Rachel Kenney has hit the nail on the head. In her April 27 opinion piece, she details the ugly ramifications of eliminating the Engineering Basic Program and the exclusive process (disguised as representative democracy) that may get us there.

What galls me is that an obviously partisan agenda is being railroaded through an established process without significant input from the people it will affect the most — students. The motion to eliminate the Basic Program was made by a “closed door” committee (the Engineering College Curriculum Committee) without significant input from students or instructors of Engineering 160/161.

While I haven’t seen any arguments on the side of eliminating the Basic Program, I know of several against it. In addition to the points Rachel made, this move will undoubtedly hurt all of the smaller departments in the engineering college. The Basic Program provides a means for students to experience and evaluate these lesser-known departments for themselves.

Without this exposure, recruitment and retention by these departments will suffer. Eliminating the Basic Program will also have a “blurring” effect on what it means to be an engineer from ISU. Without a basic core of standards in math, physics and engineering problem solving, your degree will reflect only your specific department’s commitment to this kind of training. While the reputation of some individual departments may be stellar, it helps the reputation of ISU as a whole to have a more multidisciplinary commitment to a student’s education. Isn’t such a interdepartmental approach something ISU has been known for and committed to for quite a while?

As students, we DO NOT have a direct input into this decision. However, our faculty can cast a vote. We should do everything we can to motivate our instructors, advisors and professors to prevent the elimination of the Basic Program.

Simon Huss

Graduate student

Materials science and engineering