NEW CHEMICAL COURSE AT M. I. T.

Technology will open next fall a new school of practical chemical engineering, which will maintain stations in connection with five great concerns. The Institute has for many years maintained a strong course in chemical engineering, but it is now taking an extremely important step in educational practice by bringing the school into direct contact with various industrial plants.

Work Leads to Master's Degree.

The work leading to a master's degree, in chemical engineering covers a period of five years of study. The first three and a half years from the high school are spent in obtaining a knowledge of the fundamentals of chemistry and engineering. The next nine months are spent in six industrial plants and the last nine months in the extensive Technology laboratories in Cambridge which are about to be dedicated. The main feature of the new plan is the emphasis on the nine months spent in direct contact with industries. The plan involves no mere hasty visit to different plans or superficial survey of industrial processes. A professor will be maintained in each of the six stations at the different plants and will be provided with a well equipped laboratory. The students are divided into as many groups as there are stations and pass around the circle of stations, spending about six weeks in each until the whole cycle is completed. The stations are placed in certain plants not merely because of the importance of the industries that are there in operation, but because those industries well illustrate certain fundamental processes that it is of the first importance that chemical engineers should thoroughly understand.

Basic Processes to be Studied.

The new scheme is based on the fact that any chemical process on whatever scale it may be conducted may be resolved into a series of what may be termed unit actions, such as pulverizing, heating, roasting, condensing, precipitating, crystallizing, filtering, dissolving, electrolyzing, and so on. The number of these basic unit operations is not very large. The student who understands all these unit actions is in a position to attack any chemical problem.

For the present, six stations are to be established. One will be at the works of the New England Gas and Coke Company in Somerville, where the fundamental theoretical and practical principles of fuels and combustion will be studied. At Niagara Falls, at the plant of the Exolon Manufacturing Company, there will be opportunities for work in electro-chemistry and high temperature furnaces. The application of electricity at low temperatures, and the general principles involved in paper making will be illustrated at the Eastern Manufacturing Company in Bangor, Me. The Atlas Cement Company, of Allentown, Pa., will afford extraordinarily good advantages for studying the practical applications of inorganic chemistry. The fifth and sixth plants have not yet been definitely decided on, but one will probably be where organic chemistry is chiefly used.

Resident Professors to Direct Work.

At each of these establishments there will be a fireproof building to house a special library, a lecture room, and a laboratory fitted for the special work of the place. A resident professor of the Institute will have charge of this building.

After the student has gone the round of these six stations and worked in each plant under the direction of the professor who is permanently located there, he will round out his chemical studies by further investigations in Boston. An important feature of the plan is that each station maintains a research laboratory where men who have graduated from the course or other competent chemists will pursue investigations on problems presented by the particular industry where the station is. It is the bringing of the school into the industry and of the industry into the school that is the striking feature of the new plan and has made it attract so much attention from practical men in various parts of the country.