Cornell Alumni News - eCommons@Cornell - Cornell University

• Robert L. Sproull, former director of
the Advanced Research Projects Agency
of the Department of Defense, from
1963-65, is vice president for academic
affairs. He is responsible for the investigation
of Cornell's academic problems
and the instrumentation of their revisions.
A native of Lacon, 111., Professor
Sproull entered Deep Springs College in
California and earned the bachelor of
arts degree from Cornell in 1940. In
1943 he was awarded the PhD degree
from Cornell, and he spent the following
two years simultaneously working for
the Radio Corporation of America Laboratory
and teaching physics at Princeton
University. He then joined the faculty
of Cornell as assistant professor of
ROBERT L. SPROULL
physics, rising to the rank of full professor
in 1956.
He spent sabbatical leaves in 1952 as a
physicist at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory
and in 1958-59 with the European
Research Associates in Brussels.
While at Brussels he was also a lecturer
for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization
(NATO).
Professor Sproull has served on various
advisory committees and has been a
consultant to industrial firms. He has
been a member of the Materials Advisory
Board, National Academy of Sciences,
since 1959, and has served on the
Advisory Committee for Solid State
Physics of the Academy. He was named
to the Laboratory Management Council
of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in
1962, and that same year became a trustee
of Associated Universities, Inc.
From 1954 to 1957, he was editor on
the Journal of Applied Physics. He is trie
author of Modern Physics, a textbook on
the quantum physics of atoms, solids and
nuclei. He has also written numerous
articles for professional journals.
At Cornell, he has been director of the
Laboratory of Atomic & Solid State
Physics and of the Materials Science
Center, which he helped to establish.
A member of Phi Beta Kappa, Sigma
Xi and the American Physical Society, he
has been active for many years in
Telluride Association, and he has served
as its president.
There have been some other programs proposed in the past
for which we've sought outside funding, but did not obtain
it. But, we are still working on it.
Q. The new freshman humanities program is a prime
example of innovation in undergraduate instruction, isn't it?
A. Yes. But it is also an area like so many for which the
commission can take very little if any credit. The course
seems to be going very well. As with any educational innovation,
it is relatively easy to keep one's steam up and
spirit up the first year. We all hope that the same spirit will
prevail through subsequent years, but, of course, it's too
early to tell.
Q. What is the content of this new program?
A. The principal change has been that instead of having
one monolithic English course in some one hundred sections,
the entering student is now offered a great variety of
subject matter. There are more than thirty sections of these
courses now so that the student can be working on subjects
of prime interest to him. In the monolithic English course,
content was standardized whether those students or instructors
were interested in that particular area of English
literature or not. The principal purpose has been to introduce
variety, to introduce selection by the students of areas
of interest and to make sure that the staff members teaching
that particular section are in fact interested in that particular
subject matter.
Q. The specific purpose of the former freshman English
course was to teach good writing. Does this purpose still
remain?
A. Yes. Good writing and also a more sophisticated approach
to reading so that students will become more interested
in literature. And it seems to be working. If writing
is better, I guess, in large part it's because the student is
more interested. He now writes on a subject matter of concern
to him and he writes in a field where the class time
has been spent largely in studying the subject matter itself,
Q. Has this new arrangement affected the size of classes?
A. Class size is virtually the same as the sections in the
old course. The individual courses are now much smaller
because there are many more to choose from.
Q. Are there any other innovations planned in these
courses?
A. We have our fingers crossed on the question of
whether remedial writing instruction might not be required.
There is such a course in the College of Agriculture and it
seems to be quite successful. We felt when these humanities
courses began that we might need an escape route for students
who wrote most poorly. However, we have not heard
any great complaint about student writing under the new
setup, but we will keep our antennae out to sense such
problems. There do not seem to be any so far.
Q. A major student complaint in recent years has centered
on class size. Is it a legitimate criticism?
A. The Kahn-Bowers committee was struck by the fact
that sophomores, in particular, had only large classes. We
have not done anything yet to try to cut down the class
size. We have looked at this question and some of the student
members of the commission are still looking into it.
There are two problems here. One involves scheduling and
the other financing. Actually, there are plenty of small
classes, even in the College of Arts and Sciences. The difficulty
is that they are not distributed well. In a subject like
English, for example, which has over 300 majors, there is a
tendency for the upperclass courses to be large in size. The
Classics, with only ten majors, have class sizes which tend
to be very small indeed. If a student feels strongly enough
that he wants personal involvement with professorial staff,
then he should use class size as part of the information
which he considers when he selects a major. He's virtually
22 Cornell Alumni News