Excerpts - 1962 (circa 1962)

busy crowded teaming Iowa State University 1962 together they make a jumble swarm but each has a goal and each has a place from cheese-making to music making from setting up colonies in a bead of water to sending out scouts to a planet here are all the jobs and all the lives of the coming world no longer they just college kids strumming you for ladies in the moonlight four years apart from the world here they are in the world they are apprentices to today's masters who welcomed them by saying take our tools and our skills to learn this but in lending them we expect you not only to learn from us but to build from us to outdo it and so they learn from the world for the sake of improving it Oh and each has a place his only problem is to find it when he does find it he not only studies it he works in it he practices at 18 when he starts he's immediately becoming a professional and he often pays his tuition by his practice no longer musty yarn by just washing dishes are making banana splits now he works on campus in a variety of occupations here is tomorrow's hand clasp with the hand of today one of those to cement the firmness of that grip you dr. w robert parks vice president for academic affairs as we watch our students at work on the Iowa State campus in their classrooms laboratories and libraries we see Iowa State's continuing effort to build a kind of educational program which will best fit the needs of our young men and women and they swiftly changing complex world this effort is a part of our responsibility in our tradition as a land-grant University for during their 100 years of existence the land-grant universities have been leaders in developing concepts of education which I think today are serving us well in preparing young people for their duties and responsibilities in the future world one of these concepts was a belief that educational programs should combine the scientific and the technological with a humanitarian the cultural and the aesthetic as you know the Morrill Act which created the land grant educational system gave the new colleges a broad mandate in the words of that act to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes in the several pursuits and professions of life another of these concepts was the belief that the new scientific education which the land-grant universities were helping to introduce should be oriented toward the experimental and the practical the land-grant universities have led in introducing and developing experimental science they have built their scientific educational programs upon the belief that it is not enough to learn about what has been discovered in the past but the students should also learn those principles and methods and should develop that attitude of mind which will equip them to add to the sum total of knowledge in their chosen fields thus at Iowa State the laboratory is indispensable as a library in the learning process if we look about us I think that we can see both of these concepts at work on the Iowa State campus more careful more precise so they need tools and they need practice they learn language in a laboratory just as in the old days the instructor speaks French or German or Spanish and they imitate him only now they record their imitations on tape and they play their own mistakes back to themselves more precise they learn to trust the ears by testing them and they learn to read more precisely in the reading laboratory a machine called a shadow scope runs a band of light down the page of a book this forces their attention on what they read over and over again they read until their attention is no longer forced but natural they gain the habit call concentration no matter what they are doing they are doing they learn the principles and theories in their classroom seats but then they go to the thing itself the lab the machine and the practice carry them further to themselves there they form the habits of skill and precision and concentration and because we have more to give them we expect more often we expect work we expected for example from Jim our gem is an animal science major he can choose to go into three areas of animal science production science or industry but before he can decide you must get a touch of all three to see for himself which one he wants so he starts in the general class learning the principles then he goes to a specific class for example he learns genetics the science of heredity you will need this to breed the best stop he learns to run a calculator so that he will have a skill for the business end of animal science he takes agricultural engineering drawing where he learns the general planning of a farmstead and they structural requirements of the different buildings and above all he has to know animals he learns the subtleties of judging them once they're slaughtered he learns whether or not he has judged them well he must be able to predict them this choice or prime while they're alive he can know only from a variety of his contacts Oh on the other end of the campus of the majors in aerospace engineering since no one man can design a spacecraft they'll become part of a project group one man in the group may work on the fuel system another on the guidance system yet another on the craft structure to prepare the students for this work a wide variety of courses must be taken covering many fields including a solid foundation and mathematics the analog computers an important tool for solving the many mathematical equations involved in designing a spacecraft once the system has been designed and constructed it must be thoroughly tested since any spacecraft must be lifted through the dense atmosphere it must be tested in a wind tunnel to determine that its shape can safely survive this period of fight and in the smoke tunnel you can see whether proper flow exists around the shape selected for the craft all over campus all 10,000 of them with their own jobs their own machines keep it up incessantly listening taking notes going to the labs and offices they fumble they do better they develop hard working days drive too close they elbow their ways to their dorms their houses or happily to their homes but only for supper or enough time to recoup their energy two hours later they're back back in the library which has extended its late hours they jumbled together in the Reading Room's pull their theories from the stacks curl themselves up in the cubicles or they take the day's assignment out of their memories and into their hands or they stay in their rooms and during their late hours they dredge and dig and bring up the drains of their futures and of course they take time out to shake off the library dusk to yell out their attentions to exchange their problems for a while to drift away in the beauty so they gather for our concerts in our stadiums at our code tables or in the new center we plan like the world they will become they have more and they give more as we here at Iowa State study the educational needs of modern world we have been asking ourselves a question will the educational programs and processes which we have been developing out of these concepts help to produce the kind of mind and character which young men and women will require in the latter years of the 20th century I think they will in a world in which scientific and technological change is transforming almost every phase of human activity with explosive rapidity education can no longer consider eve of itself as a specific preparation for a fixed future rather our educational institutions must concern themselves the developing kind of mind and professional competence which can make intelligent adjustments to change it must develop the mind which is alert inquisitive objective and unprejudiced open to new ideas and methods critical experimental and creative these capacities of mind and character can in part I think be developed through the experimental processes in our laboratories and our workshops furthermore the education which gives only competence in the field of one specialty is not enough in our complex and interdependent world it is not enough just to Train specialist Iowa State if it is to fulfill its educational responsibilities must also develop within its students the capacity to generalize they are built it to perceive relationships to recognize cause and consequence to understand the relationships of the parts to the whole today Iowa State broadly-based as it is in both the scientific and technical and social sciences and Humanities is in a favorable position for working out a program which permits a student's education to be more broadly based without the sacrifice of specialized competence Oh you