Letter From the President

As I write this, the Olin campus is alive with activity even as the temperature in the Oval hovers near 100 degrees. Students, faculty and staff are busy in Olin labs and classrooms, working on research projects ranging from designing assistive technology for the blind to ethics in engineering to restructuring some of our signature courses, such as Quantitative Engineering Analysis. At Olin, we are always creating, iterating and, importantly, evolving, even as we manage the lingering effects of a pandemic.

Our new strategic plan, approved by the board of trustees in May, will define our direction for the next five years.

Our vision for the future is captured in three words: Engineering for Everyone.

We chose this message carefully to be bold, definitive and direct. In practical terms, this vision means advancing equity and access within engineering education because engineering education must be welcoming to and enable the success of people from all backgrounds. That means changing many things—from the educational environment to the curriculum to the financial structure of higher education.

We also need to make sure that the engineering profession serves the needs of everyone. Engineering needs to start and end with all people, society and the planet. This demands a new kind of engineer and new approaches to engineering education. Olin’s focus moving forward will be to advance impact-centered education that seeks to develop engineers who are not only good workers but also good people and good citizens who share certain qualities.

Olin is uniquely suited to take on this work. We have multiple strengths to draw on—our early commitment to gender equity, our emphasis on a human-centered approach to engineering, and our willingness to try something new, make mistakes and learn from them.

As you will discover in these pages, we are already engaging in the work necessary to realize this vision. I thank all members of the Olin community who are involved in these exciting and important initiatives.

Lastly, as one of our strategic plan objectives is to attract new community members and partners to our mission, values and work, we actively seek connections to individuals and institutions that can be a part of the bright future we envision. I invite you to reach out to my office if you have ideas for collaboration.

Warmly, Gilda