The Rice Thresher (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 82, No. 22, Ed. 1 Friday, March 17, 1995 Page: 4 of 24
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4 FRIDAY, MARCH 17, 1995 THE RICE THRESHER
OPINION
Engineering program would benefit from major overhaul
To the editor:
Irately there have been several
articles in the Thresher about the
apathy on our campus. Suggestions
for what students can do to change
it, from watching more of 'The
Simpsons" to volunteering beyond
the hedges have been proposed. But
none of the suggestions so far ad-
dress the root of Rice's prohlem: too
much damn work.
Closer
Look
think that the administration
and students should decide to rem-
edy what ails our community by re-
vamping the engineering curricu-
lum.
IVesently, the preprofessionalism
that is encouraged among engineer-
ing majors at Rice is a detriment to
our entire undergraduate student
body.
Granted, I am not an engineering
major — far from it, really. But as a
sociology major and someone who
has been active on the Rice campus,
I have observed several ways in
which Rice suffers from the current
format of the engineering curricu-
lum.
Not only are engineering majors
(as a collective body), because of
time constraints, not as actively in-
volved in extra-curricular activities
as humanities and social science
majors are (as a group), but many of
the non-engineering departments
suffer because of the engineering
departments.
1 should make it clear that 1 don't
fault engineering majors for this: if 1
had to take 17 hours a semester,
only one of which was a non-techni-
cal course, I probably wouldn't even
watch "Melrose Place," much less
join groups or do volunteer work.
But the fact remains that many
students here fail to participate in
meaningful, intellectual discussion
with their fellow students. How of-
ten we have heard that people "don't
have time" to attend a lecture, join
a group or even do Outreach Day?
When Rice students do have free
time, they spent much of it
drinking.
Don't get me wrong — I have
nothing against indulging in a little
liquid merriment once in a while;
however, 1 do not think that it should
be the only form of relaxation that
we engage in around here.
In talking with old alums, 1 have
found that this anti-intellectual at-
mosphere is not a new phenomenon
at Rice. A historically technical
school, its engineering program has
dominated all of the other academic
areas since its inception.
Even now that Rice also has an
indisputably excellent reputation in
its humanities and social sciences,
the engineering departments still,
in many profound ways, shape the
way other academic areas develop.
For example, the major reason
that Rice does not have a broad-
based core curriculum that demands
we take a foreign language and re-
quires a senior thesis is that the
engineering professors do not sup-
port one.
So my suggestions for improving
Rice include the following 6 things:
• Do not allow engineering to be a
preprofessional degree. No other
major at Rice allows a student to go
out into the work force after four-
years here and obtain ajob specializ-
ing in that field. The closest thing we
have is a bachelor's in architecture,
which actually requires two more
years beyond the initial four — after
just four years, you get a regular
Bachelor of Arts.
At Princeton and Wesleyan any
student can take engineering
classes, and an engineering degree
does not require more hours than
other majors do, hence allowing all
students to enjoy a wide variety of
educational experiences.
• Encourage the B.A. option. The
engineering departments do cur-
rently offer a less demanding de-
gree — a B.A. instead of a B.S.— but
few people seriously consider it a
viable option or choose to pursue it.
It is the B.S. that is an accredited
engineering degree, while the B.A.
in engineering is just like any other
major's degree. Princeton's engi-
' We are being cheated
if we do not receive more
than vocational training
here; tue should be
getting an education. '
neering major, for example, is not
accredited unless one goes for a fifth
year: otherwise, it is a B.A. degree,
offering lots of flexibility in sampling
a plethora of classes, such as foreign
languages and art.
We are being cheated if we do not
receive more than vocational train-
ing here: we should be getting an
education. So, it needs to be asked
why people do not seriously con-
sider the B.A. option here. Is it a
result of academic counseling fail-
ing to list the B.A.'s merits, or do
most Rice students push themselves
to work as hard as possible and com-
plete the most difficult degree pos-
sible?
If a student plans on going to
graduate school for medicine, law,
business or engineering (as more
than half of the engineers here, in
fact, do — 24 percent medical: 10
percent law; 6 percent business: 18
percent engineering, according to
Career Services). why should they
need to take so many specific
classes? Would not English or an-
thropology courses serve them
equally well, if not better?
6 Rice students attend
20 percen t more hours of
classroom instruction
than students at
[almost] any other
American private
university. ... '
• Pass/fail freshman year. There is
a low retention rate among first year
students in the engineering pro-
gram. The reason for this, in large
part, is low grades. Changing fresh-
man year into just high pass/low
pass/fail grades would relieve much
of the stress freshmen feel when
faced with these intense classes for
the first time.
Ix>w freshman grades are more
often a reflection of how well you
adapt to college life and not how
successful you will be in a particular
field.
Poor grades should not be a rea-
son for keeping someone out of a
career that she or he would genu-
inely be good at, had it not been for
getting a few C's. M.I.T. and Brown
are currently on this system, and in
talking to friends there, it seems as.
if it is immensely popular and it less-
ens the degree to which students
are weeded out for making a few low
grades.
• Equalize graduation require-
ments. Currently, engineering ma-
jors have to complete at least 14
more hours of classroom study than
academs. Generally, it has not been
the Rice faculty, but the students,
who have been opposed to lowering
graduation requirements, even
though Rice students attend 20 per-
cent more hours of classroom in-
struction than students at any other
American private university, with the
single exception of Cal Tech.
In fact, Dean Burnett has calcu-
lated that, in the four years a Rice
student is here, he or she actually
completes the equivalent of five years
of work at any other equally presti-
gious institution, making Rice one
of the most difficult schools to gradu-
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ate from.
If Rice students had fewer hours
of classes (like Ivy Leaguers), they
would probably have more time for
volunteer work, flexibility for study
abroad and a greater interest in learn-
ing for learning's sake. As it is now,
these things are an option for only a
percentage of Rice's student body,
so administrators and profs don't
stress them as much as they might
otherwise.
• Institute a core curriculum. Sadly,
general education has not been a
priority here at Rice. The Board of
Governors needs to create incen-
tives for outstanding professors to
teach interdisciplinary areas. They
could do this by giving professors
the option of teaching a class in-
stead of serving on a university com-
mittee, giving them extra leave, bet-
ter chances at tenure, or more time
for research if they teach one of
these core classes.
• Get better science teachers. Hire
not only esteemed researchers but
good teachers, who make classroom
time less disagreeable. Have a more
"hands-on" approach from the be-
ginning, rather than making fresh-
men suffer through the Big Three
with no idea how the material re-
lates to real life. The foundations of
engineering and technology should
be exciting and fun to more than just
a handful of people, not an obstacle
to suffer through.
If we could get student support
behind any of these ideas, the fac-
ulty might also be amenable to sup-
porting it.
But getting Rice student support
for change has not been an easy task
in the past and will probably not be
easy in the future either.
There is a general complacency
and happiness with maintaining the
status quo, and Rice students often
think that the way things are is best
because they have not been exposed
to other curricula.
If Rice's graduates are be on an
academic par with the graduates of
other top-10 schools such as Harvard
and Stanford, then Rice must see to
it that it is educating people to be-
come well-rounded and socially
adept individuals.
6 The Board of
Governors needs to create
incentives for
outstanding professors to
teach interdisciplinary
areas.
Since most of the engineers at
Rice will likely go on to positions in
management, they not only have to
know their trade, but they must also
be able to work well with others,
write eloquently, and speak effec-
tively. These necessary abilities sim-
ply cannot be taught and mastered
in an electrical engineering course.
But by making the changes I have
outlined, these skills could be im-
parted to all of the students here.
And, finally, I am convinced that any
one of these changes would better
equip Rice graduates to cope with
the demands awaiting them in their
future careers.
Jenna Christensen
Brown '95
Flyer reaches incorrect
conclusion about latex
To the editor:
I write in response to some of the
statements regarding latex condoms
contained in the flyer "Safe Sex" that
was inside many copies of the Feb.
17 Thresher. I have been investigat-
ing the physical properties of latex
films for several years, and have stud-
ied the methods used to manufac-
ture and test latex gloves and
condoms.,
The flyer suggests that condoms
frequently contain 5-micron holes,
thus rendering them ineffective as a
barrier to the much smaller HIV
virus. This conclusion is faulty, and
appears to reflect a misunderstand-
ing of the data cited. In order to
explain why this is so, I will first
briefly describe how latex gloves
and condoms are made.
Natural rubber latex products are
produced from a fluid extract of the
Hema brasiliensis tree. This fluid is
collected, blended, preserved and
concentrated prior to storage or ship-
ment. Gloves and condoms are made
by depositing a film of concentrated
liquid latex on an appropriately
shaped metal or ceramic mandrel.
For gloves, this deposition is usually
the result of a single dipping.
Condoms are dipped two or more
times. Prior to dipping, the latex
concentrate is compounded, in
which chemical additives are mixed
with the latex for the purpose of
improving the products' physical
characteristics. These additives in-
clude stabilizers and vulcanizing
agents, as well as various compounds
specific to the intended end-use of
the product. Dipping* is followed by
leaching, where undesired material
is removing by washing, then dry-
ing and curing.
The rubber particles in natural
latex range in diameter from 0.01
micron to 5 microns. The majority of
these particles are less than 0.5 mi-
crons in diameter, but most of the
rubber mass resides in particles
larger than 0.6 microns in diameter.
The average particle size is about
0.5 microns; taking weight into ac-
count, most of the mass comes from
particles about 1.5 microns in size.
Thus a latex film can be thought of
as a large number of these rubber
particles held in close proximity.
Imagine a large aquarium filled with
marbles of various sizes.
Small, very convoluted channels
will exist frOm one end of the
aquarium to the other, provided that
the interstitial areas are empty, as
would be the case with marbles. In
latex, however, these interstitial ar-
eas are filled with proteins and their
decomposition products, fatty acid
soaps, ammonia, water and a num-
ber of organic and inorganic salts.
Also present are the chemical addi-
tives that were not leached out of the
latex during manufacturing.
Latex condoms are dipped at least
twice to decrease the possibility of a
defect penetrating the entire film. In
addition, condoms of reputable
manufacture are each electrically
tested for defects.
The 5 micron "holes" reported in
the flyer were the largest interstitial
channel widths observed in a frozen
glove cross section, not in a condom.
The process of obtaining the cross
section probably removed much, of
the interstitial material. Additionally,
there is strong evidence that latex
rubber is toxic to the unprotected
HIV virus, stfthat only encapsulated
viruses (in a red blood cell, for ex-
ample) would survive the trip, even
if a channel existed.
To summarize, condoms do not
frequently contain 5 micron holes,
and their use should not be forsworn
based upon this belief.
John K. Bennett
Associate Professor of
Electrical and Computer
Engineering
Wiess '73
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Hale, David. The Rice Thresher (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 82, No. 22, Ed. 1 Friday, March 17, 1995, newspaper, March 17, 1995; Houston, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth246507/m1/4/: accessed July 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting Rice University Woodson Research Center.