Olin Rundown
A Modern College for a Modern Era Starting in the late 1980s, the National Science Foundation and the engineering community at large called for reform in engineering education. In response, the Olin Foundation chartered the Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering with a $460 million grant and an equally big goal: “to be an important and constant contributor to the advancement of engineering education in America and throughout the world and, through its graduates, to do good for humankind.” The foundation challenged educators to create a new kind of higher education, and for the institution to be a pioneer in changing the way engineers are taught.
Twenty years later, our educational start-up has largely met this challenge. But we retain our experimental mindset. We’re creating innovative academic structures that test entirely new approaches to teaching and learning, and we’re designing new ways to usher engineering students into the world equipped to address profound practical, industrial, social, and economical challenges. Our mission now extends beyond our campus, as we work with others to champion a new definition of engineering and collaborate with them to reimagine engineering education around the world.
8:1 STUDENT TO FACULTY RATIO
48% OF OUR CURRENT STUDENTS ARE WOMEN
No Academic Departments Tenure Legacy to Uphold No Limits.
Olin’s ongoing resolution is to be the kind of engineering college that prioritizes radically forwardthinking project-based learning unencumbered by tradition. Olin has no departments or tenured faculty, allowing for true collaboration and integration of efforts. Having no academic departments frees faculty to create innovative learning experiences alongside one another.
31% OF ALUMNI HAVE BEEN INVOLVED IN A STARTUP VENTURE
Our Learning Model Olin’s approach to integrating traditional engineering skills with design and entrepreneurial thinking, reinforced through repeated, largescale practice in project-based and stakeholder-focused work, has become a widespread standard for engineering education. We educate the whole person At Olin, it’s not just about what students know, but what they do with that knowledge. The curriculum is shaped to develop skills such as communication and teamwork and to provide depth of technical engineering expertise. We educate people to engineer for other people The Olin curriculum is based on the idea that engineering starts with people—and ends with people. A fundamental part of our philosophy is that learning occurs through immersion in real-world applications and appreciating the social context of the work.
Making an Impact At Olin College of Engineering, we believe in not just equipping students for the future, but in preparing leaders who can shape it, for the better. Students consider the consequences of the technology they design, create and put into the world, and the impacts of their professional contributions.
Students and faculty are designing renewable energy systems, working with community leaders on lowcost ways to monitor air quality, developing novel medical treatments, starting businesses, and teaching a new generation of college graduates in the Olin tradition.
TOP EMPLOYERS: GOOGLE MICROSOFT AMAZON
TOP GRADUATE SCHOOLS: HARVARD STANFORD MIT Contact us 781.292.2300 Olin.edu
Nondiscrimination Statement Olin College does not discriminate in admission, employment or other college-administered programs on the basis of race, color, creed, national or ethnic origin, gender, religion, disability, age, or sexual orientation, or veteran, marital or citizenship status.
Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering Olin Way, Needham, MA 02492-1200
Affordable Design and Entrepreneurship
Students who choose to spend their senior year on an Affordable Design and Entrepreneurship (ADE) Capstone project have the unique opportunity to develop technologies and ventures that meet the daily needs of the world’s poorest people. ADE projects are ongoing, year-to-year initiatives that allow students and faculty to collaborate across continents, working with partner communities to develop low-tech, immediately beneficial products, such as safer rickshaws for the men who pull these pedal-powered carts through the city streets of Guwahati, India. Or, in Ghana, a team works to develop ways to help women process food they harvest by inventing products they can both use and sell to increase their income. For a lot of students, ADE is eye-opening, as they learn that engineering can be just as effective in remote parts of the world as it is in labs designing
for the Department of Defense. “ADE is an experience that has profoundly impacted many students’ lives, and a good number of them revise their career goals as a result,” says Benjamin Linder, Ph.D., Olin professor of Design and Mechanical Engineering. “They walk away a with a new sense of who they are and what their role could be in society.” Students in ADE take one of five tracks: • Global Health • Asset Value • Child Education • Community Development • Food Processing
Meet an ADE Team Designing Warmers for High-Risk Infants
The ADE Global Health team is working to realize a product started by Design that Matters, a firm specializing in medical equipment for use in low-resource contexts. The team is helping to create a baby warmer, called Otter, designed to allow rural hospitals with limited resources to treat premature and low birthweight newborns. These fragile babies are especially vulnerable to hypothermia. Otter is designed to provide a warm, clean environment that could prevent deaths from hypothermia.
Senior Capstone Program in Engineering (SCOPE)
The Senior Capstone Program in Engineering (SCOPE) is a unique industry-college collaboration, and a place where students apply the skills that they’ve been building during their four years at Olin. Seniors are grouped together in teams to match the needs of a sponsor company’s real-world project. Our corporate partners find that these exceptionally bright engineering students look at problems in new ways and find unexpected solutions. Sponsors come from all different industries and their projects vary widely in topic, development stage and desired outcome. What these projects have in common is that they each address a problem of substantial interest to the sponsor, are significantly challenging and are in technical areas that match the skills and interests of students. They range from early-phase product conceptualization to building technology intended for near-term use on the manufacturing floor;
from wide-open consideration of design principles to implementing methods to make roadways safer for cyclists. Olin has conducted SCOPE projects for Fortune 500 corporations, government research laboratories, product development companies, small businesses and startups. Some of our current partners are: • Amazon Robotics • Ford • Arthur G. Russell • GE Healthcare • Boeing • Sonos • Boston Scientific • Toyota • Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science, Inc. (CUAHSI)
Meet SCOPE Sponsors We are thrilled with the caliber of the SCOPE team, their analytical skills, and professionalism.” Mark Burzynski President, Arthur G. Russell Company
Collaboration Opportunities We work closely with 13 or 14 sponsors each year. We welcome current sponsors, interested companies and organizations, educators and community members to attend our annual SCOPE Summit, where SCOPE teams present the results of their projects, followed a reception.
The SCOPE team has done excellent work … good user & patient inputs, solid design concepts, clever prototyping, and a real clear focus on the outcome. Very nice work!” Jay Hill CTO/COO – Imaging, GE Healthcare
Contact us: Ruth Levine Director of Business Development rlevine@olin.edu 781-292-2743
Internships and Research Experiences at Olin 100% of the 2019 graduating class did at least one internship or research experience during their time at Olin. 97% did two or more. Olin has a diverse curriculum that strives to prepare students for the real world, and there’s no better way to learn how to do meaningful, real-world technical work than to jump in and do it. That’s why we ensure that our students have all the resources they need to access internships, from career fairs and workshops to alumni mentorships and summer research opportunities. Internships We are fortunate to have a strong network of partner companies anxious to put Olin students to work in their organizations, and about 100 companies come to meet Olin students throughout the year. Our internship placement services are nationally recognized, and Olin was named #2 for best internships by the Princeton Review in 2019. Many Olin students choose leadership roles, such as at global management consulting firms, for summer internships. Others choose service opportunities in areas of corporate social responsibility, education, government, non-profits and international development.
Research Experiences Each summer, 40-50 students stay on campus to work with their professors on joint research. Some of these projects are though the Olin Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program. Research projects range from creating easy-tomake and sustainable body armor to co-designing mobility related assistive technology for the blind. From exploring biomedical 3D printing to developing a more user-friendly wheelchair. These projects may be funded through governmentsponsored grants, foundations, subcontracts, individual donors and corporate partners. Some top 2019 summer intern employers: • Accelerate Wind • NASA • Form Energy • Onshape • GE • SharkNinja • Microsoft • Shift
Meet student Sparsh Bansal ’22 Sparsh Bansal met two visiting research engineers from the Mitsubishi Electric Corporation R&D center in Kanagawa, Japan, early in the Spring 2019 semester. “I talked about some in-class and other projects that I was a part of, while they described to me their processes and ongoing projects,” says Sparsh. When Sparsh followed up with them, they offered him a unique opportunity. “I was the first intern in the Human Machine Systems group – they said they created the internship for me, which was very cool.” As an industrial automation intern, Sparsh’s projects were related to designing automation solutions for people operating manufacturing plants. One of the projects he worked on was part of the KOTSUMON® System. This system uses AI video technology to draw metrics on production line workers’ motions in order to analyze their productivity and efficiency. He also worked on projects that dealt with software for automating factory layout design, and on engineering workflow system development for new industry software. “This was an amazing summer, not only because I was practicing new programming languages, but because I was designing for a completely different audience than I had in the past,” he says. “Without a doubt, my summer at Mitsubishi was one of my biggest learning experiences ever!”
Collaboration Opportunities Olin offers a Premier Recruitment Partnership program that provides our strongest corporate partners with highly personalized services that help them deeply tap into Olin’s student talent pool. We also work with organizations through the Olin Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program interested in having their own dedicated student research team. Contact us Sally Phelps Director of Post-Graduate Planning sphelps@olin.edu 781-292-2281
Entrepreneurship at Olin
At Olin, we have a unique definition of entrepreneurship, which is driven by the question: “How do we create value?” Value for our users, customers, ourselves and the world? Our definition of entrepreneurship focuses on developing people over products, and behaviors over businesses. Throughout the curriculum, we connect the teaching of engineering to entrepreneurship by encouraging students to put the creation of real value for real people at the forefront of everything they do. Our entrepreneurship stream offers a structured way to help them develop this mindset, stoke their passion for users’ experiences, and then to act on their entrepreneurial ideas. ↓ In their first year, all students take an introductory entrepreneurship course, Products & Markets, where they learn the tools that are essential to realizing true and sustainable positive change.
↓ In the elective course Iterate..., students and teams of students follow a rigorous structure to test and validate their entrepreneurial concept and test their ability to create value “in the wild.” ↓ The class Launch supports students looking to apply to external sources, such as business model competitions and venture capital, for resources to advance their product, business, or creative idea. ↓ Olin’s new Entrepreneurial Engineering Capstone experience is designed to be an option for students who are passionate about solving a problem and want to pursue both their degrees and their startup idea at Olin.
Meet Olin Senior Max Schommer What happens when the inventor of a new product is still in college? Now, thanks to Olin’s Entrepreneurial Engineering Capstone, students like senior Max Schommer won’t be faced with the difficult decision of holding off on their idea until graduation or leaving school to pursue it. In this Capstone program, select students gain professional experience undertaking an authentic engineering project in the context of a prospective new venture.
Max is working on Organizm, a computer visionbased inventory management system. “This means that if you have a drawer or cabinet or shelf with a lot of items in boxes, we can figure out how many items are in the boxes,” he says. “With this information, we can do things like automatically re-purchase items that are running low or help streamline a company’s inventory system.” Olin students like Max who are chosen to participate in this Capstone program use their skills to solve a problem, but also go a few steps further. They work to understand the problems they’re trying to solve and the value of their solution, as well as learn about finding a market. “It really helped me navigate the whole startup space,” says Max. “We have built several prototypes and are currently working on our first product and working on getting it alpha tested!”
Learn more olin.edu/entrepreneurship
Engaging with Olin “The interaction, enthusiasm and knowledge of the professors are extraordinary.” Workshop participant
Olin is more than an incubator for innovation in engineering education on our own campus. It’s our mission to help transform engineering education, and to stimulate transformational educational experiences with, and for, other institutions. We offer opportunities for educators, academics and thought leaders to experience Olin’s approach to using user-centered technology to address realworld problems, and our model of project-based, experiential learning. Programs like these offer a compelling way to experience the unique culture of Olin and spark ideas. “Campus, Curriculum, Culture” tours explain Olin’s unique courses and pedagogy and take you into classrooms and education spaces to hear from students. Olin Expos are celebrations of student learning and achievement, and an excellent way to see the evidence and outcomes of Olin’s model for learning.
Workshops throughout the year invite participants to participate in curricular activities, such as designing ways to enhance student engagement. Our annual Summer Institute is a weeklong interactive workshop for teams of educators to conceive and catalyze change in their classrooms and their institutions.
3,006 educators and business leaders have visited Olin. They represent more than 860 institutions.
The Summer Institute During our annual Summer Institute, visitors from around the world engage with Olin faculty, and with one another, to explore a range of extended immersions into Olin’s approach to co-design and to apply it to an existing or new educational innovation project. Past attendees have ranged from provosts and deans to new faculty members and everyone in between.
Hands-on analysis and design exercises, case studies and project coaching equip attendees with the learner-centered mindsets and practical tools to create and launch new courses and programs. We have a great plan to move forward with our program. I now have some really great frameworks and examples for thinking about radical learning and some new motivation to keep working toward impactful learning experiences for my students.” It was really fun to see that there are so many people interested in this — it gives me hope that we can help the next generation to be the best that they can.”
Collaboration Opportunities olin.edu/engage Contact us enage@olin.edu
Olin Alumni
At Olin, we have developed a curriculum that upends conventional expectations, standards and assumptions — and gets impressive results. Our graduates are inspired and equipped to improve the lives of people around the world through the power of innovation and engineering solutions based on human needs.
Olin graduates bring their passion for responsible technology into the workforce at Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Apple and Facebook — highly influential companies that regularly hire Olin graduates. Other alums fulfill the Olin mission of doing good in the world in nonprofits, startups and altruistic organizations. Students have worked to identify species of mosquitos that carry diseases, created high-quality agricultural equipment in East Africa and redesigned how hydropower is developed, to name just a few. Many entrepreneurial alumni have built Olin values into starting their own companies:
ccelerate Wind aims to revolutionize rooftop wind A energy in commercial and industrial spaces. Broadsheet offers a subscription news services that helps people access quality reporting and sort through sensationalizing distractions. Enzyme creates software to help small businesses get through the FDA approval process more easily. Ivani is an IoT startup with the goal of bringing automation to the field of energy management. Lever creates software that injects values into the hiring process, such as collaboration, transparency and humanity.
Meet Michael Heyns, Class of ’13 Like many Olin graduates, Michael Heyns has found a job that allows him to leverage technology to contribute to the greater good. One of Michael’s main projects as a program manager for Microsoft Word has been working with researchers, designers and engineers to design Word features in the context of creating more inclusive learning environments in education. He’s especially passionate about planning and designing features that help people with dyslexia, dysgraphia and ADHD, as well as helping emerging readers more easily engage in reading and writing. Michael has the flexibility to choose some of the projects he works on, and he seeks out opportunities to incorporate assistive features, like a text-to-speech tool, making them available to a population beyond those with learning differences. The guiding principle we like to use is ‘built-in, not built-on,’ as we try to bake accessibility into our development stream,” he says. “In this way, accessibility features become normalized and less stigmatizing.” Michael works on the occasional hardware enhancement project, too, such as augmented and virtual reality platforms that have a strong focus on accessibility. Part of what motivated Michael to take this job was the chance to work on something that could make a sizable impact. The Word product has a fairly large reach,” he notes. “It felt like an opportunity both to empower people and help them in ways that feel meaningful.”
Contact us Office of Advancement advancement@olin.edu
