Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1888 [PAGE 144]

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REPORTS OF DEPARTMENT OF INSTRUCTION.

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I t does not seem possible to introduce any additional technical studies, no matter how urgently required, unless an assistant is provided, and the receptive powers and study time of the students can also be increased. Hence, the most that can be done to improve the course under present circumstances, is to improve the methods o£ instruction by selecting the most valuable points in each branch, impressing these by repeated applications, requiring as much original work and thinking as possible, to make the student alert and self-reliant. Imparting instruction by ordinary lectures, as customary in German universities and elsewhere, relying on the taking of notes by the students, is practically useless here, except as a means of arousing the enthusiasm of the student, and of subjecting him to the personal influence and direction of the instructor. No other results are ever permanent, and very few students ever learn how to take proper notes, or afterwards make any use of such notes. As a matter of fact, I believe that German and English university students depend far more on private reading or work with a private tutor than on the lectures of the professors, both as a means of acquiring knowledge and of passing the specified examinations. Besides, innumerable facts and principles must be imparted to the student during the limited time of his studies, and he must have some compendium, which he can thoroughly memorize in the intervals of his work in the classes. I have, therefore, found some form of text-book absolutely necessary, whether this be in print or in the form of blue-print lectures, which really form a text-book. Verbal explanations and extemporaneous lectures add to this all the advantages of the common lecture system without its disadvantages. With the approval of the proper authorities, I desire to make the following improvements as soon as it may be found practicable to do so: 1. To extend elements of construction to include all the more important building trades, and kinds of work. 2. To add the study of arched structures to graphic statics. 3. To use a text-book in history of architecture, requiring synopses or briefs of each style instead of tracings of details. 4. To enlarge the cabinet of engravings, photographs and other illustrations for the use of classes in history of architecture and in designing, as rapidly as possible with the means at my disposal. 5. I n architectural drawing, to substitute for the present method of instruction one based on a system similar to the Eussian system found so successful in the classes in shop practice, requiring each student to execute a certain series of separate plates instead of copying complete sets of drawings for buildings. This method will be novel, will be more difficult, and not every student will be able to do the work satisfactorily, and the graduates may perhaps