OLIN TOWN MEETING FALL 2016 UPDATE Welcome Class of 2020 Welcoming Olin’s first years is one of the most exciting moments of the new academic year. While the official statistics for the Class of 2020 will not be finalized until October, the results are impressive, particularly for our new Admission and Financial Aid team. We enrolled 83 first years, including 13 returning from a gap year (compared to 26 for the previous class). In addition, a total of nine students are taking a gap year this year, including seven from the Class of 2020 and two from the Class of 2019. Eleven percent of the Class of 2020 are under-represented minority students, compared to 6% of the previous class. The Class of 2020 is 47% female, compared to 46% in the previous class. We also welcome two 4+1 students to campus! Finally, the Admission and Financial Aid Team is currently in the middle of implementing a new prospect and application management system called Slate.
Olin Shines in Rankings It’s the time of year when college rankings start piling up, and the college continues its impressive showing on a number of different lists: Princeton Review (www.princetonreview.com) Best 381 Colleges Best Northeastern Colleges Colleges That Pay You Back #4 Best Classroom Experience #4 Professors Get High Marks #7 Students Study the Most #7 Top Internship Opportunities #11 Best College Dorms #19 There’s a Game? #20 Great Financial Aid #25 Best Financial Aid
Princeton Review’s rankings are based on survey responses from thousands of students each year. Once again, Olin ranked in the top of many categories. Olin wasn’t included on some of the ranking lists related to student quality of life on which we appeared last year (such as Best Quality of Life and LGBTQ-Friendly). We have reached out to Princeton Review’s editorial staff to request their insight into these changes and we look forward to their response.
Move-in Day, Class of 2020 US News & World Report Olin retained its #3 spot on the Undergraduate Engineering list of non-doctoral institutions. Rose-Hulman tops the list, followed by Harvey Mudd at #2. The US Military Academy, which shared our #3 spot last year, has dropped to #4. We are also ranked #2 for both our ECE and for ME programs. MIT, Stanford, UC-Berkeley, CalTech and Georgia Tech top the ranking of institutions with engineering doctoral programs. These rankings are based solely on the results of a peer assessment survey and demonstrate the respect for Olin among our peers. College Factual In a newer entry to the college rankings game, College Factual has ranked Olin the #18 institution in the nation and #4 institution in Massachusetts. The national list is topped by Yale and Harvard, MIT is ranked #12, Harvey Mudd is #15 and CalTech is #16, so we are in good company. These results were released in USA Today, College Factual’s media partner, on September 12.
Academic Life As Olin enters its second decade (Olin 2.0) with a commitment to reinvention, new and exciting faculty are being recruited, and current roles continue to change and evolve. Daniela Faas (senior lecturer in mechanical engineering and director of design and fabrication operations), who most recently served as senior preceptor at Harvard University’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, will allow us to better embed fabrication in the curriculum and across campus. Samantha (Sam) Michalka (assistant professor of computational neuroscience and engineering) has worked as an engineer for GE and as the ED of Machine Science, a small education outreach nonprofit and was most recently a postdoctoral fellow in the Center for Computational Neuroscience and Neural Technology at BU. She brings great strengths to instrumentation courses and biomedical engineering applications. Tim Ferguson Sauder (associate professor of practice in design) was the professor of the practice and creative director at Gordon College. He will not only strengthen the design portions of our curriculum, but also contribute to student experiences in applying design in non-profit and arts-centric settings. Alison Wood (assistant professor of environmental engineering) received her doctorate in civil engineering this past May from the University of Texas at Austin with a focus on the environmental aspects of public sanitation. She will teach in our foundational curriculum and also enhance offerings and program activities in sustainability. Jon Stolk (professor of materials science and engineering education) is returning to Olin from SMU in Texas and will have a lead role in our curriculum innovation and external engagement activities including the Kern grant. He will also teach a variety of courses and continue to pursue his internationally recognized engineering education. Welcome to visiting faculty: Argosy faculty exchange appointees Associate Professor Mehul Raval and Assistant Professor Dhaval Patel of Ahmedabad University, and to Keith Buffinton, professor of mechanical engineering and former dean of engineering at Bucknell University, who is on a sabbatical-term at Olin.
Academic Leadership The Academic Leadership Team evolved over the summer, with Professor Rob Martello assuming the role of associate dean for curriculum and academic programs, a role he is taking over from Professor Jessica Townsend. Jessica is shifting her role to associate dean for external engagement and initiatives, a role she is taking over from Professor Lynn Stein who is returning to the faculty on special assignment and now serving as special assistant to the provost. Student Affairs There’s been a lot of changes over the summer in Student Affairs with the departure of Alison Black, assistant dean of student affairs, who accepted the position of class dean at Wellesley College, a significant advancement in professional development. As a result of her departure, we are reassigning her responsibilities. An Interim Assistant Dean, Adva Waranyuwat, has been appointed. Also there is a newly created position of director of diversity and inclusion & Title IX coordinator. The college’s Diversity and Inclusion Committee, which is also a new initiative this year, will serve as the search committee for this first-ofits-kind position at Olin. This new position is part of an institutional commitment to furthering our work in the area of diversity equity and inclusion, and will support the entire Olin community. Finally, Ashlee Talbot has started as the program coordinator and assistant hall director in East Hall. Summer Innovation Curriculum This summer was jam packed with curriculum innovation activities, including: •
A Computational Approach to Solving Biological Problems. Joanne Pratt and Paul Ruvolo are developing an integrated course that will teach students to view computation as a set of tools that can be applied to solve important problems in the world, such as the Grand Challenges.
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Developing New Models of Interdisciplinary Integration. A group of eight faculty members investigated other models of interdisciplinary integration in teaching.
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Leveraging Critical Reflection to Help Engineering Students Do Good in the World. A team of nine faculty members and staffers explored the extensive use of critical reflection across the curriculum.
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An Integrated Assessment Pilot: Advancing Assessment at Olin. The Curriculum Innovation Committee investigated Olin’s assessment processes and practices with the goal of proposing a system that captures more useful and better quality data.
Also this summer, a faculty and student partner team designed the second semester of the newly formed course Quantitative Engineering Analysis, including classroom renovations (AC 113).
Collaboratory The Collaboratory completed two very successful weeks of summer programming in June with a record turnout for the first week of the traditional Summer Institute, followed by a week of experimental workshops that included convening many long-term Olin partner institutions. Food Services Olin has contracted with a new dining partner – Rebecca’s, a Boston-area catering, café and contract dining business with a 30-year history in the local area. In addition, Food Service is now reporting to Patricia Gallagher, vice president for financial affairs and chief financial officer. Rebecca’s was selected for their reputation for using fresh ingredients. New to Olin is a made-to-order sandwich bar with hot pressed paninis, along with the expansion of a salad bar filled with grains and greens.
Cabinet Leadership Changes Joanne Kossuth, Vice President of Operations and Chief Information Officer (CIO), left Olin this summer after 17 years of tremendous service and contributions to many aspects of the college. Her diverse responsibilities have being reassigned. We are in the process of recruiting a new CIO who will dually report to the Executive Vice President and Provost, providing an opportunity to better integrate IT with the needs of faculty and students.
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Since we last met, Jeremy Goodman has been promoted to Assistant Provost for Institutional Research and Decision Support, and Lauren Taaffe to Associate Vice President for Strategic Initiatives.
Financial Affairs and Endowment Although the Finance team is still in the process of closing the books for the fiscal year that ended on June 30, the endowment spending rate for FY16 is 5.8 percent, equal to what we had budgeted. The preliminary June 30 value of the endowment is $353 million, which reflects a fiscal yearto-date investment return of negative 2 percent. The team is in the process of comparing this rate to similar results of peer institutions for insights into performance. As we work to finalize the books for FY16, we expect to break-even or post a small operating surplus for the year. This year, Olin was able to fund approximately $300,000 of additional, unbudgeted capital purchases and projects with savings from the operating budget.
Olin also recently received a favorable updated report from Moody’s Investor Services on our revenue bonds. We have maintained our high rating at A2 and a stable outlook. Moody’s wrote that “The A2 rating is supported by Olin’s market niche as a small Total Endowment engineering college with Quarterly Values and Trailing Averages solid student demand, high resources per student, improving operating performance and revenue diversity, and the ability to increase student revenue over time. The rating considers the College’s high debt burden, higher than typical endowment spending, debt-structure related risks, and limited philanthropic support.”
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Catherine “Kitty” Didion has joined the college as Vice President of Development, Family and Alumni Relations. Prior to joining Olin, Didion served as a senior program officer at the National Academy of Engineering for almost 10 years, and previously was the Executive Director of the Association for Women in Science.
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December 12Q Avg. Value
The 12-quarter trailing average chart shows the value of the endowment (blue line) and the 12-quarter trailing average value (red line), which forms the basis for our allowable endowment draw to support the budget.
Development, Family and Alumni Relations Olin received a game-changing $6-million, multi-year grant from the Kern Family Foundation, which is enabling the college to increase its capacity for change and innovation. For FY16, the total gifts and payments received was $1.987 million, compared to $2.071 million for FY15. (The FY16 total would have met the goal of $2.2 million except for our decision to defer receipt of $275K from the Argosy Foundation because our rate of spending from their grant fell behind schedule.) The FY16 alumni participation rate rose to 79 percent this year from last year’s rate of 78 percent. (To our knowledge, this was the highest alumni participation rate in the nation last year.) In addition, the FY16 parent participation rate fell to 55 percent from last year’s rate of 62 percent. With encouragement from Trustee Howard Stevenson, we launched an Academic Equipment Fund Challenge. This raised a total of $123,800 (including a $50,000 match by Howard). These funds will be used this academic year to ensure that Olin maintains state-of-the-art equipment needed for student and faculty success. The Alumni Merit Scholarship Endowed Fund raised a total of $103,547 in FY16. Alumni Weekend took place this past weekend (September 16-18) and included both a 5th year reunion (Class of ’11) and a first-ever 10th year reunion (Class of ’06). This year 544 Oliners (alumni, students, parents) attended 23 hosted summer parties across the country, increasing last year’s attendees by 29 percent.
Marketing and Communication Olin’s website is going through the last quality assurance review before becoming responsive on all hand-held devices, also making it appear higher in search rankings. The college has renewed its yearlong sponsorship of NPR programming on a national level for two programs – Here & Now and On Point. Olin continues to make news with a profile of Sara Hendren in Nautilus (March 18); Physics and Dance in the Boston Globe (April 20); A New Crop of Hands-On Universities is Transforming How Students Learn in The Economist (June 25) and Alternative Orientations in The Guardian (August 24).
Network of Networks Project
The Kern Family Foundation has made a multiyear $6-million investment in building capacity at Olin to influence educators outside of the learning laboratory. Kern President Jim Rahn has been working closely with Olin President Rick Miller to shape the narrative that positions Olin well for influencing change in undergraduate education in engineering and beyond. This involves emphasizing the benefits of teamwork, experiential learning and entrepreneurial mindset as an essential supplement to content knowledge and academic skills. The initial efforts have emerged from presentations at Stanford (Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders, May 25, available online), Aspen Forum on the Future of Higher Education (with Jim Plummer, June 15), Distinguished Engineering Lecture at the National Science Foundation (July 12), and a panel discussion on the need to integrate learning in arts and humanities into STEM education at the National Academy of Sciences (July 28). This narrative and positioning of Olin is well aligned with the evidence provided by a major survey of the importance of these factors in higher education conducted by Gallup and reported in a cover story on the current issue of Trusteeship Magazine from AGB: http://agb. org/trusteeship/2016/julyaugust/the-real-datarevolution. As the college prepares for increased impact in higher education with support from the Kern grant, a comprehensive review of the systems and programs within the college is in process. We are thinking of this as “Olin 2.0” (a quantum—rather than incremental—change) preparing Olin for bigger impact. This process began a couple of years ago with substantial changes in Marketing and Communications, Financial Affairs, the Faculty Manual, Faculty Recruiting, Admission, Library, Curricular Innovation, Development (in process), and this summer, Dining Services. We are now in the discussion stages for extending the Olin 2.0 effort to address the Collaboratory, IT, Student Life and Operations. A significant realignment of internal services is likely to result from this strategic review and implementation.