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George T. Heery, FA1A. In the background is the headquarters of The Coca-Cola Company, Atlanta.
A New and Better Way We have developed a new and better way to practice architecture and engineering and a new and better way to help our clients buy construction. We call it The Concentrated Responsibility Contract (CRC) Method. The CRC Method combines the best elements of traditional architectural and engineering services with the best elements of design/build. We stay completely on our clients' side, as we always have, but with The CRC Method we can now serve clients better by obtaining for them a much more enforceable guaranteed maximum price. We obtain the price earlier in the design phase than GMP's are usually confirmed, and we do so with less design cost at risk. We believe we get better buildings at lower prices for clients with CRC. Also, when the building isfinished,if something goes wrong, there should be less trouble and frustration for the owner in placing responsibility and getting the corrective work done. We have proved all of the techniques employed in The CRC Method in very successful, major projects.
HEERY For more information call 404-881-9880. Ask for Scott Braley or Vic Bowman in connection with office facilities. Ask for Bob Eskew or Bob Petras in connection with industrial facilities. Or ask for Bob Eskew or George Heery in connection with any type project. Heery Architects & Engineers, Inc. A member of the Heery International group of design and professional service companies ATLANTA • ANCHORAGE • BALTIMORE • LOS ANGELES • NEW YORK • LONDON • FRANKFURT
ENGINEERS
A Telecommunications Engineering Revolution in Progress from Atlanta & San Francisco The time is now and the company is Hayes Microcomputer Products Inc. Atlanta or San Francisco!. J America's emerging super high technology arena. Here at Hayes we've designed and supported an engineering environment free of constraints. We've promoted an atmosphere that encourages each individual's unique ability to make a contribution to see a project through from concept to completion. For those among you who look to achieve, perhaps it's time to take a good hard look at Hayes. There's a future in it. HAYES MICROCOMPUTER PRODUCTS, INC. P.O. Box 105203, Atlanta, GA 30348. An Equal Opportunity Employer. M/F
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Georgia Tech
1986 VOLUME 61. NUMBER 2 * * " * * ALUMNI ALUMNI MAGAZINE, MAGAZINE. SPRING SPRING 1?
STAFF John C. Dunn. Editor Gary Goettling. Associate Editor Melissa Fudalla Stoebe, Graphic Design Gary Meek, Margaret Barrett, Photographers
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PUBLICATIONS COMMITTEE Shirley C. Mewborn '56, chairperson D. Raymond Riddle '55 Charles W. (Buddy) Young, Jr. '67
GEORGIA TECH ALUMNI ASSOCIATION OFFICERS Geoffrey C. Gill '64, president E. Rembert DuBose '48, past president Ben J. Dyer 7 0 . president-elect Lawton M. Nease III '65, vice president B. J o e Anderson. '50, treasurer John B. Carter. Jr. '69, vice president & executive director Warren Heemann. nice president for Development TRUSTEES Term Expires 1 9 8 6 Karl W. Barnes 76 Charles R. Brown '62 William L Camp '48 Arnold L. Ducoffe '43 William M. Graves '60 John B. Hayes 70 Don C. Johnston '37 W. Ennis Parker. Jr. '64 Claude A. Petty. Jr. '50 D. Raymond Riddle '53 Term Expires 1987 F. Sibley Bryan. Jr. '60 Dave Center '36 James C. Edenfield '75 Steve M. Mitchell '65 Paul D. Gurley '47 Oliver H. Sales. Jr. '56 Frank J. McCloskey 7 2 Richard F. Ward '61 Shirley Clements Mewborn '56 J. Lamar Wright '68 Term Expires 1 9 8 8 J. Randall Carroll '68 John C. Chandler. Jr. '52 Lamar Howard Franklin '36 William F. Gannon '70 Charles A. Kistler. Jr. '55 M. Garland Reynolds, Jr. '59 Francis N. Spears 7 3 John C. Staton. Jr. '60 H. Hammond Stith, Jr. '59 Charles W. Young. Jr. '67
CONTENTS 6
Beyond 2001
16
Understanding Chaos
20
Information Technology for 2001
28
New Thrust in Recruiting
35
Frontiers of the Future
36
College of Engineering
39
College of Management
42
College of Architecture
45
College of Sciences and Liberal Studies
49
The Environmental Era
56
Man Is Master of Technology
THE ART OF MATH A computer design resembling a maple leaf (with subsets) is not a work of art, but a work of math. Scholars at Georgia Tech have discovered how to create any desired image using fractal geometry and chaotic iteration (page 16). The new geometry provides a visual rendering of our theme, "The Shape of Things to Come," in this final of three centennial issues focusing respectively on the past, present and future of Georgia Tech. Cover image generated by Laurie Hodges.
The Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine is published twice a year for active alumni by the Georgia Tech Alumni Association, Atlanta, Ga. 1986 Georgia Tech Alumni Association Official Sponsors: American Software Christiana Southeast. Inc. Coca Cola Days Inn Delta Air Lines
Guest Quarters Hayes Microcomputer Products, Inc. Lanier Plaza Hotel & Conference Center
Leslie Advertising Ramanda Inn Central Ritz-Carlton Buckhead Royer Realty Technology Park/Atlanta
In Seattle, a terraced park has been built above street level, beside an interstate exit ramp. The city of the future will exhibit many such examples of vertical development.
Bragdon is convinced billboards "will not be here by the 21st century." Instead, he foresees 'the use of lasers to create images on the sides of buildings for advertising and other purposes.
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BEYOND THE YEAR 2001: SIX TECH EXPERTS LOOK AT THE 21ST CENTURY By Gary Goatling
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redicting the future, once associated only with science fiction writers and fortune tellers, has achieved respectability in recent years. At least a dozen books, including the best-seller Megatrends, have prognosticated the next century. And now many firms are in the prediction business, extrapolating trends and technology to provide a view of the future for their clients in government and private industry. Serious prognostication (as opposed to the pap offered by supermarket tabloids) is, in a sense, planning for the future. Its value is not in seeing whether specific predictions turn out right or wrong, but in opening up our minds to the incredible challenges and possibilities that may be encountered in the 21st century. Thomas A. Edison, in an August 1, 1909, interview with The New York Times, confidently predicted that "In ten years flying machines will be used to carry the mails. They'll carry passengers, too. They will go at a speed of 100 miles an hour. There is no doubt of it. Anything within reason can be accomplished. The commercially successful flying machine is within reason." Edison was right. Yet as thought provoking and stimulating as predicting the future may be, it is, of course, conjecture, for the future is also full of surprises. "Ask me if man can ever jump from the
earth to the moon," Edison continued, "and I will reply 'no' because it is not within reason. But the flying machine â&#x20AC;&#x201D; that's different." With that caveat in mind, six experts at Georgia Tech were asked to describe a broad vision of the 21st century from the perspective of their areas of interest or expertise. Their responses follow.
THE CITY Clifford Bragdon is director of continuing education at Tech. Formerly assistant dean of the College of Architecture, Bragdon lectures frequently on the subject of urban planning. He has also served as a consultant to cities, states and federal agencies across the nation in the areas of planning and futurism.
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e says that American society will be more urbanized by the year 2000, predicting that at that time, "95 percent of the people will be situated on 10 percent of the land." With the increase in urbanization will also come significant change in the form of cities. "There are three planes â&#x20AC;&#x201D; air space, ground space and subterranean space," says Bragdon. "If you look historically at the form of American cities, it is essentially one-dimensional in that we utilize the ground plane as the primary mode of development. What will happen and what is happening right now is that we are moving toward what I call platform citiesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;where cities are developing on three dimensions." Bragdon sees cities entering a period of vertical, rather than horizontal, growth because "the cost of land is so high we can't afford not to utilize our air space." As an example of this trend he cites Los Angeles, where plans are underway to build a business district above and below street level in that city. In Atlanta, MARTA's sale of air rights over its rapid rail stations represents a move in that direction. Subterranean development is the third dimension of Bragdon's platform cities. "You'll see subterranean zoning ordinances and master plans," predicts Bragdon, who envisions a literal "underground Atlanta" of apartments, storage facilities, conference space, retail stores and many other types of development. "Today there are over 200 homes in the Atlanta metro area that are
earth-covered — homes that are built so that they use the energy1 efficient benefits of the design. That is the precursor of what our cities are going to start looking like." The 24-hour automated bank teller is the harbinger of the city of the 21st century — a city filled with activity 24 hours a day, says Bragdon, not just during the 9-to-5 workday. Flexible working hours, aided in part by the work-at-home option computers may provide, will allow workers to tailor a schedule to their individual needs. Does it make sense that so many businesses are only open for business during the same hours most people are working? Does it make sense from a time and energy perspective for so many people to jam the roadways twice daily at the same time? Bragdon thinks that creative developers are beginning to realize that many aspects of industry are out of sync with other priorities. By the 21st century, those problems will be addressed — cities will be designed both in terms of space and time. As far as buildings are concerned, Bragdon thinks architecture in the next century will develop "new ways of expressing art in the form of buildings." He sees increasing diversity in corporate architecture as firms use the distinctive look or shape of their buildings as logos, as advertisements. "The image of the building becomes significant advertising," says Bragdon, citing contemporary examples such as the Coca-Cola headquarters in Atlanta, San Francisco's Transamerica pyramid and the AT&T building in New York. In addition, Bragdon is convinced the billboards "will not be here by the 21st century." Instead, he foresees the use of lasers to create images on buildings for advertising and other purposes. "You'll be able to create holographic and kinetic visions in the sky of anything you want," he says. "The old idea of skywriting will be changed to skywriting with lasers. The sky becomes a theater." But new opportunities do not come without risks or the potential for abuse, and Bragdon readily conceeds that such uses of lasers will have to be regulated in some manner. "Another thing you are going to see in the city is sensory planning," Bragdon says. "We are now design-
ing cities using essentially the primary mode of design — physical design. What you see is what you get. In the future, more cities will be sensory planned. This means what I call tactile master planning will be done — gustatory, olfactory and acoustical planning. In other words, we'll make our cities look good, smell good and taste good. That is one reason why San Francisco is such an attractive city. "It has so many senses going on," he explains. "Fisherman's Wharf is not only an area for observing ships, the harbor, people and architecture, it's also smelling seafood odors, and seeing the sequence and texture of the landscaping. Sensory planning is in its infancy right now, but in the future, you will have
sensory planning specialists who will be working in four or five dimensions of planning." Suburban growth and the subsequent decline of the inner city has been a subject of much discussion in recent years. Many municipal governments struggle with the growing problem of providing services with a decreasing revenue base. According to Bragdon, this situation will ultimately lead to the consolidation of services and "possibly the evaporation of the 'historical boundaries between cities and suburbs. When we say we live in Atlanta, what we are saying is that we live in metropolitan Atlanta. We don't discriminate between the city and the suburb. I think
that perception will slowly work its way into the political and economic structure of our cities." What will Atlanta look like at the turn of the century? Bragdon sees a vital, healthy city with a metropolitan area that may reach as far as Athens to the north and Macon to the south. Atlanta proper "will not much longer be a city of hotels," Bragdon continues, noting that mixed-use development, just now getting a foothold in the downtown area, will blossom in the next decade. Regionalization of cultural amenities — museums, symphonies and the like — will help unify this vast urban area. As the area continues to grow, an outer perimeter expressway and a second airport will be built.
"A transit system, of course, is the key to the future city," Bragdon says. "Atlanta will be one of the top five cities in the nation because its infrastructure can handle future growth." The future integration of air, highway and rail transportation systems will provide Atlanta with a "multi-modal network almost unrivaled in the country," Bragdon says. Bragdon also offered comments on other areas that will have an impact on cities in the 21st century: • Automobiles. "The auto is an inherent part of our lifestyle," says Bragdon, although he sees the private car playing a greater role in recreational use than as the primary means of getting to work.
But, he adds, "how it is propelled and what fuel systems are used, electrical systems, etc., will change. I don't think we will be using fossil fuels to the extent we are now." Lack of parking space is a problem in many cities today, and Bragdon expects the problem to become more acute in coming years. "Our technologies cannot add more space — it is a finite thing," he says. "We must learn to manage that space more effectively." • Electronic shopping. "I don't think we should become too preoccupied with electronic linkage as the only mode in which we will communicate," says Bragdon. Shopping by computer will certainly be one of many new options, "but it doesn't replace the Lenox Square or Phipps Plaza or Cumberland Mall. There is still going to be the need for that interaction that creates and stimulates." • Education. "Staying current is going to be a commodity of the future," asserts Bragdon. "How many lawyers know about air-space ordinances? How many architects know how to design subterranean spaces? Each discipline is rapidly changing, so we will have to stay current. "My prediction is that non-credit or continuing education will be the primary mode for keeping a person current in his or her field. Members of the legal profession, for example, have to take three courses a year to stay current. That's a requirement of the American Bar Association. You'll see this more and more in other disiplines including engineering, architecture and management. • Georgia Tech. "An increasing portion of our budget will be coming from institutions other than the government, and that is going to reshape what we do at Tech, I think. The trend will be toward the privatization of services in the sense that you are going to have a merging of public and private institutions. We are doing this right now at Tech with GTRI in particular. "We are going to build the Centennial Hotel and Conference Center—a public-private partnership. The money is not coming from the state, it is coming from the private sector." Another very important change involves the use of new telecom-
munication technology. "Just as the city of the future will be an electronic city," Bragdon says, "the university of the future will be an electronic university. The Georgia Tech of the future will operate world-wide via electronics. Already we offer non-credit courses at 75 off-campus locations, and credit courses at 41 locations. The 'electronic Tech' could one day be equal in scope to the physical campus."
WAR AND PEACE Dr. Eugene Ashby is the regents' professor of chemistry at Tech. He is in demand as a speaker on the subjects of nuclear warfare and armaments, and has served as a consultant to the Department of Defense on matters of national defense weapons systems.
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egarding the chances of a nuclear confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union, Ashby says that "the chances of conflict get less and less because the consequences get greater and greater. Since both sides are completely convinced of total anihilation on both sides — and have so stated —it's quite clear that no one is going to attempt a first strike on the other." Ashby maintains that "deterrance is a valid concept," adding that the U.S. and the Soviets "would have been at war a long time ago if it weren't for nuclear weapons, in my opinion."
If a premeditated first strike is unlikely, there is another threat posed by nuclear missiles. "The greatest danger is from accidents," Ashby warns. "Eventually you must realize there's got to be an accident. It's just a matter of reasonable wisdom to assume that eventually there's going to be one terrible accident. You had just-better hope that it's not misconstrued at the time to be a direct attack of one nation on another." Despite such a dire prediction, Ashby is optimistic that the arms race will eventually be brought under control. He feels the recent Soviet proposal that all nuclear weaponry be eliminated by the early part of the 21st century indicates that nation's willingness to cooperate with America in arms reduction. The United States is a very rich country, Ashby says, "and the Soviet Union cannot afford to compete with the U.S. in this expensive avenue of making nuclear weapons. Slowly but surely their [Soviet] economy is getting weaker and weaker and it will not survive another 25 years of that kind of expenditure." The possibility of chemical warfare between the superpowers is an equally remote possibility, Ashby says. "Chemical warfare/biological warfare is an area that is related politically to the nuclear war concept" in that each is based on deterrance. "I don't know any country that's going to use those kinds of [biological and chemical] agents on another power that has the same thing, he says, adding that although the U.S.S.R. may have a larger stockpile of chemical weapons than the U.S., "the two positions are close enought that no one would dare use those agents." Parenthetically, he also notes that allegations of chemical weapons use by the Soviets in Afghanistan have never been substantiated. "There has been a lot of charges and countercharges about the Soviet Union using chemical warfare agents in Afghanistan, in Laos and in Cambodia. . . but there's never been any confirmation of that." Internal economic and sociological problems, as opposed to ideological conflict with other nations, will provide the focus for most countries in the 21st century, Ashby
predicts. The U.S. and the U.S.S.R., in particular, will be preoccupied with trying "to get their economic problems straightened our and trying to strengthen their countries from within." War, however, is certainly not going to become an anachronism, although Ashby believes it will be largely confined to Third World countries that will use military means to solve their economic problems.
ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT Dr. David Clifton is director of the Economic Development Laboratory at the Georgia Tech Research Institute.
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sked what the most important factor is for Georgia's future growth, Clifton's answer comes without hesitation: "Education is going to be a key issue as far as economic development is concerned." He says Georgia "missed the boat" some years ago when many businesses considered .moving south to take advantage of cheaper labor, the South's traditionally strong work ethic and other factors favorable to business. But by reacting slowly to a transition from an agricultural employment base to a manufacturing employment base, Georgia and other southern states failed to maximize their strengthsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; and a number of those industries located elsewhere or went overseas. "During that period we really 10
didn't do what we should have done with our educational system" to provide those industries with the various technical and business skills they needed, Clifton says. He adds that Gov. Joe Frank Harris' education reform measure is a positive step toward rectifying the situation by upgrading the education and quality of the state's workforce. In the future, Clifton sees public education enhanced through a satellite video network that will provide access to information and special lecturers located at, say, Tech or the University of Georgia. Such a system would be particularly valuable in rural sections of Georgia, Clifton believes. High technology businesses will become increasingly important to Georgia's economy in the next century, Clifton says, but cautions that high tech's potential contributions can be overemphasized. "It's an important component for the future economic development of the state," he says, "but it is by no means going to provide the kind of widespread employment base we'll need." Clifton does not see any single industry working an economic miracle for the state. Rather, he predict's Georgia's future economic strength will derive from a mix of tourism, small manufacturing, and high technology centers in Atlanta, Gainesville, Warner Robins and other places. Atlanta will continue its phenominal growth, Clifton believes, fueled in part by significant amounts of foreign investment in the area. "Foreign investment has not really hit here yet," Clifton says, but adds that the "airport, the infrastructure here, banking community offer a tremendous attraction for foreign capital" that should be forthcoming in the next few years. On the down side, Clifton believes that federal budget cuts in areas such as community block grants, which "fund all kinds of services in every community in Georgia," will definitely "impact what we can do as far as economic development" in the state. But overall, he is optimistic for the near future and the next century. "There will be a lot of stress, but we will be competitive. The capabilities and desire to compete are in our system."
THE FINAL FRONTIER Dr. Gary A. Flandro is a professor of aeronautical engineering at Tech.
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think there's no question there's going to be an ongoing interest and move into space," Flandro says. The implications of space travel "go beyond anything we can imagine." But the rate at which progress will be made is an open question, he adds, largely because of political, rather than technological, feasibility. The Apollo moon landing project, for example, was roundly criticized for its expense, forcing NASA to "put all its eggs in one basket" with the space shuttle as the focus of current space efforts. And though now there's "tremendous support for the space program in spite of the recent [shuttle tragedy]," there's no telling how future disasters may affect public opinion â&#x20AC;&#x201D; and further space ventures. Still, Flandro sees "a million and one possibilities" for the exploitation of space in the next century. He cites a study made by M.I.T and Club of Rome researchers in the late 7 0 s that had to do with "making predictions about what would happen in the world in terms of population, availability of natural resources, pollution and in terms of utilization of natural resources." The analysis of the study results, though "somewhat discredited now," Flandro points out, are nevertheless "one of the unfortunate, negative views of the
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world that we may have to think about as we guess what the future is going to be like." The data, when applied to a world system model, was interpreted by the M.I.T. staff to mean "things are going to go wrong about the year 2000," Flandro says. "The population would have grown much too large for the earth to support it, pollution increases with population so you're starting to get greenhouse effects, and on and on. We're going to run of raw materials, fossil fuels, and then the population is going to dramatically decrease all of a sudden," says Flandro of the study's conclusions. Flandro faults the M.I.T. theory because it "models the world as a closed system. If you think of the world as a closed, completely isolated organism as it were, then what they're saying is probably
right." But Flandro doesn't regard the planet as a closed system. One of the reasons he doesn't is because of our ability to leave earth. "I really feel that space colonies are viable," he says. Flandro likes the proposal of German astrodynamacist Krafft Ehricke, who advocated moving production facilities, especially the pollution-causing types of industry, away from the earth. "Ehricke suggested that if you want to manufacture things, do it on the moon. "I like the idea of doing things on the moon," Flandro says. "First of all, the little gravity is helpful. It's very light gravity so you get a lot of the benefits of zero gravity. You also have a lot of natural resources [on the moon] that can be developed. Scientists did a very detailed chemical study and felt that everything you need for basic
manufacturing is available on the moon. "How do you get manufactured goods back and forth?" Flandro asks. "Obviously you don't rely on manufactured goods from the earth. You do everything that you possibly can on the moon. And shipping things hack to the earth from the moon is relatively cheap. The gravitational force is one-sixth of what it is here, so you don't even Heed a rocket â&#x20AC;&#x201D; nothing like a space shuttle to move things from the moon to the earth. You could use catapults." What about pollution? Would moon-based industry only shift the problem elsewhere? Flandro doesn't think so. "I don't really think you can hurt space," he says. "I think we're in danger of hurting the earth, but we may not be able to hurt space if we're smart about it. "On the moon, garbage and waste does not propagate. On earth it does. The atmosphere and the oceans and the rivers cause propagation of waste material. "If you want to use nuclear power generation on the moon, waste products aren't a problem. You just put them somewhere away from habitations and you're OK because nothing can cause it to move from one place to another." Astronomer and author Carl Sagan has recently proposed an international effort to land astronauts on the planet Mars by the year 2000. What does Flandro think of the idea? "I think it is definitely feasible," he says. "I think it could be done in a relatively short period of time given the proper funding. It can't be a shoestring operation like the shuttle. It would have to be a really major program. "I like Carl's concept of having us working with some other countries. I think that's absolutely a superb idea. And it's about time somebody did something like that. Someday we're going to have to realize that the earth can't be just a bunch of separate, fighting factions. That's silly. That's really silly. We're never going to solve any of our problems if that's the way it's going to be. So I think Carl's idea is wonderful. It would give the nations of the world a chance to develop in the direction of cooperation." 11
A WORLD VIEW Dr. Daniel S. Papp is director of Tech's School of Social Sciences. The author of numerous books and articles, he is also a widelyrecognized authority on international politics.
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y and large, Papp sees little change in global alignments and concerns in the next couple decades. "In the year 2000," he says, "you'll be able to pick up The New York Times and read headlines about terrorism and instability in the Middle East. "Structurally, the international system of 2000 will be, I would think, more diffuse than ever," Papp continues. "Some people say that we're now operating under what amounts to a multi-polar system. I would think that trend would continue. The United States, the Soviet Union, China, Japan, the Western European countries will continue to dominate economically and militarily. "The so-called Third World groupings of states, will be internally divided more than ever. The old alliance systems will be subject to increasing internal disarray." Massive debt which many Third World nations have accumulated and which, Papp believes, presents a major stumbling block to their development, will not be paid off by the next century. Papp says we'll see "termination of large bank 12
loans to developing nations, [but] we'll see a lot of those debts continue to be rolled over and rolled over and rolled over." The Union of South Africa will have a different government by the turn of the century, Papp says, and the Phillipine government is also vulnerable. "Unless the problems of overpopulation and debt in Latin America are resolved, the democratic governments in that area will, almost inevitably, fall victim to totalitarian pressures once again —totalitarian pressures both of the left and the right," he adds. For the United States, Papp sees "further increased reliance on high technology and agricultural exports to maintain our international economic position" in an increasing global, interdependent marketplace. Although the U.S. will not achieve the level of economic dominance it enjoyed in the post-World War II era, Papp is quick to point out that "much of the loss of American predominance has not been the result of erroneous American policies, but rather the return of many pre-World War II producers to previous levels of production. That, I think, is an aspect often overlooked." Papp sees the introduction of a variety of new military technologies in the next few years, but none he would describe as revolutionary. "By the year 2000, unless there are some incredible breakthroughs before then, we'll just be beginning to effectively use beam weaponry," Papp adds. Papp bases his predictions on current trends. Unforeseen technological breakthroughs could alter the world political balance tremendously. "If the United States were to perfect fusion technology, or a space-based solar energy collection system," Papp says, we would have a different perception of and reaction to Middle Eastern conflicts, for example. Then, it's a whole new ballgame.
GENETIC ENGINEERING \ Dr. John Crenshaw is a retired professor in the School of Applied Biology at Tech. He lectures frequently on the subject of genetic engineering.
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renshaw has an unabashed exhuberance for the applications of genetic engineering techniques. "I think the future is just incredibly bright from these developments [in genetic engineering]," Crenshaw says. "I think every one of us will be touched by the importance of these developments within the next 10 years. . .The fruits of genetic engineering are going to help each and every one of us in one way or another." One such technique, still undergoing laboratory trials, may bode well for the victims of a wide variety of cancers. According to Crenshaw, "Dr. Steven Rosenberg has developed a technique whereby he takes lymphocytes from a seriously ill cancer patient — one for whom other drug therapy no longer seems to be effective, if it ever was — and cultures those lymphocytes with one of the new, genetically-engineered substanced — interleukin-2. Interleukin-2 is a substance we all make, but we make it in extremely small quantities. "He cultures these lymphocytes in interleukin-2 and this stimulates in the lymphocytes the aspect that many people call the 'killer' aspect. That means they go for tumor cells, in effect, or other invading cells." The cultured lymphocytes are then injected back into the cancer victim, along with an extra dose of interleukin-2. The results of the first experiment, says Crenshaw, as reported in the New England Journal of Medicine, indicated that 11 of 25 persons who received the treatment experienced a significant reduction in their tumors. "This procedure is going to be fine-tuned, adjusted," says Crenshaw. "And it's going to be very important in treating many forms of cancer." He believes this or a similar technique involving genetic engineering holds the key not only for a cancer cure, but also for AIDS and herpes cures. There are dozens of laboratories across the nation working with genetically-engineered substances. Among those substances, says Crenshaw, is a "tumornecrosis factor that is also a natural factor that we produce" though in small quantities. "But by genetic engineering we can now produce that factor," he continues. "We don't really know how important that's going
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to be, but we know that in certain kinds of tumors it has been extremely effective in knocking them out." Genetic engineering to produce natural substances to enhance and support the body's own immunization functions is but one area of research that shows great promise in the coming decades. Gene therapy, whereby a "good" gene is introduced into an organism with a "bad" gene, or lacking a gene, will virtually eliminate heritable diseases, according to Crenshaw. "There are a large number of genetic diseases, says Crenshaw, that result when a person gets a "double dose" of a bad or recessive gene. Such an individual fails to produce any of the proper protein product to prevent that particular disease from occurring. "What we do is use one of these retroviruses," says Crenshaw. "We disable the virus so it will stay put and never go anywhere else. Then we get that virus to take up a good gene of the sort our victim lacks. And then we inject the virus — we can inject it into the individual in appropriate tissue, or we can take the tissue out of the individual and 14
culture the virus with the tissue and then put the tissue cells back in. "So now the individual has his own cells with the correct gene growing in them. And they proliferate— they perpetuate themselves." "Gene therapy, as I've been talking about it, only treats disease in that individual," Crenshaw adds. "[The correct gene] will not be passed on to his progeny. Germline therapy is quite a bit more complicated." But Crenshaw is confident that obstacles will be overcome and in the next century, genetic diseases will be more than treatable — they will be eradicated. "[Germ-line therapy] will come in time," he says. "The first steps toward putting genes from one organism into another and having it passed on to the next generation has already been done in mice." That, of course, is a very simplified description of a very complicated process — a process that still needs refinement in many areas. '"It's going to be complex to put the gene where we want it," Crenshaw says. "It's one thing to get the gene into the body so that it can turn on. It's quite different thing to get
it out into the chromosome where it will be regulated properly — to be turned on when you want the product, but not all the time." Genetic engineering techniques will have many other applications in addition to treating human disease. To illustrate, Crenshaw refers to "an effort to transfer potentially nitrogen-fixing genes into plants that do not fix their own oxygen. That reduces enormously the amount of nitrogen you've got to put on the plant as fertilizer, which costs dollars. "I guess a lot of the work with vegetables is now of a very practical nature," Crenshaw says, like making "cubic tomatoes that you can ship, fruits that are more solid and easier to ship." He adds that "you can play with taste, too," or add nutritional substances, with genetic engineering techniques. With all the potential positive applications of genetic engineering, is there a sinister side? Crenshaw bristles at the suggestion of "mad scientists" who may abuse the process. "Can you think of a real, honest-to-goodness mad scientist?" he asks. "The only place in history you'll find mad scientists is in a place like Nazi Germany. And it really wasn't the scientists who were mad — the scientists may have been unethical — but they were obeying the orders of the mad politicians. "The mad scientist syndrome is not a likely probability. It's a myth. The ordinary guy who is bright enough to develop and understand these techniques is generally a highly ethical individual. "Society is by nature conservative. And if people start doing things that are at all out of line," Crenshaw says, the repercussions from peers and the public will stop such abuses. Crenshaw feels that the most important aspect of all of the genetic engineering work is the basic science aspect — developing new knowledge of biology, how cells work. "To understand these different biological phenomena [means] we can develop a w ide variety of therapeutic devices," Crenshaw says. "Genetic engineering techniques and understanding are going to develop therapy that we can only dream of now. It's going to be incredibly important."
*****'
CLASS OF 1986.
Next time you're in Atlanta for a game, a get-together, business or a getaway, join us. We'll make HfrjEjjjgT'i your stay as much of an event as the event. With incomparable surroundings, impeccable personal service. And we're uptown in more ways than one: just minutes from campus. For reservations, THE R I T Z - C A R L T O N or information about special Tech rates, call 800-241-3333 or 404-237-2700. Don't skip class. BUCKHEAO
THE ART OF MATH 16
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FRACTAL GEOMETRY
UNDERSTANDING CHAOS By John Dunn
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a n d o m patterns in nature as clouds, mountains and trees defy classical geometric definitions. "If you look behind a boat, the wake has churns and eddies in it of different sizes, and that has chaos in it," observes Dr. Michael F. Barnsley, professor of mathematics. "And yet, vou feel that you should be able to say definite things about it in terms of mathematics." The search to define random patterns in nature has led to a comparatively new branch of study — the science and mathematics of chaos — and a branch of mathematics known as fractal geometry. "We started to realize that you could be precise about the pattern of smoke coming off a cigarette," adds Barnsley. "It's elaborate and complicated, and yet, we may want to say definite things about it. "Part of the clue to understanding chaos has been understanding a class of objects called fractals," Barnsley explains. "Fractal geometry and the study of chaos have been developing hand-in-hand. "There's another area that might not seem to have much to do with either of those — computer graphics. How do you artificially compute a picture of a cloud? You can easily do a picture of a house, but how do you tell a computer
Opposite, clockwise from top: A galaxy image created by abstract fractals; a Himalayan mountain landscape including trees and clouds; and images created by abstract fractal designs.
how to draw around a cloud? It's very complicated." Indeed, during the past several years a broad sector of the scientific community has been using fractals to create computer designs of r a n d o m patterns in nature or natural phenomena. It remained a complicated process, however. Barnsley and members of the School of Mathematics and School of Information and Computer Sciences have discovered how to create any desired image using fractal geometry and chaotic iteration.
Below: The design created from the name of Atlanta's best-known product demonstrates the degree of control in using chaotic iteration and fractals to calculate images. Photos courtesy School of Mathematics
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Among those w h o helped develop the technique with Barnsley are Dr. Stephen G. Demko, Dr. Alan D. Sloan, Dr. John Elton, Dr. Jeffrey Geronimo in the School of Mathematics, and Dr. Bruce F. Naylor and Laurie Hodges in ICS. "We use chaotic iteration and fractals to calculate images," explains Barnsley. "Basically we have a computer algorithm. We input a sequence of random numbers. The output is a picture of an abstract fractal or a cloud or a tree or a mountain." Barnsley says they have been able to represent seemingly complicated images using a comparatively uncomplicated numerical sequence. The discovery has placed Georgia Tech as a leader, if not the leader, in the study of chaos and fractals. The new method of specifying and computing fractal sets is based on Iterated Function Systems. It provides effective design of certain natural objects (with unlimited detail) as well as a large class of other complex objects. The Tech method, using compact representation, efficient computation, and a very small a m o u n t of user specification, has yielded computer graphics of intricately, delicate ferns, a maple leaf, and fractal interpolation resembling a Himalayan mountain landscape. "The key thing to understand," says Barnsley, "is that this is mathematicsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; it's not art." Tech's system has been able to exercise considerable control that permits fine tuning and a range of significantly different objects. " T h e fact that the approach rests upon a firm mathematical basis gives us confidence in being able to find many ways of solving various geometric modeling problems," says Barnsley. T h e extension of the method developed at Tech could lead to .. ^ three dimensional representation of objects as the most important next step.
This sequence that evolves into a delicate Black Spleenwort Fern uses fractal geometry and chaotic iteration. The computer code for this sequence was developed by Henry Strickland, a graduate student in the School of Mathematics.
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Information technologies will strongly influence progress in fields ranging from the basic sciences to all engineering disciplines.
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY FOR THE WORLD OF 2001 By Ian M. Ross
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here are traps — or at least difficulties—in accurately forecasting technology to 2001. The problem isn't in telling you where the technologies themselves are going. The greater difficulty lies in assessing those other factors — economic, social and political—that influence technological innovation
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and thus the rate at which new technologies can be introduced and have their impact on society. More specifically, much of our country's technological success has been, and is going to be, determined by the success of its educational system, national research and development efforts, economic policies, industrial management and political leadership. All these factors will, in great measure, shape technological
innovation and its impact on the world of 2001. The so-called information technologies will strongly influence progress in most other fields — ranging from the basic sciences to all engineering disciplines and a host of industrial and economic activities. Indeed, these technologies can profoundly improve the way our society operates — its industrial processes, its use and conservation
of natural resources, its environmental impacts, its national security and international affairs, its health care and education. Three key technologies are behind all this: microelectronics, photonics and software. Microelectronics gives us the ability to process and store enormous amounts of digital information. Photonics is the key to transmitting that information with great speed. Software permits us to customize complex hardware to meet a diversity of human needs. I'm impressed that these technologies exhibit two salient properties—the microscopic and the complex. A clear illustration of this is in microelectronics. In microelectronics we are concerned with designing and making silicon integrated circuits (SIC) with components of ever smaller line size. That size is approaching and will soon slip below the wavelength of visible light. In our labs we've already made lines on silicon down to a mere 20 atoms wide. That's roughly 10,000 times narrower than a human hair! Truly microscopic! A common measure of the progress of microelectronics is how many components can be placed on a single-chip circuit. During the past 20 years we have been doubling this figure almost every year, and as a result exponentially decreasing cost
per circuit. When we started integrating circuits in the 1960s we increased component density by a factor of 1,000 per decade, doubling every year. In the last decade we've been moving a little more graciously, doubling about every 18 months. For example, we went from the one-kilobit memory in 1975 to the 256-kilobit memory in 1982. And we're still moving at that rate. Such exponential growth has no parallel in the history of industrial productivity. This year we reached still another landmark—we recently began factory production of a megabit memory chip. This Random Access Memory (RAM) chip contains more than two million components in an area about one-eighth the size of a postage stamp and can store data equivalent to 100 typewritten pages. It holds four times the memory of the 256K RAM now in use, needs only half the operating power, and can access a million memory calls in 80 nanoseconds—That's 80 billionths of a second! We plan fullscale production of the megabit chip this year—ahead of the Japanese! What will the introduction of these megabit chips mean? Among other things it will allow telecommunications and computer equipment to use far more processing power—to run more programs and
more complex programs. For example, personal computers with megabit memory could handle ultrahigh resolution graphics, animation and artificial intelligence programs. Today these can only be run on large and expensive mainframe computers. Where are we going from here in microelectronics? The limits of silicon chip technology known today should allow us to reach at least 100 million components on a chip. This will take us to year 2001. As we continue to add more components to these chips, costs per circuit will continue to drop exponentially. At the same time, the speed of the circuits will increase by an order of magnitude so that by the turn of the century the speed of silicon devices could reach 10 picoseconds — that's 10 trillionths of a second. This microscopic and complex achievement is based on meticulous chemistry and software. The purpose of such progress in microelectronics is not only to be able to pack the power of a mainframe computer into a personal computer. The tremendous amount of memory and logic this technology will help make available will be essential if we are going to achieve such things as computers that understand and respond to fluent human speech, or that do such incredible
Opposite page: Optical fibers emerge from a pressure vessel which simulates undersea conditions. Left: Lightwave multiplexer demonstrates the feasibility of sending 20 billion bits a second through a single optical fiber. Above: Ian Ross. Photos courtesy AT&T Bell Laboratories
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Microelectronics will power the advanced automation robotics and information systems that will be at the core of business and industry in 2001.
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feats as simultaneous translations allowing two people to converse while speaking different languages. The latter might take a few decades. But by 2001 we could have the memory and processing power to allow computers to understand and communicate with people with considerable fluency. In addition, such microelectronics power will be necessary for more useful expert systems and in the advanced automation robotics and information systems that will be at the core of business and industry in 2001. The second key technology is photonicsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;also referred to as fiber optics or lightware technology. Here we use photons rather than electrons. These photons are small nimble particles that move quickly and can be turned on and off fast. They are an ideal mechanism for transmission, and another example of the microscopic. Here again we also have a technology doubling in capability every year, a trend that seems likely to continue for at least another decade. Success in advancing this technology is measured by both the increases in the distance that pulses of light can be sent unamplified, and the rate of these digital pulses. To give you an idea of how far we've come in this field, let me cite that in recent Bell Labs experiments a "distance record" was set by transmitting 429 million bits per second over 125 miles without amplification. In another experiment two billion bits per second were sent on a single fiber unamplified over 80 miles. That pulse rate could transmit the entire text of the 30-volume Encyclopedia Brittanica in less than a second. Now what are the limits to this technology? We believe that the physical limits of lightware technology could ultimately be about one billion megabits per secondkilometer. Already our researchers have multiplexed ten two-gigabit signals to transmit 20 billion bits per second over 42 miles of fiber. Even that impressive accomplishment is less than one percent of the theoretical potential of the technology. So there's lots of room for progress in this field. Fiber will become the dominant means for information communication.
A rod placed in fiber drawing apparatus is heated and drawn into a fiber of the desired diameter.
By the year 2001 we should see a world well linked by fiber networks allowing wideband communications â&#x20AC;&#x201D; voice, data and video â&#x20AC;&#x201D; to cross oceans and span continents. Distance will offer no barriers to global business operations. The third technology is software. Software is that versatile, essential discipline that makes the other useful: It allows you to design today's highly complex chips with computeraided design (CAD). It helps you control factory processes with computer-aided manufacturing (CAM). It tests complex systems. It provides you with the ability to customize a whole range of systems, from tiny
microprocessors to large switching machines. Software progress is therefore key to the entire success of digital communications and information management. Software now represents a major research and development enterprise in the U.S. Approximately 10,000 companies are developing software for sale. The estimated total number of programmers in industry ranges upwards to one million. At Bell Labs, more than 40 percent of our technical people are involved in software development. We currently employ about 300 Ph.D.s in software research.
gies together. Systems engineering takes these microscopic and complex technologies and assembles them into highly usable systems that provide simple solutions to customers' needs. In the case of information movement and management in the future, as with telecommunications in the past, a powerful tool of systems engineering is networking. Network-
ing will be of utmost importance to the success of what we perceive as the Information Age. Of course, in the telecommunications business we have been linking together computers—electronic switching systems—for years. And it's been the networking of these highly reliable computers that has made possible the U.S. telephone system, a most complex technologi-
Why do we have so many people working on software? Both because of the huge demands for it and because of the complexity of software. The problem here is that it takes the equivalent of one programmeryear to write 1,000 to 10,000 lines of field grade code, depending on the systems application. All this becomes tremendously demanding when one looks, for example, at our telephone system. This is a system in which an untrained user with a simple 12-button keyboard has access to a complex network, which is really an interconnection of thousands of computer operated machines. That network operates on more than 40 million lines of code. And the telephone that accesses it relies on switches based on 1.6 million lines of code. We have learned over the years how to manage big software systems, developing them to meet cost, performance and schedule, but at high cost. Software can be viewed as a highly successful technology or a "bottleneck." The "bottleneck" reputation comes mainly from comparing software progress with that of the hardware — microelectronics. While the power of the hardware has improved many thousand-fold over the last 20 years, software programming productivity has at best only doubled. But we are beginning to see significant improvements in programming productivity based on such things as reusable and portable software. Our best hope lies in the automatic generation of applications programs. In short, we will be using more software to create more — and better—software.
Top: Loops of hair-thin glass fiber, illuminated by laser light, represent the transmission medium for lightware systems. Above: Researchers at AT&T Bell Laboratories set a world's longdistance lightware record through an experimental system that sent 420 million bits of information per second through 100 miles of glass fiber.
A final discipline, systems engineering, ties all these technolo23
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cal system with its trillions of possible connections available through a simple telephone. Through this network we've already achieved universal voice communications. Now we are moving into the challenge of creating networks that will, in addition, provide the same simple and useful access to data and video — and fully integrate all three. What we are striving for is a global network that will permit anyone, anywhere, and at any time to send or receive any kind of information without technical barriers. The network will know where the information you need is. It will allow linking of libraries, schools, factories and businesses. You won't have to know where that information is located. The intelligence built into the network will search out the information you want and bring it to you, whether it is in a library halfway around the world or in a data bank just around the corner. You will be able to access computer-based expert systems on subjects such as defense, finance, mineral exploration, manufacturing, medicine and education. You will be able to control factory production as never before. Marketing information will be easily available to help determine new product design and control purchasing and inventories. Information will be fed into flexible manufacturing systems that will allow products to be customized and produced in small batches when necessary. The operation of factories around the world might be monitored and controlled from one or more centers via the network. Networking will also allow the linking up of libraries, schools and businesses in the most useful and productive ways. The technology needed to assure the success of this kind of Information Age is itself assured. How well we put all this information to use, helping us to deal with the complexities of our society and increasing our productivity, is a less certain issue.
Ian M. Ross is president of AT&T Bell Laboratories in Short Hills, N.J. This article was adapted from remarks delivered by Ross to a Business-Government Relations Conference.
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Delta gets you there T h e official airline of the Georgia Tech Alumni Association. 1986 Delia Air Lines, Inc.
DAYS INN Days Inns salutes the spirit of excellence that is Georgia Tech. Congratulations on your Centennial!!! As an alumni of Georgia Tech, you'vee ^ • • • f c ^ you vou even more off the cost of comfortable lodging all across America. seen your alma mater and the city For a sneak preview of what's of Atlanta grow and prosper. True, ahead, simply fill out the folmuch has changed. Fortunately, lowing information and you can still get a big, attracsend it to Days Inns' cortive room—right outside porate headquarters. You'll your old stompin' grounds— receive more information for a truly comfortable price! RUSH me more information on Days Inns'Schools on the discounts and beneIn the coming months, & Sports lodging discount program. fits included PLUS a chance you'll hear more about an ADDRESS _ to pre-register on the innovative lodging discount _ STATE _ Days Inns team! program which will save SCHOOL/TEAM AFFILIATION
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My financial planner advised me that an investment in real estate would give me the tax advantage I'd been looking for. After a thorough competitive J^ check of the market, I decided that buying a Cross Creek condominium was my best investment opportunity. Value was the word that kept coming to mind when I explored Cross Creek. As an established community, the appreciation is well known, and the onsite property management was another deciding factor. Knowing that Cross Creek will handle the leasing and maintenance of my condominium makes my real estate investment hassle free.
As a graduate student at Tech, I find that Cross Creek fits in perfectly with my lifestyle. The location is ideal. I can make it to campus in just 10 minutes, and I never get caught in football traffic either before or after the game. It's especially nice to be so close to home after those late nights in the computer center. The amenities are great! My buddies and I play tennis twice a week, and I'm practicing my golf game on Cross Creek's course. And, by the way, when I really want to impress my date, I take her to dinner at the Cross Creek Club.
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The recruiting effort is aimed toivard upgrading Tech's academic standards and the quality of its students, rather than simply increasing enrollment.
THE ALUMNI CONNECTION: NEW THRUST IN RECRUITING By Bill Gregory
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o greater testament can be given a school than to have alumni participate in an active and productive recruiting program. These are the people who know the campus best, and promoting it to future students is the finest form of appreciation. Georgia Tech, like many schools today, is aggressively recruiting students. But unlike many schools, which recruit to make up for a declining enrollment, Tech's efforts are directed at upgrading the academic quality of its student body. With the establishment of the Office of Undergraduate Recruiting in 1984, Tech focused on one very important element of its future development as a preeminent institutionâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; the student body. Formerly a function within the Admissions Office, the recruiting effort is aimed toward upgrading Tech's academic standards and the quality of its students, rather than simply increasing enrollment. According to Jim Garner, director of the Office of Undergraduate Recruiting, "there was a real concern about losing control of quality" at Tech if enrollment increased to the point where facilities and faculty were stretched too far. A decision was made by President Joseph M. Pettit and Vice President for Academic Affairs Henry C. Bourne, Jr. to stabilize the size of the student body. "We want to maintain the quality education Tech offers â&#x20AC;&#x201D; and at a reasonable cost," Garner explained. 28
One aspect of recruiting for Tech has taken on an innovative flair. Through the efforts of Bruce Noggle, president of the Northeast Ohio Georgia Tech Club, prospective students not only get a warm, personal presentation of the institute, but a direct connection to the school for questions and answers. Noggle brings alumni in the area together with students accepted but not committed to Tech at an informal meeting in his home. Parents of the students are invited and attend almost in every case. What happens at these meetings sets it apart from run-of-the-mill alumni recruiting. Using a carousel of slides about Tech supplied by the Admissions Office, Noggle intersperses personal slides of himself as a student. He says it not only gives the presentation a personal touch, but the audience seems to relax more, laughing and enjoying themselves. Often, parents have grave misconceptions about the school environment and, if nothing else, the slides give them a more accurate picture of the school and its surroundings. After the slide show, Noggle and the other alumni listen to questions from parents and students. General questions about the living experience, caliber of instruction or graduate support can usually be answered on the spot. However, there are always more specific requests that require feedback from 1 the school. At Northeast Ohio Club meetings that feedback is also provided on the spot. In 1984, Noggle arranged a conference call to the Admissions
Office in Atlanta for his recruiting sessions. Parents and students gathered around the phone at a pre-arranged time and admissions officers at the other end of the line fielded their questions. The results were impressive. That year, five of seven students considering Tech attended the school. Last year four of six made the commitment. Noggle says he got the idea thinking back to his own experience in selecting a college. He says there were so many questions that answers were not easily found for, he wanted to make a difference for future Georgia Tech prospects. Deborah Harris, assistant director of Undergraduate Recruiting, puts the efforts of the alumni club into perspective. "The benefit is three-fold," says Harris. "First, it informs the prospective student about Georgia Tech; second, it shows the dedication of former students; and third, when these students graduate and go to work in other areas they may be more inclined to carry the torch as alumni themselves." Of course, the Northeast Ohio Club isn't the only one active in recruiting for the institute. At the Cocoa Beach Space Coast Club in Florida, Kay Hall arranges a special summer get-together. She invites returning students to an outdoor picnic with freshmen yet to enroll. The occasion gives the freshmen a chance to ask questions about their first year and helps to break the ice. Often they will see these students as a friendly face in a new environment during the coming year.
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Deborah Harris and Jim Garner are assistant director and director, respectively, of the Office of Undergraduate Recruiting.
The Houston Club has made a special effort with college-night programs in their area. Alumni coordinate all contacts individually. In Tampa, Florida, all college nights get the same personal attention. The Jacksonville, Florida, club has also been very supportive. In all, Tech has 75 alumni clubs around the world, including Venezuela, Puerto Rico, Colombia, Panama and Costa Rica. New clubs are coming to Philadelphia, Phoenix, Oklahoma City, Kansas City and Seoul, Korea. Although
the total number of students coming to the school through alumni efforts is a small percentage of the total enrolled, Harris says what they do is "quality recruiting." The school uses direct mail and holds receptions throughout the Southeast. Though it does buy space on the Georgia School Counselors Association calendar each year, its first real advertising venture came last year in Peterson's Guide. Their full-page ad has been generating the names of new prospects every week for months.
Regardless of the numbers or the other admissions marketing programs, Harris has a special feeling about alumni recruiting. "It makes you feel good to be getting that kind of generous support from former students," says Harris, "because not only does it have a special meaning to the prospective student, we have an extra appreciation for it as well." Bill Gregory is editor of Atlantabased Admissions Marketing, Newsletter. 79
Mark Simmons, Syracuse University '84, Edison Engineer, GE Spacecraft Operations
power their own intelligence and design more powerful, more accommodating chips. The possi- pave the way for deep space explora tion. Fifth generation computers that bilities are endless. build on the astonishing speed and Consider some recent GE develop- capacity of chips taking shape today. ments. Our custom-designed Plus startling ideas still in the minds Graphics Array Processor converts of our engineers. massive amounts of information into simulated 3-D images. With far lessIf you're drawn to the challenges of time and expense than conventionalmicroelectronic design, you should At today's GE, young engineers likecomputers reguire. Ideal for CAD/ have designs on us. At GE locations Mark Simmons are pushing micro- CAM systems. For flight simulation. throughout the USA, we design, electronics to the limit, and beyond.For electronic training manuals thatmanufacture, use and explore In design applications that take themlet trainees see over, around, and breakthrough applications in microfrom the ocean floor to the autoeven through solid parts! electronics. mated factory to the ultimate frontier - outer space. Or consider GE's Advanced Very Come contemplate the infinite Large Scale Integrated Circuits. With universe. Flex your gray matter with And with each design breakthrough,feature sizes a hundred times smaller the great minds at GE. an amazing revolution takes place.than a human hair. Because as each new GE chip^ If you can dream it, design multiplies microprocessor What's our "electronic blueprint" for capacity, so grows our capacity to the future? Solar energy chips that you can do it.
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FRONTIERS OF THE FUTURE
How should an institution like Georgia Tech prepare the pioneers of tomorrow? We have these young people with us for only a short time. They bring much with them when they come, and to this we can add much. We can help them gain three ways: knowledge, attitudes and skills—all important for them to use in their pioneering. The first of these, knowledge, is essential but it should be more than a stagnant accumulation of yesterday's facts. Knowledge should be dynamic, ever changing, and those who teach this knowledge should be learners as well-—learning new knowledge as it is discovered—even being among the seekers and discoverers of that new knowledge. Attitudes may be the most important of the three—attitudes toward science and technology, attitudes toward one's fellow human beings, attitudes toward life in organizations, within which most of us must do our pioneering. Every astronaut,
By President Joseph M . Pettit every pilot, and every passenger must have faith in complex organizations of human beings, believing that each individual can and will perform his role. Finally, skills. This means more than just the ability to solve equations. There must also be imparted the discipline of perfecting one's skills, not unlike the discipline of the performing musician. Furthermore, pioneers like our astronauts have required both mental and physical disciplines. At Georgia Tech we attempt to contribute to each, mental in the classroom and laboratory, and physical in our recreational sports and fitness programs and facilities. The two come together especially well
in the competitive world of our intercollegiate sports program. At an institution like Georgia Tech we are well able to impart the skills of using knowledge that is complete and well defined—which needs only to be learned and mastered. But how much more difficult it is to impart the skill required in making good decisions when' the available knowledge is insufficient. For this important objective our best laboratory may be in the extra-curriculum — in student organizational life and on the playing field. But now back to the matter of knowledge itself, and the excitement we find at Georgia Tech in pioneering through extending the frontiers of new knowledge. This new knowledge we will develop and share with the rest of the world, with the scientists, engineers, and managers in our several professions. And this new knowledge will enrich the teaching of future students at Georgia Tech.
35
FRONTIERS OF THE FUTURE
Dean William M. Sangster
College of Engineering By John Dunn
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he escalating cost of providing an engineering education combined with tremendous technological advances will have a dramatic, if not revolution ary, impact on tomorrow's engineering colleges. By the turn of the century, the increasingly high costs associated with an engineering education will drive some engineering colleges out of business, force others to consolidate, and will strengthen mutually beneficial alliances with the private sector, according to Dr. William M. Sangster, dean of the College of Engineering. Sangster can even foresee the day when the role of the dean will perhaps be obsolete. "My feeling is that there is going to be a reduction in the number of colleges, consolidation rather than expansion," Sangster said. "The cost of equipping engineering programs is getting to the point where it is hardly feasible. I don't see many schools adding engineering programs. Many schools will have to cooperate, share facilities, and perhaps ultimately, consolidate in order to produce a creditable engineering program. "An engineering education is laboratory intensive," he added. "That's requires that the equipment be modern. The life of equipment is relatively short these days. We have some 7,500 pieces of equipment in the College of Engineering that have an average life of 10.6 years. That is obviously too old in many instances. We'd like for our equipment to have an average life of no more than five years. To establish such an equipment obsolescence policy would require an initial expenditure of $10 million and an annual expenditure thereafter of $5 million." In the future, engineering colleges will establish closer ties with industry in technological fields. For example, Sangster points to the Georgia Power Company which has a multi-million dollar laboratory in Atlanta for training its employees. The company has made the lab available to Tech on a non-conflicting basis for its graduate level course in high voltage engineering. "There is no way that we could feasibly duplicate the facilities that
Georgia Power Company has," Sangster added. "Universities will have to share. I don't think everyone is going to be able to build the kinds of laboratories necessary. You can put $5 million or S6 million into a lab and take care of only 25 percent of the student body. Most schools simply don't have those resources." Many cities and communities in Georgia have realized the value of an engineering colllege, and there is some consideration for establishing a second engineering college in the state. In lieu of a second engineering college, the Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia is now considering a "two plus two" program which would allow qualified students to acquire their first two years of undergraduate work elsewhere in the University System and complete their engineering education at Tech. "You can carry it to the extreme that would admit no underclassmen to engineering at Tech and all upperclassmen would come from other schools," Sangster said. "That is pretty much what is done in California. They do admit some students directly from high school, but mostly they draw them from outside." Under such a program, Georgia Tech would necessarily place an added emphasis on its upper division education program. In a 20 year period, it could become a much larger part of the engineering program. During that same time, Sangster said he believes the number of faculty in the College of Engineering will double its current level of 275 members. The engineering faculty presently spends about 25 percent of its time on outside funded research and Sangster said the amount of outside support would increase. "I don't think we can reach the point we are talking about with regard to graduate level education unless we increase the amount of outside support," he said. "I don't think we will get the amount necessary or the kinds of increases we are looking for from state funds alone. We will get to the point in the not too distant future where roughly a third of our faculty effort
is expended in research, maybe as high as a half at some point in the future, which means that the College of Engineering total budget may be two-thirds outside funds and one-third state funds." The amount of time a faculty member would be involved in outside funded research "would depend on the faculty member," Sangster said. "Some of them should not be involved in it at all. Some of them close to 100 percent, at least for some period of time." The dean said the basic engineering curriculum will remain stable. "I think there will be new specialization, but in the long run, most of our students will be well advised to follow the traditional disciplines â&#x20AC;&#x201D; chemical, industrial, civil, electrical and mechanical. Obviously we think that is the way to expand opportunities, rather than create new degree programs," he said. "We can do that less expensively and with greater facility than to create new programs with new facilities, new buildings. Usually when that happens, you can get rid of new buildings easier than you can get rid of inherent structures you build into it in the way of administration and turf." One new program Dean Sangster sees developing is a Center for Engineering in Medicine which would focus on biomedical engineering. Alumnus Parker H. Petit, a pioneer in the medical engineering field, recently made a $1 million contribution for the endowment of a faculty chair for the Center. Petit, who received his bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering in 1962 and master's in 1964, is founder of Healthdyne, Inc., an international, diversified medical products and health care services company. "We are now in the process of negotiations with Emory University to work out some joint programs that will permit our students access to some of the clinical capabilities they have, and at the same time provide some special opportunities for their students in regard to technology, in addition to working on research together." Sangster estimated approximately eight to ten faculty members would
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"I don't think we will get the support necessary or the kinds of increases we are looking for from state funds alone. We will get to the point in the not too distant future where roughly a third of our faculty effort is expended in research, maybe as high as a half at some point in the future, which means that the College of Engineering total budget may be two-thirds outside funds and one-third state funds."
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"We are now in the process of negotiations with Emory University to work out some joint programs that will permit our students access to some of the clinical capabilities they have, and at the same time provide some special opportunities for their students in regard to technology, in addition to working on research together."
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be involved in the multidisciplinary program. W h a t about the student of the future? "I think the engineering student of the future will be pretty much like the engineering student of the present, but I think the Georgia Tech engineering student will probably be a brighter one than now, which is hard to conceive. They will have more training in high school in areas of concern to engineering, like computers and electronics." And what about the engineering college of tomorrow? Sangster has a visionary glint in his eye that may leap beyond the 20-year time frame. "The college of the future," he said, "is IBM." N o t the company, the concept. The chalkboard, the professor with his traditional lecture, and even the classroom may become as obsolete as the slide rule. Colleges of the future may become educational centers, dispensing coursework via laser disc to students at electronic workstations or programming material through closed circuit television. In such an educational environment artificial intelligence would play a prominent role; computers communicating with computers. "In the IBM situation, you don't need any teachers basically, and you do it all by self-paced, selfcontained instructional units. There will be more of it, but I don't think you will ever completely replace the type of education we have seen in the past."
Such an educational environment will also be beneficial in providing an ongoing education to alumni, a continuing education that will be necessary for them to keep current professionally with changing technologies. "We are now part of the National Technological University which is a group in the process of offering degree programs using the teaching capabilities of many institutions so a coherent degree program can be put together without using all the resources of one institution exclusively," Sangster added. "We are offering courses under that institution that are available all over the country and presumably would be available at sites remote from Georgia Tech and Georgia." T h e importance of an engineering education will continue to increase in value, Sangster believes. "Many students are going to engineering programs as opposed to liberal arts programs because they find these courses more beneficial. My personal feeling is that an engineering education is the liberal education of this particular time in history. The world around us is becoming more and more technological."
FRONTIERS OF THE FUTURE
Dean Gerald J. Day
College of Management By Dean Gerald J. Day
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e stand on the brink of several decades of progress and prosperity â&#x20AC;&#x201D; several decades of enormous challenge, both practically and intellectually in education. Those challenges are very acute in areas of management education and business. To understand where we are â&#x20AC;&#x201D; to obtain some sort of perspective of the present and of the future â&#x20AC;&#x201D; it will be helpful to understand where we've come from and what our roots are. We have 80 years of history. In the early times, management education was conducted under the label of commerce. In those times, the education process was largely an intuitive, descriptive process and the academic content was to search for a description of the real world of business and commerce and how it might be advanced and furthered. World War II provided an impetus to radically and dramatically change the face of management education. The rigors and disciplines of the market were largely suspended; we had a national emergency. During that time, great strides were made in manufacturing, in the application of technology, in science and engineering, in understanding productivity and understanding the human factor in productivity. The practice of management didn't flourish during that period of time. Another very important impact on management as a result of the war came from without. The besteducated and most talented researchers had been marshalled to develop the science of technology as it applied to the war. Following the war, most of these people found homes in universities and colleges. They took with them the values of research, the values of discussion and the creation of ideas. In the 1950s, management education found itself in a very precarious position. It was on the college campus, but it wasn't a fulltime regular player in the academic sense. Aside from economics, there was little intellectual substance we might characterize as the development or 39
We are facing the prospect of managing business units with no historical perspectives. We are facing the prospect of managing business units that have never existed before, • doing tasks that we have never known before and in a world that is unlike any world we have ever operated in previously. We're facing a world where the need to communicate complex ideas both orally and electronically is becoming increasingly important.
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practice of management education. We had two serious detriments: M a n a g e m e n t had no serious research or intellectual tradition, much less the tools, values or outlets to foster a research program; and business education had no obvious ties to M o t h e r Science, which would spawn theory, testable hypotheses and generate theoretical and empirical investigation. Countering this, however, was a demand created by people w h o wanted to study business — people w h o wanted to study commerce. But management education had a serious problem — even a crisis — of legitimacy on a traditional college campus. This setting brought about a major revolution from which we are still benefitting. This revolution addressed the question: H o w can engineers and scientists be prepared in the rigorous and legitimate concerns of business management? To state it more practically: If we have well trained engineers, well trained scientists, w h o are going to be the captains of industry? W h a t can education do to train them more effectively to prepare them for that role? T h u s , the American Assembly for Collegiate Schools of Business was founded. It created standards for accreditation. Today, all over the country among accredited schools, is that blueprint established more than 25 years ago. In spite of many shortcomings and challenges business education has faced since 1960, there has been no shortage of demand for the product. The program in commerce at Georgia Tech was first begun in 1913. T h e initial commerce program was broken up at Tech in 1933 and actually handed to the University of Georgia. It became the Atlanta downtown division of the university and eventually developed into Georgia State University. N o sooner had Tech lost its commerce program than it turned around and organized a program that was then called industrial management, following a Carnegie Mellon, MIT, and Purdue type of model. In the mid-1960s, Georgia
Tech had the distinction of being the first institution in the country to have both its undergraduate and master's program in management accredited by AACSB at the same time. In 1969, what was then the school of industrial management was granted college status. In 1980, the name of the college was changed to the College of Management. One of our challenges in the future has to do with the notion of the United States' competitiveness in world markets. We hear from business people, social scientists, politicians, and people of a number of persuasions that in spite of the gains that the U.S. economy has made over the past couple of decades, we are seeing a continuing erosion in our competitive position. There is n o end of the hue and cry for restoring America to the preeminent position or the dominant position in world markets. Some consider it to be a national, if not a h u m a n tragedy, that there are some other strong players in the international competitive gig. I don't believe our challenge is competitiveness in world markets in any pure sense of the term. O u r key challenge in this area is the ability to be competitive while at the same time adhering to the strictest sense of morality and moral behavior concerning all peoples. I think we have no license whatsoever to equip the engine of our economy to literally plunder or leave barren the countries with w h o m we want to do business. T h e challenge of the practice of management for the next 15 years and beyond is to deal in international markets with international peoples — nearly all more disadvantaged than we — for their benefit as well as our own. We have to get out of the mentality that life is a zero-sum game. Another intellectual challenge facing the College of Management and other business schools is the applied issue of ethics and ethical conduct incorporated in the practice of making business decisions. We must be willing to incorporate as binding constraints the ethical and moral issues into the decisions we make, the objective functions
we are trying to maximize, the very activities we would like to foster. The issue of ethics is not outside the realm of management, it is at the very heart of management. It is at the very heart of the practice and the education of management. The world we are facing over the next 15 years is characterized by some forces that we have not known in the past. More than ever, I think the world that we are facing is characterized by a need to know and understand the principles of science in engineering and in technology — both the theory and the practice. The world that we are facing is characterized by a very high dependance on data, on information, on real-time conversion, on information access and synthesis. The world we are facing is increasingly global in nature — political boundaries, cultures, languages, are becoming less and less important in terms of delineating where action stops or starts. Issues of sourcing and manufacture and distribution don't know the barriers of national boundaries. We are facing a future of short product life-cycles; we are facing a future of short investments recovery periods or opportunities. We're facing a future on increasingly heavy investment in flexible systems that can be adapted or changed over relatively short time periods. We are facing the prospect of managing business units with no historical perspectives. We are facing the prospect of managing business units that have never existed before, doing tasks that we have never known before and in a world that is unlike any world we have ever operated in previously. We're facing a world where the need to communicate complex ideas both orally and electronically is becoming increasingly important. We are facing a world in which organizations generally are becoming flatter, more line oriented, less dependant on staff, primarily as a result of the information revolution. We are facing a world where senior managers have a unparalleled need to understand the world in which they operate. As a result of short product life-cycles and a lot of turnover among products,
we're facing a world of entrepreneurial activity; creativity is highly valued and very important to the future of our work. The implications of this to business schools are many. We have no shortages of intellectual challenges as a result. It is my opinion that 25 years after the previous revolution in management education, it is time for another. I don't think the future management education at all hangs on adding a course here or changing a course there; adding this course requirement here or changing that course requirement; the issue is not how do we rearrange the boxes. The issue is the rethinking, much in the same way that the pioneers in the 50s rethought the fundamentals of management. To meet the challenge of competitiveness, it is not a question of adding courses in international business, it is not a question of economists together to discuss how businesses can be more productive or more efficient, it's not just a question of applying the rules of logic of operations research or statistics to arrive at numerical solutions to problems. Our challenge today is to open the doors of the business school to the political scientist, to technologists, to demographers, to heart-science people in chemistry or physics or any of the engineering disciplines, and to think with people with broad perspectives representing different points of view and many disciplines as to how to confront the questions. We need philosophers, we need thinkers, we need scientists, we need managers, we need economists— all who can sit around the table and think about the very issues we are dealing with as to what is right, what is good, what is helpful. Regarding the powerless and the disadvantaged, the question is not how do we share control, how do we throw crumbs to those who do not have any crumbs. The issue is how do we use our productive enterprise for the benefit of everyone. We are trapped in a zero-sum mentality. We have the idea that as I get, someone else loses; if they get, I lose. I don't
think that is the future of management. I don't think that is the future of higher education. I don't think that is the future of the educational process. I believe that our College of Management is poised on the brink of the most intellectually challenging period of its history. The issues are not simple. The issues are very complex, but they can be tackled and
Regarding the powerless and the disadvantaged, the guestion is not how do we share control, how do we throw crumbs to those who do not have any crumbs. The issue is how do we use our productive enterprise for the benefit of everyone. We are trapped in a zero-sum mentality. We have the idea that as I get, someone else loses; if they get, I lose. I don't think that is the future of management.
they should be tackled. They are not going to be tackled by a simple restatement of what we have already done. Business education has matured over the years. The issues today are not survival as they were once, but service. The •issue is not greed, but gratitude. The issue is not personality, but ideas. The issue is not isolation, it is a sense of community. The issue for the College of Management is not to be a black hole, but to be a bright star.
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FRONTIERS OF THE FUTURE
Dean William L. Fash
College of Architecture By Dean William L. Fash
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here's not any facet of human existence and activity that isn't manifested in some way in architecture. And your perceptions are just as "valid" as mine; architecture is irrevocably public in nature. Webster defines architecture as "the art or science of building." Which is it, art or science? The debate continues, as it has tor centuries. T h e great architects of history have been known both for analytical genius and for artistic inventiveness. Every student of architecture becomes familiar with the great Roman builders, for example, w h o engineered works in concrete and stone, such as the aqueducts and the dome of the Pantheon in Rome, which remain marvels of structural design to this day. By contrast, it was not primarily technology which was the determinant for the stained glass and statuary that characterized building in the Gothic age. Rather, it was the opportunity and the need to educate the masses by means of the art of the great cathedrals-â&#x20AC;&#x201D;the focus of community life and work in that time. Whichever side of this debate one chooses, it is obvious that good architecture is the consequence of a creative response to both technological and artistic factors. To complicate matters even further, it also has a sociological function. As art, architecture is called the "noblest of the arts," and the "mother of the arts." Through most of recorded history, civilizations have sought for their architecture to express and represent the dignity and ambition of their aspirations, as well as the character and style of their values. Egypt's great pyramids were powerful symbols of everlasting life; today's corporation is very conscious of the "corporate image" which its buildings project. It is the symbolic quality of architectureâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; and the symbolic role that society requires its architecture â&#x20AC;&#x201D; which makes architecture undeniably an art form. It is at best, however, an impure art form. The architect has a measure of direct social and public
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responsibility not characteristic of other arts. He must be legally licensed to practice, as a protection of the public health, safety and welfare. His building designs must satisfy functional and technological requirements, as well as symbolic ones, and he must, work within economic constraints — often severe ones. H e provides a professional service, on commission to clients, usually designing a public facility for users w h o m he does not know. He does not enjoy the same kind and degree of freedom for selfexpression as others in the arts — although many would attest to the strength of his compulsion for selfexpression! T h e need for shelter, and protection from the elements, which today has taken the form of climatic control within buildings, is a second basic h u m a n need of which architecture is a manifestation. Architecture, then, is a cultural art and science, which both meets and reflects basic h u m a n needs, and which is an inextricable part of every h u m a n life. As a discipline, it is comprehensive in nature, drawing from the basic sciences of physics, mathematics and behavioral science, as well as from several branches of engineering, especially civil, mechanical and electrical. In addition, its basic language for expression and communication is the language of perception, in the visual arts. O n e thing that's unusual a n d distinctive about architectural education, is its long-term devotion to the problem method of teaching— the case-study approach. This teaching method was imported from the Hcole des Beaux-Arts in Paris in the late 1800s; it is probably the single most dominant influence in U.S. architectural educations history. It is an excellent and appropriate method, because it is responsive to the process of synthesis of which architectural design consists. It is very similar to the case-stud\ method employed in schools ol law; it is employed in the six-year-long series of design studios. For every architectural student, past and present, the design studio is like a second home. It is the central hub of the study pro-
gram, both in content and in curricular time. It is here that the thought process peculiarly appropriate to architecture is learned. And it is here where the humbling but exhilarating, life-long challenge to one's intellectual and imaginative capacities that is architecture, is first encountered. O u r students, like all before them, spend endless hours in the design studio — not so much because they must, but because they want to, so pervasive is architecture's challenge, and so great is the sense of personal achievement from its successful conduct.
teaching hospital, in which doctors are hired to both teach and practice, a n d in which research is integrated. T h e knowledge base for the discipline can thus be systematically developed, as can techniques for practice, as part of the "schools" operation. In architecture, the faculty member has traditionally been hired to teach; his practice is independent from the
T h e teaching method employed has been challenged and questioned for decades. It is an expensive way to teach, requiring individual tutoring of students by studio faculty; it is thus labor-intensive. It also subscribes to qualitative standards rather than quantitative ones, and it is exceedingly dependent upon the teaching ability of individual faculty members. Since it is so fundamental to teaching in architecture, many serious, organized studies challenging the method have been conducted — the most recent one sponsored in 1981 by the Andrew Mellon Foundation in several East Coast schools. N o better method has been found and no effective, workable alternative to the problem method has yet been demonstrated.
as "the art or science of
I refer extensively to the method of teaching architecture both because I think it is centrally descriptive of the characteristics of architectural education, and because I think it is the derivative for many of the present and future issues which we face in architectural education. For example, it is a tradition that creative work by faculty in architectural schools has consisted of professional practice, except for the scholarship of architectural historians, and some measure of research in the technical areas. Involvement in practice does clearly enhance teaching, especially in design studios. This tradition is based loosely on the model of the medical profession. Unlike medicine, however, there is no equivalent in architecture to the
Webster defines architecture building." Which is it, art or science? The debate continues, as it has for centuries. The great architects of history have been known both for analytical genius and for artistic inventiveness.
school, except insofar as he brings its benefits to bear in his teaching. It is also individualized, and unrelated to the schedules, assignments and expectations for his performance at the school. He's on his own with it, without organized support or integral reinforcement from the school; yet, he is expected by the school to be productive in the professional arena. As a result, there is not an organizational, integrated concurrent development of teaching and practice in architecture, and the knowledge base has suffered from neglect by default. I believe this issue to be a fundamental and major one for the future of architectural education. O u r school is attempting to address it by developing a research program equally active and significant to work in professional practice done by faculty, and by exploring ways in which organizational integration of the three functions — teaching, practice,
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and research â&#x20AC;&#x201D; might occur through the school. O n e step toward integration of practice and teaching is already taken in the profession at large, through creation of an Intern Development Program, now being implemented. Also similar to medicine, architecture is characterized by a potent inner hierarchy of status. In medicine, surgeons are the "elite";
One thing that's unusual and distinctive about architectural education, is its long-term devotion to the problem method of teachingâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the casestudy approach. It is an excellent and appropriate method, because it is responsive to the process of synthesis of which architectural design consists.
in architecture, it's the designers. In architecture, so much stress has been placed on the role and importance of design (designers) that it intimidates those more interested and more able in other aspects of architecture. It is unfortunate, and detrimental to the profession. I believe it is one of the underlying reasons that architecture has not experienced the development of specializations anything , like those in other disciplines despite the fact t h a t it is a multifaceted, comprehensive field. Architects remain fiercely devoted to the perception of themselves as generalists, and fiercely proud of the kind of creativity characteristic of the design experience. I believe this, too, to be a present and future issue in architecture and architectural education. If not through specialization, how are we to deal effectively with the growing complexity of architectural practice, 44
and the exponential growth of knowledge which we are expected to utilize in that practice? Perhaps the future will see greater stress on the architect's effectiveness as a manager â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the manager of a team of specialists, both from within architecture and from other disciplines. I would count three primary intellectual challenges facing our discipline. O n e is the age-old challenge presented by architecture's symbolism. Currently, the profession has run amok with a proliferation of theories for design, and of preoccupation with design theory. W h a t kinds of architectural symbols are truly appropriate for today's American society? We observe a growing concern by communities to establish a stronger sense of continuity with the architectural past. I would expect this current m o o d and activity in preservation and conservation to continue in the future, and to increase. At the same time, we are talking of extending mankind's habitation into the reaches of space. We are also beginning to experience the effects of dense congestion in our cities and the h u m a n and social problems it produces. Should architecture become more socially conscious and humanistic, or participate more fully in the advancement of technological expression? In either case, how can it? There's a whole series of questions to pursue relative to architecture's symbolistic responsibilities. A second intellectual challenge is better to interpret and respond to the Technological Age. So-called "intelligent buildings" employing computer control for the indoor climate, building security, and many functional requirements are now being built. It's not difficult to visualize. Would such a house succeed and be accepted? One is reminded of the time in the 1920s when Jeanneret Le Corbusier, great Swiss pioneer in the modernist movement in architecture, described a house as "a machine for living in." From across the Atlantic came the huffy reply of Frank Lloyd Wright, also busy interpreting the machine age in architecture: "Only insofar as the h u m a n heart is a
suction pump." Perhaps Corbusier will prove prophetic; perhaps Wright's humanist concern will prevail. We think that we here at Tech are in an excellent environment for addressing this issue; it is a high priority of the college. Probably the most significant intellectual challenge faced by architectural schools is to do something about the knowledge base. I've described the generic reason for its neglect; finding a solution for its revitalization is not so easy. The traditions in architecture and architectural education are quite reasonable and quite firmly established. Along with about a dozen others, our school is seeking to establish a new tradition, to add to (not replace) the old: the tradition of research as an operational n o r m . This duality of role for the collective faculty is replete with hard questions and sources of conflict. We are committed in our school to the seeking of answers to the questions and resolution of the conflicts. O u r faculty consists not only of architects but also environmental psychologists, mechanical, civil, and electrical engineers, historians, urban planners, and building scientists, all of w h o m are doing architectural research, along with their architect colleagues. We're following this path out of conviction that the knowledge base needs continuous attention and development, and out of conviction that this new tradition we're trying to get established can only benefit the quality of architectural education, and the architecture its products will produce. Time will tell; results so far are basically positive.
FRONTIERS OF THE FUTURE
Dean Les A. Karlovitz
College of and Liberal Studies This article is exerpted from an interview with Dean Les A. Karlovitz
'he College of Sciences and Liberal Studies plays a number of roles within the institution. We provide the education in natural science and mathematics on which the technical portion of the curricula of all of our students is based. And weprovide essentially all of the education in the humanities and social sciences. This is equally important. We have to remember that we are educating our students for life, and not just for a job. To be educated for life, one needs to read literature to learn about the human condition, one has to study social sciences to understand the interplay between technology and society, and one has to learn exceptionally good communication skills, both written and verbal. One also needs the perspective of history, the wisdom of philosophy, and a value system which includes an appreciation of the arts.
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We have our degree programs in the sciences, and we carry out extensive research. We make contributions to society, and through our research programs our faculty members keep up-to-date. I like the phrase "institutions of higher learning" because the faculty members are learning just as much as the students. We learn through our research programs, while the students learn primarily through the education programs. A good illustration of our endeavor to keep our degree and research programs current is provided by the eleven major new laboratories that have been established in our college in the last three years â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Computersupported Instruction Labs, in fact we have two of those; Applied Mathematics Lab; Computer Graphics Research Lab; Computer Graphics Instruction Lab; Fractal Image Processing Lab; Artificial Intelligence Instruction Lab; Computer Programming Lab; Modern Language Audio Lab; Solid State Physics Lab; Fermentation Technology Lab; and the Computer Networking Lab. We have been fortunate to receive extensive industrial; federal and Georgia Tech Foundation support in establishment of these critical laboratories. This is a particularly important 45
This is a particularly important time for science. The reliance of the nation on new technology and new science, and on the interrelation between them, has never been greater. The frontiers have never been more challenging, and the prizes never larger. Our science units are particularly well positioned to rise to the occasion.
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time for science. T h e reliance of the nation on new technology and new science, and on the interrelation between them, has never been greater. The frontiers have never been more challenging, and the prizes never larger. O u r science units are particularly well positioned to rise to the occasion. The reason for this is that Georgia Tech thrives on the interplay, the reciprocity between science and technology. Just to exemplify that, many of our degree programs are called "applied." We give degrees in applied mathematics, applied biology and applied physics. T h a t shows one part of the reciprocity. And then our research programs make use of the newest technology. A new kind of mathematics is being done because we have the computer technology. We are doing outstanding research in atmospheric chemistry using lasers as an analytical tool. Basic science contributes to the development of technology and, reciprocially, basic science makes use of the newest technology to derive more knowledge. It is also a very important time for the humanities and social sciences. There is a national debate going on about the proper role of the humanities and social sciences. T h e debate derives in part from the disintegration of the traditional curricula leading to liberal arts degrees, and on the other hand, it derives from the fact that technical degrees such as engineering degrees are considered to emphasize specialization without sufficient integration. We plan to respond to these challenges. I chose for my title of the Weber lecture I gave in February "A National Championship for COSALS." Let me explain that. First of all, we like to be measured in terms of our dreams and ambitions as much as we like to be measured in terms of our accomplishments. Why did I pick that particular title? T h a t title for me has the right connotations. It has the right a m o u n t of impudence it\ it. When you say you plan to win a national championship, you agree to take on all comers. You want to reach a pinnacle of national acclaim. I also like the
overlap with sports because they remind us that one has to be relentless in the pursuit of excellence, they remind us that recruiting is very importantâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;which is certainly true for academic institutions because outstanding faculty is the lifeblood of our programs. And it also reminds us that our sports programs have, in fact, delivered on their promises. N o w this metaphor fails in an interesting way. In sports, the rules for reaching a national championship are pretty clear. But in academia, it's quite different. T h e people who are the national champions, in fact, define what the rules are. To become a national champion in academia, you set a new course. For example, Carnegie-Mellon University, then Carnegie Tech, developed computer science as an academic discipline long before anyone else and, in that area, they are still champions. In academia, you become a national champion to a large extent by blazing a new path. Just as there is an important reciprocity between science and technology, there is the same reciprocity between the plans of this college and the plans o! Georgia Tech. O u r plans have to fit hand-in-glove with the institutional plans. When I talk of our championship, it's just the part we have to do in order for Tech to achieve its grand ambitions. I have studied carefully the latest national report on the quality of graduate programs put out by the National Academy of Science Press. It shows, once again, that at the great American universities, excellence in engineering and excellence in science go hand-in-hand. It is a well established fact that American higher education has entered a period of intense competition. We've basically finished a golden age when everything just grew â&#x20AC;&#x201D; enrollments grew, faculty grew, and buildings and facilities mushroomed. We're coming off this era of great expansive growth and entering an era of intense competition.
T h e nation needs new science and new technology. M u c h of it is expected to come from universities. It follows that the very best people both in science and engineering will be heavily recruited. We will find ourselves in intense competition for the kind of people we expect to hire. It is a great challenge. Let me conjecture a little about the areas in which we expect to make the kind of thrusts that would take us to what I call a national championship. Some of the areas include biochemistry and medicinal chemistry, biotechnology, atmospheric chemistry, industrial and organizational psychology, cognitive science â&#x20AC;&#x201D; in particular we are developing an outstanding program in cognitive aging, artificial intelligence, non-linear dynamics and chaos, computer graphical mathematics, scientific computing, software engineering, device material physics, and optical physics. 1 hose are the twelve areas where, in m\ opinion, leaps forward are most likely to occur. We expect to set the standards; we expect to make the rules. Each of these areas represents important scientific and technological opportunities, as well as national needs. In each of these we have important ongoing works which can be accelerated into a thrust that can result in national leadership.
Secondly, we want to develop nationally recognized curricula in the humanities and social sciences. At Georgia Tech we're fond of saying we do a better job of teaching our students about the liberal arts, about the humanities, and social sciences than the great liberal arts institutions do about teaching their students about science and technology. And that's a correct statement, but we can do more. The national debate provides us with an opportunity to achieve a leadership position. We should rise to the occasion. If I take a hard look at where we are and where we would like to be, I can express it very simply. We have reached a very nice position. In every area of endeavor, we have nationally recognized individuals on our faculty. The position for which we are planning calls for us to develop nationally recognized programs. This means that we will build on our strengths to develop thrusts of the kind I noted earlier. As the end of the century approaches, I would expect us to have developed national leadership in at least one program in each of the areas that we represent. It's very ambitious, but I think we can do it.
It is a well established fact that American higher education has entered a period of intense competition. We've basically finished a golden age when everything just grewâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; enrollments grew, faculty grew, and buildings and facilities mushroomed. We're coming off this era of great expansive growth and entering an era of intense competition.
In the educational arena there are many ambitions, but two merit special mention. First, the integration of information technology into all of our educational programs. I see the computer workstation serving simultaneously as the tool-of-thetrade and the tool for enhancing the learning process. As one example of progress, beginning this quarter, all assignments in all of the technical writing classes are required to be done at computer workstations. This introduces students to an up-to-date milieu for technical communication. At the same time, the editing capabilities of the workstation stimulates students to develop their writing skills.
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Our perceptions of environmental
problems range from
disgust over roadside trash to destruction of the planet.
i i
THE ENVIRONMENTAL ERA: UNDERSTANDING OURSELVES AND OUR SURROUNDINGS By Dr. John C. Nemeth
D
oes a day pass without news of a menacing spill or leak, another poison-filled, abandoned "dump" or building, a product posing previously unimagined danger, or a criticism of the ways society tries to cope with this seemingly endless procession of problems? While the chorus continues to sound a dirge and the difficulties are legion, progress, however halting it often appears, is being made. Why are we apparently such poor managers of our environment? Perhaps a bit of perspective on w h o "we" are and how "we" operate will point out some aspects of the roots of our problems and what we must strive to overcome. The words "environmental management" are so inclusive that our continued efforts to understand ourselves and our surroundings seems a great tasks indeed. As a starting place, we should recognize that despite a bewildering a m o u n t of information, man's comprehension of the environment is in fact embryonic, and his ability to organize information, develop strategies, and implement sound environmental management is little more than the proverbial procreative gleam in his eyes. T h e answer to the question of why such a capable species has brought on this state of affairs is as complex as the personalities and attitudes known to man. Obviously, we recognize our shortcomings â&#x20AC;&#x201D; witness the various environmental calamities we
Authorities investigate contamination at hazardous waste site.
49
produce and the vast amounts of energy expended trying to overcome these problems. However, our survival motive, combined with mental capacity and the fact that we have opposable digits, is basically a strong, individualistic desire to comfortably surviveâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the way we want to. Of course, these somewhat self-centered tendencies manifest themselves in societal organizations with diverse, often antagonistic goals and methods for attaining them. Importantly, we have begun to recognize that the development of the scientific, technical tools to know and manage our environment is evolutionary and neither cheap nor easy, particularly past mismanagement. Furthermore, the challenges of environmental management, particularly for hazardous substances, are continually changing, and while this can be frustrating, we may take comfort in the realization that our quality of life is also constantly improving, as we apply ourselves to providing an equilibrium between growth and management of finite resources. So, currently in the dawn of the environmental era, our perceptions of environmental problems range from the disgust over roadside trash (a symptom of the overall malady) to destruction of the planet. Response to these problems ranges from a sort of laisse-faire social Darwinism to extreme environmental protection that attempts to halt even the progression of nature itself. Appropriately, focus is beginning to center upon development of a broader view â&#x20AC;&#x201D; a holis- â&#x20AC;&#x17E;< tic vision that places less emphasis on our condition as individual biological organisms and economic entities. Environmental management as an inclusive science is based upon decision making that takes into account multifarious physical, biological, and social factors. Thus, what started out in ancient times as ritual and magic is progressing toward a well-established foundation in science that is best attempted by mirroring natural pro50
cesses and ultimately acting, not on nature, but with its forces and substance. Problems and Regulations Governed by a variety of state and federal laws, regulations, and agencies, plagued by competing technologies, and sometimes
fathom and often appear to conflict. However, as society has become better informed, agencies and interests such as public advocate organizations increasingly express a better-informed concern over known and potentially carcinogenic, mutagenic, teratogenic, and highly toxic or physically hazar-
,2 Above: Dr. Marilyn S. Black, senior research scientist, performs analysis on atomic absorption spectrophotometer. Left: Air filters sample various organic and inorganic contaminants in workplace.
flt/n b r ^
exploited by special interests, the issues of identifying and understanding hazardous substances, then handling them safely, center on protecting human health and the. environment. That objective is sometimes obscured in a jumble of complex problems and myriad laws that are generally difficult to
Opposite: Dr. John C. Nemeth and Joan Uhr, Australia's assistant secretary of National Occupational Health and Safety Commission, check lab experiment.
The problems associated with hazardous materials are numerous and ive all share a"-common responsibility for the problems and solutions.
51
We are planning to investigate ground water pollution by using an artificial intelligence computer approach to identify toxic waste. dous chemicals. Given this positive public attitude and calls for real answers, it is imperative that the initiatives of the recent past be supported and enhanced. The legal mandates of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Transportation, Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and numerous other agencies, in combination, provide a sound basis for proper handling of hazardous materials, but more significantly, represent an important trend toward more stringent, rational, scientificallyfounded controls. The challenge is to make it all work efficiently for the common good. The problems associated with hazardous materials are, of course, numerous and varied, and we all share a common responsibility for the problems and solutions. The basic categories of potential difficulty include the dangers related to specific chemical and physical characteristics of various substances and, importantly, their interaction with each other, the environment, and us, in routine usage, disposal and accidents. With over a million known chemical compounds and perhaps ten thousand new formulations annually in this country alone, demands for new products continues to be met. However, the relative amount of research dedicated to understanding and managing not only these new substances and their residues, but many that have been used routinely for decades, is small indeed compared to resources invested in their development, production and mar^ < keting. Thus, the evolution of scientific advances is skewed toward providing new products while far less investment has been made toward understanding the potential problems deriving from the products themselves, the by-products of the processes needed to produce them, and the negative interactions possible with humans and the general environment. Our only serious efforts as a nation to act upon concerns related to hazardous substances have been 52
traditionally manifested through legislation. In the last 15 years or so, a series of significant environmental laws have been enacted for the purpose of protection and renovation of air, land and water resources. It is interesting to note how our scientific understanding and law-making feed upon each other in the development of a well founded environmental management system. Increasingly sophisticated, the earliest regulatory priorities were on reducing the sheer volume of wastes disposed of in the air, water and land. More recently, newer laws and their amendments have focused on not only utilization of the current scientific and engineering state-ofthe-art, but have attempted to provide solutions to hazardous materials/wastes problems heretofore only vaguely recognized. This redirection and more holistic legislative approach is causing ipdustry to divert a larger proportion of overall production investment into product and productprocess-residue awareness and management. However, before we rush to provide technical answers
Environmental management concerns the development of strategies for physical, biological'and social factors.
to needs which surficially seem straightforward, we have to face the fact that, just as no facet of the nation's economy may be said to be regulated by one law, few of our actions are truly isolated from the whole environment. The interdependent and interrelated activities of our production endeavors have spawned a regulator) complex of laws just as intertwined and mutually supportive as the industrial system that produces the hazardous materials we target for regulation. Taking what traditionally was and all too often continues to be a narrow view of one's societal and regulatory responsibility can result in at least two possible outcomes: 1) the missed opportunity for instituting a well-planned, comprehensive and cost-effective pro-
gram of human and environmental protection, and 2) the missed implications that one regulatory requirement might have for other aspects of a given business. For instance, in the former case, the incomplete picture may result in serious costs related to corporate liability through suits and fines. In the later case, a program to correct a given pollution problem could, unless fully evaluated, result in residues not easily or even possibly amendable to water or land disposal or even economically achievable treatment, reuse, or recycling. Georgia Tech takes the logical and increasingly common course of integrating the goals of a particular business or facility operation with appropriately designed environmental, health, and safety protection. This philosophy rests upon the use of a broad-based environmental audit approach. Solutions and Tech's Role In response to its original charge from the Georgia legislature over 50 years ago, the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) is directly involved in literally hundreds of projects in the general areas of research and development, technical assistance, and outreach training for industry, government and the public at large. The Environmental, Health, and Safety Division (EHSD) of the Economic Development Laboratory, along with several other units within the academic schools as well as GTRI, is pursuing a variety of programs to comprehensively deal with many of today's urgent needs and problems in hazardous substance identification, evaluation and control. With the goal of becoming a major regional and national resource of applied environmental science and engineering, EHSD is growing rapidly, increasing the scope of technological capabilities and reaching a constantly-expanding variety of organizations and businesses. Drawing upon the total resources of Georgia Tech, EHSD is actively carrying out projects which call for the integrated con-
tributions of its staff engineers, safety scientists, industrial hygenists, chemists and environmental scientists. By involving other Tech researchers in specialized areas such as biotechnology; computer science; environmental, electrical, and chemical engineering; and economics, EHSD is providing timely and cost-effective solutions that are actually based on multidisciplinary investigations and evaluation. Comprehensive assessment of the total complex of environmental and socioeconomic factors is the guiding philosophy. Moreover, EHSD is making clear headway in breaking down not only the barriers that often separate classes of professionals, but the truly wasteful notion that the workplace and general environment are somehow mutually exclusive. Our work has shown that the best problem solving and decision making is founded upon a properly integrated team approach. Emphasizing hazardous substances control, a brief review of the principal programs in our broad mission areas demonstrates the surprisingly varied and interdisciplinary services we now offer at Georgia Tech. Research and Development Georgia Tech is involved in a diverse number of important facets of personal and environmental protection. Currently, research efforts center upon enhancing industrial process efficiency and waste treatment/management; hazardous waste detection, evaluation, and cleanup; asbestos abatement; toxic emissions from commercial building products; indoor and open-area air pollution; improved bioassay methods; ergonomics (manmachine interactions); environmental contaminant chemistry; and chemical exposure and allergic/ sensitization related to respiratory disease. Work in these areas is designed to produce specific answers to real problems. Several projects within the Agricultural Research Program illustrate the additive and interdisciplinary
nature of our research. In association primarily with the poultry industry, Georgia Tech engineers have made several important contributions to process management through a variety of low-cost computer and vision-based systems which include sensing and monitoring poultry-house conditions (temperature, humidity ammonia, feed and water consumption) and several other facets of poultry processing. Other projects include design, construction and monitoring of energy-related systems such as a full-scale wood heating and active and passive heating systems for growout houses; performances and feasibility evaluation of a rotating biological conductor and other methods for treating process wastewater; and an innovative approach to sludge dewatering that draws upon electro-osmotic technology. Prompted by the successful techniques developed by our agricultural research engineers, EHSD is now investigating an electrophoretic system to identify and ultimately remove ground-water contaminants in place. This potentially revolutionary technique is very exciting for a number of reasons. Just the process of gathering, transporting
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Asbestos program at Tech is the most widely recognized program in the country.
53
and analyzing samples from polluted groundwater is subject to numerous sources of error that invaribly raise major questions about the technical reliability of data. And, of course, the expense is very high. Those difficulties have been compounded in most cases because knowing what substances to look for has generally been a guessing game. Therefore, we are also planning to investigate the potential for identifying specific sources of groundwater pollution, particularly from landfills, by using an artificial intelligence computer approach to identify toxic waste substances produced by industries in a given area. The advent of much stronger right-to-know legislation has led to increased employee awareness regarding exposure — usually atmospheric— to hazardous substances. Thus, numerous workplace problems have been identified that require research and correction. Our research efforts have centered on indoor air pollution including development of adequate monitoring and analytic methods, health effects evaluation and abatement techniques. The primary areas of current research include topics ranging from the effects of nitros oxide in dentist offices and organic emissions in manufacturing plants to the release of formaldehyde from building products and the effects of passive exposure to cigarette smoke using highly sophisticated environmental chambers. Perhaps the most widely noted Georgia Tech efforts dealing with hazardous substances is the EHSD < asbestos abatement program. One of the most controversial and sensitive issues of our time — the removal or immobilization of asbestos used in the construction of schools and many other buildings — is frought with emotion, misconceptions, political diversions and lack of standard technical investigation methods and abatement procedures. Georgia Tech has been a national leader in developing and implementing contractor standards 54
and in easing the fears surrounding the presence and control of asbestos. Later this year, the EHSD Asbestos Program, now well into its second year as one of EPS's four regional asbestos information centers, will embark on a major, three-year asbestos abatement research program. In the area of safety engineering, Tech professionals are researching ergonomics, effects of fatigue on accident rates, task evaluation procedures, and psycho-physical factors — each of which has been directly related to accidents and exposures involving hazardous substances. Once again, computerand vision-based techniques, developed in the agricultural research program, are playing an important role in this area of much needed workplace research. In some of the more difficult, yet needy, areas in environmental sciences research, EHSD is pursuing two important aspects of environmental quality assessment. One example is the improvement of contaminant-effects evaluation through more cost effective and scientifically reliable bioassay methods. The organisms tradition-
Hazardous waste dump site.
ally used to judge the effects of pollution in water, sediments and soils have proven to be flawed as broad, useful indicator species. Pitfalls associated with most organisms involve test-population maintenance, sensitivity ranges of the creatures themselves to a host of factors, and the appropriateness of making inferences to other organisms, including man. A trying process under controlled conditions, applications in the environment are seldom attempted. However, working with scientists from the School of Applied Biology, we are in the early stages of investiating a species of nematode worm that appears to overcome most of the problems normally experienced in bioassay work. Perhaps most significant is that it may prove to be a very useful critter for field testing in both aquatic and soil systems. In the study of biogeochemical cycles such as acid rain, much is often unfortunately made of few data points. Given the variability in distribution of potential atmospheric pollution sources, natural climatic patterns and ecologic systems, sorting out cause and
Georgia Tech has been a national leader in developing standards and in easing fears surrounding the presence of asbestos.
effect can be risky busiess indeed. O n e useful but seldom well documented type of data that would be helpful in air quality evaluation, and perhaps even in setting industrial emission levels, is the contribution of sulfur compounds to the atmosphere from natural ecosystems, particularly sulfur dioxide â&#x20AC;&#x201D; a major cause of acid rain. Reliable field measurement is the biggest roadblock to providing such data. Working initially in coastal salt marshes, Georgia Tech ecologists and environmental scientists are actively researching the development of instrumentation in field methods that hopefully will make quantification of this important information possible. Technical Assistance For the past seven years, Georgia Tech has been providing aid in improving workplace safety and health, including right-to-know issues, to firms all across the state. Funded through a continuing grant from O S H A . upwards of 2,500 companies have received direct, onsite, confidential technical assistance from EHSD safety professionals and industrial hygenists. This innovative regulatory approach, based upon the concept of non-adversarial, voluntary compliance, has been marvellously successfulâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; achieving a compliance rate over 75 percent. An extremely cost effective return of the tax dollar to business, this type of program is particularly helpful to the small to moderately sized firms seldom armed with technical, legal and financial resources to cope with complex federal and state regulations. Often identified as one of the top on-site safety and health consultation assistance programs in the United States, Tech scientists have extended the OSHA concept to help improve compliance and enforcement in other regulatory areas. Two-and-one-half years ago, with funding from EPA and the Georgia Environmental Protection Division (GA EPD), we started a
unique on-site consultation program in hazardous waste management that targets the small-quantity generators. Tbis pilot project has produced an 88 percent compliance rate, received wide national attention, is being used as model for other programs throughout the country, and now appears to be headed for continued funding by the state of Georgia. T h e obvious key to on-site consultation success is highly motivated, technically competent program staff. However, as the project has evolved, we have added other components including workshops, seminars, public presentations, and short courses across the state; distribution of written materials; telephone assistance, and access to materials here on campus. Outreach Training and Information Technology transfer, the third major charge of G T R I , cuts across all areas of E H S D endeavor. T h e majority of the some 60 separate continuing education courses, conferences, symposia and seminars conducted annually by E H S D relates directly to the identification and understanding of hazardous substances, as well as their proper management. Ranging from asbestos abatement through industrial toxicology, hazardous waste, indoor air pollution, hazard communication/right-to-know, and many other topics, this activity has in the past year reached nearly 6,000 people. Attendees receive continuing education credits from Georgia Tech, but more significantly, they obtain up-to-date information and training in these important subjects. Many of our programs have been invited for presentation elsewhere. For instance, in the past year we have taken o u r asbestos abatement course to Washington, Dallas, Chicago, San Francisco, Baltimore, and Anchorage, Alaska. Later in 1986, we will present the course in London, England. The centerpiece of our outreach effort is the annual Environment, Health and Safety Conference to be
held this year at the Atlanta Marriott M a r q u i s , March 31 through April 3 . T h e conference theme, "Basics and Beyond," is tackling the broadest spectrum ever of environmental and occupational workplace issues. In addition to our own Georgia Tech staff, we are bringing in experts from throughout the country to address the nature of today's problems and provide solutions. As we grow, so too does our ability to serve important state, regional, and national needs in the area of hazardous substance control. In July, through the cooperation and assistance of the Georgia Fire Training Academy, the Governor's Hazardous Materials Emergency Response Advisory Council, and GA EPD, we will be presenting the first of a series of courses on hazardous material control and emergency response. Designed to provide classroom and hands-on training, this one-week program will be accompanied by other specific emergency-action training courses such as emergency medical aid'and firing fighting at hazardous substance accidents. This training program will fill a critical need because there is no other source of such training easily available in the Southeast. Finally, E H S D publishes a quarterly newsletter, Environmental Spectrum, and several other more specific technical publications.
Dr. J o h n C. N e m e t h is chief of the Georgia Tech Research Institute's Environmental, Health and Safety Division. A member of Governor Harris' Hazardous Materials Emergency Response Advisory Council, he is in demand as a speaker, is widely published and writes a monthly column for Occupational Health and Safety. Dr. Nemeth is nationally recognized in environmental management, particularly related to hazardous waste issues. SS
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Kranzberg is confident that man can solve the problems he faces as he approaches the 21st century.
I :. J
MAN IS NOT SLAVE, BUT MASTER OF TECHNOLOGY By Sam Heys
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r. Melvin Kranzberg can look to the future and see problems. But he can also look to the future and be fascinated with the possibilities. "Our science and technology has made us the richest society in the world's history."says Dr. Kranzberg, Callaway Professor of the History of Technology at Georgia Tech. "We have enough to share with others. We are now face-to-face with our own moral pretentions and ideas, which we have given lip service to all these centuries. "Are we really going to use our technological expertise and the goods it provides us to help us be kind to our neighbors? Before, everyone said these things, but no one could afford to do them because they only had enough for themselves â&#x20AC;&#x201D; little to spare. Technology would enable us to make the golden rule a reality. I find this fascinating." The 68-year-old Kranzberg believes one of the great challenges of technology now is solving the problems created by the unforseen implications and results of previous technology. "This is called the scales of use," he says. "Take DDT, for example. When used on a small scale, it does great things to help in food production, etc. When used on a large scale, it has implications for the food chain of birds, fish
and eventually man. We stopped using it; we could afford to. In India, DDT used to prevent malaria and they continue using DDT. Why? They could not afford a pesticide; it would cost more and have to be sprayed three and four times a year, instead of just twice a year. "Automobiles are another example. The pollution of the air wasn't a problem when you didn't have many automobiles. Technologies don't come singularly, they come in groups. Once you have autos, you must have roads, tires, petroleum, garages, etc. In the past, engineers have not had to think about the full picture. Now they are forced to." Kranzberg sees the progress of mankind throughout civilization as being directly related to the development of technology. He believes man's utilization of technology is part of a continuing drama of man fighting against the unknown. "A good portion of our social environment has come about because we used our technology to protect us against a natural environment which is pretty inhospitable and cruel to man," he says. Just as he mentions the pollution problem that has been created by the automobile, Kranzberg is aware of a major pollution problem that was alleviated by technology with the advent of the automobile. "At the turn of century, in New York City alone, horses deposited some
IVi million pounds of manure and 60,000 gallons of urine in one day," he says. "The automobile promised cleaner, quieter transportation, but, as we know, pollution, congestion and safety problems have returned in altered form as a result of the large-scale use of the automobile." Kranzberg is confident that man can solve the problems he faces as he approaches the 21st century. "An engineer can't solve them himself, but nobody else can solve them without the aid of the engineers," he says. "It is very difficult to think of a problem that does not have a technical component. But all of these have a strong human componentâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; social, humanistic, cultural and institutional factors." Kranzberg believes engineering and society have become entwined because the world has become "manmade." "Man, with the aid of technology, has formed the institutions and laid the foundations of our society. If it is a man-made world, I claim that man can remake it," he says. Kranzberg tires of the literary swipes that are taken at technology. He points out that the monster of Frankenstein and Rossum's universal robots were created by men who sought to do good for mankind. He says both creations failed to accomplish their makers' goal because of mankind, not because of the theory so often expressed by humanists, that technology is evil. 57
"If we are afraid of technology," says Kranzberg, "then we are afraid of ourselves and other h u m a n beings. The fault lies in m a n himself. " M a n has the power and is not the innocent victim of his technology. Lots of people think there has been a reversal. Slaves are n o longer the servants of mankind and man has become the slave of the machine which he invented. I don't think that is true. I think we do have control over technology, and hence, over a great deal of our future. But we do have to exercise control properly and we do have to realize that technology occurs in a social, cultural, economic context and all facts have to be taken into account." Kranzberg likes to use the Thames River as an example of how humans can use technology to. their advantage when properly motivated. Even before the Industrial Revolution began to pollute the riverâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;as far back as 1471â&#x20AC;&#x201D;history tells of the stench of the Thames. Only a quartercentury ago, the T h a m e s was, for all practical purposes, a dead river. The tidal reaches were so polluted that no fish, except eels, could survive in them. Birds had left the river's banks and, in dry summer months, scientists could not detect any dissolved oxygen in its water. Strict enforcement of anti-pollution laws and the application of envionmental technologies, according to Kranzberg, has returned the Thames to life. Several dozen species of fish swim in the river now and thousands of ducks and birds winter there. "This shows us several things," he says. "How man created pollution long before industrialization began. H o w technology added to the pollution to create a dead river. H o w technology was called upon to cleanse the sewage before it reached the river. And how the public's will to establish laws and enforce them helped restore the Thames to a purity it has not had for some 500 years." Kranzberg can see numerous problems today, all with a technological base: "The ratio of burgeoning population to food 58
resources and other resources; the question of environmental contamination and the pollution of certain energy resources; chemicals, dumping them without knowing until later that was the wrong thing to do; urban congestion; communications.
"Man has the power and is not the innocent victim of his technology. Lots of people think there has been a reversal. Slaves are no longer the servants of mankind and man has become the slave of the machine which he invented. I don't think that is true."
"We have begun to teach sociopolitical mechanism to deal with this," says Kranzberg. Technology assessment, environmentalism. All these are responses. Practically every civil engineering department in the country now has become a department of civil and environmental engineering. They helped get it messy. N o w they are helping clean it up." Kranzberg used to give a talk that the basis of society is Judeo-Christian religious tradition, Greek philosophers and the Renaissance. "But now science and technology are the distinguishing hallmarks of our society," he says. "They distinguish it from what has gone on from any other time in the world. "The old Greek philosophers asked the right questions: What is truth, beauty, justice, what is my relationship to the cosmos, to my fellow m a n , etc. T h e only thing that modern science and tech-
nology have changed are the answers. What is truth? We now have instruments which enable us to see what we cannot see with our regular senses. What is beauty? Science and technology have given us all sorts of new means for expressing our aesthetic senses. Whole ideas have to be changed because the answers are different." Kranzberg's expertise had always been history, but when World War II broke out the Army taught him electrical engineering at Johns Hopkins. He had grown up in St. Ixmis, the son of Jewish immigrants w h o had fled Russian Poland as children in the late 19th century. He was an honor student at Amherst College and got a master's degree in European history from Harvard in 1939. Three years later, Harvard awarded him a doctorate in modern French history. Despite training him to be an electrical engineer, the Armv found a greater need in Kranzberg's ability to speak both French and German. He was attached to an infantry unit and given the assignment of interrogating German prisoners of war. The recipient of a Bronze Star, Kranzberg says he questioned more than 1,000 German prisoners and found only one w h o was unwilling to cooperate. " T h e morale of the German army was pretty bad by that time [1944-45]," he says. When the war ended, Kranzberg taught briefly at Harvard and at Stevens Institute of Technology in H o b o k e n , N.J., before returning to Amherst. He taught Western civilization there for five years before moving to Case Institute of Technology in Cleveland. When Case merged with neighboring Western Reserve University in the early '70s, Kranzberg moved to Tech. In his 15 years at Tech, Kranzberg believes the school has "proven itself to be markedly responsive to the technological and scientific needs of society. " N o t only is it being responsive," he says, "it is forging ahead and, in a sense, creating the basis for new technological and scientific enterprise that will help determine the directions of American society in the future."
Kranzberg believes that Tech has responded to the changing nature of engineering education and will have to continue to do so as the 21st century approaches. "What we are finding out in science and technology is that the old disciplinary barriers are no longer meaningful. T h e division into civil, mechanical, etc., engineering responds to the problems of the 19th century. In the 20th cenrun the problems become interdisciplinary, the boundaries become ha/\ and dim. So you have bioengineering— biology and engineering coming together," says Kranzben ,. "When you talk about computer - and microchips, you're talking at mut physics, mathematics, materials, coil engineering, structures and so forth all coming together. "Tech is dapting to this change with the k ind of people it is getting on the fat iltv. We still have the division n terms of bureaucracy, but it does, not exist any longer in the fields il icinselves or among the faculty. People are moving around from one held t o another." Kranzbi rg says an engineer must now be aware of the social, political, economic and other factors that affect the context in which he works. "So what we have done is strengthen the social science component of the faculty and curriculum," he sa\s. Kranzbi rg believes that Tech's increased (mentation toward research will help keep its students abreast of the main advances occurring in technology "Up tin il 15 years ago Tech was largely training young men, and just a few women, for their first job in industry. It was not as research i riented as it is today. Now we k i\e a mixture of research and teachmg. I think that is essential 1 ecau.se you cannot teach young men and women to be prepared for the world of the future unless you are performing research yourself at the frontiers of the cutting edge of research, because otherwise the students are learning old technology. T h e metaphor I use is that the\ are drinking from a stagnant pond. Research makes sure the professor is right up,
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EVOLUTION OF A DISCIPLINE
knowing what's going on and is helping to lead the way into the future," he says. "When I came here, only one person in the department had published a book in the preceeding five years and he had used it to get a job offer away from Tech. Nowadays, with the same number of people in the department, about four or five books come out every year and umpteen articles and presentations. It has completely changed. It's forward looking and the people have scholarly stature and are recognized in their fields. They have national and international recognition, and that's true of the engineering and science departments, too." Kranzberg envisions Georgia Tech playing a central role in the 60
further industrialization of the South, particularly Georgia. "The governor goes out and tries to get foreign countries to put factories here and he visits other states to lure factories down here," he says. "In order to do that, you have to have some trained scientific and technical people around, and Georgia Tech is helping as a magnet to draw some of the firms here. Instead of our being a net exporter of students, we will be importer of industry because they will want to be where Georgia Tech
Sam Heys is features ivriter for The Atlanta Constitution and The Atlanta Journal, specializing in stories about people and history.
Dr. Melvin Kranzberg remembers well those first classes he tried to teach at Case Institute of Technology in Cleveland in the early 1950s. "I was teaching history and we had some great courses, but the students were profoundly disinterested, because there were no figurative dollar signs in front of the course numbers," says Kranzberg. Kranzberg had spent the previous five years at Amherst College, where the liberal arts students had been keenly interested in his Western civilization classes. He was determined to find a way for his Case students to become similarly interested. "I remembered a dictum of John Dewey, a famous educator at the turn of the century. He said that to get a student interested in something, you start him out in something he's already interested in," says Kranzberg. "Inasmuch as I was working with students who were already committed to science antl engineering, I just changed the basic question we asked to: How have science and technology affected the development of Western civilization and how has Western civilization affected the development of science and technology? The students became ver\ interested." So did Kranzberg. "I discovered there was very little scholarship in the history of technology, very little known about it," he says. "So I became more and more involved." In less than a decade, Kranzberg had started America's first graduate program in the history of technology at Case. He was also principal founder of the Society for the History of Technology and founding editor of its quarterly journal.
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