1970-Tulane Student Made Film (Video)
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- [film noise, scratches]
- [beep]
- - Tulane's okay.
- It's a university.
- - A university is an institution of higher learning.
- Having a College of Liberal Arts
- and a curriculum graduate studies together with
- several professional schools and faculties such as law,
- medicine, architecture, and engineering,
- and authorized to confer degrees.
- A university is an institution of higher learning.
- Having a College of Liberal Arts and a curriculum
- graduate studies together with several professional
- schools and faculties such as law, medicine, architecture,
- and engineering, and authorized to confer degrees.
- - Tulane is an independent, nonsectarian university
- that admits students without regard
- to place of residence, race, religion, or national origin.
- It is composed of 11 schools and colleges
- and four research centers.
- Its total full time enrollment is approximately 7000 students,
- of whom 3600 are undergraduates.
- The undergraduate divisions are the
- College of Arts and Sciences, which admits only men.
- Newcomb College which admits only women.
- The School of Architecture and the School of Engineering,
- both of whom admit men and women.
- University College, while primarily
- conducting evening courses for adults,
- offers programs of medical technology
- and physical education to which students
- may be admitted directly from high school.
- The graduate divisions of the university,
- other schools of business administration, law, medicine,
- public health and tropical medicine,
- social work, and the graduate school.
- - School of Engineering generally consists
- of about 35 special areas of emphasis nationally.
- But at Tulane, we tend to emphasize the fields
- of civil, chemical, mechanical, and electrical engineering.
- And its in these general fields
- that about 80% of all engineers graduate.
- But there's something new in engineering education that
- we are participating in,
- and we find very exciting and revolutionary, really.
- And that is to-- the introduction
- of the more flexible approach to engineering.
- For one thing, we recognize that many engineers,
- four or five years out of school,
- no longer are identified as engineers.
- That is they go into management,
- or increasingly they top the basic engineering program
- with additional professional work,
- for example, in law and medicine.
- And since it is a fact that this happens.
- We think that the engineering basic training ought
- to recognize that engineers do these diverse things.
- So at Tulane, besides these departmental programs,
- we have one extraordinarily flexible program,
- which we just call the engineering curriculum.
- And it's designed really around the liberal arts concept,
- where a student has sufficient flexibility to emphasize
- special coursework or special talents,
- which he might have for his own very particular objectives.
- We have a certain number of students, for example,
- who are using engineering as a basic curriculum
- when they know that they're going on
- to medical school,
- eventually to become either practitioners or researchers,
- but who consider the engineering background,
- as is increasingly the case I think, a general
- academic background, not a highly specialized one.
- Others are going into law.
- Others are going into a combination
- engineering and master's degree program
- in business administration.
- So I think what's new in engineering generally,
- and possibly particularly so at Tulane,
- is the much more flexible approach.
- And our situation of being a small
- technical school in a large liberal arts community
- has strongly influenced our moves in this direction
- and I think lets us do some things
- which many engineering schools can't.
- - Physics is a description of nature.
- What marks it off for many other studies of nature
- is the quantitative way in which
- physical phenomena are described.
- Usually the result of a calculation in physics
- is a very precise relationship between physical quantities.
- The result is that very complicated systems
- are frequently not treated by physics.
- For that reason, it's possible usually to distinguish between
- physics and technology, where devices are developed
- on the basis of physical principles.
- The physics department at Tulane has been active
- since about the time of the Civil War
- and has offered a strong undergraduate program
- for essentially all of that time.
- It's only since the Second World War
- that we've been involved in graduate research,
- except for a few master's degrees.
- Our current areas of interest
- are in solid state physics
- and nuclear physics.
- Examples of the sorts of experiments
- we do in nuclear physics are the scattering of neutrons
- from elements and the observation
- of the resulting gamma rays,
- whose energies and intensities can be used
- to determine the structure of the nuclei
- which did the scattering.
- We are currently involved in trying to make
- some of our graduate studies more relevant
- to environmental problems
- such as pollution
- and health physics problems.
- [silence]
- - When I think chemistry, I think basically fun.
- We're all sort of little boys
- playing in the laboratory who haven't quite grown up.
- The fun we have, however, is really quite serious.
- Some of the problems we're studying at Tulane
- are, for example, why do silver iodide crystals
- serve as nuclei for the formation of ice?
- Understanding this problem may very well lead
- to curing hurricanes, to preventing hurricanes.
- Other very important questions which we ask ourselves are,
- for example, why do living things live?
- This is a question which is very complex,
- but which is actually being studied
- by various undergraduates and also graduate students
- as well as faculty at Tulane.
- My own research asks the question, How do we utilize
- the food that we eat in order to convert this into energy?
- All living systems have to do this.
- They have to get energy from food.
- Professor Alworth, in our department,
- is trying to find out why certain bacteria in plants
- are able to synthesize vitamin B12.
- If humans don't get vitamin B12 in their food,
- they get sick and they'll eventually die.
- In the building just to the right of me,
- which you may be able to see, is our computer laboratory.
- This is used by Professor Cusacks
- in our silver iodide study, as I just mentioned.
- It's used in other fundamental studies trying to explain why
- molecules have the geometry they do.
- Other members of our chemistry faculty
- study synthesis and general synthesis of phosphorus
- compounds, for example, many carbon compounds.
- Trying to understand in general just exactly why chemistry
- functions as it does.
- Why chemical compounds can be made.
- Problems involving life and chemistry in general
- changed from year to year.
- And the ones which I just described
- are some of the ones which are undergoing continuous study.
- Okay.
- - Mathematics is both the
- most esoteric of the sciences
- and at the same time, one of the purest of the arts.
- It is an exciting and interesting place to be.
- In mathematics we cannot teach
- the joy of living,
- or the interest, or the...
- sense of adventure that one experiences.
- All we can do is teach the substantive part of it
- and try to give some idea of our own pleasure
- in studying the subject.
- It has its applications, but most mathematicians
- don't really think about the applications.
- It is at once a systematic
- and also a notational device.
- It's notational in the sense that
- with very small number of notation,
- we try to describe a large number of different things.
- It simplifies these ideas in that way.
- It's systematic in that we try to...
- take from some particular set of phenomena
- the essence of that phenomena and build a system
- that is strictly logical about it.
- In that way, it is possible
- to apply the purest of logic
- to a system and to remove from the system
- the extraneous things that simply clutter up the mind.
- At Tulane, we've built over the last 20 years
- one of the finest mathematics departments
- in the South and indeed in the country.
- In three areas of mathematics we have the top men
- in the world, and in those three areas, the three definitive
- books have been written by Tulane faculty members.
- The PhDs that have been produced at Tulane have in a recent
- study been the first in the nation in productivity.
- We have turned out undergraduates at the very,
- the very best universities in the country
- to continue their work.
- At Tulane, we produce good mathematics
- and good mathematicians, and that's what we we’re after.
- Does that figure?
- Okay.
- [chuckles]
- [silence]
- - When we talk about American philosophy,
- we can mean two things.
- First, we may mean the public philosophy.
- That is the philosophy of our civilization.
- In that case,
- our philosophy is mostly derived
- from the European Enlightenment, and we have in mind thinkers
- like Locke, Rousseau, Hume, and others.
- On the other hand, we may mean by
- American philosophy what the philosophers do,
- what the American philosophers do.
- Then we find that we don't have any sort
- of official philosophy.
- Rather, the scene is very pluralistic.
- There are many different types
- of philosophy, many different trends in American philosophy.
- Probably the most dominant trend
- at present is analytic philosophy.
- On the other hand, we have rising and now widely
- accepted as quite respectable speculative metaphysics.
- And I might add in this connection
- that we have one of the most prominent
- speculative metaphysicians in the United States
- and perhaps in the Western world on our own campus,
- I mean, Professor James Feibleman.
- At the same time, we can observe the rise
- of interest in this country, in the European movements
- of phenomenology and existentialism.
- And in that connection
- I might also add that we have a very fine representative
- of these new and recent trends in philosophy
- in the person of Professor Edward Ballard.
- Now, as for the future of American philosophy,
- it is pretty difficult to discern.
- It seems to be moving in the same sort
- of pluralistic direction in which it moved in the past.
- However, there is one thing which is quite clear,
- and that is that American philosophers are becoming
- increasingly aware
- that what they are doing must be relevant
- to social problems and other burning issues of the day.
- And we can already discern this in the format
- of the American Philosophical Association program
- of the past year, where, for example, there were symposia
- devoted to topics such as violence and other
- leading issues of that type.
- [silence]
- [inaudible]
- - Hands out of pockets, or hands in pockets, or what?
- - [Cameraman] Whatever’s comfortable with you.
- - Um.. all right.
- The Graduate School of Business Administration
- has as its primary mission
- the education of this community
- and the national community’s business leaders,
- both for tomorrow and in future decades.
- We educate MBA students
- and Ph.D. students
- who are going to join the ranks of industry
- and the ranks of leadership in not only the business community,
- but in organizations like hospitals,
- institutions like universities, and in government.
- All of our students already
- have an undergraduate degree either in liberal arts,
- or the sciences, or in engineering.
- A number of our students, but a smaller number,
- have undergraduate degrees in business.
- Our purpose is to take these undergraduates
- who have technical and liberal arts degrees
- and to give them the
- professional education in business administration
- that will enable them to become tomorrow's leaders.
- The school is very heavily involved in the community.
- We do not have an ivory tower school.
- Our faculty generally are drawn from the best universities
- in the country
- and many of them have a wealth of practical experience
- in business before they join us.
- We have professors who have had much experience
- in industrial relations and consulting
- with organizations like Humble Oil.
- We have professors who have accomplished
- a great deal of research both in the...
- practical world as well as the academic world.
- We draw professors from universities
- throughout the country.
- Our professors are involved in the business community.
- We have a number who are members of professional organizations
- and community organizations.
- Our students get out in the community.
- We use our students as consulting teams
- to small business organizations, both white and black,
- so that we can provide
- the kind of technical assistance for business
- that a business school like ours ought to provide.
- We try to encourage our faculty members
- to do as much consultation, as much work with business
- as is consistent with their academic objectives.
- For middle management and top management, we put on a
- continuing set of executive programs
- every year designed to keep the educational level
- of business people in this community
- up, designed to keep them informed of what the newest
- techniques and the newest trends in business are.
- So that involvement with the community
- is the byword of this school.
- [Business Professor] Is that about enough?
- [silence]
- [background crowd noise]
- - Go?
- A lot of changes have taken place
- in the university in the last ten years,
- and a lot of them have taken place
- in my particular department, which is Biology.
- Biology is no longer what it was ten years ago because
- many of the critical issues that are facing us people
- are really biological questions.
- Questions that didn't used to be asked
- and questions which will now have to be answered.
- We're an animal and we're a consumer on this planet,
- [Biology Professor] and we're not like all the rest.
- And we are just like all the rest,
- I think is a better way to say it.
- [background crowd noise]
- And...
- for the first time
- biology is finding itself, answering the questions:
- what is man's particular balance point in the environment?
- Now businessmen can ask of a business, does it show a profit?
- And this is often an ultimate criteria.
- And the idea that is now prevalent, one--
- [film reel distorts, audio cuts out]
- The university is not what it was ten years ago.
- And this is certainly true of the Biology department.
- Biology recently has found itself
- in the forefront and answering
- some of the questions that face the human...
- human population.
- We are...
- in essence a department, or an area, or a skill
- directly germane to the most critical problem
- now being realized by people on this earth.
- Just how far
- can we exploit our environment without fouling our nest?
- In business, the question
- that is always asked is,
- is there a profit?
- And this is answered by the short-term profit,
- the middle-term profit, and the long-term profit.
- Because of our increased exploitation of our environment,
- we are now going to have to answer the question,
- what is the environmental impact of our actions
- on the short-range,
- on the middle-range, and on the long-range?
- And my department has several members
- that are working in just this particular area
- and deciphering and
- [Biology Professor] establishing the balance points.
- - I burnt a candle for a poem,
- and killed my grandmother to write a novel,
- all on stage.
- [inaudible]
- [silence]
- - All right, one of the questions that
- my students sometimes ask is, why does a man write poetry?
- Well, one of the sophomoric inanities is that...
- a poet is called up into some sort of cosmic communion,
- which gives him a privileged information about the patterns
- and vibrations of the universe, and that out of that
- special privilege he's able to teach us.
- Well, that's not, I think, why a poet writes a poem.
- He writes it because he's a performer,
- and it is out of that performance
- that our interest in poetry develops.
- We like to see words in play because we think
- that the craft of words well-managed give pleasure...
- pleasure in the experience of language.
- Okay, you want to stop?
- [chuckles] I'm through now.
- - [Cameraman] Yeah.
- - We've had theatre at Tulane since 1937.
- People here who teach theatre, tend to think of it as more
- than just one of the performance arts,
- particularly in our undergraduate
- and in our graduate programs as well.
- We teach theatre as a means of communication between people.
- I don't need to say I think that
- communication is one of the things that's been talked
- most about lately, the art of communicating.
- And we feel that in theatre, in addition to being one
- of the most inclusive of the performing arts
- including many of the other arts, such as music,
- art, dance, and the others, that we are teaching people
- to communicate with each other, to express themselves,
- to get a meaning from the inside of one person's mind, into the
- inside of another person's mind.
- And this is our--
- we think our main contribution in teaching theatre here.
- We have an undergraduate degree in theatre, a major with a BA.
- We also give two advanced degrees, graduate degrees,
- a master's degree, MA, and a
- Master of Fine Arts degree, which is a much more practical,
- perhaps less theoretic or less academic degree
- since we are one of the performing arts.
- Theatre at Tulane occupies a position as
- one of the fine arts, although there's no formal
- designation of the performing arts
- here at Tulane, along with music and with art.
- We have two well-equipped, although small theatres
- in which we put on four major plays,
- four major productions open to the public each year.
- This is only a small part of the
- performance aspect of our department.
- We have as well countless one act,
- studio productions, many other things that we are allowing
- and helping our students to learn through doing
- rather than just sitting in a classroom and listening.
- So that we think that theatre
- on the Tulane campus plays a very important part
- in the general education, as well
- as the specific education of the theatre performer.
- - [making trumpet sounds]
- - The first thing to understand
- about the music department at Newcomb College is that it's
- within the framework of a liberal arts college.
- This makes us quite different in purpose
- from a professional school of music.
- A professional school of music is in business to prepare
- professional musicians,
- whereas a department such as ours is to provide
- a musical background for people, whether they're going to be
- professional musicians, that is, as teachers, or simply
- that they are going to have music
- as an important part of their life
- as they would have if they were majoring in English literature,
- French literature, or any of the other cultural areas.
- We do provide instruction in all of the
- different fields of music, that is in performance,
- in the history of music,
- and also in the theory of music.
- And all of our students take courses in each of these areas
- because they're actually related.
- If a person is going to play a composition, say,
- by Beethoven, it's important to know something about
- when this piece was written.
- This is what he learns in the history of music,
- what the general characteristics of the period are.
- It's also important to know that he understands
- how the piece is put together, and this is what he will
- learn in the theoretical parts of his curriculum here.
- This doesn't mean that students who major in music at Newcomb
- or Tulane cannot become professional musicians.
- But it means that they're going to have to have additional,
- more intensive study, probably in performance
- once they graduate from here.
- We're convinced, on the other hand, that this is a very--
- the kind of background that we give
- is important and indeed essential
- for the making of a complete musician.
- An important part of our work,
- of course, is for the non-specialist.
- We have many courses for the student who’s taking
- [Music Professor] only one course in music.
- [background crowd noise]
- - Oh.
- [inaudible]
- - The Art school in the university is one of the newer
- phenomenas in education especially in higher education.
- And our department is trying to provide the place
- for creative research in the visual arts,
- as well as time to study the history of art
- and mankind's accomplishments through the ages.
- And this feeds back into what
- the studio people do when they know the past.
- It helps them to anticipate the future.
- Our department has been going
- since Newcomb was founded, practically.
- And is world famous for its activities
- in the period of Art Nouveau, the turn of the century,
- when Newcomb pots were made and sold from the school along
- with other such activities.
- At the present time,
- we are beginning to work in the directions of the
- most experimental kinds of art which people are doing around
- the country.
- In the sense that this is so new,
- it's also very hard for people to understand,
- but it is part of the visual education.
- [background voices]
- - This is my second year
- as Dean of the Law School.
- And of necessity,
- I am-- I have a view of the school
- which is key to what I hope to accomplish with it.
- The heart of the Law School as of any other
- type of school is what it teaches
- and the people who do the teaching.
- With respect to the first, that is the curriculum,
- we have made what I would consider to be
- a lot of progress during the last two years.
- Of course, one must
- teach certain basic type of courses such as those
- which are peculiar to the law of Louisiana,
- and in the-- on the common law side,
- certain type of courses without which
- a lawyer cannot practice.
- Over the years, however,
- these courses have been changed.
- Some have been taken out of the curriculum.
- Some have been added to it.
- And these changes were not always the most rational type.
- So for the last year or so, the faculty has been engaged
- in reorganizing these courses
- in a sequence which would be irrational,
- and to the end of providing a more systematic
- education for the student.
- A second undertaking in this area
- has been to create [inaudible] the--
- or in the third year rather,
- courses representing a high degree of specialization.
- This is so, for example,
- with respect to courses in property
- and courses in taxation.
- In addition,
- the third year is being oriented more and more
- to courses which might be called cultural in nature.
- That is, courses in which the purpose is
- not just to provide a law student
- with instruction about rules of law
- or kinds of law which it needs for practice,
- but courses intended to give them some sense
- of perspective about the law.
- In this category, I would include
- not only courses in jurisprudence
- and legal history, but also courses
- which deal with the failure of the law properly
- to deal with some contemporary issues.
- In this respect,
- our law insofar as it concerns
- urban environment, insofar as it concerns pollution,
- and related type of issues,
- are cultural courses necessary to create a fine perspective--
- a perspective, rather, for the student.
- Finally, both in the first year of Law School
- and in the last year
- we are attempted to-- we are attempting
- to make what Tulane always has
- claimed to be and has not always succeeded in doing.
- And that is to be a law school devoted to comparative law,
- that is, with the systematic and correlated study
- of both the common law and the civil law of Louisiana.
- These are the essential directions of the school
- with respect to its curriculum.
- To bring about these changes
- we have had to bring some new teachers.
- It is my conviction that the new members
- of the faculty have added considerable strength
- to its already fine qualifications
- and that the Law School is going to be better in the years
- to come than it has ever been before.
- [inaudible]
- [silence]
- [inaudible]
- [silence]
- - Y’all drop...
- on by.
- Y’all drop...
- on by.