75 Years of Electrical and Computer EngineeringThomas L. Noack

© Thomas L. Noack, 2003

Introduction

The Electrical Engineering program was founded in approximately 1928. This is when Prof. George F. Anton joined the faculty, and corresponds to the first appearance in the University of Puerto Rico (UPR) catalog of an electrical engineering program. Electrical engineering courses, and at least one faculty member, appear earlier, but this seems the most likely date when the program began its continuous existence. It is also the probable date the two first graduates (of 1932) began their studies. The engineering faculty did not divide into departments until somewhat later, so this seems an appropriate time from which to count anniversaries.Because the progress of, and the needs for, engineering in Puerto Rico are so closely tied to events and trends in the economy, government, and technology, I have chosen to break the history into chapters corresponding to major changes in these influences.The initial chapter, Prehistory, begins with the United States acquisition of Puerto Rico in 1898, and ends just before the appearance of electrical engineering as a separate program. This, and the next chapter cover a time of extreme poverty and absentee ownership of the one major industry, sugar growing and processing. For several reasons, the island became even more impoverished; several agricultural sectors, including tobacco and coffee disappeared as major export crops. Since sugar cane growing demanded large and exclusive plots of land, laborers who formerly cultivated small plots of land instead became landless seasonal laborers, living on bare subsistence wages. Government changed but little from the 1900 Foraker act, which set up the civil government structure, until 1940, when the Popular Democratic Party (PPD) under Muñoz Marín came to precarious power.The next chapter, Beginnings, begins with the appearance of Professor Anton in 1928 and ends before the election of 1940. There is little documentary evidence covering this period, only editions of the college catalog, fragmentary annual reports, indirect oral histories and the short but valuable history of Dr. José Martínez Picó (1998). Four faculty members joined during this period; these four, Anton, Porrata Doria, Dueño, and Wiewall, shaped the program and department, all were to serve until retirement in the 1960’s and 1970’s, and to hold administrative positions. It is, however, the real beginning and formative period of electrical engineering. The next chapter, War and Peaceful Revolution, covers the short but eventful period when the government became active in almost everything, industrialization, infrastructure development, the financial system, and economic planning. At the end of this relatively short period, Puerto Rico had an elected governor, industrialization was well underway, most of the present governmental institutions and public corporations were in place, and the University had been accredited and assumed nearly its present structure.The third chapter, Electronic Years, ends just before the appearance of the computer engineering program in 1979 and the beginnings of the personal computing era. During this period our graduates were hired in large numbers by US corporations, program emphasis shifted from power systems to a more balanced set of options including also control, electronics, and communications. The various engineering programs were accredited in 1960.Chapter four, Computing Comes, Industry Participates, treats the relatively short period between the appearance of the computer engineering program in 1979 and the beginnings of the series of NSF-CISE grants starting in 1988. At its beginning, electrical engineering was the poor relation in the engineering faculty, with aging laboratories, not enough space, essentially no administrative support for research, but a reputation for quality and high demand for its graduates, at its end, industrial and governmental support (still not institutional) had created and modernized many of its laboratories. New faculty members, and finally some institutional support for their research had begun to appear.

The last, but not concluding chapter, The Rise of Research, begins with an infrastructure in place and the appearance of new faculty members with institutional support for their research efforts. By its end, the department was the campus leader in externally funded research, the M. S. program in computer engineering had begun, and Ph. D. programs in computation and electrical engineering were in place. The technological corridor initiative had begun, as had efforts to encourage startup corporations, this with several notable successes. And the department was out of space again.

Sources and Acknowledgments

Besides the book and documentary references listed in footnotes and in the bibliography I have collected oral history when available. The earliest dates covered by direct interviews are 1935 (José L. Martínez Picó) and 1938 (Rafael Pietri Oms). None of the founding faculty (Anton, Porrata Doria, Dueño, or Wiewall) are still living, and only one (Porrata Doria) left a written history. Martínez Picó’s history includes information taken from interviews with Porrata Doria and comments from Dueño. Anton’s history is valuable, detailed, and complete; lamentably he chose to end it in 1923 in order to avoid embarrassing living individuals. I plan to terminate this history as of the week before I commit it to silicon or iron oxides. Many other present and retired faculty have granted interviews, and these have been the most important source of information. For the last twenty years I also have my own recollections. The personnel of the Colegio Library’s Puerto Rican Collection, especially its director, Sara Ruiz, have been most helpful. Dr. Anand Sharma was kind enough to loan the various ABET self-study volumes dating back to the original accreditation in 1960. Loreina Santos Silva knows everybody on campus and arranged many of the interviews with retired faculty, provided much insight into the folkways of the Colegio and will translate this history into Spanish when it is completed. The translations from Spanish to English and the interpretation of Spanish documents are invariably mine. Too many individuals have helped to cite all by name, unless asked otherwise I will list all those interviewed, but usually not casual conversations. I am honoring the privacy of personnel records (which I have not tried to see) and the comments made by ABET (which I have seen), since those comments and the term of accreditation are considered confidential. Persons interviewed include Professors José L. Martínez Picó, Rafael Pietri Oms, Jaime Arbona, Jorge Cruz Emeric, Jorge Ortiz Alvarez, and Miguel Vélez. These individuals are listed in order of arrival at the Colegio.

This history is not an official University project but is exclusively my work and has been done without University sponsorship in terms of salary, released time, staff assistance or computing equipment. I have relied on the University library, but only to the extent permitted to students or individuals from the general public. Consequently the statements of fact or opinion are mine and do not represent the official viewpoint of the Department or the University. The errors, of course, are mine, all mine. The work was not undertaken for profit, and is freely offered to the Department for inclusion in its 75th anniversary commemorative volume. It should be understood that the Department and University have not edited its content, but have done typographic preparation and the correction of minor errors.

Prehistory

Puerto Rico was acquired by the United States, along with the Philippines and Guam, as a result of the Spanish-American war of 1898. At that time its population was approximately one million, it had little nonagricultural industry, and no higher education. Primary and secondary education existed, but mostly in urban areas. The significant export crops were sugar, coffee, and tobacco. The next year, a major hurricane (San Ciriaco, August 8, 1899)1 devastated the coffee plantations, and application of import duties to Puerto Rican coffee in Spain, until that time the primary customer for coffee, ended the era of coffee plantations. Tobacco lost its importance as cigarettes replaced cigars; Puerto Rican tobacco was a higher quality suitable for cigars, which were hand-manufactured – also tobacco is a politically controlled crop in the United States, and competition wasn’t welcomed. All these factors combined to convert Puerto Rico into a one-product economy, plantation-grown and locally processed sugar. The extension of the Navigation acts to Puerto Rico restricted shipping to US flag carriers, sharply curtailing export-import trade.A military government was installed temporarily, replaced in 1900 by a civil government under the Foraker act (1900) and the similar Jones act (1917). Both bills provided for an elected lower house and a Presidentially appointed governor. The Foraker act and the Insular cases (1904) resulted in Puerto Rico becoming an unincorporated territory, under U. S. law, but not equal in status or rights to a state or an incorporated territory (then including Alaska, Hawaii, Oklahoma, Arizona, and New Mexico, all of which later become states). As territories, they had fully elected governments but no congressional representation. Under the Foraker act, the executive council (department heads and appointed members) functioned as an upper house. The commissioner of education and the attorney general were direct presidential appointees. The Jones act granted US citizenship and replaced the executive council by an elected senate, and added a number of veto and veto-overriding powers. It continued the direct presidential appointment of several cabinet members, including the attorney general, commissioner of education, and auditor. With minor modifications, these arrangements continued until 1948, when the governorship was made elective, and were replaced by Public Law 600 and the present Puerto Rican constitution of 1952. The Foraker and Jones acts were surprisingly similar to the Autonomous Charter granted to Puerto Rico by Spain just before the Spanish-American War2

The University of Puerto Rico was initially founded in 1903 as a normal (teacher training) school. It accepted eighth-grade graduates for its regular course, and had a special one-year certification course for high-school graduates. For some years, the commissioner of education was also the head of the university.

1 Miner Solá, Edwin, Historia de los huracanes en Puerto Rico, First Book Publishing of P. R., 1995, pp41-44.2 Ramos de Santiago, Carmen, ed., El Desarollo Constitucional de Puerto Rico, Universidad de Puerto Rico, 1985. This is a collection of fundamental laws and court cases related to Puerto Rico. Curiously enough, the author has found information related to English documents in these Spanish translations.

George Anton3 credits D. W. May (Director of the federal agricultural experiment station), José de Diego (then representative for Mayagüez in the legislature) and Carmelo Alomar (Secretary of the experiment station) with the initial steps of establishing a land-grant college at Mayagüez, located there in order to take advantage of the experience and cooperation of the experiment station. Representative José de Diego sponsored the enabling act in the legislature, which was passed in March 1908, and under considerable encouragement from Mr. May and several farms next to the experiment station (the nucleus of the present campus) were purchased by the University. Many attempts to locate the college elsewhere were defeated during these initial years. Very fortunately, the Comptroller of the U. S. Treasury authorized the extension of the 1862 Morrill land-grant college act to Puerto Rico. This resulted in initial and continuing federal appropriations to the college.4

3 Anton, George F., Since the Beginnings of Time – the Early History of the College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts, Editorial Maucci, Spain, 1965. The pictures in this chapter are taken from this bork.4 The Morrill Act of 1862 granted a share of money from the sale of federal lands to the several states to establish colleges teaching agriculture and the mechanic arts, hence the title of Colegio de Agricultura y Artes Mecanicas. It had been proposed before the Civil War, but defeated by slave state interests. It was later amended to provide for experiment stations.

The first dean of the college, F. L. Stevens, was appointed in November, 1911, and construction of the first building (Degetau) began in early 1912. The first classes opened in September 1912. Initially, the college was really a vocational high school, with a single curriculum in agriculture. It was not until 1920 that Dr. C. E. Horne was appointed Dean and immediately changed the college from a half-preparatory and half-collegiate to a true collegiate school. The first class graduated in 1915, with 15 B. S. degrees, all in agriculture, and 17 subcollegiate certificates, 3 in agricultural science and 14 in polytechnic science. The first engineering B. S. degrees were granted in 1918, 3 in civil engineering, two in mechanical engineering, and one in sugar engineering. Several of these and later engineering graduates first appear as recipients of subcollegiate diplomas in polytechnic science, usually two years before receiving the engineering B. S. Anton’s history shows a picture titled “A corner in the 1913 New Engineering building”, showing several rows of what appear to be identical electrically powered lathes, but no engineering faculty appear in the list of 24 faculty members (10 professors, 13 instructors, and one laboratory assistant) for 1914-15. The total enrollment in Fall 1915 was 280 (including 63 women), with 15 nonteaching employees.

By April 1916 149 students remained. A faculty list (with salaries this time), shows 18 faculty members including the dean, who received $3,000. Other faculty members received $1,000 to $1,800, including L. Lang, listed as Professor in electrical engineering (on leave) at $1,800. After Dean Horne’s elimination of preparatory courses and students the enrollment dropped to 128 in fall 1922. Soon after Dean Horne’s arrival in 1920 he succeeded in fighting off pressure to move the college to Rio Piedras. A school of architecture was started in the college in 1921, however the administration cancelled the contract of its professor and withheld scholarship funds for its students in 1922, leading to its collapse.

The 1918 earthquake that caused such severe damage in Mayagüez destroyed the main building, Degetau. It was destroyed, along with most of its contents, by a fire fueled by gasoline stored therein.

It is interesting to compare educational costs with incomes during this period. In its December 23, 1912 issue , the Agricultural College Weekly quotes typical costs of $120 per year, and in 1919-20 the College prospective quotes costs of $227.50 per year. Costs rose rapidly during the next decades, although Anton’s history quotes $850/year for 1934-35 his detailed figures do not support this number, and a more likely figure is $400. The yearly cost for 1954-55 is $636.50 and that for 1960-61 is $689. However, the per capita income (not to be confused with family income) was $100 per year in these years, and typical cane cutters’ wages were one dollar per day (in season), while needle trades workers in Mayagüez earned less than two cents per hour. After the destruction of the Degetau building, most classes and other activity seem to have been carried on in temporary buildings; total enrollment was quite small, and many laboratories, especially agricultural, were held in the field. The first of the non-agricultural curricula was called chemical engineering and sugar chemistry. This will be described later. Then, as now, the Colegio had no on-campus housing for students. By the late teens, the other engineering disciplines, including civil and mechanical had made a small but significant start.

Beginnings

This section begins with a direct translation of a section of Dr. José L. Martínez Picó’s history, Cinquenta años de historia.5

“The case of electrical engineering is interesting. The total enrollment in this curriculum wasYear 25-26 26-27 27-28 28-29 29-30 30-31 31-32 32-33 33-34Enrollment 4 2 2 5 2 5 12 22 47Already in Horne’s report appears one student enrolled in electrical engineering. But for years no graduate in this specialty appears. To my understanding the beginnings of this department have one name, Anton, and one year, 1928. He says the same thing in his Síntesis Biográfica in the last page of his book, stating,

“He has served in this institution since 1928, the year in which he came to Puerto Rico for the first time, contracted as Instructor of Electricity.”He was always known as George F. Anton. The F. stood for Fotis, a name of Greek origin. He was born in Sparta, Greece, in 1892. His family immigrated to the United States in 1895.I have mentioned before the importance of the reports of [Dean Carlos] Figueroa for the history of the College. His 1932-33 report with respect to the electrical engineering department, along with information from a November 18, 1995 interview with Professor Porrata Doria and my memories of courses in electricity taken as a student of chemical engineering in 1935-39 taken with this professor allow me to understand the beginnings of this department, and to want to do the same for each of the divisions of this institution. Thus we have one more genuine view of events.

The [Dean Carlos Figueroa’s] 1932-33 report states:“The College offered a course in electrical engineering from the beginning. Many students were interested but abandoned it after a short time since neither the character of instruction nor the available equipment satisfied their needs. Due to the local interest in developing hydroelectric power, the consequent development of electrical energy supply, and current professional developments in civil engineering, we decided to develop this department to a state of efficiency that would meet our needs. The reorganization and development began in 1929 and during the present year we have been able to announce that our curriculum in this field has been recognized as “standard” by the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, the highest expression of the science and technology of this field in America. Last year we graduated the first two students. This year there were three, and for next there are six candidates.”

The graduates in 1932 were Julio Oms and Eduardo di Cristina. The three of 1933 were José Gil Cardona, José Lomba Arias and Osvaldo Porrata Doria.According to Osvaldo Porrata Doria the department was founded in 1931. Porrata became an Instructor in the summer of 1934 as a substitute for Professor Anton who went on leave to Columbia where he obtained his Master’s in 1936. That summer Oscar Vere Garcés, an Instructor who graduated from Cornell in 1925, resigned to go to industry. Porrata Doria took his position and Braulio Dueño, B. S. E. E., , 1930, M. S. E. E., , 1931, Alabama assumed a temporary position as substitute for Anton.I have to pause before the figures of Porrata Doria, Dueño and Wiewall, the teachers who accompanied Anton in the development of the department of electrical engineering, the department that from its founding in 1931 and for years thereafter was the greatest attraction to many of the most privileged minds that have passed through this institution as students. We have seen how Porrata Doria and Dueño joined the department in 1934. According to Porrata Wiewall had joined the department in 1929. I have tried without success to confirm this, but in Dean Figueroa’s June 1931 report he states that there were 23 full-time faculty and one, professor Peña,

5 Martínez Pico, José L., Cinquenta años de historia, UPR-Mayagüez, 1998. Translation by the autor.

part-time from July to December. He added that all these had served for some years, except Rafael Rivera Valiente who had joined as Instructor of botany in 1930-31 and Rafael A. Toro, Professor of pathology who started in January 1931. In the same report he states that Wiewall studied at Columbia in the summer of 1930. From all this I can conclude that Wiewall, who eventually obtained his doctorate, and for years held important administrative positions, such as dean of arts and sciences (the first such) and dean of academic affairs (also the first such) had joined the faculty in 1929.Braulio Dueño Leary was for some years the number two man in the department of electrical engineering. He figures largely in the student strike of 1942, when, as a veteran within a group of young professors, he opposed the faculty resolution which requested that the students terminate the strike and return to classes. This group managed to defeat the resolution by promoting a meeting of the “rebels” with University Chancellor Benítez, who had come to Mayagüez to hear their appeals. Dueño became the spokesman of the group, referring to the incident as “small fray” and succeeded in convincing Don Jaime. The students returned to classes in January 1943, having lost the first semester of 1942-43. Between January and August 1943 they made up the time lost. Joseph Axtmeyer acted as dean of the faculty of sciences (mathematics, physics, and biology), recently created by the university law of 1942 and also as vice-rector. Rafael Menéndez Ramos became dean of agriculture, and Braulio Dueño was named dean of engineering. Later, Luis Stéfani replaced Axtmeyer as vice-rector. Stéfani became dean of engineering and Dueño became dean of sciences, a post eventually occupied by Dr. Wiewall until the beginning of the 1970’s. The law of 1942 specified that the vice-rector would be one of the deans of the College. Porrata Doria, as stated before, and in his own narrative, graduated in 1933 and joined the faculty in 1934. In the summer of 1935 he went to study at Rensselaer. He finished his Master’s in four successive summers. He had one of the most agile minds that have passed through the institution. He succeeded Wiewall as department director, serving for eleven years, during which time all non-teaching functions were performed ad honorem. Also he was in charge of the underground installation of the electrical lines on the campus. He was one of those who helped, again without compensation, with athletic activities. He well earned his position as one of the pioneers who made the campus what it is today. The modality followed by Porrata of beginning to teach with only a bachelor’s degree and then obtaining a master’s by summer study in the United States, paying all his own study expenses, continued for some years and was the basis for the creation of a native faculty. Antonio Barceló had advocated this approach when president of the board of trustees in the 1920’s. In retrospect this had advantages. It gave the individual a chance to see if he really wanted to teach and dedicate his life to the university, and gave the university a chance to evaluate his potential as a faculty member. This was the procedure until the second world war began in 1939 and the United States later entered after the Pearl Harbor attack in December 1941. After six long years of uncertainty, the conflict ended with the atomic bombings of August 1945.In particular I would like to cite Porrata as one of the purists in the use of Spanish. Evidently he was a disciple of professor Cándido Collac who, according to the annual report of 1931-32, joined the faculty in that year, and was much respected by his colleagues and his students. In his classes, Porrata insisted on the correct use of the language. It must have been Collac who alerted to Porrata that the curriculum and department should be called Ingeniería Electricista and not Ingeniería Eléctrica, as it was then and is still called.Returning to the tables in the last report of Dean Figueroa, with the data for the year 1933-34 added, notice should be taken of the increase in electrical engineering enrollment, now 47 students. This number was exceeded only exceeded by mechanical engineering with 70. Also, after being tried for four years, the practice of offering a common first year for all engineering students was discontinued, but this pattern later reappeared.

Electrical engineering courses and faculty appear in the University catalog as early as 1921 6. In that catalog it is stated that courses and curricula will be offered only if there is sufficient demand. The wording used in the 1921 catalog is:

“The College will offer courses leading to the degree of Bachelor of Science in Agriculture, Civil Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Sugar Chemistry, General Science or Architecture as its resources – buildings, equipment, faculty – will permit. Any line of work for which the number of applicants is insufficient to warrant giving it, the college reserves the right to withdraw. Elective subjects will be given as scheduled, if more than four students desire to take them.

The first faculty member listed in the catalog is Cornelius Duffey in 1921. He received a BSEE from Tufts in 1907, and is listed as Professor of Electrical Engineering. He later (1925) received a master’s from RPI, and then reappears as Instructor and then Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering and Physics as early as 1932, and still later, until at least 1939, as Assistant Professor of Physics. Several students are listed as electrical engineering in the mid 1920’s, but none graduated. At least one transferred to civil engineering and did graduate. It is likely that the policy described in 1921 took effect.

In the year 1928, the first graduates, Edward DiCristina and Julio Oms entered the Colegio; both graduated in 1932. Three more graduated in 1933, including Osvaldo Porrata Doria, who spent his entire professional life in the department, serving as director for eleven years. He was the first in a long line of top students of their classes to become faculty members. Miguel Wiewall was the next professor to arrive, he had graduated from RPI in 1927 and according to Martínez Picó, started in 1929. He received his master’s from Columbia in 1934, probably by studying in summers. He became the first Ph. D. in the department when he received the degree in 1938 from Harvard. Before his retirement in 1967 he had become Dean of Arts and Sciences and then Dean of Academic Affairs. Osvaldo Porrata Doria, Braulio Dueño and Oscar Vere Garcés all appear in 1934. The first two finished their careers and retired from the Colegio; Vere soon disappears from the listings.

George Anton Miguel Wiewall Braulio Dueño Osvaldo Porrata Doria

The “Founding Fathers”6 The Puerto Rican Collection of the UPRM library contains a complete collection of these catalogs, dating back to 1921. In early years, all students were listed. The UPRM yearbook, Aristoteleia began publication in 1932; it was published until the late 1970’s. In earlier editions it contained individual photographs of all graduates and faculty members, and group pictures of all classes. The catalog was in English, Aristoteleia was usually in Spanish. Aristoteleia is the source for nearly all photographs, the catalog is the source for faculty and curriculum listings.

As of approximately 1934

Edward Di Cristina Julio OmsThe first graduates, 1932

Two other Colegio graduates of this era appear, José Cristy and José García de Quevedo. This likely is the José Cristy who served as an Assistant Professor from 1960 to 1964. José García de Quevedo graduated in 1939, received his master’s at RPI the next year, and returned immediately to teach in the Colegio. In 1948 he became the first known graduate of electrical engineering to receive a Ph. D. (from Duke). He taught here during the war years and continued until 1973.

Cornelius Duffey Oscar Vere Garcés José Cristy José García de QuevedoSeveral once and future faculty

The Junior class of 1932

The first documented curriculum was hardly an electrical engineering curriculum at all; it was essentially mechanical engineering with a few major courses in the fourth year. This is not surprising; the island’s only industry was sugar cane. The utilities were either privately or municipally owned and were not well-engineered in any case. They came under central government control only after the 1940 election, both to improve service quality and to provide rural service. The municipal utilities were excellent sources of patronage, and their elimination caused much political protest. Goodsell describes it as follows7:

“Criticism of Puerto Rican public enterprise was, of course, almost inevitable. Several influential interests were suffering real or potential losses: Bolívar Pagán was losing his waterworks, the Canadian utility group was being divested of its power franchise in San Juan, and the Porto Rico Telephone Company was being threatened with expropriation. But more fundamentally, the government was abandoning its pre-1940 role of limited participation in the economy in favor of a distinctly interventionist role. In administration this change was being made manifest by the appearance of numerous new public corporations. To advocates of laissez faire these developments must have seemed alarming. The critics employed various tactics against the expansion of public enterprise. One was to fight it on legal grounds, as illustrated by the court battles connected with the various utility struggles. Attorney General George Malcolm, who opposed the reform program and Tugwell so vehemently that he was discharged by President Roosevelt in 1942,

7 Goodsell, Charles T., Administration of a Revolution, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1965., p. 187.

The curriculum soon developed into a typical electrical engineering program of the era, mostly power-oriented, but with a communication option in the senior year, and composed almost entirely of required courses with almost no social-humanistic content8. Contrary to the implication in Martínez Picó’s history, the program remained small until the sixties. The science departments here were formed from the engineering departments. For example, the chemical engineering program was originally chemical engineering and sugar chemistry, it was the first engineering program on campus, and operated only in a cooperative mode with the sugar industry. The physics department also formed in large part from electrical engineering. It was common for beginning faculty from engineering to teach in mathematics also, both former chancellor Martínez Picó and Roberto Ortiz Muñiz did so.

The present licensing structure for engineers in Puerto Rico dates from the establishment of the Colegio de Ingenieros de Puerto Rico (CIAPR) in 1938. Before the U. S. takeover in 1898, a series of royal decrees governed engineering licensing and practice9. Fairly soon afterward the Puerto Rico Society of Engineers was formed, but with no particular government sanction or legal backing. The 1938 law provided qualifications similar to those of the several states, including examinations and experience evaluation by an examining board appointed by the governor. Unlike the pattern in any state the CIAPR was established, and current, dues-paying membership was made a requirement for any form of engineering practice, including work in government agencies or private corporations. CIAPR can and does bring complaints before the examining board, and has sued individuals for practicing without CIAPR membership. Similar requirements for professional society membership are common in Latin American countries. Changes in legislation since then have provided for five-year license terms rather than permanent licenses, and recently (late 1990’s) a continuing education requirement was instituted. The present licensing examinations are those produced by the National Council of Engineering Examiners (NCEES).

8 Until ECPD instituted a requirement for one-half year of social-humanistic courses this pattern prevailed in most engineering schools. Generally, the social-humanistic courses replaced a series of business and industry-related courses that had filled the available three credits or so per semester in the last two years.9 Ing. Francisco Pagán Santos, Executive Director, CIAPR, private communication. 2003.

Some idea of living conditions in Puerto Rico during the 1930’s can be gained from the following quotation and photograph, both from Goodsell10:

“Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes, after visiting Puerto Rico in 1936, made the following note in his diary, ‘We visited several points of interest in San Juan…We inspected two or three slum areas, and they are the worst slums that I have ever seen. The dwellings looked as if a breath would blow them over. …Open sewage runs through the streets and around the buildings and there are no sanitary facilities at all. The children play in this sewage…It is unbelievable that human beings can be permitted to live in such noisome cesspools.’”

Yet this is not the worst – Carr quotes a 1937 article in the Puerto Rican Journal of Tropical Medicine:

“From Eleanor Roosevelt on, every American who visited Puerto Rico was appalled at its poverty, particularly in the slum areas of San Juan. Yet the conditions the slum dwellers sought to escape by leaving the sugar plantations of the countryside for the capital were even worse: villages surrounded by human excreta because only half the houses had even primitive latrines; malaria

10 Goodsell, Op. Cit., P5. The picture is from page 6 of the same work.

still a killer among an undernourished population; three-quarters of the children under fourteen years of age with no shoes.11 The average annual wage for a family of five was $349.

11 Health and Socio-Economic Conditions on a Sugar Cane Plantation, Puerto Rican Journal of Tropical Medicine: 12 no. 4 (1937) pp405-490, quoted in Carr, Raymond, Puerto Rico, a Colonial Experiment, Vintage Books, 1984.

War and peaceful revolution

The Puerto Rican election of 1940 was close but decisive. Since 1932 the island had been governed by a coalition of the Republican and socialist parties (the Socialist party, in spite of the name, was ideologically close to the Republican; in later years the Republican party would evolve into the present New Progressive party)12. The governor, the Attorney General, the Commissioner of Education, and the auditor were direct presidential appointees. Until the 1939 appointment of Admiral William Leahy as governor, for many years his predecessors were political appointees, often businessmen or local politicians with little knowledge or understanding of government or Puerto Rico itself. It is unfair to classify all previous governors during the first forty years of U. S. hegemony in this way, some appointees of both parties were capable and interested in Puerto Rican welfare, some others, were the worst kind of political hacks. Admiral Leahy served from 1939 until just after the 1940 election. He certainly was appointed to oversee the development of defense of the Caribbean, but he appears to have been a serious, if elitist governor.13 The minority party had been the Liberal party, which expelled Luis Muñoz Marín in 1937,14 whereupon he organized the Popular Democratic party. In 1940, this party won a one-vote majority (10-9) in the Senate and, with the aid of several Liberal representatives was able to elect the House president also. The resident commissioner was Bolívar Pagán of the opposing Republican-Socialist coalition (Unión Republicano-Socialista). Upon Admiral Leahy’s departure in December 1940 Guy Swope was appointed governor.

He lasted six months and was replaced by Dr. Rexford Guy Tugwell, a former professor of economics at Columbia, member of Roosevelt’s “Brain Trust” and most recently head of the New York state planning commission.15 With Tugwell as governor and Muñoz Marín as Senate president the stage was now set for a governmental and economic revolution, continuously opposed by business, labor

12 Bayrón Toro, Fernando, Elecciones y Partidos Políticos de Puerto Rico, 1809-2000, 6th ed.13 Rodríguez Beruff, Jorge, Las Memorias de Leahy14 Pagán, Bolívar, Historia de los partidos politicos Puertorriqueños (1898-1956), Tomo II15 Tugwell, Rexford Guy, The Stricken Land

interests, the resident commissioner and several major newspapers, and conservative political interests in the U. S. Congress.16 17 During the legislative session of 1942 the legislature:

“Transferred the unreliable municipal water systems to the new Water Resources Authority,Shifted fire service and park management from municipal to newly created insular agencies,Reorganized completely the politics-ridden university,Created transportation and communication authorities,Placed the economically vital sugar mills under government regulation,Established one of the most powerful planning agencies found in democratic government at that time,Created, to control the growing executive branch of the government, a modern budget agencyAuthorized the creation of two economic development organizations, the Puerto Rico Development Company and the Development Bank of Puerto Rico.” 18

“Whereas in 1937 the Middle States Association (whose jurisdiction includes Puerto Rico) had refused accreditation to the university, in 1946 the association's inspector recommended acceptance on grounds that "it is now a respectable educational institution.”19 This is an understatement of what really happened, namely that Chancellor Benítez developed a close relationship with the later president of Middle States. 20 Later, in the mid 1950’s, this approach was used to obtain accreditation of engineering at Mayagüez, which came in 1960.21

The U. S. entered the war in December 1941, upon being attacked by the Japanese. Actually, the U. S. had been a quite partisan neutral since the start of the European war in 1939, the military draft had started in 1940, and war in the far east was no surprise. Almost immediately Puerto Rico felt the consequences of the war. Although it is not generally realized, the Caribbean was one of the most active areas of submarine warfare against merchant shipping, San Juan harbor itself was mined at one time22, and submarines were active in the Mona passage. Tugwell describes the situation informally and eloquently:23

“ Our troubles do not clear. 1 suppose they will not, and that the war will be a continuous series of crises, each to be met as best it can be done without much chance of planning. Unemployrnent, inflation, exhaustion of supplies (including gasoline and food) reached a point of desperation long ago. We live on less than would have been believed possible some time ago. No rice for weeks; beans at triple their nominal price and few left; no dried fish or meat - or very little. People live on a scratched-up diet and there is widespread lack of sufficient food. I have done all 1 can think of but it is impossible not to feel responsible.We have cement; and we can make tile; but we have little else to work with; and anyway it is virtually impossible to get construction permits from the W.P .B., even when we guarantee to use only local materials. This restriction is driving all my officials to despair. We lack customary materials; we could do much with what we have; but we are not permitted to do anything.Still almost no ships; still a discouraging distribution of the supplies contained in those which do come - the percentage of necessities is a little higher, perhaps, but not much.”24

16 Ibid17 Pagán, Bolívar, Crónicas de Washington18 Goodsell, Charles T., Administration of a Revolution19 Ibid20 Navarro Rivera, Pablo, Universidad de Puerto Rico: De control político a crisis permanente21 University of Puerto Rico-Mayagüez, Questionnaire for Review of Engineering Curricula – submitted to Engineers’ Council for Professional Development, 196022 Kelshall, Gaylord T. M., The U-boat War in the Caribbean23 Tugwell, Op. Cit24 Ibid.

The Colegio, the engineering school, and especially electrical engineering were quite small in these years. Several faculty members were actually teaching in other departments, for example, Braulio Dueño (1908-2002), the department’s only emeritus professor, taught in physics and became director of the physics department by 1945. José García de Quevedo taught in both departments before and during the war years. He was probably the first department graduate to receive a Ph. D. He received his BSEE from the Colegio in 1939, his M. S. in 1940, and his Ph. D. from Duke in 1948. . He taught in physics and INEL from 1940 to approximately 1946. Later he became director of this department and still later of Nuclear engineering. Roberto Ortiz Muñiz also taught first in mathematics (1940-1953) and then in electrical engineering until retirement. George Anton, the “founding father”, had returned to the U. S. Army Signal Corps (he served in both world wars).

The University, and especially the Mayagüez Campus, were in some turmoil during these years. In May 1942, a new university law was passed. This provided for an organization much like the present, with a central administration headed by a Chancellor, and Vice-Chancellors for each campus. It also replaced the previous board of trustees, which was openly political; as most of its members were ex-officio, by virtue of their positions as leaders of the legislature or the executive branch. Previously the Mayagüez Campus was a remote college of the University, under a Dean directly responsible to the Chancellor on the main campus at Rio Piedras. Limited student and faculty participation in university governance was introduced. Initially Rexford Tugwell was appointed Chancellor, but was then appointed Governor before taking office as Chancellor. An attempt was made to have him fill both offices, but a political storm erupted and Jaime Benítez, then an instructor in Political Science was appointed instead. He was a close advisor to Luis Muñoz Marín and was to head the university until 1971. He appointed a chemistry professor from Rio Piedras, Dr. George T. Axtmeyer, as Vice-Chancellor at Mayagüez. Almost immediately a student strike began, lasting through spring 1943. Martínez Pico25 and Navarro26

both describe this strike as being based on interpreting the new University law as requiring the Vice-Chancellor to be named from the deans at Mayagüez. Although the strike was student-originated, Martínez Pico27 describes it as having faculty support, and mentions Braulio Dueño as being very involved. Classes were given in the summer, with final exams immediately afterward. Navarro28 describes a large failure rate due to final exams being given with little chance to prepare. Dr. Axtmeyer resigned shortly after the strike began. Later in 1943, Prof. Luis Stefani (1901-1970), an MIT graduate who had taught in, and directed mechanical engineering for many years, became Vice-Rector, serving until 1965, generally respected and admired. The present engineering building, Stefani, built in 1960, is named for him. The Monzón building housed most of the engineering departments starting in 1939, and became so seriously overcrowded that when Stefani was built, engineering space expanded by a factor of two-and-one-half. The 1960 self-study questionnaire prepared for the initial accreditation visit describes the facilities as follows:

“The College of Engineering shared Monzón Building (built in 1938 and having about 48,100 sq. ft. of floor space) with the Department of Chemistry of the College of Science. The Department of Civil Engineering had its facilities in three different buildings, two of which were old and inadequate temporary structures. The Chemical and Mechanical Engineering main laboratories were housed in an old wooden building (destroyed in 1954-55) which was completely unsatisfactory for their growing needs. The Departments of General and Electrical Engineering,

25 Martínez Pico, José L., Cinquenta años de historia, UPR-Mayagüez, 1998.26 Navarro Rivera, Pablo, Universidad de Puerto Rico: De control político a crisis permanente, Ediciones Huracán, Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico, 2000.27 Martínez Pico, José L., Op. Cit.28 Navarro Rivera, Pablo, Op. Cit.

housed in Monzón Building, had no room for further laboratory expansion and were urgently requesting additional space. The newly established Department of Industrial Engineering had been assigned limited office space in the old Agriculture Institute Building and its new laboratories were temporarily installed in the Engineering Shop Building which had been constructed in 1948.The College of Science and the Division of General Studies (now College of Arts & Sciences) were in a similar situation. The Division of General Studies had all its facilities scattered over the campus in temporary wooden structures (mostly war-surplus barracks) which were unsuitable. The Departments of Mathematics, Physics and Biology of the College of Science, were too crowded in the Celis Building (built in 1936 and having about 47,800 sq. ft. of floor space) and were demanding additional classroom and laboratory space.

One of Benítez’s innovations was the general studies program, consisting of a nearly-uniform freshman year for all campuses of the university. All of these courses were taught in a separate division of general studies. This year was actually inserted before the freshman year of engineering; its addition was the origin of the present five-year curricula in engineering. For other majors, the new freshman year essentially replaced the earlier one. General studies would remain in existence until 1949, gradually dividing into the present set of departments, which later merged into the college of Sciences, resulting in the present college of Arts and Sciences. These curricula are described more completely in an appendix.

Unlike many state universities in the U. S. during the war years, UPR remained a completely civilian campus. Many U. S. schools were dominated by officer training programs, such as the Navy’s V-12, in which the students became active-duty enlisted men, living in military dorms, wearing uniform and receiving military pay, and were commissioned at or before graduation. Most male students not in these programs were rather quickly drafted. Enrollment during these years can be inferred somewhat from immediate postwar statistics.. EE graduating classes remained small until 1961; before that most graduating classes were less than ten students. In these same years civil engineering graduated 50 to 100 per year, and mechanical about 20. This pattern seems to fit the jobs available then, few graduates were offered jobs in the US until much later, so most jobs were in civil engineering, developing the island’s infrastructure. Only much later, when U. S. companies came to Puerto Rico and discovered that local engineers were well-qualified, did U. S. hiring begin.

English was the official language of the University until 1942 i, and none of the curricula before that date include Spanish courses. Chardonii describes the evolution of primary and secondary education, noting that secondary education developed only after 1898, and that high schools were in English all during this period. Contrary to the popular impression, the language of instruction shifted repeatedly between Spanish and English in the lower grades. Earlier in the University’s history, most faculty came from the U. S. and taught in English. This was not true in engineering, except for Professors Anton and Duffey, all EE faculty were Puerto Rican. The first few, Duffey, Anton, Wiewall, Dueño were educated in the U. S., from Porrata Doria and García de Quevedo onward nearly all were Colegio graduates with U. S. advanced degrees.

Navarro Rivera29 describes this period. Although English had been the official language, at least some faculty members had been teaching in Spanish for many years, among them was probably Benítez. In September 1942, the Council on Higher Education (CES, the University’s governing board under the new University law) adopted Benítez’s recommendation that Spanish be the preferred language of instruction. This met with opposition in the U. S. interior department, and support in Puerto Rico. In 1946, the legislature passed a bill that went considerably farther, requiring that university instruction be exclusively in Spanish, unless the CES previously

29 Ibid.

authorized the exception. Also, future textbooks were required to be in Spanish. This is the version of the bill vetoed by President Truman, not the softer Benítez proposal. The language pattern before and since seems to be as at present, English is used only by non-Hispanic faculty, but most engineering textbooks are in English, partly because no appropriate and current Spanish texts are available. The only real change is that University documents are now in Spanish. This seems to pose no difficulty, since most non-Hispanics seem to read Spanish well, but less often are they fluent in oral Spanish. Interestingly enough, the University catalogue is still in English, but the yearbook Aristoteleia was in Spanish from its first edition in 1932. Departmental enrollments remained quite small during these years, A few faculty came, some left again. Several of the new additions included Hector Cabán Zeda and Teodoro Mercado, who soon went on study leave, Henry Fischback, who later went on study leave, and Alejandro Rivera. The 1948 catalog has more complete listings of courses and faculty than most other editions; here Professor Porrata Doria is listed as Professor in charge of the power option and Dr. Wiewall in charge of the communications option.

The Electronic Years

The electrical engineering program, as well as several others, was initially accredited by ECPD (now ABET) in 1960. Later reaccreditations during these years occurred in 1965, 1969, 1975, and 1981. The initial accreditation followed the pattern of the University’s accreditation by Middle States in the early forties, by bringing in previous ECPD inspectors for consultation and practice visits. Thus the engineering school was well-prepared and also known to ECPD by the time of the actual visit.The following description is taken from the self-study prepared for ECPD in 1960.

“During 1954-55 the Middle states Association of' Colleges and Secondary Schoo1s made, for accrediting purposes, an eva1uation study of' the University of' Puerto Rico. The Engineers' Council for Proíessiona1 Development was represented by Brother Amandus Leo, Dean of Engineering of New York' s Manhattan Col1ege, who inspected the College of' Engineering. The eva1uation report was favorable and as a result the University was granted accreditation by the Middle States Association. In 1955-56, short1y after the pub1ic release of' ASEE's “Report on Eva1uation of Engineering Education”, al1 engineering departments conducted self-evaluation studies which culminated in a series of curricular and other changes which, in our opinion, have strengthened our undergraduate engineering education. During 1957-58 we invited Dr. Thorndike Saville, well known engineering educator and past-president of' ECPD, to visit us and make an individual appraisal of' our College of Engineering. His five-day stay on our campus and his subsequent report and recommendations were of great va1ue to us. During 1958-59 and following the release of ASEE's “Report on the Engineering Sciences”. engineering departments again re-examined their programs of' studies and incorporated significant changes in curricula. course arrangement, and in course content.

In the late fifties and early sixties the University had, to its great credit, completed a major building program that saw the construction of most of the buildings we still use. The 1960 ECPD self-study describes the physical facilities before this building program thusly:

“Five years ago, during 1954-55, the College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts of the University of Puerto Rico was not only extremely crowdedly quartered in the available institutional area, but also had its facilities rather disorderly distributed on the campus. As a result, it t was quite difficult t to obtain the necessary close academic and administrative integration between the different units The College of Engineering shared Monzón Building (built in 1938 and having about 48,100 sq. ft. of floor space) with the Department of Chemistry of the College of Science. The Department of Civil Engineering had its facilities in three different buildings, two of which were old and inadequate temporary structures. The Chemical and Mechanical Engineering main laboratories were housed in an old wooden building (destroyed in 1954-55) which was completely unsatisfactory for their growing needs. The Departments of General and Electrical Engineering, housed in Monzón Building, had no room for further laboratory expansion and were urgently requesting additional space. The newly established Department of Industrial Engineering had be en as- signed limited office space in the old Agriculture Institute Building and its new laboratories were temporarily installed in the Engineering Shop Building which had been constructed in 1948.The College of Science and the Division of General Studies (now College of Arts & Sciences) were in a similar situation. !he Division of General Studies had all its facilities scattered over the campus in temporary wooden structures (mostly war- surplus barracks) which were unsuitable. The Departments of Mathematics, Physics and Biology of the College of Science, were too crowded in the Celis Building (built in 1936 and having about 47,800 sq. ft. of floor space) and were demanding additional classroom and laboratory space.The College of Agriculture was probably the only one which had no such probl6ms. It had recently occupied Piñero Building (constructed in 1952 and having approximately 41,900 sq. ft. of

floor space) and their needs were well satisfied. The construction of Luchetti Building, completed in 1955, marks the beginning of a steady physical facilities expansion which has kept its uninterrupted rhythm of growth since then, as is shown in the chronological table which follows in the next page.Summarizing, the total area of our physical plant facilities for the year 1960-61 will be about 775,000 square feet, which is more than 2-1/2 times the available area we had five years ago. A total of approximately 500,000 square feet of floor space have been added since 1955 at a cost of about $ 6,350,000.

The tabular study below is quoted from this same report:

IDENTIFICATION BUILT SQ FT COST USELuchetti Building 1955 29,102 $ 220,000 (Eng’g Laboratories)General Studies 1956 41,871 $255,000 (Liberal Arts Studies)Physical Plant Building 1956 31,193 $ 125,000 (B1dg &. Grounds Div)Engineering (Stéfani) 1958 110,737 $1,285,000 (Engineering Studies)Nuclear Center Building 1960 27,270 $2,500,000 (Nuclear Stud &: Research)

(includes reactor)Dormitory Buildings (2) Constr 92,070 $ 750,000 Total capacity for 300 (For men

students) Students Service Center Constr 67.797 $ 786,000 (For faculty & students) Darlington Apartments Bought 100,000 $400,000 Dormitories for about 264

students, 53 faculty apartments In addition, two new assembly rooms with capacity for 75 students each, have been recently equipped and made available in Celis and Monzón Buildings. Also, three new biology laboratories are now available in Celis Building.The construction of a modern, air conditioned library with a seating capacity for_800 students, will be started next year. The estimated cost of thi8 new building is around $860,000 and will have approximately 55,000 square feet of floor space.

Several economic details of this table are interesting. The cost per square foot for standard classroom/laboratory/office construction is only about $12. The cost per faculty member is surprisingly small, about two years salary (for both items in 1960 rates)The reactor was not a successful investment, it cost almost twice as much as the entire Stéfani building, which now houses electrical, general, and administrative offices and has many good years remaining; the reactor is long gone.

The distribution of laboratory space in Stéfani is also interesting, more than half was in the electrical machinery laboratories. This disproportion disappeared with the later miniaturization of these laboratories.It is also instructive to compare the size and utilization of these laboratories with some used in other departments, such as those for hydraulics and heat power, and to note that some of these labs are unchanged since the beginning, even though much of their instructional purpose has disappeared.

DEPARTMENT OF ELECTRICAL ENGINEERINGE1ectrica1 Machinery Laboratories 4725 sq. ft.Ultrahigh Frequency Laboratory 740 sq. ft. Servomech. & Computer Laboratory 575 sq. ft.Communications Laboratory 900 sq. ft.Engr. Electronics Laboratory 1490 sq. ft.Total Electrical Engineering 8430 sq. ft.

DEPARTMENTAL MAJOR ENGINEERING LABORATORIESFEB. 1960

DEPARTMENT AREA, sq. ft.GENERAL ENGINEERINGFluid Mechanics Laboratory 7,250Eng'g. Materia1s Laboratory 6,000Engineering Drawing Roams 2,650CIVIL ENGINEERING Sanitary Engineering Laboratory 1,000So11 Mechanics Laboratory 1,500Highway Engineering Laboratory 1,900Surv. & Photogram. Laboratory 1,500Civil Engineering Design Rooms 2,300ELECTRICAL ENGINEERINGElectrical Machinery Laboratory 4,725Ultra-high Frequency Laboratory 740Servomech. & Computer Laboratory 575Camnunicat1ons Laboratory 900Eng'g. Electronics Laboratory 1,490MECHANICAL ENGINEERING Thermo. & Heat Power Laboratories 13,000Manufacturing Processes Laboratory 12,000Engineering Meta11urgy Laboratory 1,300INDUSIRIAL ENGINEERING Motion & Time Study Laboratory 300Factory Planning Laboratory 400Work Simplification Laboratories 3,000CHEMICAL ENGINEERING Unit Operations Laboratory 2,000Unit Processes Control Laboratory 1,100

Note: No portion of the above laboratories is specifical1y assigned for purposes other than undergraduate instruction.

DEPARTMENTAL MAJOR ENGINEERING LABORATORIESDEPARTMENT AREA, Sq. Ft. PERCENTGENERAL ENGINEERING 15,900 24.2%CIVIL ENGINEERING 8,200 12.5%ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING 8,430 12.8%MECHANICAL ENGINEERING 26,300 40.1%INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING 3700 5.6%CHEMICAL ENGINEERING 3,100 4.7%TOTAL - ALL DEPARTMENTS 65,630 100.0%

The Stéfani building is shown shortly after its construction. Note that the helicornia plant is already in place, but much smaller, and that there is no parking problem, in fact no parking.

These were the last years of the long administrative career of Don Luis Stéfani. He was born in 1901, received his B. S. in mechanical engineering from MIT, and soon came to the Colegio, becoming director of the mechanical engineering department. In 1943, he became Vice-chancellor under the University act of 1942, remaining so until 1965, and continuing to teach after that. In 1965 a new University law provided greater autonomy for the campus, established all the campuses as equals organizationally, and created Central Administration and the office of President, occupied by Don Jaime Benítez until 1971. The new chancellor of the Mayagüez campus was José Enrique Arraras, an attorney and later legislator. The campus assumed its present administrative form, with deanships for Arts and Sciences, Engineering, Agriculture, Administration, and Academic Affairs, and an academic senate apportioned approximately by number of faculty members. In contrast to the Stéfani years, Arts and Sciences soon became dominant in the academic senate and to a considerable extent in campus administration in general, and still remains so. The building program described above took place in the last years of the Stéfani administration.

In the decades of the sixties and seventies, the department went from smallest to largest (in enrollment) of the engineering departments, started a graduate program, saw the retirements of its founders, and moved from a very traditional revalida-based30 curriculum to a modern version including most of the then-important fields of electrical engineering. Although at the end of this period the engineering school was again underfunded, understaffed, under-housed, it had progressed from supplying a few engineers for local government and industries to being the best source of high-quality minority engineers for U. S. corporations and government agencies. At the end of these decades the computer engineering program was established. The Puerto Rico Nuclear Center was established in 1957, and absorbed much of the research interest in engineering until its gradual disappearance at the end of the seventies. Many of the department’s faculty during these years did graduate work in nuclear rather than electrical engineering, and several departmental faculty members assumed administrative positions in the Nuclear Center. The 1960 accreditation report describes it thusly:

THE PUERTO RICO NUCLEAR CENTER is an educational and research facility operated by the University of Puerto Rico under contract with the United states Atomic Energy Commission. The main facilities, located on the Mayagüez campus, include a 1,000 kilowatt, pool-type, research reactor (due for completion during 1960), educational and research laboratories for radiobiology, radiochemistry, nuclear and reactor physics, nuclear metallurgy, etc. The reactor and laboratories are located relatively close (10 minute walking distance) to the new Engineering Building. A Nuclear Science and Engineering program of studies of graduate level, leading to an M.S. degree,

30 Revalida is the Spanish term for any examination required for licensing in the professions. In this context it refers to both parts of the professional engineering examination, which in Puerto Rico and most U. S. states is formulated and distributed by the National Council of Engineering Examiners (www.ncees.org) .

is offered jointly by the College of Engineering and the College of Arts & Sciences under the auspices of the Center.

It is interesting to note that the former Nuclear Center is now being renovated to serve research in this department and others and to house parts of the Ph. D. program.

The nuclear program was part of an effort to achieve energy self-sufficiency that eventually collapsed for a number of reasons, both economic and environmental. Another industrialization effort that failed was an effort to set up a petrochemical industry in the Ponce area. This was based on a temporary advantage that was somewhat of a tax benefit resulting from favored treatment of crude oil shipments from South America to Puerto Rico. This advantage disappeared with the oil crisis of 1973 and the resulting jump in oil prices. Its ghost can still be seen in the abandoned oil refineries and the facilities of the vanished Union Carbide.

The curriculum in 1960 evolved by gradual evolution from that of even the prewar years. In 1960, the first three years were common to all engineering curricula. Students were not even admitted to individual departments until they applied shortly before the beginning of the fourth year, and took no electrical engineering courses until then, so effectively the major courses were all compressed into the last four semesters of a ten-semester program. This pattern had existed to some extent even before the creation of the general engineering department in 1949, but 1960 is the high-water mark. In later years, major courses appeared in the third year again, and finally, starting in 1973, students were again admitted to specific departments at entrance. By the end of the seventies the curriculum compared favorably with programs in the U. S. The space made available by moving major courses back into the earlier years permitted modernizing many courses and adding work in newer fields such as logic circuits and digital electronics and modernizing the courses in most other areas. 31. Our students, besides being of higher quality at admission were better prepared at graduation; they had the benefit of perhaps another semester of more advanced technical electives. Much later, in about 1990, an attempt was made by an ad hoc committee consisting of the engineering department chairmen to revert to the old pattern; they nearly succeeded.

Electrical engineering enrollments increased greatly during the early 1960’s, until then only one postwar graduating class had ever been larger than eleven students most were five to eight, shortly afterward forty to fifty became the norm. Soon admission policies became far more selective.32 Personal comments from several graduates of the 1960’s and early 1970’s indicate that this enrollment increase happened before U. S. employers came to the campus in large numbers. A possible explanation is that affirmative action, accreditation and subsequent admissions to graduate schools, and the accomplishments of those few who found U. S. jobs contributed to the surge in employment opportunities.

The first woman graduate from electrical engineering was Iris Gandía in 1948, who worked for the Puerto Rico Electrical Energy Authority until retiring in 1980. The next two graduated

31 In these years, several economizing trends appeared in U. S. schools, including compressing engineering curricula into the last two years so as to permit easier transfers from feeder institutions and reducing credit requirements to no more than 128 credits in eight semesters.32 Admission is based on the admissions index, which is a weighted average of high-school gradepoint and college board exam scores. For a student whose test scores match high school performance it is somewhat of a predicted college gradepoint. The lowest index ordinarily considered for admission to any engineering department is 300, which corresponds to a high school GPA of about 3.30, for computer engineering it has been as high as 3.45, corresponding to 3.50.

nineteen years later, but soon women were approximately one-third of students in engineering. Several have been medal winners in their respective curricula, including Sandra Ramos, Nayda Santiago and Blanca Toro (all three now have Ph. D.’s), and Frances Fournier. Women were a part of the faculty in non-engineering departments from the thirties or earlier, and at one time were a majority of faculty in some departments on the Mayagüez campus33. They also, at various times, have occupied the chancellorship and all the major deanships except agriculture. However, they did not appear as engineering faculty until sometime later, first in general and chemical engineering, and later in all departments except civil engineering (but including the surveying section of civil engineering). The computer center in 1960 was described in the self-study report for ECPD accreditation as:

“THE COMPUTER CENTER is an instructional and research laboratory operated and supervised by the Department of Mathematics of the Col1ege of Arts and Sciences. Its main facility, an IBM 650 Magnetic Drum Data Processing Machine, together with assorted equipment and machines such as: punchers, sorters, verifiers and interpreters, provides a unique research too1 which is readily available to all interested staff members of the different faculties in the Mayagüez campus.

In later years, the computer center acquired several generations of computers, next came an IBM 360 (model unknown) with 128 K of RAM, and later still a DEC PDP-10. A small amount of time-sharing equipment appeared in the 1970’s, some installed in a computer room in Stefani. The eventual evolution of the computer center was into various models of DEC VAX machines in the early 1980’s, but by then technology had changed, and this computer center, like most others, became primarily an administrative tool. Networking, when it came to the campus and was actually funded for administrative purposes; its usefulness for academic computation was a by-product of the coverage needed in any case.

As might be expected over a twenty-year period, faculty turnover was almost complete 34. All the founding fathers retired during the sixties and early seventies. Virtually all new faculty during these years came through the study-leave program, Fomento35 scholarships, or our own M. S. program. At the end of the seventies, the department’s faculty (except for Dr. Florencio Vázquez, a Spaniard) was entirely Puerto Rican, only two did not have a bachelor’s degree from the department, and only three were not either scholarship recipients or graduates of our own masters’ program. Although a number of new Ph. D.’s appeared during this time, enrollments increased so rapidly that it was impossible to give released time for research, or to provide laboratory space or equipment. Consequently, essentially no research developed during these years. The Middle States report of 1966 stated:

“this is adding to problems of recruitment which in themselves in an insular community are difficult enough. While the provisions for leave for members of the faculty are generous, these in themselves do not solve the problem and are not playing any role of significance in attracting new faculty and preferably some of senior rank from outside the Commonwealth. Finally, there should be greater support than is currently the Case for continuing programs of research. This however, is a perennial problem encountered everywhere but markedly so in scientific disciplines such as

33 Santos Silva, Loreina, Women in Higher Education, UPR-RUM, May 1982.34 Retirement in the UPR system is based on years of service rather than age at retirement, full benefits are given at thirty years, with sharply reduced benefits before that point. As a result, few professors serve more than thirty years.35 Fomento is the popular name for the Puerto Rico Industrial Development Corporation (PRIDCO), established during the early Muñoz-Tugwell years. Fomento scholars were required to work in Puerto Rico on a year-for-year basis just as study-leave recipients. Study-leave scholars were required to work at the University, PRIDCO scholars could work anywhere in Puerto Rico. Several went to significant government positions.

Engineering. The periodic re-evaluation of the College of Engineering by representatives of E.C.P.D. reveals that the curriculum in the areas under review are standard and good. While this is particularly true as far as the curriculum and instruction in electrical engineering are concerned, the college in genera! is meeting satisfactorily its mandate and goals. The coordination with the Nuclear Center is effective and a source of strength to the college. There is adequate budget provision for the various programs offered, and as, is true of all parts of the university a very, liberal leave policy for members of the faculty. The college is well housed with adequate equipment and facilities.There should, if possible, be more members of'the faculty with Ph.D. degrees and more opportunity for the faculty to engage in research and study leading to publication. Recruitment of faculty of this type, despite the liberal leave policy, is difficult but must be pursued vigorously. Whether the qualitative requirements of Puerto Rican economy for engineering talent are higher than the qualifications of the graduates of the college is a moot question that will repay study. Finally, the library resources are seriously inadequate and do not support properly the curricula offered.

Faculty-student relationships, and faculty attitudes were much more formal during these years. This pattern has been described by several graduates from this period, it ran the gambit from harsh grading standards to formal behavior in the classroom, to faculty isolation from students otherwise. This was a common style in other colleges also, although it disappeared earlier there than here. One bit of evidence, faculty pictures from this era always show suits and ties, but by 1980 or so, that dress code had disappeared. The pictures below show this, neither is the complete group. Teodoro Mercado is the only one common to both pictures; Osvaldo Porrata is at the right in the 1962 photo. Several individuals have described a form of academic elitism in which the earlier Eastern university educated faculty seemed to feel superior intellectually to the later arrivals.

Departmental Faculty - 1962

Departmental Faculty – 1987

Roberto Ortiz Muñiz and Roberto Ortiz Aguiar – 1965

However, sometimes faculty-student relationships were less formalized. Above is the only father-son team to teach in the department. Later, two husband-wife and one uncle-niece teams were to appear.

Computing Comes, Industry Participates

The computer engineering program originated in 1979, apparently with an edict from above, rather than as a department initiative. In fairness to the department it should be noted that their pessimism originated in large part because of the difficulty of obtaining administrative support for at any level for already established programs. According to then-chancellor Rafael Pietri Oms, the program was one of several proposed for engineering, including manufacturing, biomedical, and computer. A committee consisting of professors Rafael Fernández Sein, Walter Ruiz, and Hiram Cabassa were appointed and prepared a proposal which resulted in the eventually adopted program. According to Dr. Manuel Rodriguez Perazza, the committee also included several then relatively new professors from electrical engineering including Baldomero Llorens, Julio Santiago, and Roberto Pérez Colón. The proposal met with sustained opposition from the mathematics department, which had a computing option within the mathematics major, and felt this gave them a mandate to develop and control all computing majors on the campus. Only because their academic senator was absent on the day the program was approved does it exist today. The program graduated six students in 1983, and since then has become remarkably successful. It quickly grew to about one-third the size of the electrical engineering program. It is essentially equivalent to an electrical engineering program plus the software content of most computer science programs, and usually has the highest entrance index of any undergraduate program in the University. Originally, the program contained a significant digital signal processing and communication system component; this is still present in its graduate programs. During its early years it benefited greatly from industrial support, most of its computing equipment was supplied by industrial grants, and several industries furnished visiting faculty who taught software courses and in some cases helped to obtain the NSF grants that furnished the vital infrastructure and external visibility for the program. Initially General Telephone and Telegraph furnished visiting faculty and help in developing the program proposal, later AT&T furnished visiting faculty for a number of years, and virtually all the computing equipment used for software courses. Still later, Bellcore furnished several visiting professors and summer employment for faculty, Hewlett-Packard donated the first generation of workstations, and IBM donated equipment and several visiting professors. With one exception36 it was not until 1994 that the University furnished any computing equipment. More recently IBM and Hewlett-Packard have donated equipment and sponsored cooperative research programs with several faculty members.

The first of the industrial involvements was that of GTT. It has been described in an article by Dr. Manuel Rodriguez Perazza37 According to this article, GTT allotted $200,000 for the establishment of a computing program at UPRM and obtained the services of Dr. George Singletary, then director of the computer science department at Pennsylvania State University. Shortly afterward (in 1981-82), Dr. Terry Glagowski, a software developer at GTT came as a visiting professor.

In about 1984, Dr. Florencio Vázquez and Prof. Carlos Alcaide (then department director) visited AT&T. This trip resulted in the appointment of Dr. Bill Scheerer as campus angel for the university. This relationship soon resulted in the donation of the first generation of Unix 36 The university purchased an IBM Series 1 as part of the initial proposal. This was housed in the present IEEE reading room and office space, it had 250K of memory and used 8-inch floppies for student files. When a student appeared, the operator had to manually load that student’s floppy. It had about 20 of the rather expensive green-phosphor alpha terminals of that epoch and used IBM’s proprietary language PL/one.37 Rodríguez Perazza, Manuel, El nacimiento del la ingeniería de computadoras,Tecnomundo, CIAPR, San Juan, PR. 2002.

machines to the department; the systems were the primary software instructional systems from 1986 to 1994, when they became obsolete and died at about the same time. AT&T also provided a visiting professor each year from 1986 until 1991 and occasionally after that. One of the most significant results of this relationship was their assistance with proposing and overseeing the first of the department’s three NSF-CISE infrastructure grants. They provided two visiting professors for that year, and three of the five members of the advisory committee for that and the next succeeding grant in the series. This relationship remained close and beneficial for many years until the eventual reorganization of AT&T into Lucent, the dispersal of the Bell Laboratories organization, and the departure of AT&T from computer equipment and software production.

IBM had furnished one visiting professor earlier, and then, from 1992 to 1994, Alejandro Vásquez (brother of the present dean, Dr. Ramón Vásquez) came as a visiting professor. Along with him came the IBM RS-6000 system, which was three host computers and a number of X-terminals. This became ASEL, the Advanced Software Engineering Laboratory, which was used for software engineering and artificial intelligence courses. In later years, IBM has sponsored cooperative projects with several department faculty; these will be described later.

During these years Professor Carlos Alcaide served as director until 1985, and was then replaced by Dr. Teodoro Mercado, who served until his retirement in 1990. Dr. Samuel Irizarry, who had been associate director, then became director, serving until the departure of Chancellor Stuart Ramos. Faculty turnover and diversification were both significant during these years. Dr. Henry Fischback and professors Alipio Cabán, Aníbal Acosta Ayala, and Alejandro Rivera retired in the early eighties. For the first and only time, faculty of non-Colegio origin were the majority of new hires. Drs. Venkatesan, Palomera, Parsiani, Monroy, and Noack appeared during these years, as did several others who later left, generally for personal reasons. Drs. Ramón Vásquez and Jorge Ortiz Alvarez returned from study leave in 1984, Drs. Néstor Rodríguez and José Borges left and returned late in the decade. Drs. Gerson Beauchamp and Miguel Vélez went on study leave during this time, as did Dr. Shawn Hunt, who had grown up in Puerto Rico but attended Tulane University.

In part due to suggestions made during the 1981 ABET visit, a major curriculum revision was done in 1983. The most significant part of this revision was to establish four options (power, communications/electromagnetics, control systems, and electronics). ABET specification changes later required one-half year of design content, this was initially accomplished by specifying the amount of design content for some courses and by introducing some purely design courses. The present curriculum is essentially this one with minor modifications.

A major modification of the computer engineering curriculum was initiated in 1985. This encountered much opposition in the academic senate from the mathematics department, essentially the curriculum revision was passed, but nearly all course revisions had to be withdrawn. The present curriculum is essentially this one with minor modifications. In both curricula there has been gradual evolution within the existing framework, including establishment of more technical electives.

This was also a time of expansion and then contraction in the electronics industry. Hewlett-Packard, Digital Equipment Corporation, and Intel had all established manufacturing plants in Puerto Rico. H-P has continued to expand, but DEC and Intel have since departed. The Sensormatic plant in Moca has continued to be the primary manufacturer of antitheft devices for merchandise. Electronics and pharmaceuticals were the primary beneficiaries of Section 936, which granted exemption from U. S. corporate taxes for products attributed to Puerto Rico. These industries have survived, even after the repeal of Section 936, but most of the low-wage

industries that depended on this exemption, such as tuna processing and clothing, have gone to underdeveloped countries.

In the middle 1980’s relations with the Colegio de Ingenieros de Puerto Rico (CIAPR) worsened. CIAPR sued the University to compel the employment of only CIAPR members to teach engineering courses. This would have forced the removal of a number of faculty members all through the engineering school, and virtually barred hiring faculty for computer engineering, since no licensing was available in this specialty. It should be noted that the Puerto Rican license requires residence before application, and as enforced, it usually blocks the licensing of those without a U. S. or Puerto Rican engineering degree. The lawsuit was defeated, but sporadic efforts have been made to reinstitute it and to introduce legislation to enforce such a requirement.

The first of the series of NSF-CISE proposals was submitted and approved late in the decade. It appears to have begun with a visit of then-Dean Leandro Rodríguez to NSF in late 1986. A department committee was appointed and wrote a pre-proposal. This resulted in site visits to NSF and AT&T in 1987, and then the writing of a full proposal for infrastructure improvement, which was funded for $1.5 million over five years. This provided the first significant computer facilities owned by the department, and permitted the establishment of several research centers and laboratories that still exist and provided the nucleus for expanding the electrical engineering graduate program. In fact, the grant probably provided more facilities for electrical than for computer engineering programs. Since, two more grants in this series have been funded. It can be stated fairly that the subsequent rise of research in this department could not have occurred without this funding.

The Rise of Research

The NSF-CISE grant was really the beginning of the current wave of research and graduate study in the electrical engineering department, in both programs. Although several research contracts had been funded in earlier years, and a relatively small graduate program had existed since 1967, and the faculty who would eventually initiate most of the research of the nineties and beyond were still undergraduates or beginning graduate students. The industrial affiliates program, which would feed into several major grants, was just beginning. Also, these were the years just before the dawn of the internet and the personal computer revolution, a paradigm shift that made computing available to almost everyone rather than major institutions and industries only. Although the NSF-CISE grant was proposed as developing infrastructure for computer engineering, it really was applied far more to electrical engineering, for several reasons:Industrial donations supported the software courses to some extent. No similar donations came to electrical engineering,Several newly arrived faculty had research interests in fields on the borderline between the two fields, such as digital signal processing, remote sensing and VLSIThe graduate program existed only in electrical engineering, and computing support was needed to support thesis work in this area.Research-oriented faculty in software did not arrive until somewhat later; these courses were taught either by visiting faculty or those without research contacts.The first few major grants were MRCE (Minority Research Center for Engineering), TCESS, a NASA grant developed in conjunction with the Raytheon Corporation. One smaller grant came from the Puerto Rican government for human interface research. The TCESS grant has continued until the present, diversifying also into subsurface remote sensing. NSF-Epscor was initiated in the early eighties, but it provided relatively little benefit to the Mayagüez campus, and none at all to this department. The 2001 Undergraduate Bulletin fairly closely describes the current status of research.

“The Department currently manages over $14 Million in research. Among its faculty members there is a recipient Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) which is the highest honor bestowed by the US government to faculty in the beginning of their careers and two recipients of the prestigious CAREER awards from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The Departments has two major research centers: the Tropical Center for Earth and Space Studies (TCESS), and the Center for Computing Research and Development (CECORD). Our Department is a member of the Center for Power Electronic Systems (CPES), a NSF Engineering Research Center located at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute. Also, the Department is a member of the outreach program of the NSF ERC Packaging Research Center at Georgia Institute of Technology.Among the research laboratory facilities available for graduate level work are:Atmospheric Phenomena LaboratoryElectric Energy Processing Systems LaboratoryHuman Computer Interaction LaboratoryIonospheric Radar LaboratoryLaboratory for Applied Remote Sensing and Image ProcessingMicrowave and Antennas LaboratoryOptoelectronic Systems Research LaboratoryPower Electronics LaboratorySpace Information LaboratoryProcess Control Laboratory

The NSF-CISE grant has been renewed twice, in 1993 and 1998. The 1993 grant was directed toward establishing the masters’ program in computer engineering. The 1998 renewal was designed to establish the Ph. D. program in computation. This interdisciplinary combination came about in part because of events at the time of preparation of the 1993 renewal proposal. At that time, with the encouragement of the University’s central administration, the computing section of the mathematics department on the Rio Piedras campus prepared a competing proposal. Since NSF would only fund one proposal per institution per year, this was resolved by combining the two proposals and splitting the funds between the two campuses. Eventually, the Rio Piedras funding was transferred to the mathematics department at Mayagüez instead, and the computing Ph. D., when it developed, became interdisciplinary, referred to as the Ph. D. in Computer and Information Sciences (CISE). It is managed through the PRECISE project, directed through Dr. Domingo Rodríguez. In recent months, the department has received several more major grants, mostly centered in computing and power systems. These last form a rather closely linked group of projects, both in terms of personnel and types of research. For example, one grant, developing intelligent power routers, is linked to another (an NSF career award) emphasizing power quality research and education.

This was a time of much administrative turnover, both at higher levels and inside the department. Surprisingly enough, the departmental administrative turnover coincided with the most productive period in the department’s history. Partly this is because the times were right, but certainly the fact that academe is quite different than industry or business is part of the reason. For the most part successful academics are self-directed, and the desired result is not just a single product, but a combination of many outcomes, including research but also good teaching and innovation in general. A strong and dictatorial administrator can easily stifle real achievement even while obtaining good scores on artificial metrics. At least one director during this period was successful by reviving communication within the department rather than direction per se.

At the beginning of this period, the Popular Democratic Party (PDP) was in power, the governing board of the University was the Council on Higher Education (CES), the president was a law school professor, Lcdo. Fernando Agrait, and the chancellor was Dr. José Martínez Picó, who had come out of retirement as Dean Emeritus of Academic Affairs. Both had taken office after the change in political control resulting from the 1984 general election38. Sometime later, but still during the PDP administration of Rafael Hernández Colón, both president and chancellor resigned and were replaced by Dr. Saldaña, a dental school professor, and Dr. Alejandro Ruiz, a biologist who had been Dean of Arts and Sciences. Dr. Teodoro Mercado had become director in 1985, he retired in 1990 and was replaced by the associate director, Dr. Samuel Irizarry, who served until the end of the chancellorship of Dr. Stuart Ramos Biaggi. When the New Progressive Party (PNP) came into power in 1993, they passed legislation to create a new governing board for the University, called the Board of Sindicos (JS). Later, the Rosselló imposed a permanent cut of $40 million per year on the University, diverting these funds to the private universities and to a school voucher fund. Dr. Norman Maldonado, who had served as chancellor of the medical sciences campus became president, and Dr. Stuart Ramos, a biologist, who had served as Dean of Students some years before, and a longtime academic senator, became chancellor. Professor Pablo Rodríguez was interim chancellor before Dr. Ramos was appointed. Dr. Ramos was fired several years later, after political sources disagreed with some of his 38 The president of the University is normally replaced whenever a change in party control of the governing borrad takes place. Since the terms are staggered, this normally takes place a year or two after an new majority party takes control. All lower administrative posts are positions of confidence, thus all resign at that time and are normally (but not always at lower levels) replaced. This has an unexpected side benefit, since administrators are chosen from a relatively small group of eligible people, it is the only way to periodically provide variety and avoid stagnation.

administrative appointments. He sued the University and won a retraction, but retired shortly after. Then followed a long period of uncertainty, with several interim and permanent chancellors. One was Dr. Zulma Toro Ramos, who had been successively Director of the Industrial Engineering department and Dean of Engineering, before becoming chancellor. Although an able individual, she was temperamentally unsuited for administration; this was well-known beforehand by both students and faculty, and the academic senate opposed her appointment for that reason. Eventually she was replaced by a succession of interim chancellors before the recent appointment of Dr. Jorge Vélez Arocho after the 2001 election, when the PDP had again come into power. Dr. Irizarry was replaced by Professor Héctor Monroy after the departure of Dr. Ramos. He resigned some time later, and was replaced by Professor Baldomero Llorens. Then followed a series of interim directors, including Dr. Sandra Cruz Pol, Dr. José Rivera Cartagena, Professor Monroy, and the present interim director (and probable next director) Dr. José Luis Cruz. Through all this, the department functioned quite smoothly, even going through the first accreditation visit under Criteria 2000, which emphasizes outcomes assessment with somewhat less emphasis on curriculum content. This was one of the periods of greatest success in obtaining research funding.

Conversations with various researchers indicate that during the initial period of departmental research development there was relatively little support in terms of released time or seed money. The pattern seems instead to have been one of individuals who were able to exploit contacts and promising research areas obtained during their Ph. D. work, and to find their own way into initial research opportunities. More recently, released time and support has been given, and the present pattern is one of small groups often obtaining equipment and travel support through programs such as PRECISE or TCESS (Tropical Center for Earth and Space Studies. TCESS originated with a NASA grant held jointly with Raytheon corporation through an initial contact arising from the department’s industrial affiliates program.

Again, these were years of significant changes in faculty. Drs. José Colom, Sandra Cruz Pol, José Luis Cruz, Luis Jiménez, Rafael Rodríguez Solís, Agustín Irizarry, Manuel Jiménez, José Cedeño, Nayda Santiago, Eduardo Juan and Javier Arroyo returned from study leave. Two new Ph. D.’s in power systems, Drs. Guillermo Riera and Javier Quintana arrived and left very quickly for major government positions. Dr. Bishwajit Ray left to accept industrial employment. Drs. Florencio Vázquez, Heriberto Plaza, Héctor Cabán Zeda and Manuel Rodríguez Perazza and Professors José Colón and Roberto Ortiz Aguiar retired durning the late 1990`s. At the end of the decade Drs. Bienvenido Vélez, Manuel Rodríguez Martínez and Pedro Rivera joined the department more or less directly from the Rio Piedras Campus; all have computer science degrees. The majority of these new faculty members have already obtained research funding, as mentioned above, three have received NSF Career grants or the NASA equivalent.

Also, during these years the department acquired its first permanent women faculty members, Sandra Cruz Pol and Nayda Santiago. . Both had taught as instructors before going on study leave. María Teresa Jiménez taught in computer engineering from 1982 to 1987, but as a member of the general engineering department. She then transferred to the Río Piedras campus. Several other women have taught, usually as prospective study leave candidates, including Providencia Rodríguez, Sandra Soto, Mariecel Torres, and Emily Angarita. Women are now approximately one-third of students in engineering.

Bibliography

Roosevelt, Theodore, Jr., American Imperialism, Doubleday, Doran & Company, Garden City, New York, 1937.Deitz, James L., Economic History of Puerto Rico, Princeton University Press, 1986. 0-691-07716-9Tugwell, Rexford Guy, The Stricken Land, Doubleday, Doran & Company, Garden City, New York, 1947.Ross, David F., The Long Upward Path – a Historical Study of Puerto Rico’s Program of Historical Development, Editorial Edil, San Juan, Puerto Rico, 1969.Anton, George F., Since the Beginnings of Time – the Early History of the College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts, Editorial Maucci, Spain, 1965.Martínez Pico, José L., Cinquenta años de historia, UPR-Mayagüez, 1998.Reynolds, Lloyd G. and Peter Gregory, Wages, Productivity, and Industrialization in Puerto Rico, Yale University Press, New Haven, Connecticut, 1965.Goodsell, Charles T., Administration of a Revolution, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1965.Navarro Rivera, Pablo, Universidad de Puerto Rico: De control político a crisis permanente, Ediciones Huracán, Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico, 2000.Nieves Falcon, ed., Violation of Human Rights in Puerto Rico by the United Status, Ediciones Puerto, San Juan, Puerto Rico, 2002.Sotomayor, Orlando J., Poverty and Income Inequality in Puerto Rico, Centro de investigaciones sociales, Universidad de Puerto Rico, 1998.Moscoso, Francisco, Agricultura y sociedad en Puerto Rico, Siglos 16 al 18, Editorial ICP, 2001.Weisskopf, Richard, Factories and Food Stamps – The Puerto Rico Model of Development, The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, Maryland, 1985.Ramos de Santiago, Carmen, ed., El Desarollo Constitucional de Puerto Rico, Universidad de Puerto Rico, 1985.Pagán, Bolívar, Historia de los partidos politicos Puertorriqueños (1898-1956), Tomo I y II, San Juan, PR, 1956.Pagán, Bolívar, Crónicas de Washington, Biblioteca de autores Puertorriqueños, San Juan, 1949.Bayrón Toro, Fernando, Elecciones y Partidos Políticos de Puerto Rico, 1809-2000, 6 th ed., Editorial Isla, 2000.Kelshall, Gaylord T. M., The U-boat War in the Caribbean, Naval Institute Press, 1998, 1994.Rodríguez Beruff, Jorge, Las Memorias de Leahy, Fundación Luis Muñoz Marín, 2001.University of Puerto Rico-Mayagüez, Questionnaire for Review of Engineering Curricula – submitted to Engineers’ Council for Professional Development, 1960, 1965, 1969, 1975.University of Puerto Rico-Mayagüez, Self-study Questionnaire for Review of Engineering Programs – submitted to Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology, 1981, 1984, 1990, 1993, 1996, 2002.Soltero Harrington, Fred, ed., 50 Años de Historia Colegial, University of Puerto Rico-Mayagüez, 1998.Trías Monge, Jose, Puerto Rico – The Trials of the Oldest Colony in the World, Yale University Press, 1997, 0-300-07618-5Dietz, James L., Puerto Rico – Negotiating Development and Change, Bienner, Boulder, CO, 2003, ISBN 1-58826-147-6Bender, Lynn-Darrell, Ed., The American Presence in Puerto Rico, Publicaciones Puertorriqueños, San Juan, PR, 1998, ISBN 1-881713-76-8

Tulley, Henry C., The Engineer’s Handbook, 4 th Ed., The practical care and management of motors, boilers, engines, pumps, inspirators and injectors, refrigerating machinery, hydraulic elevators, air compressors, rope transmission and all branches of steam engineering. Henry C. Tulley and Co., St. Louis, Mo, 1904, 961 pp, Price $3.50. Land Grants: First Morrill Act, http://www.higher-ed.org/resources/morrill1.htmhttp://www2.uiuc.edu/unit/armyrotc/history/ The Reserve Office Training Corps Vitalization Act of 1963 eliminates the "mandatory" nature of ROTC. The Fall semester of 1964 implemented this voluntary participation.http://www.unh.edu/army-rotc/HISTORY.htmJoint Resolution No. 5, April 7, 1920, Authorizing the Municipality of San Juan to grant a scholarship of $360 per year to Osvaldo Porrata Doria, who is pursuing a course of studies at the School of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts of Mayagüez, Porto Rico and for other purposesSantos Silva, Loreina, Women in Higher Education, UPR-RUM, May 1982.Miner Solá, Edwin, Historia de los huracanes en Puerto Rico, First Book Publishing of P. R., 1995, ISBN 0-9633435-7-2.Carr, Raymond, Puerto Rico, a Colonial Experiment, Vintage Books, 1984.American Society for Engineering Education, Committee on Evaluation of Engineering Education, Report on Evaluation of Engineering Education, Journal of Engineering Education, September 1966, pp. 25-60

Appendices and Explanations

Curriculum

The first evidence of electrical engineering courses or a curriculum appears in the 1921 university catalogiii. One faculty member, Cornelius Duffey, is also listed; he appears as late as 1939 as a physics professor. According to Martínez Picó39, he first appears in a yearbook in 1919 and for some years was coordinator of the courses in engineering. He died in 1941. Enrollment data (at that early date students were listed by name, year, and curriculum) show several students enrolled during the middle 1920’s but none graduated, some disappearing and some transferring to civil engineering. The first engineering program on campus was actually chemical engineering and sugar chemistry, which was defined as a co-op program. The 1921 catalog describes it thusly:

“The course requires eighteen months of scholastic work after the completion of the freshman and sophomore curriculum in engineering. This time is divided over three years enabling the student to study half of each year from July to December and to work as analyst in a sugar factory the other half. The experience gained during his first crop enables the student to comprehend with more ease the subsequent subjects and he gains more benefit because he realizes the practical applications of his studies. For the student of limited means the financial aspect of this part-time work should not be overlooked.”

The other branches had four-year programs, later with summer camps before the freshman year. The curriculum at this early date is very similar to that of mechanical engineering, containing only a few electrical engineering courses. In part this is a result of the nature of engineering practice then, often practiced by individuals who were responsible for installation and maintenance as well as designiv. This catalog lists nine electrical engineering courses, all in elementary circuits or power. It is interesting to compare the freshman year of 1921 and that of 2003; surveying and engineering shop have now been replaced by Spanish I, otherwise little has changed. The curriculum shows only gradual changes until the late 1940’s, although this is somewhat of an illusion. It is apparent that because of the small electrical engineering enrollment, the much larger enrollment in other curricula, especially mechanical and civil engineering, that the department was primarily a service department. This pattern of small EE enrollment was to continue until nearly 1960; the first graduating class of more than ten students was twenty in 1959. In the post-world war II years civil engineering graduated typically sixty, and mechanical engineering more than twenty.

One major change came when Don Jaime Benítez became chancellor in 1942. He instituted the general studies program, which consisted of a separate department that taught all the courses in a nearly uniform first year, regardless of major. Engineering students took this program and then continued with what had been the freshman year. This was the start of the present five-year program. In later years, the general studies departments divided again, becoming the faculty of arts and humanities, and finally the present faculty of arts and sciences. The science faculties were actually populated from the engineering departments, several electrical engineering professors became chairmen in physics, and deans of science.

39 Martínez Pico, José L., Cinquenta años de historia, UPR-Mayagüez, 1998, p. 53

English was the official language of the University until 1942v, and none of the curricula before that date include Spanish courses. Chardonvi describes the evolution of primary and secondary education, noting that secondary education developed only after 1898, and that high schools were in English all during this period. Contrary to the popular impression, the language of instruction shifted repeatedly between Spanish and English in the lower grades.

Curricular evolution was quite gradual during all this period (until the late 1950’s). The engineering faculty (note this really means the college of engineering; claustro is the Spanish translation of the English word faculty) began seeking accreditation in the middle fifties. In 1955 ASEE issued the Grinter report40, which required a set of six engineering sciences in addition to mathematics, physics, and chemistry; these became the core of the engineering fundamentals examination. On this campus, most had been shifted into the general engineering department when it was created in 1949. The Grinter report comments are quoted below:

“F. The Engineering Sciences An engineering science as defined here is a subject that involves largely the study of basic scientific principles as related to, and as related through, engineering problems and situations. Engineering science stems from two basic areas: mechanical phenomena of solids, liquids, and gases; and electrical phenomena. A common practice is to subdivide these into the following six engineering sciences: Mechanics of solids ( statics, dynamics, and strength or materials). Fluid mechanics. Thermodynamics Transfer and rate mechanisms ( heat, mass, and momentum transfer). Electrical theory ( fields, circuits, and electronics). Nature and properties of materials ( relating particle and aggregate structure to properties). It is not necessary that this material be treated as separate courses. … It is not intended that the above shall be a complete list of the engineering sciences. It may be anticipated that other engineering sciences will develop; for example, information theory shows promise of contributing to measurement and control in all engineering fields. … It is evident that the engineer needs background in all of the six fields listed. Only after careful consideration and determination that the fundamental concepts are substantially covered in other studies at an equivalent mathematical level, should one of engineering sciences be omitted from a curriculum. Alternately, there may be some curricula or engineering programs for which sciences other than those listed must be chosen, for example, a life science or an earth science. It should be possible to achieve the breadth, quality, and penetration desired by allotting about one fourth of the total program to the undergraduate study of engineering sciences.

With the formation of this department the curriculum was set up under a three-two year plan. Under this plan, students were admitted to engineering, rather than a specific field, and all took the same courses for the first three years. Late in the third year they applied to admission to their desired major. Electrical engineering students took no electrical engineering until the fourth year. This soon slipped back to the present structure of admission to a specific department, and with curricula gradually diverging into specialization. By 1971, electrical engineering courses once again started in the first semester of the third year, and by 1983 in the second semester of the second year. Later, in about 1989, an initiative from other departments in the college of engineering proposed a return to this approach, but with the admission to specific departments to be done at the end of the second year rather than the third. Again, this version delayed the start of electrical and computer engineering courses. It was eventually defeated; the only evidence of its

40 American Society for Engineering Education, Committee on Evaluation of Engineering Education, Report on Evaluation of Engineering Education, Journal of Engineering Education, September 1966, pp. 25-60

existence is the department’s Puerto Rican history requirement. Two significant changes were driven by outside influences. Required military science courses disappeared vii in 1964. Land-grant colleges had been required to offer military science from the beginning (the Morrill act of 1862) and nearly all had required it. Officer training programs in the colleges came much later, just before world war Iviii. In the early 1960’s ECPD (the present ABET) instituted a requirement of one semester of social-humanistic courses. Some vestiges of the general studies program provided some of these courses, but restructuring was needed to provide meaningful course sequences.

A significant curriculum revision was made in about 1983, instituting four options (power, electronics, communications and electromagnetics, and control systems). This was done in part in response to an ABET inspector’s comment that many transcripts showed an uncoordinated choice of electives with no depth of experience. Also, ABET began emphasizing design, and in order to meet this requirement, the design credit for each course was specified and each graduate was required to have at least one semester total of design credits. More recently ABET has required a capstone design course in all curricula; this has resulted in at least one purely design course in each option.

In conjunction with ABET’s 2002 visit, the department established committees to revise both curricula. These have issued some reports, but the complete report has not been issued. A major emphasis has been structuring capstone courses for each option of electrical engineering and setting up emphasis areas and subcommittees for computer engineering.

The computer engineering curriculum was instituted in 1981, with the first six students graduating in 1983. The program was and is the equivalent of an electrical engineering program with some specialization in digital electronics and the software content of a computer science degree. The impetus for this program actually came from above, the proposal was written by a committee appointed by then dean Flavio Acarónix. A revision of this program was begun in 1985, but was delayed for many years in the academic senate, primarily because of competition and objections from the mathematics department, which had a relatively inactive computational mathematics option in its major dating from somewhat earlier. As a result, a few aspects of the revision had to be withdrawn, addition of needed software electives was delayed for some years, and accreditation was delayed until 1993, whereas it could have been sought as early as 1987.

In about 1998, an ad-hoc committee was appointed by the then chancellor Zulma Toro to develop a software engineering curriculum. This committee was composed of the software faculty of computer engineering, with certain exclusions. It developed a curriculum and a proposal that included the creation of a new department. Soon after, a computer science program was proposed based on the present computer engineering program. At about the same time, the mathematics department proposed a computer science program within the faculty of arts and sciences. Both curricula have been approved by the academic senate, thus a decision as to whether one or both or none are implemented rests with the University president. The present set of proposed programs (computer science and software engineering, along with masters’ and doctoral programs in computing) would be administered by a new department called CISE (Computer and Information Sciences and Engineering) to be formed from software faculty in the present Electrical and Computer Engineering Department.

The very beginnings of the curriculum are interesting for several reasons. The freshman years of the 1921 and 2001 curricula are shown below:

THE FRESHMAN YEAR IN ENGINEERING – as of 1921

Course No. Course Name First SecondChem. I-II General Ohemistry 4 4Draw. I-II Engineering Drawing 2 1Engl. Ia-Ib Composition and Rbetoric 3 3Math. I Advanced Algebra and Trigonometry 6 -Math. II Analytic Geometry and Calculus -- 5M. E. I Engineering Sbop 2 --Pbys. I Elementary Pbysics -- 3Mil. Sci. 1 Basic Course 1 1 Total 18 18

THE FRESHMAN YEAR IN ENGINEERING – as of 2001Course No. Course Name First Second

CHEM 3001, 3002 General Chemistry 4 4GEEG 3011 Engineering Graphics 1 2*SPAN 3101 Basic Course in Spanish 3 3*ENGL 3--- First year course in English 3 3*MATH 3005 Pre-Calculus 5MATH 3031 Calculus 1 4PHED Course in Physical Education 1 1

18 15

This is not the whole story, after the first year almost everything is different. In the 1921 version the mechanical and electrical engineering curricula are identical except for the replacement of one heat power machinery sequence in the senior year for mechanicals with electives for electricals. The electrical engineering requirement is the same for both, a six-credit sequence in apparatus and circuits in the junior year, and a ten-hour electrical circuits sequence for seniors. As might be expected, there is one literature course, one economics course, and many hours of surveying, forge and foundry, and machine shop. Engineering economics is there, called estimates and costs.

The general studies program was an innovation of the early Benítez years. It began on the Rio Piedras campus as early as 1943, but may have come as late as 1946 to Mayagüez, when the General Studies Division started operation. At least one of its instructors survives, now Professor Emeritus Josefina Rivera de Alvarez. The curriculum for engineers was

Course CreditsFall Spring

Spanish 1-2 3 3English 1-2.3 3Physical Science 1-2 3 3Mathematics 1-2 5 5Military Science 101-102 or Physical Education 1-2 for women

1 1

The Humanities 1-2 3 3Totals 16 16

For general science majors the humanities course was replaced by biological science, general studies students took both humanities and the humanities in place of mathematics.

This was the beginning of the five-year curricula in engineering; the catalog description of the mathematics sequence reveals that it was really what is now precalculus. Analytical geometry and calculus appeared in what was called the freshman year (really the second year) in engineering. This year also was common to all engineering curricula.

The work of the Freshman year in engineering, common to all curricula, is tabulated 011 a preceding page.The freshman year in engineering in the late twenties was the same in all engineering curricula.

Course No. Course Name Fallcontacts

Fallcredits

Springcontacts

Springcredits

Chem. I-II General Chemistry 6 4 6 4Draw. I-II Engineering Drawing 6 2 6 1Engl. Ia-Ib Composition and Rhetoric 3 3 3 3Math. I Advanced Algebra and Trigonometry 6 6 -- -Math. II Analytic Geometry and Calculus ~- -- 5 5M. E. I Engineering Sop 6 2 -- --Phys. I Elementary Physics ~- -- 3 3Mil. Sci. 1 Basic Course 3 1 3 1 30 18 26 18

Faculty

Until the late 1950’s, electrical engineering enrollment, and thus faculty size were quite small. The first known faculty member was L. Lang, listed in the 1915 budget as professor of electrical engineering (on leave) with a salary of $1800. The second was Cornelius Duffey, who appears in 1921, and later (until at least 1939) in the physics department. The continuous existence of curriculum and faculty really dates from 1928, when the first graduate (Edward Di Cristina, 1932) entered the Colegio, and Professor George F. Anton began teaching. He was followed by Miguel Wiewall, Braulio Dueño Leary, and Osvaldo Porrata Doria, all of whom continued teaching until retirement in the late 1960’s. These “first four” were the entire department during the 1930’s and into the postwar years and merit individual description. The pattern of hiring Colegio graduates who are then or later sent on study leave to other institutions begins with George Anton and has furnished the majority of departmental and engineering faculty to this day.

Another frequent pattern during early years was the transfer of electrical engineering faculty to other departments. This first occurred when separate science departments appeared, Prof. Braulio Dueño served as Director of the physics department and as the first dean of Science and Prof. Miguel Wiewall served as dean of Arts and Sciences and later as dean of Academic Affairs. Later, Dr. José García de Quevedo became chairman of the Nuclear engineering department. Also, several faculty members taught in the general engineering department for several years after receiving the Ph. D., before returning to electrical engineering. The Puerto Rico Nuclear Center was established in 1957. Several INEL faculty were sponsored for graduate study in nuclear engineering and returned to INEL as the nuclear program disappeared.

George Anton was born in Sparta, Greece in 1892. He was brought to the United States with his family in 1895, and served in the U. S. Army during World War I. He completed his bachelor’s degree at Georgia Tech in 1924, and came to the Colegio in 1928. He studied each summer and finished his master’s degree at Columbia in 1936. H served in the U. S. Army signal corps again from 1941 to 1948 and then served until retirement sometime after 1965. Apparently he continued to teach after age 70, which was then the compulsory retirement age. He also served as associate director of the Engineering Research Center, apparently retiring in 1968 and dying sometime in the early 1920’s.

Dr. Miguel Wiewall was born in 1905 and received his BSEE from RPI in 1927. After one year as an electrical engineer with the Puerto Rico Light and Power Company he came to the Colegio in 1929. He received his M. A. from Columbia in 1934 and his Ph. D. from Harvard in 1938. He later performed some research on ionospheric winds, and (1947-1963) was dean of Arts and Sciences, and later was dean of Academic Affairs (1963-1966). He was the original occupant of both positions. He died in February 1982.

Dr. Braulio Dueño was born in 1908 and received BSEE and MSEE degrees from Alabama in 1930 and 1931. He came to the Colegio shortly after, remaining until retirement in about 1970. From 1938 to 1941 he was an engineer with the Puerto Rico Water Resources Authority, and also studied at Cornell, receiving the Ph. D. in 1955. He played a significant role in the 1943 strike in the Colegio, and later became physics department chairman and previously dean of Science (?-1947). He taught communications courses and performed research in radio astronomy. He was the department’s only emeritus professor and died at age 94 in the fall of 2002.

Prof. Osvaldo Porrata Doria was born in 1913 and was the honor graduate from the Colegio in 1933. He worked for two years, and then came to the Colegio as instructor in 1935, eventually becoming director until retiring in the late 1960’s. He is thus the first of many Colegio graduates to teach in this department. His primary interests were electric machinery and power systems. He died in 1980. Martínez Picó41 describes him thusly:

“He had one of the most agile minds that have passed through the institution. He succeeded Wiewall as department director, serving for eleven years, during which time all non-teaching functions were performed ad honorem. Also he was in charge of the underground installation of the electrical lines on the campus. He was one of those who helped, again without compensation, with athletic activities. He well earned his position as one of the pioneers who made the campus what it is today.”

Dr. José García de Quevedo was the honor graduate in 1939, and received the MSEE from RPI in 1940 and the Ph. D. from Duke in 1948. He is likely the first of the department’s graduates to receive a Ph. D. He was director of the Nuclear Engineering department during its existence and of the Nuclear Center, and then returned to teaching in the department, remaining until at least 1973. Another early Ph. D. from the department was Dr. Modesto Iriarte, who received his B. S. in 1945 and taught later on several occasions, including both service as an instructor, and as Assistant Professor from 1960 to 1964.

From the about 1960 to the late 1980’s, with the increase in EE enrollment, teaching loads were quite heavy, and no released time for research was granted. During these years, even faculty with new Ph. D.’s were unable to continue their research. Also, graduate enrollment was small during those years. Only with the NSF-CISE grants starting in 1988 and the return of several study leave faculty did significant research develop. Under present conditions, most receive 50% released time for the first few years; they can built on research and contacts started during graduate school, and the majority have then found significant funding.

The study leave program has furnished the majority of present faculty. Outstanding students apply or are selected and usually (not always) serve as instructors for one to several years before going to graduate school. During graduate school, all tuition and expenses are paid, along with a stipend which has remained constant at about $400 per month since at least the mid-1970’s. After completing the Ph. D., they must return for at least as many years as they studied, or return all the reimbursement with interest. Formerly they could also pay retirement during study leave and receive retirement credit; recent changes in retirement policy have made this unaffordable.

It should be noted that many study leave faculty were the top students in their classes. These include Porrata Doria (1933), García de Quevedo (1939), Fischback (1957), Ortiz Aguiar (1965), Ricardo Mediavilla (1974) served 1983-1985, Nestor Rodríguez (1978), Gerson Beauchamp (1984), Miguel Vélez (1985) and Nayda Santiago (1989).

Soltero’s history42, contains a list, obtained from catalog entries of those who served during his trajectory from 1945 to 1995. For these years it is the best concise summary available, but unfortunately it does not cover the early years, nor does it list all degrees or other service, nor does it include all visiting people. This primarily administrative history contains a half-page history of the department, of dubious accuracy. It does not state when the department was

41 Martínez Pico, José L., Cinquenta años de historia, UPR-Mayagüez, 1998, translation by this author, the complete translation of a section of this history describing electrical engineering appears the chapter covering this period.

42 Soltero Harrington, Fred, ed., 50 Años de Historia Colegial, University of Puerto Rico-Mayagüez, 1998.

founded, but it does list department directors beginning in 1946. Professors Porrata Doria, Dueño, and Wiewall all served as directors during this period.

In 1981, the departmental faculty included 24 men, of whom 3 were on study leave. Of these 24, 22 were BSEE graduates of this program, of the others one was a University of Connecticut graduate who stayed only for that year, the other was Florencio Vázquez, who received his Ph. D. in Spain. Of these, 9 had Ph. D.’s, two in nuclear engineering. Three, including the two nuclear engineering Ph. D’s had nuclear engineering master’s degrees from the Colegio. At the end of that year, two of these faculty members retired, and in 1984, two more. This was the end of a very insular era, faculty composition changed notably after that year; nearly all new hires were Ph. D.’s.

In 1982, five new faculty were hired, three were non-Hispanic Ph. D.’s, one was a Colegio graduate with a Ph. D, and one was a Colegio graduate with two M. S. degrees and some industrial experience, who later received the Ph. D. on study leave. During the next few years (through 1986), several more non-local faculty members were hired, of these about half left within a few years. From then until 2002, most new faculty were local graduates returning from study leave, the others were from Latin American countries with U. S. Ph. D.’s. Except for two who accepted significant positions in Commonwealth government soon after arriving, no study leave recipients have left since the 1970’s; turnover among others hired during this period was about 50%. Only one retirement occurred between 1984 and 1996. Many retired in a few succeeding years, including Drs. Rodríguez Perazza, Florencio Vázquez, Heriberto Plaza, Cabán Zeda, Ortiz Aguiar, and Prof. Colón Díaz. No more than two or three retirements are likely in the next five years, since retirement benefits are based exclusively on years of service and not on age at retirement, and they are greatly reduced for those with less than thirty years service. Consequently relatively few will become eligible. With the addition of Ph. D. programs in electrical engineering and in the proposed CISE (Computer and Information Sciences Engineering) most new faculty will likely be hired for research and the Ph. D. program.

i Navarro Rivera, Pablo, Universidad de Puerto Rico: De control político a crisis permanente , Ediciones Huracán, Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico, 2000.ii Chardon, Luis, in Bender, Lynn-Darrell, Ed., The American Presence in Puerto Rico, Publicaciones Puertorriqueños, San Juan, PR, 1998, ISBN 1-881713-76-8, p215iii All curriculum references, unless otherwise stated, are taken from the University’s catalogs, from 1921 to present.iv Tulley, Henry C., The Engineer’s Handbook, 4th Ed., The practical care and management of motors, boilers, engines, pumps, inspirators and injectors, refrigerating machinery, hydraulic elevators, air compressors, rope transmission and all branches of steam engineering. Henry C. Tulley and Co., St. Louis, Mo, 1904, 961 pp, price $3.50v Navarro Rivera, Pablo, Universidad de Puerto Rico: De control político a crisis permanente, Ediciones Huracán, Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico, 2000.vi Chardon, Luis, in Bender, Lynn-Darrell, Ed., The American Presence in Puerto Rico, Publicaciones Puertorriqueños, San Juan, PR, 1998, ISBN 1-881713-76-8, p215vii http://www2.uiuc.edu/unit/armyrotc/history/ , The Reserve Office Training Corps Vitalization Act of 1963 eliminates the "mandatory" nature of ROTC.viii History of ROTC, http://www.unh.edu/army-rotc/HISTORY.htm ix This committee included Rafael Fernández Sein, Hiram Cabassa, and ?, Sein’s business partner from civil