
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, July 20, 1993                   TAG: 9307200583
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: JOHN B. CRITTENDEN
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

TEACHING HIGH-SCHOOL BASICS - IN COLLEGE

WITH ALL due respect to G. Wayne Clough, dean of engineering at Virginia Tech, and his comments on Tech's engineering students (July 11 letter, "There's no generation of boneheads"), I take umbrage with several of his views.

Clough would have one believe that our entering engineering students have few shortcomings. Through my 19-year experience with freshman engineering students, I found that far too many have been academically undisciplined, unmotivated and undereducated. Fortunately, most of these young men and women have been capable of changing their attitudes and learning the basics not mastered in high school.

It seems that the problem becomes a bit worse each year.

That may be why the Department of Mathematics is now requiring certain engineering freshmen to complete a remedial mathematics course before initiating the normal mathematics sequence.

That may be why less than 50 percent of last year's engineering freshmen were transferred from General Engineering to their major program of study at the normal time. (Fortunately, another 40 percent is attending summer school, etc., to overcome deficiencies from their freshman year.)

Thanks to the caring efforts of the faculty in the College of Engineering, and the modified attitudes of students and their parents, most of our engineering students do, eventually, graduate with an engineering degree. But the faculty, particularly those teaching freshman-level courses, spend far too much time teaching and reviewing material that should have been mastered in high school.

Perhaps Clough might have different viewpoints if he had taught even one required freshman-level engineering course during his numerous years at Tech. He has not done so, and thus does not appreciate the frustration implied by Professor LeDoux (July 3 letter, "Public schools need basic, not `outcome-based' education").

Unfortunately, he and many high-level administrators at Tech have little or no in-class contact with the typical freshman. Attitudes might be different if the university president, numerous vice presidents and the deans occasionally taught a standard (non-honors) first-year course.

John B. Crittenden is an associate professor in the Division of Engineering Fundamentals at Virginia Tech.

by CNB