The following continues the serialization of Chapter 3 on education from SIMPLE SOLUTIONS for Humanity:
My University Years
Stanford was my first retirement. I had studied so hard and was relatively burnt out by the time I made it to this college campus in September of 1958, that it was fortunate I was here, for many of the top schools actually flunked out people. That “look to your left and look to your right” lecture on opening day to determine whether it was to be only one-third who would be forced to leave or graduate (this range varies from school to school) did not apply to Stanford. There, they figured you were worthy of something, so almost everyone graduated. The only exception I remember is a friend, a really nice guy, who, at the end of the first quarter (at that time we had three quarters of school and one quarter of free summer), went around, shook our hands, and told us that he was called in to determine why he was doing so poorly, and was told that the admissions people made an embarrassing mistake. He should not have been accepted in the first place. He was asked to voluntarily leave. I can still see his face and the agony he was facing of going back home.
The second good thing was that I majored in chemical engineering. Why I did this had something to do with facing a challenge, for I never did all that well in chemistry in high school and did not know much about this field, but it appeared to be an exciting unknown. I think it is in my blood to head in the direction of the challenge. What I did not realize then was that, year after year, chemical engineering B.S. students always received the highest pay of anyone graduating. Even in 2006, when liberal arts majors garnered $30,828, business administration grads got $39,850, and computer science majors received $50,046, chemical engineering degree graduates received an average starting salary of $55,900, more than $3,000 over those in electrical engineering. (Even higher now.)
That one-third ratio, actually, was much worse in chemical engineering. While there were 75 or so who appeared to be majoring in this field as freshmen, my graduating class 45 months later was 8, or about 10%. But I don’t know of any who flunked out. They mostly transferred into economics and the social sciences, and no doubt are making a lot more money than I ever earned. Eight seems like a small number, and should be below the minimum to attain any kind excellence. In our junior year, the chairman of the department, David Mason, rushed into one of our lecture classes, and proudly announced that our department had gained accreditation. To our general astonishment, no one had ever before mentioned that we were NOT accredited. Yet, a decade after I graduated, the Stanford Chemical Engineering Department attained #1 status, as tiny as it still was in size. It by then had moved out of chemistry into engineering. Funny, but I was more concerned at the beginning when I arrived on campus that Leland Stanford Junior University was a real university, and not a junior college, rather than the department I joined being accredited. Such is ignorance and youth!
Book 1 described some of my history, including my five years in the sugar industry, and the fact that I graduated in less than four years each from both Stanford and LSU, as again indicated in Chapter 2 on Eternal Life. Armed with a PhD in biochemical engineering, I went back home to teach at the University of Hawaii in 1971.
The first college course I taught was FORTRAN, a computer language. I was given the text the day before my first class, had not ever taken the class and I barely knew anything about the subject. Let’s see, should I confess to the class that I would be learning with them, or wing it. As I walked up to the podium I chose the latter. Questions came up that I did not understand, but I deftly side-stepped them with the response, “we will take up that subject later in the semester. I don’t want to confuse the group.”
There were a hundred or so in that first class, from freshmen to graduate students. After the course was over, streams of students, including those in graduate school, came by to tell me how much they enjoyed the semester. This never happened again in such numbers in my 28 years in academia, although I only taught for a few years. The lesson learned was that if you don’t know what you are teaching, but must, you actually make the course easier to understand. This state of semi-panic evokes humility. From then, in all my courses, my problem was not to visibly laugh at the elementary nature of student questions. This kind of arrogance hurts teaching. I became an administrator not long after that first experience, but now realize that I really should go back and teach teachers to teach. There is an important educational clue here I should be developing. However, as this is about all I’ll ever do, I hope some educational professor or influential higher education administrator is reading this.
I also taught an elective (meaning it was not mandatory) called “Technology and Society.” Dean (of Engineering) John Shupe was a man of the world and was very supportive of my attempts to teach technology to non-technologist, and, conversely, the real world to engineers. He and I even teamed one semester. In a typical class of a hundred, one fourth each were engineers, natural scientists, humanists and social scientists. I never used a text and covered everything from the environment to politics. Much of the course dealt with what was happening that day or the long term future. They needed to form teams to perform a service in the community.
I sometimes gave a final exam where there were four columns of students, representing each of the major areas, and they were provided the option of completing the exam as an individual, or forming a team of up to four students, one from each column representing the four study areas. Usually, the better students went solo, but the exams were so long that only the teams did well, and, as a warning, I underscored this point. The whole point of this exercise, of course, was to begin to change the attitude of those top scholars, which is, it is sometimes better to work with others.
I almost always gave a final essay question everyone had to answer on their own where I picked three topics I could not imagine were in any way related, and asked them to spend no more than 10 minutes to develop one paragraph linking those words. Every one did spectacularly, with answers beyond my expectation. I learned a lesson here, that everyone has the potential to be creative when absolutely necessary. I’m not sure if this kind of final exam would survive today, as grievances would almost surely be filed.
One class in particular was noteworthy. There were 75 students. Instead of doing things in the community, teams of half a dozen wrote one chapter of a book on energy self-sufficiency (this was the period between the first and second energy crises in the 70’s), and produced a play for presentation at an upcoming energy conference. We had sufficient connections to extract some funding from the National Science Foundation to publish the book, which was adopted by the Hawaii public school system for their use. One problem was that each chapter used a cartoon from the popular media. We got a letter at one point from Sidney Harris of American Scientist, who said, if you use my cartoon, I will sue you. How he found out about our plagiarism is a mystery, but he eventually settled for a $100 fee. Maybe he was doing this in jest, but the initial letter seemed so angry that I suspect he was serious.
The energy play was presented to a NSF Science for Citizens audience at the Hawaii State Capitol. The conferees (including mayors and legislators) enjoyed the message so well that the group received funding to take the show on the road. During the summer, the class presented this energy self-sufficiency play (with dances and songs) on all the major islands. Battle of the Bands in Naalehu, depicted in Book One, was one of my singular public accomplishments. The phenomenal success of these 75 students can be added to my top ten.
I learned several other lessons from “Technology and Society.” As mentioned before, it is difficult to get people to work together. Engineers are probably the worst at this. Success comes from influencing and working with people. The know it all quickly descends, and becomes bitter. We need to change our educational objectives. I’ve lost count, but this is another of my failures. I was never able to convince even one faculty member or administrator that we had a faulty educational system. Granted, I did not try too hard, for I was busy doing energy and environment things.
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The Dow Jones Industrials increased 56 to 9497, with Hong Kong and Japan down, and Europe almost all up. Crude oil surged today to $71/barrel, while gold cracked 1000, plus $7/toz to $1001. One source predicted $5000/toz gold in three to five years, but another said that silver is the more attractive investment. How significant is $1000 for gold? Not much. It was $1034/toz last year, and in 1980 reached $850/toz, which would be worth $2,222/toz today.
How can you calculate this number? Just go to the right:
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