PDF (1941) - CaltechCampusPubs

DESCRIPTION OF THE UNDERGRADUATE
AND FIFTH-YEAR COURSES
THE COURSES IN ENGINEERING
The five-year plan of engineering instruction is based on recognition
of the fact that a four-year period of study is inadequate to give
satisfactorily the combination of cultural, basic scientific, and engineering
studies essential to the highest type of engineer, and to afford
at the same time leisure for the development of the physical wellbeing
and human interests of the students. The four-year course
trains, more broadly and fundamentally than the engineering courses
now given at most institutions, the large proportion of students who
study engineering not to make themselves engineering experts in a
specialized sense, but to fit themselves to fill satisfactorily adIninistrative
positions in the utilities and manufacturing industries, and to
serve as operating and constructing engineers in such industries. The
fifth-year courses, based on this broad fundamental preparation, and
co-ordinated with it so as to constitute a harmonious, unified, fiveyear
period of study, with no sharp breaks between the undergraduate
and graduate periods, will afford the more intensive training required
by the engineer who is to do creative work in his field.
The four-year course in Engineering includes an unusually thorough
training in physics and mathematics, and instruction in chemistry
and geology; also extended courses, continuing throughout the
four years, in humanistic studies, including English writing and
speaking, literature, evolutionary science, history of civilization, current
social and political problems, and econoInics; and, finally, those
engineering subjects common to all branches of engineering, such as
surveying, mechanism, descriptive geometry, machine drawing, applied
mechanics, engineering materials, hydraulics, and preliIninary
courses in Civil, Mechanical, and Electrical Engineering.
Laboratory facilities are available for experimental work in hydraulics,
thermodynaInics, metallography, materials of construction, soil
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