English as an Engineering Tool: Samuel Chandler Earle and the Tufts Experiment

Journal of Technical Writing and Communication Jan 1995

English as an Engineering Tool: Samuel Chandler Earle and the Tufts Experiment

Teresa Kynell Northern Michigan University

Abstract

Evaluation of Samuel Chandler Earle's 1911 presentation to the Society for the Promotion of Engineering Education demonstrates Earle's role as a key player in the shift of a technical writing course which combined both the goals of an engineering curriculum with the ultimate, real-world needs of the graduated engineer. Earle's Tufts Experiment, discussed in his paper, “English in the Engineering School at Tufts College” [1], would not only provide the impetus for a decade of discussion among engineering and English educators, but would provide, in part, the impetus for the Committee on English, a committee Earle would chair, charged with studying engineering English offerings in the United States.