[BC] Engineering school - half

[Bob Foxworth]

Some decades ago I thought I wanted to be an Electrical
Engineer. At the wise age of 17, not even old enough
to drink beer, yet wise enough to foresee my life's future.

I had been a ham since age 10. I got my First Phone
the same year I went to college. How Hard Could It Be ??

Off to a land grant college in Terbacky Country. A good
school, their graduates are very well educated. We ignored
the ignominy of the sophisticated liberals and their
Karrmann-Ghias, 30 miles west, calling us "cow college"
where the lucky ones had their own pickup to drive.

The way it worked at a land grant college, besides having
to take 2 years of ROTC, is that the school has to accept
EVERY applicant from in-state. This is a loooooot of people.
Three freshmen in a 12 foot room with two desks,
one sink, no phone, no fridge. (It's different today)

It must be buried deep in the fine print that there is no
law that says they have to GRADUATE every applicant.

Part of this process is to have Math 101 at 0800 six
days a week, then Chem 101, at 0800 six days a week,
the next  year is Physics 101, at 0800 six days a week.

I recall the failure rate in W. P. Seagraves' Chem 101
class was 70 percent, the year I took it. I think I made
a "D". (I had honors' chemistry in high school). I think
there were over 250 students in the lecture section. If
you sat in the back, you couldn't even see the blackboard
and they always ran out of the mimeo handouts.

The purpose of all this was to get the student body size
down to manageable level and to identify those who
were prepared to do extraordinary work to succeed.

I had the same lecture, the first week. It went, "look
at the guy on your left" "look at the guy on your right"
and "neither will be here next year". That is pretty
much how it went.  As an aside, there were perhaps
two dozen women in the entire engineering school
back then. I still have a receipt from them -  Out of State
tuition $273 for the semester. Housing extra.

Obviously the rules for a military survival class are
much different, and much more significant. This
is apples and oranges. If I were teaching NBC
(Nuc-Bio-Chem) I would want every graduate to
get it, as well.

ObRadio: The carrier current operation on 600 kc/s.
What a time waster, and good radio education -
all at the same time!

- Bob


> I couldn't agree more with Ron Youvan!  I was an electronics, NBC and
survival instructor in the military and it was my job to teach EVERYBODY
in my classes.  If a troop didn't get it then I worked with him until he
did.  That's what a REAL teacher does!
>
> Ron Dot'o
> Salem, OR.

>   ----- Original Message ----- 
>   From: Ron Youvan<mailto:ka4inm at tampabay.rr.com>
>   To: Broadcast Radio Mailing List<mailto:broadcast at radiolists.net>
>   Sent: Friday, September 30, 2005 14:14
>   Subject: Re: [BC] Engineering school - half
>
>
>   >>> I clearly remember my first day of EE class at the same
institution that
>   >>> Mario attended.  The EE prof's first words were "at the end of
this
>   >>> semester, fifty percent of you will no longer be in this
>   >>> department."  He
>   >>> was right.  The bottom 50% received Fs.
>
>   >>   Humm, That must have been a poor teacher to fail at his job so
badly.
>
>   > Dunno about that...don't recall that the bottom 50% got weeded out
the
>   > 1st semester, but I'd say that roughly half the class did not
return for
>   > the 2nd year of classes.  I thought I came away with a pretty good
>   > education.
>
>      It seems to me, he FAILED TO TEACH half of the people that signed
up
>   to learn from him/her.  No?
>      I think the school would be BETTER if they had a teacher/s that
could
>   teach ALL of the students that signed up (and paid) to learn.  No?
>
>      If I FAILED to fix half of everything that breaks at work,
>   I wouldn't have lasted a month.
>   -- 
>       Ron