I graduated from John Marshall High School in Los Angeles in 1949, and was then accepted to UCLA College of Engineering in Los Angeles, when university education was affordable even for students who worked and paid their way as I did (earning about $1 per hour). Upon becoming an undergrad, and later a graduate student in the 1950's, I along with about 100 College of Engineering freshman students were extremely fortunate. We entered the College of engineering to be stewarded by the Dean of the College of Engineering, Llewellyn K. Boelter. I also had the great fortune to meet and have as a mentor and dear friend, Professor Alan E. Flanigan. Some comments about these two educators follow to provide some background in the wake of the oil rig failure and relaes of many millions of gallons of toxic oil that is now endangering all life as the toxins contaminate water and land. You will understand the connection if you read on.
Llewellyn Michael Kraus Boelter was born in Winona, Minnesota, on August 7, 1898. In 1917 he received the Baccalaureate degree from the College of Mechanics of the University of California at Berkeley. He continued his studies and in 1918 was awarded the degree Master of Science in Electrical Engineering. His vision of engineering as began to shape. Dean Boelter began his long career in teaching with his appointment in 1919 as Instructor in Electrical Engineering, and his initial interest in the development of the heat-power laboratory and the upgrading of instruction in the field of internal-combustion engines. Both were hands on engineering that required experimental lab work to verify designs and actual mechanisms. In 1923, he was advanced to Assistant Professor of Experimental Engineering in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, and in 1927 to Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering, and in 1934 to a Full Professorship. Each step entailed multiple disciplines of science, and experimental verification of his ideas.
He became the Associate Dean of Engineering at UC Berkeley in 1943, and was selected to lead, organize, and implement the College of Engineering at the University of California at Los Angeles, which began under his Deanship in 1944. He put his ideas on engineering into practice and established a College of Engineering without specialties. His purpose was to instill in his students the idea that scientific disciplines applied in engineering are inseparable. Basic knowledge derived from sciences is applied for practical purposes for engineering. He believed that engineering must not be divided into separate academic fields that bear no relationship to the real holistic world. Based upon this strongly held belief, upon establishing the new College of Engineering at UCLA, he abolished all specialized engineering departments and unified an interdisciplinary educational approach that integrated all engineering disciplines into one field: Engineering. UCLA stood virtually by itself in the education of engineers. A few Engineering Colleges instituted similar approaches, but the march to specialization and compartmentalization of engineering education prevailed. This is a basic cause of the Gulf of Mexico oilrig failure and the consequences of the disaster that follow.
Boelter and his hand picked faculty abolished the use of professorial titles and addressed each other as mister (at that time all faculty were male) or by their last names in a collegial manner. Typical academic formality was absent. Interdisciplinary education was stressed and all areas of science and mathematics essential to tackle real-life engineering problems and needs were emphasized. Courses in humanities and economics as well as history and philosophy were required. Engineering today is rarely taught using the interdisciplinary and unified Boelter method, and engineering education has become instead a highly specialized fragmentation of scientific disciplines manipulated by computer programming to create a world of “virtual engineering” that has less to do with realty and more to do with computer simulation. Thus, the failure of the Gulf oilrig and blowout preventer took place, and continues to poison the planet that all animal and plant life and we inhabit. Under Boelter’s leadership if implemented, this catastrophe would not have happened. Future similar man made catastrophes are inevitable if we fail to learn essential lessons from this disaster that require fundamental changes in engineering education and engineering management as`well.
All freshmen first met Dean Boelter when he addressed the new undergraduate class, as he did annually. A key part of his words of guidance always included the following: "Education proposes to rescue men from slavery and make them free, in case they want to be fre e. It proposes in the second place to make them free from the bondage of prejudice, routine, and the rule of thumb. A free man is a man who can initiate; who has sufficient control over his walks and ways to do as his reason and outlook tell him is right and best. A man who acts on prejudice, or drives his wagon in any other rut, is a slave, no matter how much he may pride himself on his prejudices and loyal adherences". He was quoting Benjamin Ide Wheeler who was the President of the University of California (Berkley was the only campus then) from 1899-1919. Boelter stated his deep belief in President Wheeler's definition of a university “The whole purpose of the university is to provide men with the means of seeing into things themselves, so that they shall not be dependent, but independent. Education must never be by rule of thumb...education is a path to independence and individual responsibility for everything one does". Dean Boelter instilled a sense of values and responsibility in all students who attended UCLA College of Engineering during his 22 years as Dean, and I consider myself very fortunate to have been an undergraduate and graduate student there during that period.
Another faculty member who influenced me greatly was Alan E. Flanigan, Professor of Engineering, who was my principle guide both as a teacher and as a human. He taught me so much about engineering as a discipline wherein science, math, and analysis and testing is necessary to achieve some practical purpose for the benefit, not harm, of people. Alan Flanigan imbued me with the understanding that the disciplines of engineering are ultimately rely upon empirical testing and the outcome of such testing. Engineering is not the theoretical use of scientific principles, but rather the application of scientific principles to the design and construction of devices and things that are proven safe and reliable by means of actual physical tests. Experimental testing is the essence of engineering, and cannot be ignored or excluded because of some theoretical reason or postulation. Under Alan Flanigan's guidance, I was consistently reminded of the basic requirement for all engineering as displayed by a prominent sign in his office that was evident upon entering his office: "One test is worth a thousand expert opinions."
Engineering cannot me accomplished without testing to avoid unanticipated failures of structures or devices. This essential aspect of engineering was basic at UCLA at the time I was a student. Laboratory and testing experiences requiring individual use of a wide variety of laboratory equipment was a mandatory part of the engineering curriculum. These included X-ray equipment, 500 ton compression/tension testing machines, materials property testing and evaluations, electrical circuits and measurements, chemical analysis and testing , land surveying, and other lab apparatus to teach students that engineering requires physical testing and assumptions must be tested before they are allowed to be implemented. These lab classes were team projects where a team of four students actually set up and operated the testing equipment and individual reports were submitted analyzing the results and presenting conclusions. Such labs were part of most courses.
Sciences were the underpinning of engineering and testing was the required validation of all engineering developments. No exceptions allowed regardless of the mathematical formulae and scientific tools that were used to aid in the development. Real testing would tell whether the engineering result was what you intended or not
That was engineering as it was taught at UCLA from about 1949 through 1966 when Dean Boelter was in charge, and faculty like Alan Flanigan were in the trenches teaching young students the art of engineering. That art is the blend of science, math, and their application to the world of human invention and physical things that are man made. The art of engineering is absent if testing is omitted or ignored. Unfortunately testing is largely ignored today in Engineering Colleges at most universities because the computer has replaced expensive a space intensive laboratory testing equipment, and because our educational system produces theoreticians who have been taught that the computer when programmed properly is a deity that cannot produce an incorrect solution to any problem. Nothing can be more false. Engineering has become a computer art or technological game, and the fundamental requirement of testing is becoming extinct. Today’s engineering graduates from even the most prestigious universities are mainly computer trained specialists in highly specialized engineering fields rather than generalized holistic engineers who understood the practice of the real art of engineering as taught at UCLA under Dean Boelter and with faculty like Alan Flanigan.
Now let us relate of this to the failure of the gulf oil rig. The failure and the death of eleven workers and injuries of many others would not have occurred if true engineering had been applied. The resultant toxic contamination of millions (or possibly billions) of cubic feet of ocean water, the toxic contamination of millions (or billions) of acres of wetlands and beaches, and the deaths of untold numbers of bird and sea life would have been avoided if real engineering were applied. The loss of employment in the fishing industry, and the eventual toxic and carcinogenic contamination of drinking water (as the ingress into groundwater aquifers occurs) was avoidable and would not have occurred if engineers had done engineering as was taught a long time ago at UCLA.
Firstly, engineers must make the basic decisions concerning safety of any device or structure, not business executives or corporate CEO's. A good engineering CEO would not have made the decision to drill in deep ocean water. Such a decision must be made after complete system testing is conducted, under conditions that are actually duplicative of the deepwater mechanisms and ocean bottom conditions. Large laboratory pressure vessels and massive apparatus are necessary, and I bet my bottom dollar that the essential testing apparatus was not even considered by the CEO's running the show. Engineers involved should have said no to the entire project without testing of the mechanisms and control systems intended to stop a leak once one started. The testing of mechanism and control systems if conducted under truly simulative conditions and replicated numerous times would have proven their inadequacy and unreliability. Engineers who were independent thinkers and educated as Boelter and Flanigan taught engineering would have stopped the work and refused to participate in untested technology that could cause disastrous consequences if failure of one or more of the untested mechanisms or structures occurred. Furthermore, they would have informed regulators of the shortcomings and the responsible regulators should have denied the permit to drill the well. If this indeed took place, and was ignored, then criminal actions not just punitive civil damages must be initiated against all those who collaborated in this debacle. However, deliberate intent was not probable as more likely pure incompetence and stupidity grounded in motivating greed were more likely the cause of this catastrophe.
There is a lesson that should result from the deadly man made disaster that will have consequences for decades to come as possibly billions of cubic feet of underwater plumes of contaminated ocean water spreads and poisons everything that comes into contact. The environmental and societal harm is incalculable, and never be fully remediated. The damage done “is”, and will worsen even if the gushers of oil soon stop. This disaster occurred because the discipline of engineering was` prostituted by the blind greed of corporate purpose, and burecratic incompetency. Engineers working for the corporations are responsible, and the regulators who failed to grasp what engineering testing is all about are responsible. The incompetency of government agencies and politicians who suffer from the delusion that science is exact. Engineering is not science but rather the application of science to obtain approximate solutions and developments. Empirical testing must always occur before implementation of any engineering technology when the consequences of failure are so immensely damaging. Our educational system that should produce real engineers is now producing computer specialists in narrow engineering fields. Today's engineers in large engineering petrochemical and construction companies are generally under the thumb of administrators and executives who seek instantaneous profit and juicy bonuses. Inadequately trained engineers have become lackeys of corporate executives. They are incapable or reluctant to stop projects when such actions would jeopardize their own careers.
We can expect many more failures of man made engineering monstrosities like that of the deep water oil rig in the Gulf that will unleash even greater damage and environmental disasters, unless real engineering and regulatory oversight is applied. This is not a matter for politicians who are influence by lobbyists’ dollar contributions, just as under-educated engineers are paid off by corporate bonuses. Such disasters, spurred on by greed and the unbridled quest for money, without consideration of the probable system failure, is a symptom of a technical shortfall that must cease. Dean Boelter, Alan Flanigan, and Benjamin Ide Wheeler words of wisdom can lead the way if we are awakened by their words and deeds and remake engineering to benefit humankind. Engineers must take responsibility for their actions and be accountable for their gross incompetency just as CEO’s and political leaders for their stupidity, greed or deliberate avoidance of the real world of technology and the potential disasters that always lurk. Ultimately, properly educated and trained engineers and societal leaders who put life and environmental sustenance, as top priorities, are essential for all humanity. If this lesson is the hidden jewel from the manmade gulf oil disaster, we may benefit after all. Let us all help discover the pearl in the oyster shell emblematic of the good derived from this disaster in the sea and amongst the marshlands of Louisiana and the sandy shores of the Gulf of Mexico. The pearl is there if we learn the lessons.
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