will nevertheless be in his work because he likes it, and like it because he is in it-just as Russell Conwell's man in his famous lecture, "Acres of Diamonds," was contented because he was rich, and rich because he was contented. One may be justified in feeling righteous indignation against a minister of the Gospel who reviles religion, a physician who scoffs at the established rules of hygiene, and a social worker who habitually and continually sneers at the mere mention of social progress. Involved in this idea is the whole question of common honesty. Finally, I would mention the obligation to cultivate a lively imagination and an appreciation of the aims and efforts of clients and organizations. A social worker's convictions and enthusiasm about his own job may now and then tend to isolate him. Technical training in the specialty of social work may have the same effect. Breadth of vision, however, due to intellectual background and wide experience, will make him look with generous appreciation upon the efforts of all groups striving for the common good. I was greatly impressed by reading a few years ago in the Survey about a case worker with unmarried mothers, who had been earnestly insisting upon a certain line of social treatment when coming in contact with her girls. When, however, a young woman friend of hers was approaching motherhood before marriage, this same case worker looked upon the problem with an entirely different point of view, and found herself not only willing to modify the views which she had insisted upon toward strangers, but even willing to suggest a different course of treatment for her friend. The inference the case worker intended to leave was that she had failed in appreciation, up to this point, of the circumstances in which these girls were placed, and was not quite big enough to cooperate fully with established institutions like the home and the church. Within a few weeks I received a letter from a family welfare case worker, formerly a member of my own staff when I was secretary of such an organization, who is now married and has two children. She said to me: "I wish I could be a case worker now. I see things so differently. I would do so much of my case work on a different basis than I used to do it." Many a conventional case record reads: "Case closed. No cooperation." A social worker lacking keen imagination is constitutionally unable to cooperate. Everybody is willing to cooperate upon, but not all are ready to cooperate with. Cooperation is reciprocal or it is nothing. It is possible to give and take without surrendering worth-while convictions. Every social worker should inventory his convictions at least once a year. We believe that a man should have the courage of his convictions, but we believe also that he should have convictions worthy of his courage, and only those that are founded on reason. Dr. Van Waters pointed out last year in Denver that "professional work is chiefly an affair of the spirit." This being so, cooperation ought to be relatively easy. It is not so much a question of getting this or that done in our way as it is a question of a broad approach to the solution of the big problem. Generally lack of cooperation is due to conflict of per sonalities. If social workers do not like each other they are not inclined to cooperate. If they do like each other, that is to say, if their personalities coalesce, problems are generally worked out on a satisfactory basis. Cooperative effort is sometimes indicated by selfish concern for the prestige and standing of an organization or department rather than by an aggressive interest in getting something done for the common welfare. If we care not who does it so long as it gets done, results will be greater. Thus it is that conviction about one's own job and enthusiasm for one's own service must be balanced by power of imagination and a breadth of vision which will stress the opportunity of the other fellow to do his job. If our profession becomes an affair of the spirit rather than an affair of detailed behavior the results are likely to be greater. Many times lack of cooperation is due to immersion in a sea of details. A big, broad view of the objectives everybody is seeking is lost sight of. To summarize, ethics is the science of behavior as good or bad, judged by its effect on others. Social work is dedicated to that vague thing called social progress, which must at least be viewed as approachable, whether or not it is realized to any great degree. This, of course, strikes at individual and communal behavior viewed in terms of its good and bad effects. Social work involves contact with the most baffling problems of the day, namely, those dealing with human behavior. Only those can rightly be called social workers who are broadly indoctrinated. Social workers must be people of breadth of vision, able to look beyond the limitations of their own back yard. They must be sincere in their work, with convictions of its importance and with enthusiasm for its accomplishment. They must be willing to sacrifice even the ambitions of their own organizations, and surrender some of their less important habits of behavior in the interests of a demonstrably sound program. In short, they must have heart and brains. THE INVESTIGATION OF ENGINEERING EDUCATION There is probably no field of higher education in which the results are more susceptible of objective measurement or critical appraisal than in engineering education. It is quite natural that this should be true. For the most part the engineer's work results in concrete things. Scarcely an incident of modern life is uninfluenced by those things. His work is subjected constantly to the severest tests of safety, convenience, and economy. His failures cannot remain undetected, and may have the most far-reaching consequences. Engineering education, which prepares men for these exacting duties, is nearly, if not, indeed, quite, as readily judged by its results. For one thing, engineers themselves who look to the colleges for the recruitment of their ranks are a most critically and analytically minded group, accustomed as they are to deal in realities and always to seek the underlying truth of every situation. Not unnaturally, then, engineering education might have been expected to receive its full share of attention in the well-defined movement of the past twenty years or so to scrutinize closely the methods and results of higher education in this country. This, indeed, has proved to be the case. This critical attitude toward the results of education is a very wholesome one. It has been manifested in many ways; in none, perhaps, more clearly than in the number and variety of educational investigations which have been undertaken in the past few years. While these studies and their results are quite generally known, it may not be inappropriate to mention the Flexner investigation of medical education and the virtually revolutionary change which has followed it as an example of what they may accomplish. In the field of engineering education there have been two of these surveys. The first was undertaken by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching at the request of a group representing the four major professional engineering societies. It is generally spoken of as the Mann investigation, since the report upon it was written by Dr. Charles R. Mann, formerly of the Department of Physics of the University of Chicago. The Mann report was published in 1918, at a time when the engineering colleges were struggling through the period of the Student Army Training Corps. They were in no position to act upon the recommendations which the report presented. About four years ago, feeling that constructive action was needed, the engineering teachers themselves, through their organization, the society for the Promotion of Engineering Education, petitioned the Carnegie corporation for funds to continue the study of engineering education. The second of the two studies then followed. In presenting the request and in planning the work a principle new at that time in such undertakings was proposed. Briefly, it was recommended that the study be carried out by the engineering teachers and the engineering colleges themselves as a cooperative undertaking; that it should be a sympathetic study of engineering education by those most directly concerned. It was planned to conduct the work primarily through the agency of committees of the faculties in all of the colleges, and to coordinate the work through a central committee known as the board of investigation and coordination. It was also proposed that the work be in direct charge of a director and a staff. These proposals were accepted and the sum of $108,000 was appropriated for the work, the money to be furnished over a period of three years, during which it was assumed that the major portion of the study would be completed. The work has now been in progress for about two and one-half years. During that period it has been proved beyond any reasonable doubt that it is entirely possible to conduct a study of a branch of professional education by the method of cooperation of the colleges themselves and to demonstrate that the work can be of a sufficiently detached and critical character. It has been possible to make a thorough analysis of engineering edu cation in all of its important phases, to study its relationship with the profession and with industry, and to begin the formulation of plans for constructive betterments. In fact, the enlistment of the aid of the colleges and other agencies, including the national engineering societies, has made it possible to accomplish a volume of results which would not have been possible by any other method in a similar period, if, indeed, some of the information and results would have been obtained at all. This aspect of the investigation of engineering education deserves careful consideration by anybody considering a similar project; in fact, it has been adopted in other studies and is working successfully in them. It has its limitations as well as its advantages. One of its great advantages is that the work is done by those who will be affected by the results, and the way is thus paved for the adoption of the plans which grow out of the enterprise. Furthermore, the colleges look upon it as their own undertaking. They are vitally interested in its outcome, and our experience is that they will do almost any amount of work to insure its success. When the plan was first proposed it might well have been feared that the colleges could not look upon their problems from a sufficiently detached point of view; that, as someone expressed it, there might be a strong tendency "to rationalize the status quo." It might also have been feared that there would be a tendency on the part of individual colleges to magnify their merits and conceal their defects. As far as the engineering colleges and the engineering teachers are concerned, it may be affirmed quite definitely that such fears are groundless. Throughout the entire undertaking it has been manifest that all cooperating parties desire only to look the situation squarely in the face, to know the worst as well as the best, and to bring about results of lasting and substantial benefit to the colleges and those they serve. One disadvantage of the cooperative method, but one which can be surmounted by careful planning, is that it imposes a rather cumbersome organization. There are 154 institutions in the United States and 10 in Canada which offer engineering courses leading to degrees. There is also a considerable number of institutions offering preengineering courses or other courses related to engineering. Of the 164 institutions mentioned, there are now 136 which are officially affiliated with the undertaking. This, incidentally, is one measure of the widespread cooperation and support which the project has had. In all of these institutions there are either special committees of the faculty or one or more individuals designated as cooperators. To deal with all of these cooperators has required very careful planning and a considerable amount of systematic organization. Such, then, has been the origin and the general plan of the investigation. Since it is undoubtedly the most salient development in the movement to elevate educational standards in the field of engineering, and since it is being conducted on a plan which is somewhat different from that followed in similar studies of education for the professions, it may be advisable to give a rather explicit statement of the methods of organizing and administering the work. In planning the study it was decided to follow what we like to call the engineering method, that is, first to assemble all of the essential and relevant facts: to learn exactly where we stand, and to comprehend fully all of the conditions and limitations of our problems, as well as to arrive at an adequate understanding of the methods and agencies through which to arrive at their solution. In accordance with this principle the investigation was divided into a sequence of stages, and an estimated time requirement was set for the completion of each stage. These stages and time allotments are as follows: first, a period, estimated to require one college semester, was set aside for what may be termed a reconnaissance. During this period it was planned to visit a rather large number of the more important institutions; to confer with faculties, committees, and individuals; to appraise in a general way the work of the institutions; to learn what constituted the most pressing problems with which they were confronted; and finally, to estimate the effectiveness of the agencies, namely, the committees, through which the work would later be done. At the same time the interest of the colleges in the undertaking was aroused, and invitations to participate in it were extended. Second, a period of one year was devoted to a thorough analysis of all important phases of engineering education; to the assembling of the basic facts, not only those relating primarily to the colleges themselves, but also to the work of engineering graduates in industry and professional practice; to the relationships of engineering colleges and the professional bodies of engineers; and to other important aspects of the general problems of engineering education. This stage of the work was completed in the spring of 1925. Reports were then prepared which embody a considerable proportion of the results. The third stage, which has been in progress during the present college year, has been devoted to an analysis and interpretation of the facts gathered in the preceding stage. This study has been made by the faculty committees, general committees of the society, and by the headquarters staff. In this way the bearing of the evidence upon the purely local, as well as upon the general, situation has been studied. It may be remarked that it is in just this way that the cooperative method is of greatest value. It permits the institutions not only to contribute directly to the general result, but gives each of them a strong impetus to compare their own situation with the general one and thus to discover their strengths and weaknesses. During this third stage study has also been given to the preparation of recommendations and to the formulation of plans for those constructive measures which should follow as the outcome of the undertaking. The fourth and last stage will be launched at the annual meeting of the society about two weeks hence. It will be devoted to putting the plans for betterment into effect through concerted action by all of the colleges. In addition to this division into stages, the investigation has been divided into five major groups of projects, as follows: first, studies of engineering curricula and methods of instruction; second, studies of the personnel of engineering education-students, teachers, and graduates; third, studies of the services, |