War Changes Extend To Smaller Sciences

This is the fifth in a series of articles to appear during the coming weeks discussing the effects of the present war on the departments of concentration, their courses, enrollment, and Faculties.

The completeness of the inroads made by the war on academic life in reflected in the effect it has had on the group of smaller aciences in the University. While completely disrupting the larger science departments such as Physics, the war has also severely distorted the structure and very purpose of the departments of Astronomy and the Geological Sciences.

Chief problem which they have had to solve is the relining of their curricula to the present demand for trained scientists. The broader studies of the skies and earth must be reshaped and focused to the needs of the military.

Navigation Emphasized

For the Astronomy Department this adjustment has to date been centered about Astronomy 2, Navigation. Now to be given in each term, this primary course in navigation has swelled in size from approximately 30 to fully 100 students. Requiring no previous acquaintance with the subject and only a fundamental knowledge of trigonometry, the course consciously intends to prepare men for intensified service instruction like the Navy's V-7.

The Department is preparing, in addition, a series of courses closely connected with the war. Beginning in the second half of the Summer term, Professor Donald H. Menzel will offer a course in Astrophysics and next fall Associate Professor Bart Bok will teach Statistics.

Military Courses Added

Geological Sciences, Geography and Geology, are already giving a number of military courses. Among them are Military Geology, 28b, which has nine students enrolled; Aeronautical Metrology, 10b; Aerophotography and Aerosurveying, 36b; Field Communication, 37; and a repetition of Aerial Mapping, 38a, presented originally in the first half-year. This department has also organized flexible half courses to accomplish the work previously done in a full year and is prepared to give divisionals at any time. All these geological courses are highly specialized and specifically attempt to train men in subjects useful during the war.

Both these departments have lost substantial fractions of their teaching staffs to the war effort. From Astronomy, Lecturer Theodore Storne in now a Captain in the Artillery and Research Associate Fletchor Watson is working in a defense laboratory. The Geological Sciences have four men working on defense projects: three on leaves of absence and one resigned. In the former category are Instructor. Edward Ackerman, Assistant Professor Francis Birch, and Associate Professor Columbus Iselin; in the second, Teaching Fellow Nathan Parker.

Geophysical Research has been seriously interrupted by the war affecting graduate students as well as teachers. The department's staff members are constantly called to defense conferences in Washington and highly trained graduate field men leave continually to work on strategic mineral supplies. Research for strategic metals in Bolivia has been speeded up and a staff man will go there in May to hasten the work.

The number of concentrators in Astronomyhasomy has not been affected by the war as yet and the department has not found it necessary to make any specialized adjustments of concentration requirements. Likewise, there has been no substantial change in the 82 concentrators in the Division of Geological Sciences.

While the number of graduate students in each department has fallen off about 50 percent, undergraduate enrollment in the Geological Sciences has dropped very insignificantly from 599 to 585 and in Astronomy about 25 percent from the fall figure of 50 students. Expecting radical decreases in undergraduate enrollment in regular courses, these science departments predict a swing to the specialized war courses that will more than balance this loss