WPI Plan 25th Anniversary basis for Commission Competition

A celebration of the 25th Anniversary of the WPI PLAN should be an occasion to stimulate again that prescience concerning the next 25 years. Hence as part of the 25th Anniversary celebration the Anniversary Committee will commission up to five papers on the future directions for WPI. The terms and conditions of an open competition for the commissionings are explained below.

Part I of the 25th Anniversary Celebration of the WPI PLAN COMMISSION COMPETITION

$1000 each paper for the papers on the following topic:

"WPI - THE NEXT 25 YEARS"

Up to five papers will be commissioned and the competition is open to all members of the WPI Community - faculty, staff and students (undergraduate and graduate registered as of December 15, 1995). Joint authorship is acceptable but the stipend will be spilt accordingly.

RULES:

Contestants must submit an abstract of approximately 1000 words (four pages typed double-spaced), to Dean Emeritus Grogan, Project Center, no later than noon January 15, 1996. Winners of the Commissions will be announced January 23, 1996.

An outside panel of three WPI Trustees/Alumni will select up to five abstracts for the commission of $1000 each for submission of a full paper of approximately 5000 words (20 pages typed double-spaced). The completed paper (in hard copy and diskette) must be submitted by noon March 18, 1996 to qualify for the stipend.

All abstracts will be submitted to the selection process without identification of authorship. Thus the name and address of the author(s) must appear only at the top of each abstract page, allowing copying without identification of the author(s).

Abstracts and papers become the property of WPI and may be published individually or collectively, in print or via WWW, and will very probably form a focus for Part III of the Anniversary Celebration, a colloquium on the Future.

Content:

The Committee encourages the widest possible creativity concerning the topic, but anticipates that the papers will in some fashion address three fundamental questions:

*What changes in the world of the professional scientists/engineers/managers will WPI have to accommodate in the next 25 years?

*How will WPI negotiate those changes, both in mission and curriculum?

*What will be the reasons for WPI's success or failure?

Specific questions that follow from the fundamental inquiries are almost endless, but some authors may want to play with questions such as: Will WPI still be an independent institution? Will WPI students focus on traditional classes or will they meet only on various media formats? What will be the fate of projects and other current WPI degree requirements? How will the college be organized and financed? What will be the composition of the faculty and student body? What will professional life be like? What new challenges and opportunities will emerge?

Criteria for selection:

The outside panel doubtless will have its own ideas of evaluating the abstracts but the Anniversary Committee will urge the panelists to consider the plausibility and evidence of the papers' predictions, the cogency and logic of their arguments, the originality and perceptiveness of their arguments as well as the originality and perceptiveness of their thoughtful consideration of WPI's encounter with the future. The panel will almost certainly consider the clarity and writing quality of the abstracts presented.

Future projection is a very dicey enterprise, but the 25th Anniversary Committee has made available on reserve writings possibly relevant to the topic: "Preparing for the 21st Century" by Paul Kennedy; "Post-capitalists Society" - ch 11- "The Accountable School" by Peter Drucker, "Who killed the Middle Class" by John Cassidy and "A Vista for Academe" by Diran Apelian.

Members of the Anniversary Committee would be willing to help any potential author or authors in creating their abstracts, if so requested.

Members of the committee are as follows: Donald Berth (831-5630), Cathleen Connelly (swathy@wpi), Paul Davis (pwdavis@wpi), James Demetry (jdemetry@wpi), Raymond Hagglund (hagglund@wpi), Thomas Keil (thkeil@wpi), Linda Looft (lclooft@wpi), Lance Schachterle (lschachterle@jake), John Zeunger (jzeugner@wpi), William Grogan Chairman (wrgrogran@wpi).