to teach large classes has so far been conducted upon the supposition that as the classes become larger the number of teachers can be suitably increased. In my work the problem has taken another form, which may be worth your consideration.

Suppose that a professor has charge of the junior and senior classes in some advanced subjects for which each of them comes to him three times a week, and that he must prepare his lectures, his blackboard and other illustrations and his models, and look over and mark frequent written recitations and problems without any help, besides attending to matters of attendance, order and discipline, examining conditioned students, meeting committees and making frequent reports such as may be expected in any institution conducted on the card-index plan. Suppose that he finds that he can do this efficiently with small classes and that the numbers increase, say from twenty-five to one hundred in each class, so as to impair the efficiency. What is the best thing to do if no help is given him?

If the subject is given by lectures he can in a properly appointed room take the whole class at once, and he can give occasional written recitations and look over the papers afterwards, and do this with a measure of success if all the students are in earnest and he has their attention, and if students who fall behind are dropped back. But he will be overworked and unable to keep up with the literature of his subjects, let alone doing any outside work in them, and he will know that his teaching was better when the classes were small. Now shall he divide the classes

and if so into what size sections? If he tries them in sections of twenty-five each he must spend twentyfour hours per week in the classroom and find most of his energy gone when he escapes from it, but he will have as many recitations and problems to look over as ever, besides which extra time will be needed in preparing his lectures so as to keep the different sections together and be sure that the same explanations are given to all the sections. It will therefore be impossible to teach them in four sections each and the question is can he expend his stock of energy most efficiently upon the class as a whole or would it be better to divide it into say two sections? Or to put it mathematically as a question of maxima and minima, given a large number N of students, and a fixed amount E of teaching energy, per week, each student to spend H hours weekly in the classroom, required the number n of sections for the best result.

THE NEW ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING BUILDING AT THE WORCESTER POLYTECHNIC

INSTITUTE.

BY HAROLD B. SMITH,

Director of the Electrical Engineering Department,

AND BY ARTHUR W. FRENCH,
Director of the Civil Engineering Department,
Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

The new building which has been erected the past year, as a home for the department of electrical engineering at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute has been developed along lines which are in many respects unique among buildings of its class and a description seems worthy of presentation before this Society as of probable interest to many of its members.

The department of electrical engineering was established at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute in the year 1896, and space was assigned for its work in the Salisbury Laboratories and in the Power laboratory, which was ample for the first few years, but rapidly became inadequate, as may be seen from the following table showing the growth in registration of students taking the electrical engineering course at the institute.

The last two values are, of course, estimates, but can be determined with reasonable accuracy from data now available.

The building was planned by the members of the electrical engineering department, with a view to the existing conditions and the probable accommodation necessary for students during the next few years. The various features are, therefore, designed to accommodate easily and conveniently a total registration in the department of 275 to 300 students, with a distribution for the work in the laboratories and class rooms of about the following proportion:

Graduate Students

Seniors

Juniors

15

50

60

While this is a desirable number of students to be accommodated with the facilities provided by the building and equipments now being installed, the common experience of technical schools, of growth beyond limits at present recognized, has been taken into consideration and, with slight modifications in the arrangements of the building and increase in the corps of instruction and in equipments, which could readily be accommodated without structural changes in the building, double the above registration could be taken care of without serious crowding.