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August 24, 1965 - Image 43

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The Michigan Daily, 1965-08-24

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TIRE MICHIGAN DAILY

PAGE DINE

THE MICHIGAN DAILY PAGE NINE

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ronte

11

11

iding this sort of overall
on and coordination be-
a heroic undertaking.
ng a course for the re-
program, even keeping the
f state on an even keel, is,
row a phrase from a crusty
onomics professor describ-
nsumer studies, a little like
ig gravity by examining a
lling from a tree during a
ane in the dead of night.
the job falls to Vice-
ents Heyns, Pierpont and
tn.
for has it that all roads
o Roger W. Heyns in the
of Academic Affairs. Coun-
nors from other quarters
Pierpont in the Office of
ass and Finance as a toll-
or at almost every point.:
way (or both), it's .con-

Analogous
Heyns is in a position analogous
to the former dean of faculties.
He works closely with the deans,
department chairmen and center
and institute directors in estab-
lishing new academic programs,
overseeing current ones, hiring
faculty and, most importantly,
controlling the University's aca-
demic budget.
Heyns' principal direct involve-
ment in research is delegated to
Norman, who directs or at least
4# keeps tabs on research programs,'
research appointments and relat-
ed problems of space and admin-
istration. The Officedof Research
Administration directed by Robert
Burroughs works as his staff.
In a university as decentralized
as this one and with the faculty
always hypersensitive to threats
imagined and real to their peroga'-
tives, Norman's Jobis a tricky
one. So far he has avoided the
numerous pitfalls
The Office of Research Admin-
istration is largely an administra-
tive mechanism that has grown
up piecemeal over the years to
deal with problems of research
grant and contract supervision
and control.
It must act in restraining, chan-
neling negotiation and mediation
roles to keep 1000 researching fac-
ulty from galloping off In 10600
different directions leaving the
tenuous administrative ,ad fi-
nancial threads that hold the Uni-
versity together to collapse into
a heap of paperwork.
Both Ends.
And it is Pierpont that keeps
those financial threads taut and
tied down at both ends. He has,
in accordance with his theories of
decentralization, delegated his
orge-image among researchers to
A. B. Hicks, who supervises the
Sponsored Research Business Of-
fice. Some would say he does this
in order to find time to think up
new ways of bothering the fac-,
ulty with bureaucratic problems.
Pierpont and Hicks would reply,
however, that they aren't here to
make friends, that there are 1600
research projects at the Univer-
sity, all of which have accounts
that require supervision with pur-
chases that have to be audited,
personnel that have to be paid-
as government auditors require in-
creasingly complex records of
where federal money goes.
There are, in any case, fairly
large areas of overlapping author-
ity between the Office of Research
Administration and Hicks' Spon-
sored Research Business Office
and the resulting problems are
being worked out slowly and pain-
fully: There isn't any open fight-
ing, just subtle warfare, as in so

much of the University.
What generally happens is that
each faculty member will manage
after a period oftrial and error
to establish some small entrance
to this great bureaucratic mechan-
ism, generally through a personal
contact. It may be someone in
ORA, one, of the vice-presidents,
a knowledgable and influential
dean or department chairman, or
an obscure assistant somewhere in
the system.
Once such a contact is set up
the faculty member hangs on to
it for dear life, using it to get
him whatever is needed to keep
the bureaucrats happy and as far
away from him and his research
and his graduate students as pos-
sible.
Life goes on.
Research Centers
Superimposing a $42 million re-
search program onto the old Uni-
versity structure has created ex-
citing new possibilities that may
make the administrative problems
worth it in the end, but certainly
the disciplined old departmental
system will never be the same.
Interdisciplinary appointments,
centers and institutes and study
programs have proliferated, and
imany have the most tenuous of
relationships to any 'of the de-
partments connected with them.
The largest and internally most
cohesive unit at the University is
the Medical Center, even though
in this case the term refers to
geographical arrangement and
not to administrative organiza-
tion. .
(The Medical Center is more
of a cohesive, well-structured unit
to undertake a variety of related
tasks than most administrative
units to which the term center is
actually applied.)
Presided over by Dean William
Hubbard, a figure comparable only
to Pierpont for suavity and disci-
plined control of an organization,
the Medical Center operates al-
most autonomous from the rest of
the University.
Growing Fast
Research in the biomedical
sciences is growing faster than
in any other field. This fact, cou-
pled with the tremendously high
level of financial support given to
medicine in general in the United
States, makes research at the
Medical Center exciting, expand-
ing, productive and expensive.
After the Medical Center the
Institute for Science and Tech-
nology is the largest University
research unit. Established in the
late 1950's after the Sputnik spur
to education, IST has never really
gotten off the ground as an or-
ganized, driving force for re-
search and education largely be-
cause there was never enough
thought ,given to exactly how it
would fit into the University.
Most programs'in the fields of
science and technology are more
easily fitted to old departmental
patterns than wrenched out and
placed in a separate institute with
other programs with which they
have very little in common.
It was thought for a while that
the institute could fall back on a
program of aid and encourage-
ment for Michigan industry, but
there has never been much in the
University that could be related
directly to Michigan's economic
development.
Not Enough
IST does have a productive In-
dustrial Developnjent Division,
but there isn't enough there to
fill a program on the scale set up

Science--Antithesis

N SUGGESTING ways of in-
troducing students to the
scientia of our time, I have not
accounted sufficiently for the
evolutionary nature of culture.
Because scientia, like tech-
nology, is perpetually in a state
of becoming, an education that
merely indoctrinated students
in the structure of images at a
given moment would be passive
and conservative--the mirror or
the servant of dominant intel-
lectual forces.
This education ought to be
rather their critic and genera-
tor, and that is a demanding
higher education into new
paths always has imparted to
its institutions inertial forces
powerful enough to, carry pre-
vailing images far beyond their
useful life span, to the point
at which their obsolescence is
evident to even the stuffiest
academic minds.
Furthermore, the prevail-
ing scientia not only may be
hostile to images different
from those it promotes, but
consciously or unconsciously it
mission.
The effort required to direct
may organize its education so
that criticism is frustrated
This deficiency would explain
some of the paradoxes of con-
temporary higher education,
which, in being designed to
promote empiricism and tech-

nological specialization, inci-
dentally manages to stiffle phil-
osophical synthesis and ethical
speculation. In proceeding from
a broad survey at the base to
a narrow parochialism at the
apex, the university curriculum
not only trains efficient spe-
cialists.
It also protects obsolete
scientism from being subjected
to effective criticism by ob-
structing from the advanced
student a commanding view of
the topography of his culture.
At the root of these prob-
lems is the preoccupation of,
twentieth-century scientia with
function and process, and with
the nature of observation,
which is a cause as well as a
result of the insecurities of our
time.
It has brought extraordinary
progress in science and scholar-
ship, and radical changes in
the arts, but it has not sought
or promoted solutions to the
major dilemmas of human
existence and behavior, nor
even provided the means of
assessing the ,value of its own
achievements.
It is because of its concern
with process that our scientia
has exalted the technician and
thus actually has blurred the
distinction between technique
and scientia that I am attempt-
ing to revive. The reaction of

Response
intellectuals to a scientia with-
out values has been increasing-
ly restive but-because the is-
sues have been wrongly defined
-quite undirected and often
merely nostalgic. It erupts oc-
casionally in attacks on science
and scientific method-attacks
that ignore the underlying sim-
ilarity in the attitudes of the
scientist, the artist, and the
humanist-scholar.
If our scientia, and the edu-
cation that sustains it, deserves
criticism, it is unlikely to re-
ceive it from without, since it
encompasses all creative
thought in our time.
It will not give way to a com-
peting system but will evolve,
as scientia always has, by gen-
erating its own antitheses and
responses.
For this reason, I am con-
vinced that the healing of pres-
ent illnesses in our culture can
be effected only by those who
are committed to it and versed
in it, as well as in its traditions,
and not by those who reject
our most distinguished and
characteristic products -- the
work of the Wittgensteins, de
Koonings, Beckets -- on the
grounds that they somehow
lack the old humanistic values.
-JAMES S, ACKERMAN
In Daedalus, the Journal
of the American Academy
of Arts and Sciences

every aspect of information sys-
tems, biological systems and social
systems, from artificial models to
human subjects. "Theory," often
expressed in some sort of mathe-
matical modeling of the essential
elements of a real system, is a
common word-game theory, com-
munications t h e o r y, systems
theory, information theory, "com-
munications theory of urban
growth," and others.
As with ISR, the excitement
generated by the critical mass of
researchers working at MHRI has
spilled over into many depart-
ments and schools, serving to at-
tract good students and faculty,
generate Students for a Demo-
cratic Society and teach-ins, and
generally to throwing off sparks
in a great many directions.
Schools and Colleges
It was in the engineering col-
lege that research at the Univer-
sity first got started back before
World War II, and a great deal
of the research program is still
there.
Aerospace
The aerospace department,
much in the news this summer,
presides o v e r a considerable
amount of space research spon-
sored by the National Aeronautics
and Space Administration and the
Air Force. Myriad projects are or-
ganized into the Space Physics
Research Lab, the High Altitude
Research Lab, the Propulsion Lab,
and the Wind Tunnel Labs.
(The engineering college has, a
penchant for organizing endless
numbers of "labs," of which these
are some of the larger. They arise
as one or two faculty in a par-
ticular area gather in considerable
research support and a graduate
student following. This is com-
bined with lots of specialized
equipment, so a shingle over the
door, soon follows.)
Elsewhere in} the engineering'
college there is a lot of research
that falls on the line between
basic and applied. This has put
the engineering faculty into a
position of continually having to
defend itself against the "purists"
across the street in Randall Lab,
for instance, or in various literary
college departments.
Many Projects
The chemical and metallurgical
engineering department, one of
the very fine ones in the country,
has numerous projects underway.
Prof. Donald L. Katz has also
done a great deal for the -Univer-
sity through his work in establish-
ing a computer curriculum for
engineering undergraduates and
in helping to guide the Univer-
sity's general involvement in com-
puter use.

n

g

for the institute. So the director,
Prof. James T. Wilson, is left with;
a beautiful building and various1
programs picked up from odd
places in the University, none ofI
which really fit together.
These include the Biophysics
Lab a n d the Electro-Optical
Sciences Lab, the only original1
products of the attempt to make
IST a real science institute. And
the Electro-Optical Sciences Lab
has in fact proved a tempest in a
teapot within the IST organiza-
tion, as Prof. George W.. Stroke,'
its head, almost had a large part
of the University's research appa-
ratus in orbit before he was final-
ly shifted to the electrical engi-
neering department and settled
down with some generous research
grants.
The other part of IST is the
Great Lakes Research Division-
which existed long before IST and
still has a life of its own-and the
Willow Run Laboratories.
Willow Run.
The Willow Run Labs were
added on to IST in 1960, in hopes
of some sort of mutual benefit
which hasn't really materialized
yet, though there are still hopes.
Willow Run work is very defense
oriented and is usually classified.
There is a minimum of relation-
ships with either faculty or stu-
dents from the University, most
of the work being done by pro-
fessional researchers.
The Institute for Social Re-
search is probably the most spec-
tacularly successful of the inter-
disciplinary operations. However,
this very success must be troubl-
ing to administrators because of
the unlikelihood of duplicating
within the University the con-
ditions that have made IRS pos-
sible.
This institute is a product of.
the labor and genius of Rensis
Likert, its director, who founded

it in the early 1950's. ISR was
started in connection with the
burgeoning pseudo-science of sur-
very research. From meager be-
ginnings -the University offered
Likert and his colleagues heat,
light and space but no money for
operations and salaries - Likert
built the institute into one of the
greatest social science operations
in the world, with some outstand-
ing theorists, economists and as-
sorted interdisciplinary types on
the staff. It was one of the Uni-
versity's great bargains.
Stimulus
Even more important than ISR's
own research has been the stim-
ulus it has provided to other parts
of the University. The people and
work there have proved to be a
powerful attraction to draw in
new programs in social science
fields, along with excellent fac-
ulty anxious to be a part of the
"critical mass" of talent that
comprises ISR. The economics
and psychology departments have
certainly benefitted, while the

most spectacular "spin-off" has
been the Mental Health Research
Institute, variously identified as
a bastion of systems theory and
a spawner of radicalism.
MHRI's innocuous title masks
one of the most exciting and di-
verse centers of activity at the
University. Prof. Anatol Rapoport
professes to be in a field called
mathematical biology. Prof. Kon-
stantin Scharenberg is in neuro-
pathology; Prof. Merrill Flood is
another mathematical biologist
and Prof. Ralph Gerard is .in
neurophysiology.
Prof. McConnell has incensed
many psychologists with his well-
publicized studies of planaria, and
Prof. Richard Meier studies,
among other things, communica-
tions systems in cities and holds
down an appointment in the con-
servation department in the nat-
ural resources school.
Staff-60
Altogether the academic staff
with PhD's numbers about 60.
Research at MHRI delves into

VICE-PRESIDENT NORMAN
Other active departments are
numerous: civil engineering, elec-
trical engineering, mechanical en-
gineering, meteorology and ocean-
ography, naval architecture and
marine engineering and nuclear
engineering. The naval tank, run
by Prof. Richard Couch is a par-
ticularly interesting operation.
Ship designs are tested in it by
towing models up and down a
long pool.
Prof. William Kerr heads up
both the nuclear engineering de-
partment and the Phoenix Pro-
ject, which was started after
World War II through private
contributions. T h e University's
post-war leadership in the de-
velopment of peaceful uses of
atomic energy, particularly in the
uses of isotopes, was a result of
this undertaking.
In the electrical engineering de-
partment, where Prof. Hansford
Farris recently succeeded Prof.,
William Dow as chairman, Prof.
Fred Haddock is active at his
Radio Astronomy Observatory on
Peach Mountain near Ann Arbor.
In the literary college there is
a fantastic variety of work going
on (though, in fact, that college
as an entity is more fancy than
fact): astronomy, botany, chem-
istry, economics, geology and
mineralogy, mathematics, physics,
psychology, sociology, zoology,
communications, conflict resolu-
tion and museums work.
This is what the scientific ex-
plosion is all about.
Meanwhile, t h e University's
bulwark against severe imbalances
among the various disciplines are
various intra-University sources of
funds, which are carefully par-
celed out for maximum return
among projects that can't find
support from timid sponsors, or
are given to younger, less exper-

ienced but promising faculty or
to, the poorly suported fields.
Take a brief look next at other
parts of the University's research:
--Prof. Paraskevopoulos in the
architecture and design college is
working with his students on the
design and construction of cheap
plastic houses, one answer to gen-
eral methods of building construc-
tion that are still in the 19th
century;
-Prof. Larson in the same
sthool has studied city planning
and looks forward to the world
city;
-The business administration
school has a great many industrial
and' economic studies going that
begin to get at some serious prob-
lems in hospital administration,
industrial relations and economic
development;
-The dentistry school, with
its excellent faculty and library
collections, has long been severe-
ly restricted by space but will
soon be housed in the finest new
building on campus;
-The public health school un-
der Dean Myron Wegman has
quite an ambitious program in
public health economics, commun-
ity health service, environmental
health, epidemiology, and indus-
trial health, enhanced by a recent
Ford Foundation grant for inter-
disciplinary population studies.
Knowledge and
the Future
The money is going to continu
to flow. The demands for new
knowledge by a society that makes
rapid economic expansion the rule
are going to increase tremendous-
ly. Society is going to be more and
more willing to lay out huge sums
for research and development as
it learns that the returns from
money invested in knowledge and
theories of how to deal with it-
work with it and make it work
for society-will be far greater
than for ,money invested in steel
mills or airplanes.
It has been estimated that over
65 per cent of the net worth of
the United States is in peoples'
brains, not their equipment, as
opposed to 35 per cent before
World War II. That's where IBM's
worth is.
Value no longer rests in the
applications of knowledge, and
less and less in the knowledge it-
self, but in its creation, in new
discoveries and methods and
theories that keep countries ex-
panding, enable Lyndon Johnson
to foresee the coming of the
Great Society, and put universi-
ties and their research programs
in the very center of a social revo-
lution wrought by information
and its communication.

Iii

THE MICHIGAN MEN'S GLEE CLUB'

I -

It,1 ii

IT'S A GROWING TOWN IN A CHANGING WORLD!
BE REASSURED - deal with a nationally known, long established record
shop
FIND AMPLE HELP and guidance in choosing from an evergrowing selec-
tion of record entertainment.
ENJOY SHOPPING where music and artists on records retain their high
intrinsic value.
BE REASSURED in knowing that the pricing is competitive.
FIND A BROAD SELECTION of the best in recorded music.
SO JOIN YOUR FRIENDS - Shop where music on records is our pleasure,
as well as our business.

ANNUAL TRYOUTS ... AUG. 30 ... 7 P.M. .. . MICHIGAN UNION

THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN takes pride in pre-
senting The University of Michigan Men's Glee
Club, recognized as one of the nation's outstanding
glee clubs. Under the direction of its well known
conductor, Philip A. Duey, the Club has gained na-
tionwide recognition through appearances on radio,

1959 the Club was the first American choir to ever
win the male choir competition. In 1963 the Club
took first place by winning over 20 groups from 11
different countries.
THE ACTIVITIES for the coming academic year will

with the New York University Men's Glee Club. The
Club will also be engaged in concerts throughout
southeastern Michigan. The year's activities will be
climaxed by the Club's annual tour which is tenta-
tively scheduled for Canada and northeastern United
States.

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