A DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE
I read the article “Making the case for engineering as a liberal art” (p. 16, Summer 2008) with great amusement. The logic is fully inverted.
If the goal of a Union education is to prepare students to address the threats and opportunities presented by the technological world, then the primary education required is in the disciplines of science and technology. Science is the principle focus in the context of rational human society, not the other way around.
The Princeton University gift to “integrate the two disciplines” (engineering into the liberal arts) is a bizarre concept. An academic discipline is a well-defined body of knowledge within a well-bounded scope. Physics is a discipline. Electrical engineering is a discipline. At best, liberal arts is the aggregate domain of non-science. How do you integrate a discipline with a non-discipline?
I attended Union from 1968–72 because the Physics Department and Engineering Department had competent staff who prepared me for graduate school and a career in the world of technology. I was able to use my scientific and engineering knowledge to work a diverse and rewarding career that spanned process automation, environmental engineering, data communications, information management, and corporate IT planning and architecture.
To this day, I can name several Union physics professors who were instrumental in teaching me how to acquire and integrate new facts into hypotheses and working knowledge. I used those skills in every technical and management position I held. I can’t recall a memorable class or faculty member from the Union humanities program.
Study of the humanities can certainly make one’s life experience more pleasurable. Broad improvement in living standards, however, follows the application of science in technology. If you have to ask whether technology or liberal arts contributed more to the overall material wealth and prosperity of human-kind, then you probably need to ask “Who is John Galt?”
Large portions of 20th century history, and the recent financial fiasco of government-encouraged mortgage-backed securities, clearly teach us that we don’t need more “political scientists” or “social engineers.” I suggest Union focus on the core scientific and engineering disciplines that will properly equip students to interact competently in a technological world.
John “Hans” Mentha ’72
Hans Mentha retired as a director of enterprise IT architecture in 2003, lives on 5 acres of woods in rural North Carolina, and describes himself as “purposefully unemployed.”
A PROFESSOR’S GUIDANCE
I was saddened to learn of the death of Charles Swartz, professor emeritus of physics and my academic advisor at Union from 1962–65. Professor Swartz had an incredible influence on my future as an academician.
Professor Swartz was really tough. He always answered my questions by asking a question. At the time, I didn’t like that. I just wanted the answers.
Professor Swartz didn’t give out compliments freely. But, at the end of my sophomore year, I sat in his office and discussed my upcoming junior year program. I had one free elective and thought I should probably enroll in a statistics course. Professor Swartz looked at me for a long moment; perhaps he was thinking that I was finally coming of age. He simply said, “That’s a very good choice, Joe.”
When I was a senior at Union, I took Professor Swartz’s dreaded quantum mechanics class. (I went on to take five more courses in quantum mechanics, and it is still only slightly distinguishable from magic.) One day, Professor Swartz said to this struggling student, “Joe, when you think about a physics problem, think about the general picture. You tend too much toward specifics. I think you’ll do better if you try that.” I have not forgotten that Charles Swartz taught me how to think.
On one warm spring afternoon in 1965, I was sitting in Professor Swartz’s office on the second floor in the old Physics building on campus. I was 21 years old. I was one week from graduation and I was figuring on working for NASA after I completed my doctorate. I was looking out of the window at the spring blossoms, yearning to get out of the office. And then I looked around the office. Here was an incredibly bright man who had a private office filled with books, a blackboard on one wall with various student and professor calculations and a window overlooking the campus. I began to think, this is what I want to do.
Although we wrote to each other when I was in graduate school in the 1960s, Charlie and I had no correspondence for a number of years before I retired in 2005. I was thankful that Ken Schick, professor emeritus of biophysics, was able to provide me with Charlie’s e-mail address at that time. I wrote to him and told him of my upcoming retirement from St. Thomas Aquinas College, where I had taught physics for 34 years. I noted that I was being granted an emeritus professorship. He responded by saying, “Either I am getting very old or emeritus professors are getting that honor at a much younger age.”
In Charles Swartz, I found the enviable characteristics that every outstanding teacher has: a love for young people and a limitless enjoyment of teaching. I shall never forget him.
Joseph A. Keane ’65
Joseph A. Keane was a professor of physics and mathematics at St. Thomas Aquinas College in Rockland County (N.Y.) and now lives Fayetteville, Pa.
Editor’s note: News of Professor Swartz’s death was published on the College Web site in September. His obituary is in the In Memoriam section, located here.