Paul Quinn When... Old-School Engineering

The September 1892 issue of Hampton University's Southern Workman contained the following letter to editor General S.C. Armstrong, from a Hampton alumnus recently hired to teach at the new Paul Quinn College in Waco, Texas:

During the past year I have opened a mechanical department at Paul Quinn College known as the industrial annex, which consists of one large frame building, benches and tools to accomodate fourteen persons. And for next year we are preparing to enlarge by building a brick shop and putting in steam power and wood working machinery. Thus you see, General, and it is true, I am trying to operate my work down here on the same plans I was taught at dear old Hampton. The change in my work is because there are better chances for development in every respect at Paul Quinn, the college being in Waco, a large city, while Prairie View is seven miles from any town.

Our course of instruction covers a period of three years, as at Hampton in the "Huntington Industrial Works." This annex will make it possible for many poor persons to get an education and a trade at Paul Quinn College as at Hampton.

It is a fact, General, that there is not another school in the state that gives such chances for an education through industrial avenues.

As the one in charge of the Industrial Annex of Paul Quinn College, I ask for your assistance in any way you can give it. Now we want to raise this summer and fall about $3000 to pay on the building, additional tools and machinery, which will cost $6000.

Yours sincerely, J.L. Randolph

(Southern Workman, vol. 21, issue September 1892, p. 142)

Today's Paul Quinn student can major in engineering technology or computer science, and take courses that Professor Randolph could hardly have imagined, such as Assembly Language Programming, Operating Systems, Digital Logic Circuits, and Advanced Microprocessors. But much of the foundational coursework--algebra, trigonometry, and calculus--would be familiar to him, as would the aspirations of today's instructors to prepare our students for relevant careers with a solid future.