programme of Courses.

To adequate preparation and studious diligence must be added
expert teaching and a wisely formulated programme of courses.
Every good engineering school must be the development of
individual ideals and each one has its own accent, its own distinctive
quality. The special character of the University of
Virginia may best be shown by a comparison of its programme
with that of one of the greatest and best known of the American
schools of engineering, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The entrance requirements of these two schools are substantially
identical. The amount of work demanded of the student
is the same—eight hours a day for six days in the week. The
course of study in each case extends over four years. At the
University of Virginia the session is thirty-one weeks, exclusive
of examination periods and holidays; at the Massachusetts Institute

of Technology it is thirty weeks. The general conditions
are thus very nearly balanced. The tabulated statement below
exhibits the distinctive features of the programme of each school,
by showing the number of hours consumed in lecture, preparation,
and practise for each of the four great groups of studies
comprised in the courses of civil, mechanical, and electrical
engineering:

Programme of hours of work consumed in Engineering Studies at
University of Virginia and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

               

	Civil Engineering		Mechanical Engineering		Electrical Engineering
Group A. Mathematics and Mechanics. Geometry, Algebra, Trigonometry, Analytical Geometry, Calculus, Statics, Dynamics.	U. Va.	M.I.T.	U. Va.	M.I.T.	U. Va.	M.I.T.
	1116	795	1116	855	1116	855
Group B. Physical Sciences. Chemistry, Physics, and Geology; including in each case the laboratory courses.	1116	915	744	790	1006	770
Group C. Engineering Science. Applied Mechanics; and Civil, Mechanical, and Electrical Engineering.	2790	2765	2634	1940	2258	1920
Group D. Engineering Practice. Drawing, Shop-Work, Laboratory work in Engineering.	930	495	1474	1275	1570	1235
Group E. Humanistic Studies. English Literature, Modern Languages, History, Political Economy, and so on.		970		1080		1160
Grand Totals.	5952	5940	5952	5940	5952	5940

An examination of the tabulated figures shows that the M. I. T.
consumes about one-sixth of the student's working time in
humanistic studies. At the U. Va. his attention is concentrated

on the four other groups and the time thus saved is distributed
in nearly equal parts among them. One other difference
does not appear in this comparison. With its larger faculty
the M. I. T. gives a larger percentage of the total time
to class instruction than the U. Va. The result is that the
student gets somewhat more direct teaching and does rather less
individual work. That he is eventually benefited by this state
of affairs does not appear. At the U. Va. out of each 16 hours
he spends on an average 7 hours under the professor or instructor
and 9 hours in independent work. This proportion
seems liberal enough.

Equipment.

A modern school of engineering needs ample material equipment
for the work of instruction. It must have not only
laboratories of chemistry and physics and geology and
mineralogy; but a sufficient outfit of field instruments; of shops
and tools for work in wood and in metals; of testing machines
for all sorts of structural materials; of apparatus for hydraulic
measurements; of boilers and engines and appliances for testing
the same; and of electric apparatus and dynamos and motors
for both direct and alternating electric currents. In all those
departments the University of Virginia is well furnished; richly
furnished, indeed, in proportion to the number of its engineering
students. Witness the large provision made in the tabulated
programme above for work in engineering practise. The apparatus,
instruments, and machines are new and of the best
construction, and annual additions are made to the equipment.

Crane Donation.

Of the recent additions to this equipment the most important
is the gift of Mr. Charles R. Crane, of Chicago. This gift is a
collection of apparatus and machines for alternating current
work in electrical engineering, so selected as to enlarge and
complete the outfit already in use. Although serving actively as
vice-president of the Crane Valve Company, an enormous business
corporation, founded 55 years ago by his father, Mr. R. T.
Crane, who is still its president, Mr. Charles R. Crane has many
varied and vital interests outside his business. As president for
many years of the Municipal Voters' League of Chicago he has

exerted a powerful influence for good government in an independent
and non-partisan way. He was a close friend of the
late President Harper, of Chicago University, and was associated
with him in the heavy task of organizing that great
modern school. He is deeply interested in biological research
and has been for a long time the president of the Marine
Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole. His summer home at
Bridgeport, Conn., enables him to indulge on Buzzard's Bay and
Vineyard Sound that love of the sea, which carried him as a
lad on a voyage in a bark from New London to Java. Mr.
Crane's permanent home is in Chicago, but his wide reading and
deep study of American politics and world politics have brought
him the friendship and acquaintance of many national leaders
and have made him feel at home in many lands. He has long
known the University of Virginia and his gift to the Department
of Engineering is not the first of his discriminating acts of
generosity to this school.

Isabella Merrick Sampson Scholarship.

Another noteworthy gift to the Department of Engineering
recently received is a scholarship fund of $2,000. The donor
was the late Mr. W. Gordon Merrick and the scholarship is
named in honor of his sister. Mr. Merrick was born in Philadelphia,
Oct. 28th, 1842. In 1867 he came to Virginia, bought
a farm called Glendower, in the southern portion of Albemarle
County, married a wife and settled down to the life of a country
gentleman.

Mr. Merrick at once took an active interest in county affairs,
served as road commissioner and as justice of the peace for a
number of years, and in the latter part of his life as county
chairman of the Republican committee. In the fall of 1910 he
gave up his country home because of ill-health, removed with
his family to Charlottesville and died there January 3rd, 1911.

In 1874 Mr. Merrick's sister left a fund, of which he was one
of the trustees, to be used for education in the South. For
several years the fund was used for the salaries of public school
teachers in Albemarle County, and general public school purposes.
In the last years of his life he became the sole trustee.
He then determined to employ the residue of the fund for the

endowment of a scholarship in the Department of Engineering
of the University of Virginia.

Under the terms of the deed of gift the fund is placed in the
hands of three trustees, two of whom are members of the University,
while the third is a citizen of the county. These trustees
constitute a self-perpetuating board. The management and investment
of the fund and the appointment of the scholar is
in their hands. The scholar must be a student in the Department
of Engineering, and in the selection preference is to be given to
a student from the county of Albemarle, if there be such a deserving
student; and next to a student from the state of Virginia.
If there be no deserving student either from Albemarle or from
Virginia, then the trustees may award the scholarship to any
other deserving student in the Department of Engineering. The
annual income from the endowment is paid to this scholar, and
he is eligible for annual reappointment as long as he remains a
student of engineering in the University and justifies by his
conduct and scholarship the expectations of the trustees.

Persons desirous of fuller information as to the courses in
engineering in the University of Virginia are invited to apply
for catalogues to

Howard Winston, Registrar;

and for explanations and advice to address