St. Louis Post-Dispatch September 29, 2002 After nine years and 119 graduates, joint program earns accreditation By Susan C. Thomson (Reprinted with permission from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch) * Fifteen percent of the graduates have been African-American. That figure is three times the national average. Room 320, Urbauer Hall, Washington University. Raimo Hakkinen, professor of mechanical engineering, Washington University. Everything about this Tuesday evening class in fluid mechanics is Washington University -- except the students. All are from the University of Missouri at St. Louis. They are taking the course for UMSL credit toward UMSL engineering degrees. Nine years ago the two universities forged an agreement that allowed classes like this to happen. So far that has made it possible for 119 UMSL students to earn bachelor's degrees in civil, mechanical and electrical engineering. A few weeks ago the program earned its official stripes -- approval from the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology. Accreditation lends an extra measure of prestige to the program, whose degrees have always been perfectly valid, and will make it easier for a graduate to qualify for certification as a "professional engineer." The program was designed with part-time students in mind, people with day jobs, able to take their engineering courses in the evening or late afternoon at the rate of one or two a semester. Because accreditation requires a history, it was last year before the two universities felt they had enough graduates to make a case, said William Darby, the program's dean. One try was all it took. The accreditation was sweet for UMSL Chancellor Blanche M. Touhill, who is retiring from her job at the end of December. Early in her tenure she negotiated the agreement with Washington University. The pact fulfilled a wish that had been on UMSL's list from the campus' founding in 1963 and that turned into a campaign in the mid-1980s. UMSL and its supporters argued that there were hundreds of prospective students -- especially women and members of minority groups -- in the St. Louis area who would seize a chance to work on engineering degrees part time and at low, public-university tuition rates. Edgar Chay was one such student. An associate's degree in manufacturing technology from St. Louis Community College at Forest Park was only a start. He wanted to be a full-fledged engineer. Washington University would have been too expensive, he said. "The UMSL program was the only one that would be best for me." Chay got his bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from UMSL in August after taking all of his engineering courses at Washington University. Now he's a graduate student, on the Ph.D. track, at Washington University and a teaching assistant in the fluid mechanics class. First program of its kind It's lab night, and the UMSL students have grouped themselves in threes or so around experiments in viscosity, specific gravity, surface technology and the like. The students are all concentration, taking precise measurements and carefully noting them in their lab books. Cheri Steffan and Tim Pope are two-thirds of one group. She has a degree in computer science and works full time in the field. "It's been a hot field for 30 years, and I'm tired of the heat," she said. She's been taking courses toward a civil engineering degree for eight years now and figures she has three more to go. Pope is a full-time engineering technician, helping to design appliance motors for Emerson and taking courses for a degree in mechanical e ngineering. Why the degree? Because, he said, it will make it possible for him to do "a different level of work." So far women, like Steffan, have made up 18 percent of the UMSL engineering graduates, just one point shy of the national average. Fifteen percent of the graduates have been African-American, like Pope. Officials are especially proud of that figure, which is three times the national average. The program came about by default. UMSL would have liked its own engineering school, but the Missouri Legislature wasn't about to come up with the millions that would have been needed to start it from scratch. Instead, lawmakers ultimately earmarked $1 million a year for UMSL engineering, too little for the campus to go it alone. After a brief joint venture with the University of Missouri system's engineering campus at Rolla fizzled, UMSL got together with Washington University. Their partnership was the first of its kind in the nation between a public and a private university. As far as anybody on either campus knows now, the program is the first like it to win accreditation. In the years before the deal was done, estimates for as many as 1,400 students and an annual cost of as much as $6 million were being tossed about. Both numbers have proved overblown. Enrollment has stabilized around 400 students. Costs have doubled since the beginning - to just over $2 million last year. Of that, $131,000 paid for an office staff at UMSL. The rest went to Washington University according to a complicated payment schedule that rises with the numbers of students and credit hours they take. Between the state's $1 million subsidy and the students' tuition payments, revenue has covered expenses, give or take a little every year. Students interviewed in the fluid mechanics class were unanimous in their praise for the program, saying it wouldn't have been possible for them to pursue their degrees full time or at any greater cost. Hakkinen, who also teaches Washington University students, sometimes in the same classes with UMSL students, said the UMSL students have been among his best. He complains only that UMSL's grading system tops out at an A, while Washington University's allows for an A-plus, which many UMSL students have deserved, he said. Reporter Susan C. Thomson:; E-mail: sthomson@post-dispatch.com; Phone: 314-209-1315 Copyright 2002, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Inc. (To see the St. Louis Post-Dispatch online, go to http://home.post-dispatch.com)