Engineering, Science, and Management War Training
Encyclopedia
The Engineering, Science, and Management War Training program (ESMWT) was one of the largest and most productive educational activities in America's history. It was perhaps only second to the G.I. Bill (officially the Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944) in its scope and productivity.
Sometimes referred to as an "experiment in streamlined higher education", this government-sponsored program provided, without charge, college-grade courses for large numbers of Americans to fill urgently needed technical and scientific civilian positions just prior to and during World War II. College-grade was officially defined as "work of an academic standard customarily demanded of engineering-school students."
With successive designations of Engineering Defense Training (EDT), Engineering, Science, and Management Defense Training (ESMDT), and ESMWT, the program was operated by the U.S. Office of Education from October 1940 through June 1945, with 227 colleges and universities providing about 68,000 courses for close to 1,800,000 students at a total cost of some $60 million ($940 million today's dollars).
and heading the Office of Education (predecessor of the United States Department of Education
), to develop a program to help alleviate this crisis.
Studebaker asked Andrey A. Potter, Dean of Engineering at Purdue University
, to assist in developing this program and in preparing a proposal to Congress. A National Advisory Committee – composed of academic leaders and industry officials – first met on September 20–21, 1940. On October 9, a bill authoring the Engineering Defense Training (EDT) program with initial funding of $9 million (equivalent to $138 million in 2008) was passed by Congress and quickly signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt
.
The bill authorized the Office of Education to contract with engineering schools throughout the U.S. to offer "intensive courses of college grade, designed to meet the shortage of engineers in activities essential to national defense." Roy A. Seaton, Dean of Engineering at Kansas State College, was appointed to direct the program. Twenty-two regional advisors, each a prominent engineering educator, served without pay as coordinators.
Courses under the EDT program began on December 9, 1940. During the remainder of the Fiscal Year ending June 30, 1941, about 120,800 individuals enrolled in 2,260 courses offered by 144 institutions.
In July 1941, the Labor-Federal Security Appropriations Act, authorized the addition of chemistry, physics, and production-related courses to form an integrated ESMDT program. Funding was increased to $17.5 million ($270 million equivalent in 2008), and Dean George W. Case from the University of New Hampshire, replaced Seaton as the program director. During the next year, enrollment increased to nearly 450,000 men and women in about 7,800 courses offered by 196 colleges and universities.
After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor
(December 7, 1941) and the entry of the U.S. into World War II, the War-Time Commission was formed within the Department of Education to be responsible for this and other special training activities. The program was again renamed, becoming ESMWT, and continued as such through June 1945. The annual enrollment in ESMWT averaged nearly 600,000 in some 13,000 courses. Ultimately, 215 colleges and universities participated, with the offerings given in more than 1,000 towns and cities.
It is noted that many of the ESMWT courses, although of "college grade" at that time, might not be recognized as such in engineering and science programs today. At most colleges and universities in the early 1940s, engineering education greatly emphasized practical applications as opposed to theoretical analysis. It was somewhat the same in many undergraduate physics and chemistry programs.
Although there might be progressively higher-level courses in a subject, each ESMWT course was to be complete in itself and designed to convey some stated, applicable knowledge set. While prerequisites were listed for courses, these were mainly to indicate the background needed to understand the subject matter, and the pursuit of a course was not limited to persons having these prerequisites.
The participating colleges and universities were fully responsible for determining the local needs and developing courses to meet these needs. The relationship of these courses to the regular courses in a degree program was also under the responsibility of the offering institution.
Regular faculty members taught most of the courses. Although requiring considerable preparation, this was welcome work for most professors; between the draft and volunteering, college enrollment was a small fraction of normal. Some courses required instructors to have a highly specialized knowledge, and practitioners from industry were then used.
The matter of granting academic course credit for the special courses was an issue from the beginning. The Office of Education recommended against academic credit, reasioning that since the courses were paid by the government, this might "constitute a Federal subsidy to the participating college", a forbidden practice in that day. It was recommended, however, that knowledge of a subject gained through these courses be recognized, by examination or otherwise, for students in regular college programs, allowing them to excused from that subject, with or without credit.
The Engineers’ Council for Professional Development (ECPD), then the accrediting body for engineering programs and predecessor of the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology
(ABET), also had reservations concerning academic credit. Following much debate, it was left to each school to make any credit-related decisions and, in the end, most decided against directly granting academic credit, primarily citing the imbalance of applications over theory in most ESMWT courses.
After being prepared by the offering institution, course outlines, schedules, and other information were submitted to the ESMWT Washington staff for approval, and the cognizant school was required to permanently maintain the same type of records on presented courses as those kept in regular academic programs.
Perhaps the greatest diversity was in the number of female students. Prior to the 1940s, there were few women working in industry science and even less in engineering. The entry of women into defense jobs is well known through "Rosie the Riveter
", but those in wartime engineering and related work are not often recognized; however, thousands entered professional work after being prepared through this program.
Under the initial EDT, women constituted less than 1 percent. With the addition of science and management courses, there were about 9 percent under ESMDT. After the start of the war and ESMWT, the numbers participating in the program increased to 22 percent. Many engineering schools that had earlier been all-male, first accepted women when they began the program. Conversely, a number of previously female colleges – including Bryn Mawr College
, Skidmore College
, and Wellesley College – participated in the program and had their first male students. (Some of these schools later reverted to all-female).
Throughout the program, about 75 percent of the enrollments were in engineering subjects. After a series of courses in a particular subject area, many of the students, especially those having an earlier background in science and/or mathematics, were placed in regular engineering positions with industry or government agencies. These were sometimes referred to as "instant engineers." A 1950 survey of practicing engineers found that there were many more than the sum of those in 1940 plus those graduating from engineering colleges in the 1940-50 decade; much of this difference was attributed to persons who gained this classification through the ESMWT program.
Many schools considered graduation from ESMWT courses to have great significance. As an example, at North Carolina State University
the Chancellor often personally awarded certificates to the graduates.
The Office of Education requirements were that students of any race would be admitted to ESMDT courses. Unfortunately, African-Americans were not well represented either in the participating institutions or as students. Howard University
did have a relatively large program for the District of Columbia area; this was led by Herman R. Branson of the Physics Department who had a distinguished post-war career in academia.
assisted in teaching a 10-week ESMDT course in electronics at the University of Pennsylvania
's Moore School of Electrical Engineering
. The course had 30 students, 16 of whom held Ph.D. degrees. Among the students was John W. Mauchly. Eckert and Mauchly then teamed in developing the Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer (ENIAC
), America's first large-scale digital computer.
Courses in industrial chemistry and metallurgy were in great demand. Harry J. Sweeney, then Chief Metallurgist for the giant Republic Steel
, stated, "I don’t know what we would have done without the ESMDT courses; about 75 percent of our new professionals were trained through this program."
Aircraft played a vital role in World War II. During 1940, Cornell University
started courses in aircraft structures and stress analysis at Buffalo, New York
, for Bell Aircraft
and Curtis Wright
. One of these, starting December 9, was the first EDT-sponsored course in the U.S. By the end of the first year, more than 800 students were attending these classes.
In 1941, the University of Texas started a series of ESMDT courses in aeronautical engineering. These were so successful that the next year a full Department of Aeronautical Engineering was formed. For the aircraft industries of Los Angeles, Maurice J. Zucrow of University of California, Los Angeles
, taught ESMWT courses on jet propulsion
and gas turbines, introducing hundreds of aeronautical engineers to this critical technology of post-war propulsion.
Across the nation, some of the most attended courses were in electronics and radio communications. Massachusetts Institute of Technology
, Harvard University
, Tufts College, Northeastern University, Boston University
, and Boston College
joined forces to offer the ESMDT/ESMWT program; Dean Edward L. Moreland of MIT served as the coordinator. Much of it was in support of the Radiation Laboratory
at MIT where microwave radar was being developed and the electronics firms in the northeast area.
Rutgers University
was one of the few participants that included labor-management courses in its ESMWT offerings. These brought workers to the Rutgers campus in unprecedented numbers. The coordinator, Norman C. Miller stated, "The spirit of patriotism, sacrifice, and co-operation that imbued both labor and management in service to the war effort was clearly evident in these courses." This effort carried into the post-war era with the establishment of the School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Rutgers,
Sometimes referred to as an "experiment in streamlined higher education", this government-sponsored program provided, without charge, college-grade courses for large numbers of Americans to fill urgently needed technical and scientific civilian positions just prior to and during World War II. College-grade was officially defined as "work of an academic standard customarily demanded of engineering-school students."
With successive designations of Engineering Defense Training (EDT), Engineering, Science, and Management Defense Training (ESMDT), and ESMWT, the program was operated by the U.S. Office of Education from October 1940 through June 1945, with 227 colleges and universities providing about 68,000 courses for close to 1,800,000 students at a total cost of some $60 million ($940 million today's dollars).
History
In mid-1940, before America officially entered World War II, it was brought to the attention of U.S. Congress that the civilian effort supporting the expected conflict would require far more engineers than were then available or could be produced through normal programs at colleges and universities. As part of the budget preparation, Congress tasked John W. Studebaker, then Commissioner of EducationCommissioner of Education
The Commissioner of Education was the title given to the head of the National Bureau of Education, a former unit within the Department of the Interior in the United States...
and heading the Office of Education (predecessor of the United States Department of Education
United States Department of Education
The United States Department of Education, also referred to as ED or the ED for Education Department, is a Cabinet-level department of the United States government...
), to develop a program to help alleviate this crisis.
Studebaker asked Andrey A. Potter, Dean of Engineering at Purdue University
Purdue University
Purdue University, located in West Lafayette, Indiana, U.S., is the flagship university of the six-campus Purdue University system. Purdue was founded on May 6, 1869, as a land-grant university when the Indiana General Assembly, taking advantage of the Morrill Act, accepted a donation of land and...
, to assist in developing this program and in preparing a proposal to Congress. A National Advisory Committee – composed of academic leaders and industry officials – first met on September 20–21, 1940. On October 9, a bill authoring the Engineering Defense Training (EDT) program with initial funding of $9 million (equivalent to $138 million in 2008) was passed by Congress and quickly signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt , also known by his initials, FDR, was the 32nd President of the United States and a central figure in world events during the mid-20th century, leading the United States during a time of worldwide economic crisis and world war...
.
The bill authorized the Office of Education to contract with engineering schools throughout the U.S. to offer "intensive courses of college grade, designed to meet the shortage of engineers in activities essential to national defense." Roy A. Seaton, Dean of Engineering at Kansas State College, was appointed to direct the program. Twenty-two regional advisors, each a prominent engineering educator, served without pay as coordinators.
Courses under the EDT program began on December 9, 1940. During the remainder of the Fiscal Year ending June 30, 1941, about 120,800 individuals enrolled in 2,260 courses offered by 144 institutions.
In July 1941, the Labor-Federal Security Appropriations Act, authorized the addition of chemistry, physics, and production-related courses to form an integrated ESMDT program. Funding was increased to $17.5 million ($270 million equivalent in 2008), and Dean George W. Case from the University of New Hampshire, replaced Seaton as the program director. During the next year, enrollment increased to nearly 450,000 men and women in about 7,800 courses offered by 196 colleges and universities.
After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor
Attack on Pearl Harbor
The attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike conducted by the Imperial Japanese Navy against the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on the morning of December 7, 1941...
(December 7, 1941) and the entry of the U.S. into World War II, the War-Time Commission was formed within the Department of Education to be responsible for this and other special training activities. The program was again renamed, becoming ESMWT, and continued as such through June 1945. The annual enrollment in ESMWT averaged nearly 600,000 in some 13,000 courses. Ultimately, 215 colleges and universities participated, with the offerings given in more than 1,000 towns and cities.
Courses and academic credit
The primary objective of the program was to prepare persons for professional positions in defense activities. The authorization required the courses to be of "an academic standard customarily demanded of engineering-school students", distinguishing them from offerings of trade or technical schools. They were limited to engineering, physics, chemistry, and management subjects directly needed in defense activitiesIt is noted that many of the ESMWT courses, although of "college grade" at that time, might not be recognized as such in engineering and science programs today. At most colleges and universities in the early 1940s, engineering education greatly emphasized practical applications as opposed to theoretical analysis. It was somewhat the same in many undergraduate physics and chemistry programs.
Although there might be progressively higher-level courses in a subject, each ESMWT course was to be complete in itself and designed to convey some stated, applicable knowledge set. While prerequisites were listed for courses, these were mainly to indicate the background needed to understand the subject matter, and the pursuit of a course was not limited to persons having these prerequisites.
The participating colleges and universities were fully responsible for determining the local needs and developing courses to meet these needs. The relationship of these courses to the regular courses in a degree program was also under the responsibility of the offering institution.
Regular faculty members taught most of the courses. Although requiring considerable preparation, this was welcome work for most professors; between the draft and volunteering, college enrollment was a small fraction of normal. Some courses required instructors to have a highly specialized knowledge, and practitioners from industry were then used.
The matter of granting academic course credit for the special courses was an issue from the beginning. The Office of Education recommended against academic credit, reasioning that since the courses were paid by the government, this might "constitute a Federal subsidy to the participating college", a forbidden practice in that day. It was recommended, however, that knowledge of a subject gained through these courses be recognized, by examination or otherwise, for students in regular college programs, allowing them to excused from that subject, with or without credit.
The Engineers’ Council for Professional Development (ECPD), then the accrediting body for engineering programs and predecessor of the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology
Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology
ABET, Inc., formerly the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology, is a non-profit organization that accredits post-secondary education programs in applied science, computing, engineering, and technology...
(ABET), also had reservations concerning academic credit. Following much debate, it was left to each school to make any credit-related decisions and, in the end, most decided against directly granting academic credit, primarily citing the imbalance of applications over theory in most ESMWT courses.
After being prepared by the offering institution, course outlines, schedules, and other information were submitted to the ESMWT Washington staff for approval, and the cognizant school was required to permanently maintain the same type of records on presented courses as those kept in regular academic programs.
Students and recognition
By law, admission to ESMWT courses was open to students without regard to age, sex, or race. With this, and without enforcement of prerequisites, there was a great diversity of students in the various offerings. It was not uncommon to find students in their early teens using the ESMWT program to accelerate their entry into engineering and science jobs. On the other end of the age spectrum, many of the students were in mid-life, preparing for a change of work field or refreshing their earlier education.Perhaps the greatest diversity was in the number of female students. Prior to the 1940s, there were few women working in industry science and even less in engineering. The entry of women into defense jobs is well known through "Rosie the Riveter
Rosie the Riveter
Rosie the Riveter is a cultural icon of the United States, representing the American women who worked in factories during World War II, many of whom produced munitions and war supplies. These women sometimes took entirely new jobs replacing the male workers who were in the military...
", but those in wartime engineering and related work are not often recognized; however, thousands entered professional work after being prepared through this program.
Under the initial EDT, women constituted less than 1 percent. With the addition of science and management courses, there were about 9 percent under ESMDT. After the start of the war and ESMWT, the numbers participating in the program increased to 22 percent. Many engineering schools that had earlier been all-male, first accepted women when they began the program. Conversely, a number of previously female colleges – including Bryn Mawr College
Bryn Mawr College
Bryn Mawr College is a women's liberal arts college located in Bryn Mawr, a community in Lower Merion Township, Pennsylvania, ten miles west of Philadelphia. The name "Bryn Mawr" means "big hill" in Welsh....
, Skidmore College
Skidmore College
Skidmore College is a private, independent, liberal arts college with an enrollment of approximately 2,500 students. The college is located in the town of Saratoga Springs, New York State....
, and Wellesley College – participated in the program and had their first male students. (Some of these schools later reverted to all-female).
Throughout the program, about 75 percent of the enrollments were in engineering subjects. After a series of courses in a particular subject area, many of the students, especially those having an earlier background in science and/or mathematics, were placed in regular engineering positions with industry or government agencies. These were sometimes referred to as "instant engineers." A 1950 survey of practicing engineers found that there were many more than the sum of those in 1940 plus those graduating from engineering colleges in the 1940-50 decade; much of this difference was attributed to persons who gained this classification through the ESMWT program.
Many schools considered graduation from ESMWT courses to have great significance. As an example, at North Carolina State University
North Carolina State University
North Carolina State University at Raleigh is a public, coeducational, extensive research university located in Raleigh, North Carolina, United States. Commonly known as NC State, the university is part of the University of North Carolina system and is a land, sea, and space grant institution...
the Chancellor often personally awarded certificates to the graduates.
The Office of Education requirements were that students of any race would be admitted to ESMDT courses. Unfortunately, African-Americans were not well represented either in the participating institutions or as students. Howard University
Howard University
Howard University is a federally chartered, non-profit, private, coeducational, nonsectarian, historically black university located in Washington, D.C., United States...
did have a relatively large program for the District of Columbia area; this was led by Herman R. Branson of the Physics Department who had a distinguished post-war career in academia.
Noteworthy offerings
From June 23 to August 29, 1941, electrical engineering student J. Presper EckertJ. Presper Eckert
John Adam Presper "Pres" Eckert Jr. was an American electrical engineer and computer pioneer. With John Mauchly he invented the first general-purpose electronic digital computer , presented the first course in computing topics , founded the first commercial computer company , and...
assisted in teaching a 10-week ESMDT course in electronics at the University of Pennsylvania
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...
's Moore School of Electrical Engineering
Moore School of Electrical Engineering
The Moore School of Electrical Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania came into existence as a result of an endowment from Alfred Fitler Moore on June 4, 1923. It was granted to Penn's School of Electrical Engineering, located in the Towne Building...
. The course had 30 students, 16 of whom held Ph.D. degrees. Among the students was John W. Mauchly. Eckert and Mauchly then teamed in developing the Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer (ENIAC
ENIAC
ENIAC was the first general-purpose electronic computer. It was a Turing-complete digital computer capable of being reprogrammed to solve a full range of computing problems....
), America's first large-scale digital computer.
Courses in industrial chemistry and metallurgy were in great demand. Harry J. Sweeney, then Chief Metallurgist for the giant Republic Steel
Republic Steel
Republic Steel was once the third largest steel producer in the United States.The Republic Iron and Steel Company was founded in Youngstown, Ohio in 1899....
, stated, "I don’t know what we would have done without the ESMDT courses; about 75 percent of our new professionals were trained through this program."
Aircraft played a vital role in World War II. During 1940, Cornell University
Cornell University
Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...
started courses in aircraft structures and stress analysis at Buffalo, New York
Buffalo, New York
Buffalo is the second most populous city in the state of New York, after New York City. Located in Western New York on the eastern shores of Lake Erie and at the head of the Niagara River across from Fort Erie, Ontario, Buffalo is the seat of Erie County and the principal city of the...
, for Bell Aircraft
Bell Aircraft
The Bell Aircraft Corporation was an aircraft manufacturer of the United States, a builder of several types of fighter aircraft for World War II but most famous for the Bell X-1, the first supersonic aircraft, and for the development and production of many important civilian and military helicopters...
and Curtis Wright
Curtis Wright
Curtis Blaine Wright is an American country music artist. He made his debut in 1989 with the single "She's Got a Man on her Mind" on a branch of MCA Records, before recording a solo album in 1992 on Liberty Records...
. One of these, starting December 9, was the first EDT-sponsored course in the U.S. By the end of the first year, more than 800 students were attending these classes.
In 1941, the University of Texas started a series of ESMDT courses in aeronautical engineering. These were so successful that the next year a full Department of Aeronautical Engineering was formed. For the aircraft industries of Los Angeles, Maurice J. Zucrow of University of California, Los Angeles
University of California, Los Angeles
The University of California, Los Angeles is a public research university located in the Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, USA. It was founded in 1919 as the "Southern Branch" of the University of California and is the second oldest of the ten campuses...
, taught ESMWT courses on jet propulsion
Jet propulsion
Jet propulsion is motion produced by passing a jet of fluid in the opposite direction to the direction of motion. By conservation of momentum, the moving body is propelled in the opposite direction to the jet....
and gas turbines, introducing hundreds of aeronautical engineers to this critical technology of post-war propulsion.
Across the nation, some of the most attended courses were in electronics and radio communications. Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...
, Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
, Tufts College, Northeastern University, Boston University
Boston University
Boston University is a private research university located in Boston, Massachusetts. With more than 4,000 faculty members and more than 31,000 students, Boston University is one of the largest private universities in the United States and one of Boston's largest employers...
, and Boston College
Boston College
Boston College is a private Jesuit research university located in the village of Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, USA. The main campus is bisected by the border between the cities of Boston and Newton. It has 9,200 full-time undergraduates and 4,000 graduate students. Its name reflects its early...
joined forces to offer the ESMDT/ESMWT program; Dean Edward L. Moreland of MIT served as the coordinator. Much of it was in support of the Radiation Laboratory
Radiation Laboratory
The Radiation Laboratory, commonly called the Rad Lab, was located at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts and functioned from October 1940 until December 31, 1945...
at MIT where microwave radar was being developed and the electronics firms in the northeast area.
Rutgers University
Rutgers University
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey , is the largest institution for higher education in New Jersey, United States. It was originally chartered as Queen's College in 1766. It is the eighth-oldest college in the United States and one of the nine Colonial colleges founded before the American...
was one of the few participants that included labor-management courses in its ESMWT offerings. These brought workers to the Rutgers campus in unprecedented numbers. The coordinator, Norman C. Miller stated, "The spirit of patriotism, sacrifice, and co-operation that imbued both labor and management in service to the war effort was clearly evident in these courses." This effort carried into the post-war era with the establishment of the School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Rutgers,