Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 57.djvu/286

276 the profession. As usual, the Institute of Technology is early in the field with a course designed to this end.



The last of the engineering departments to be considered and one of the largest, is that of civil engineering, a department established when the Institute was founded, and until 1881 under the direction of that accomplished scholar and teacher, Prof. J. B. Henck, and since 1887 in charge of the writer. This department has grown since 1886 from four to eleven teachers, and from sixty to one hundred and fifty-three students in the three upper classes. It now occupies the two upper floors of the Engineering Building, or about twenty-three thousand square feet. In recognition of the increasing importance of sanitary questions affecting the health of communities, a new branch of civil engineering was recognized by the Institute in 1889 by the establishment of a regular four years' course in sanitary engineering, in which particular attention is directed to such problems, and students are afforded opportunities of studying the bearing of chemistry and biology upon them. Here again the breadth and specialization of the work at the Institute was shown, rendering it possible with no change in the teaching force and with no disarrangement of studies, to establish such a course of instruction as soon as the need for it became apparent.

Interesting work has been done under the direction of Professor Burton, professor of topographical engineering, in connection with the