Fine Arts finance
Bringing performing artists to campus has become an increasingly expensive venture, but the Swarthout Society is constantly helping to defer those costs.
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Nebraska will be able to face Florida State in full force tomorrow, as the NCAA agreed to postpone sanctions against 60 of the team's players. Nebraska will make its appeal Tuesday
Husker hiatus
Bright turn only
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Can this be Kansas, Toto? Today will be another pleasant one with highs in the 80s. and temperatures should drop into the 50s tonight.
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THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Vol. 97, No. 10 (USPS 650-640)
Published since 1889 by the students of the University of Kansas
Friday September 5,1986
Futures for engineering graduates are diverse Jobs for new oil engineers rare Aerospace students
By ALISON YOUNG
If he had it to do over again, David Ratliff wouldn't major in petroleum engineering
"It's something I want to do," he said, "but there aren't any jobs."
Ratliff, Topeka senior, is one of more than 200 KU chemical and petroleum engineering students whose job opportunities have decreased as oil prices have dropped.
Carl E. Locke, dean of engineering,
said the foundering oil industry and
the resulting lack of jobs had caused
enrollment in chemical and
petroleum engineering to drop
significantly.
Three or four years ago these majors were extremely popular because of their high job demand, Locke said.
Since 1982, enrollment in the petroleum engineering program has dropped 63 percent. In 1982, 108 students were enrolled, and school officials project that 40 will be enrolled this fall.
Enrollment in chemical engineering has dropped 40 percent, from 269 students in 1982 to a projected enrollment of 160 this fall. This fall's projected enrollment is four students more than last year's and represents the first increase since 1982
George Swift, chairman of the department of chemical and petroleum engineering, said the drop in enrollment was not unique to the University of Kansas. It is affecting all of the chemical and petroleum engineering programs across the country, he said.
Julie Cunningham, engineering placement director, said petroleum
engineers were having an especially difficult time finding jobs.
"Since most go into the oil and gas industry, they've been having some problems," she said. "But it wasn't that way four years ago when they came into the program."
In the spot market, domestic oil brought $16.15 a barrel Wednesday. On the same day last year, the price was $28.25 a barrel.
When times were better, many chemical engineers also were hired in the oil and gas industry, said Cunningham.
But chemical engineers have more job flexibility, she said, and they aren't facing the same difficulties finding jobs.
Swift said chemical engineering students were employed in a variety
of fields ranging from petrochemicals to plastics to cosmetics
Paul Willhite, professor of chemical and petroleum engineering, said oil companies were only hired when the industry was engineering students at each school.
Students who do not graduate at the top of their classes will have more difficulty finding employment, he said.
"They're going to have to do a lot of looking and knock on a lot of doors," Willhite said.
Because of the state of the job market for petroleum engineers, Locke said it might be to the advantage of these students to stay in school to earn at least a master's
See PETROLEUM, p. 5, col. 1
Aerospace students set high enrollment
KU 20th Day Petroleum Engineering Enrollment
By BILL RAYNOLDS Staff writer
Bill Skeet/KANSA
This fall's enrollment in the KU aerospace engineering program will be the highest in its history, a School of Engineering official said last week.
Enrollment in the program has increased steadily during the past several years, said Vincent Muirhead, professor and chairman of the department of aerospace engineering.
He projected that enrollment on the 20th day of classes would be 325 students, 13 percent higher than last fall's 20th-day enrollment of 286. The 20th-day figures represent the official enrollment count.
"There has been a growing student interest in NASA, the space shuttle program and the aircraft industry," Mrhead said.
If Muirhead's projection holds true, the enrollment in aerospace engineering this fall will have increased 23 percent since 1982, when the enrollment was 263 students.
Muirhead also said reasonable tuition rates and a national reputation in aerospace engineering might explain the enrollment increase.
KU's aerospace program ranked eighth out of 35 schools in the latest Gourman Report, an independent survey of some schools that offer degrees in aerospace engineering.
Muirhead said about 75 colleges and universities in the country offered degrees in aerospace
engineering.
Jan Roskam, Deane E. Ackers distinguished professor of aerospace engineering, said he had about 50 students in his flight dynamics class. An ideal size is 30 students, he said.
Increased student interest also can be a drawback for a growing engineering program. Larger class sizes, budget constraints and a lack of equipment can handcuff professors and students.
"If a class gets too big, it becomes a mass production line." Roskam said. "We're terribly understaffed compared to the number of students
The aerospace engineering program has seven faculty members.
While KU's aerospace program receives no state money, federal and private agencies contributed about $60,000 in research money last year. About 90 percent of the money, $540,000, came from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Muirhead said, and the remaining 10 percent, $60,000, came from the private sector.
Roskam and Muirhead both said the department needed to acquire computer-aided design equipment and more up-to-date lab equipment. For example, Roskam said that KU design classes still were taught by hand while other top aerospace programs used computers .
"We're hit with a double whammy," Muirhead said. "There's little
See AEROSPACE, p. 5, col. 1
Four injured as gunmen seize plane in Pakistan
The Associated Press
KARACHI, Pakistan — Four men dressed as security guards and firing machine guns seized a Pan Am jumbo jet fitted with almost 400 people at Karachi airport early today, and at least four people were wounded, officials in Pakistan said.
Aman spokeswoman Pamela Hanlon in New York said a young Asian man was shot on the plane sometime after it was seized and was taken from the Boeing 747 in unknown condition. She said she could not confirm that the man was a passenger or who had shot him.
Pan Am's manager at Karachi, Viraf Daroga, was on the tarmac negotiating with the gunmen through a megaphone as heavily armed Pakistani soldiers and commandos surrounded the plane and cordoned off the area.
A Pakistani air force spokesman, who refused to be identified, said that the gunmen appeared to be Arabs
and that they were speaking English.
and that they were speaking English. The gunmen were demanding to be killed.
The three-man cockpit crew managed to escape through an emergency hatch. The plane had just arrived from Bombay, India, on its way to New York. The Pan Am office in Bombay said about 41 Americans were among the passengers.
The attackers fired machine-gun bursts into the air when seizing the plane. Two airport ground crew members were injured in the assault, but it was not clear whether they had been shot.
Sluggish system boxes in KU prof
Hours after the plane was seized, the gunmen opened fire from the plane at airport personnel and wounded at least one worker of Pakistan's Civil Aviation Administration, officials said.
Airport police also said they thought one person on the plane had been wounded.
See HIJACK, p. 5, col. 5
By TONY BALANDRAN Staff writer
An overhead projector beamed the face onto the walls of Wescoe Hall's George R. Waggoner Auditorium. Thomas, Arthur Young distinguished professor of business, wrote the words "homework box" beside the face.
Arthur Thomas drew a disgruntled face with a green marker yesterday beneath the financial accounting homework assignment.
Outside the auditorium hung a $56 wooden box, Thomas's final symbolic ornament of a four-month entanglement with a process designed to make large, not small, changes. Facilities operations employees installed the box yesterday.
The box will keep teaching assistants from having to gather more than 600 assignments before class each day, Thomas said. Students now can put homework in the box before entering class, allowing him a few more minutes for his lecture.
Although the box has three features Thomas did not approve, he said he was satisfied that some permanent container was installed.
The features Thomas did not approve of are a trough in the front of the box, a partition that
"I can't give a complete happy face because the box is not the way I want it," he said to his class of about 300
"You need to be careful as to how to put your homework in," Thomas said. "If you put the papers on the partition, they might fall off the box, and after a rainy day, you might get back some muddy papers."
separates the box's width into two equal parts, and an anled front.
The trough probably was cut to make the box more attractive, he said. However, Thomas said the partition and the angle reduced the volume.
"They built the box well. We'll see what happens on the first big homework assignment," he said. "My thought is that it won't all fit."
The wooden box replaced a cardboard box Thomas had used since the beginning of the semester. Thomas began his quest for the wooden box May 22. After approval by David Shulenburger, associate dean of business, the plans went to the office of academic affairs.
After a trip through the wrong department, the plans, which would make the box four inches too narrow, were returned to Shulenburger and Thomas. The design was then returned to architectural services for re-evaluation.
When the design was returned a second time to Thomas and Shulenburger in mid-August, they again disagreed with the plans, this time because
Reproduction of Architectural Services blueprint the plans called for a partition down the middle of the box. Shulenburger finally approved the plan with the partition because of his frustration.
Donald Whipple, assistant director of architectural services, said, "We normally do not handle small projects such as this. A great deal of our projects range in the $40,000 to $50,000 range."
Under the gun
Ray Crader, St. Louis sophomore, labors on an architecture project due today. Crader and other second-year architecture students worked late last night in the Lindley Hall Annex.
Re-admission plan near final OK
By PAM MILLER
Staff writer
A proposal that would keep dismissed students from being immediately re-admitted to the University school that dismissed them is nearly at the end of its journey to the chancellor's office.
The Faculty Senate is the only governing body remaining that has to approve the change before Chancellor Gene A. Budig makes his decision on the matter.
The amendment would affect the 9Z status of students who were dismissed from one of the University schools or the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, said Melvin Dubnick, chairman of the Faculty Executive Committee.
Students under the 92% status take courses for enjoyment. They are not seeking a degree and are not enrolled in any of the schools or the college
FacEx sent a memo to each member of the Faculty Senate on Aug. 27. The members have until Sept. 12 to petition for review of the amendment. If no petition is filed by then, Dubnick said, the amendment goes to the chancellor
The amendment states that any student who has been dismissed from
The amendment states that any student who has been dismissed from a school or the college may not enroll for one regular semester after dismissal.
a school or the college may not enroll for one regular semester after dismissal. The student, however, may be re-admitted to another school or the college.
The University Council Committee on Academic Procedures and Policies originally recommended the
It also states that any student who was dismissed for academic reasons and had taken course work under the 92 status may not count that course work towards a degree. Last semester, 476 students were classified as 92.
amendment in March, and it since has been approved by the University Council, Senate Executive Committee and University Faculty Council
Donald Scheid, associate dean of fine arts and chairman of the committee that recommended the amendment, said the misuse of the 9Z. status by dismissed students made a mockery of the standards of the University.
"Let me say that this was not something that went forward quickly. This was something researched by two different committees." Scheid said.
However, the amendment has not made its way through the system without meeting some opposition from students.
For example, at the May 1 meeting of the University Council, all 10 of the council's student members present opposed the amendment.
opposed the affirmative.
"Basically, the problem that the faculty sees is that students who have been academically dismissed are being allowed to continue school in the 9Z status." said Gordon Woods, Ulysses graduate student and a student member of the council. "But the real problem is that students are being dismissed."