The Skule Story: The University of Toronto Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering, 1873-2000 (review)

The Skule Story: The University of Toronto Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering, 1873-2000. By Richard White. Toronto: University of Toronto Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering, 2000; distributed by University of Toronto Press. Pp. xi+336.

The name "Skule," which students and alumni fondly invoke to describe the engineering program at Toronto, derives from the persistence of the institution's original 1873 title, "Ontario School of Practical Science." Although this name and its acronym (SPS) officially disappeared when the school became part of the University of Toronto in 1906, many stubbornly used it for decades after. Engineering students at North American universities have always represented a breed apart, and the stories of this Toronto bunch are no different. Richard White chronicles their idiosyncracies in the form of various initiation rites, the Toike Oike newspaper (named apparently from the inflection of a turn-of-the-century Irish caretaker who cleared the building at end of day with the phrase "take a hike"), and the Lady Godiva Memorial Band, which by the 1970s seemed more interested in female nudity than in any historical association with protest.

The above references are gleaned from sections on student life that White has included in The Skule Story to breathe life into an otherwise dry institutional history. Alas, the valiant attempt does not completely succeed, as this self-published anniversary history will be of limited interest to others besides Skule students, faculty, and alumni.

This is not to say that the subject is of no consequence. The history of engineering education has often been addressed in this journal, and there are particular benefits to be gained from cross-national comparisons. However, institutional historians are obligated to deal with dry topics, such as the evolution of curriculum, the proclivities of individual professors and deans, and the ups and downs of financial crises. White does a yeoman-like job of wading through these, and he does raise some broader issues, such as the conflict between theory and practice, the relation between the physical sciences and engineering education over time, and the changing relations between his institution and the provincial and federal Canadian governments.

It is striking how much the "Skule" story resembles that of many engineering institutions south of the Canadian border. Conflicts between what Monte Calvert has dubbed "school culture" and "shop culture" in the nineteenth century, tensions with science departments within the broader university, significant impacts of two world wars on internal developments, and post-World War II growth in graduate education and research are just some of the themes that also dominate the history of engineering schools in the United States.

Although Peter Lundgreen's 1990 discussion of engineering education in Europe and the United States contrasts an "Anglo-American" tradition of apprentice instruction with programs for the more academic training of engineers in France and Germany, there remained significant differences between the British and American models. White could have explored these more thoroughly in his case study, as a fusion of British and American traditions occurred in Canadian higher education, broadly speaking. He mentions some of the benchmark investigations of North American engineering education, such as the Wickenden and Grinter reports, but one longs for a more critical analysis along the lines of David Noble's America by Design (1977) (even without accepting some of Noble's controversial conclusions).

Of interest to SHOT members of long standing is the story of the creation of the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology within the engineering faculty in 1968, and of the role of our late colleague, John Abrams, in its establishment. In addition to university president Claude Bissel, whose support was crucial, electrical engineering chair Jim Ham played a critical role. Ham emerges as one of the very progressive leaders of the faculty in its latter years, serving as dean of both engineering...