The Midpeninsula Free University

MFU Articles Published by The Stanford Daily
1966

FUPA, Experiment Needless: EE Prof

Stanford students need not look outside the University for agencies like the Experiment and the Free University of Palo Alto to find courses that focus on contemporary, activist issues.

Professor Ralph J. Smith, of the Electrical Engineering Department, thus challenged all students who are enrolled in or intrigued by the curriculum of Experiment: Why sacrifice units by studying outside the University when, If one looks around seriously, he can find full-credit courses that are concerned with the same problems?

Professor Smith who has spent one year in the Philippines and six weeks in Vietnam as an A.I.D. consultant, is now offering a two unit seminar in Resource Strategy, meeting on Mondays from 3:15–5 p.m. in Room 127 of the McCullough Building.

The seminar develops methods for attacking and hopefully solving problems such as overpopulation, Civil Rights, air pollution, and domestic and foreign poverty, through the application of specialized knowledge.

Professor Smith invites a number of guest speakers to strengthen the program. The first speaker, Kent Smith of Berkeley, will lecture this after noon on the Impact of Technical Change on a Traditional Culture.

Resource Strategy is a three-quarter seminar designed for all interested students, regardless of major. Last year economics and political science majors, as well as one pre-med, participated.

One of the discussion questions is, What Right does the USA have to go into Vietnam to develop the country and what are the psychological reverberations in this nation as a result of the American presence?

Professor Smith's purpose in developing the seminar is to infuse humanitarianism and creativity into America's present approach to the crucial problems that each day loom as greater threats to our personal and national existence.