Formative influences of engineering extension on industrial education at Iowa State College

At Iowa State University, engineering educators promoted and established industrial education under the guidance of the College of Engineering. Until about 1890, several professors provided training for non-engineers. Such training became a major concern of several national organizations. Engineers in the American Association of Agricultural Colleges and Experiment Stations established the Mechanic Arts Section. Within the Society for the Promotion of Engineering Education, a Committee on Industrial Education sought ways for engineers to influence the growth of industrial education;John B. Johnson, Dean of the College of Engineering at the University of Wisconsin, began artisan training in 1901. It grew into an extensive engineering extension program, led after 1906 by Louis E. Reber. In Iowa, the Iowa State Manufacturers Association and Anson Marston, Dean of Engineering at Iowa State, won funding for an extension department. Two organizations also affected that development, the YMCA and the Land Grant College Engineering Association. Between 1913 and 1917, the extension engineers in Ames conducted programs which provided industrial education to thousands of Iowans. World War I and the Smith-Hughes Act altered the extension efforts, placing the vocational work under the Iowa State Board for Vocational Education. The Trades and Industries department, started in 1919, took over the teacher training work, and by about 1925, industrial teacher preparation stood as the sole function of the department. That also indicated that many direct ties to industry had been broken. The teaching mission characterized the Industrial Education department for several decades