Innovation Portrait: Olin College of Engineering

 History of Olin

Olin College of Engineering was founded in 2001 when the National Science Foundation and leaders in the engineering community began urging reform in engineering education
to include more emphasis on entrepreneurship, teamwork, and communication. With over $460 million in start-up financing from the F.W. Olin Foundation, Olin developed a hands-on, interdisciplinary program aimed at producing engineering innovators who will be leaders in solving the global challenges of today and tomorrow. In addition to producing engineering innovators, Olin also has a mission to effect innovative change in the field of education – not just in engineering, but more broadly in any academic environment so that institutions rethink their educational approaches and learning environments.

The college, located in Needham, Massachusetts, has an elite student body of 350 students who major in Electrical, Computer or Mechanical Engineering. In just two decades, the college has earned noteworthy rankings and Olin alumni are doing well in employment, graduate school and research. The school is an undergraduate lab school where new ideas are tried, where failure fuels needed change, and where successful ideas are ultimately shared outside the classroom with collaboratory partners.

Olin is Different!

Grading

First-semester grading is done on a “pass/no record” system to encourage students to take risks with hands-on/project-based experiences in several areas while they develop critical thinking and communication skills. Students are told to “try really hard” and embrace failure. This results in increased intrinsic motivation and creativity.

Curriculum Design

Some course content, standard at other universities, is not covered at Olin, which allows students to invest substantial chunks of time in their projects. It is widely believed that much of the content becomes obsolete by graduation, so the threat of missing out on content is largely diminished. However, students may jigsaw-teach a chapter’s worth of material to save time if a professor feels it is worthy enough material that it shouldn’t be entirely skipped. In general, if students don’t know something necessary to move forward in a project, they are trained to become confident in figuring out how to learn it. The focus at Olin remains more on problem solving skills, collaborating and communicating. About 25% of student time at Olin is lecture-based learning, while the remaining time is spent in a hands-on, collaborative approach to solving real-world problems. An important focus in a design course is learning to communicate effectively with the future product users to ensure the product that students design meets their needs.

Students experience learning not only in formal and technical ways, but also as explorers and creators who design their own path.  Olin has created a learning environment for students called the Learning Continuum. This continuum provides students access to learning in all areas of their college life through individual and team projects, and it empowers them to devise innovative solutions to real problems.

Project Based Learning

Click on the links below to learn about the different project-based experiences at Olin:

Course-Based Projects

Passionate Pursuits

Senior Capstone Program in Engineering (SCOPE)

Projects that Help Others

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Teaching Assistants

Experienced students called NINJAs (Need Information Now Just Ask) are paid to teach other students how to use specialized equipment to complete projects.  The equipment includes welding machines, sheet metal machines, water jets, plasma cutters and laser cutters.

Adapting 

Olin’s faculty is comprised of individuals with doctorates from leading institutions (Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, etc.) who engage in the school’s mission of providing a superb engineering education and transforming engineering education. Professors work hard each year to revise and adapt curriculum as needed. They spend much of the summer working with their interdisciplinary colleagues to create, and then tweak courses.  One great outcome of having cross-content professors in classes together is that they have the time to think on interdisciplinary levels.  An example of this happened when two professors noticed students misunderstanding two like terms,”evidence” and “data,” because the professors were each using only one term or the other in their classes. Experimental courses have also been woven through the curriculum at Olin since the school opened its doors in 2001.  These “experimental” classes are publicized as such, and tend to be popular with Olin’s student body, as students generally appreciate having a voice in the course design. The small size of Olin allows for an agile environment that can recover when a course requires a significant overhaul.

 

 

 

Innovation Portrait: Worcester Technical High School

Worcester Technical High School was in the news not too long ago when President Obama delivered the commencement address at graduation on June 11, 2014. This school was chosen for its strong success and incredible turnaround in just a ten-year period. Worcester Tech went from being the lowest performing school in the district to boasting over 95% of students graduating from high school. About 38% of those graduates now attend a 4-year college, while another 32% attend a 2-year college or technical program.

Worcester Tech applied to be an Innovation School. It’s a five year plan, and the school must submit a yearly report with progress toward their goals and student achievement data. Being an Innovation School gives Worcester Tech more autonomy with professional development and hiring of staff. The best example of this was allowing their shop teachers to choose real world locations for their professional development, such as the local wastewater treatment facility. Academic teachers chose shop teachers to team up with for the day.

The high school’s principal, Kyle J. Brenner, said it all comes down to the four R’s: rigor, relevance, relationships, and responsibility.

Rigor

Rigor has been established by doubling honors classes offered, introducing AP courses and incorporating a program called AVID (Advancement via Individual Determination) that prepares students for college.  However, supporting students in this demanding environment is what allows students to meet the rigor with success.

Relevance

The school’s curriculum is always evolving and looking toward the future as educators try to prepare students for an ever-changing workforce. An example of this was when the institution cut back its sheet metal program, while expanding the biotechnology and environmental technology programs.

Relationships

With over 350 business/industry advisers, community relationships are what really drive Worcester Technical High School. Not only do they receive funding and state-of-the-art equipment, but all technical programs are dedicated to giving back to the community that has made this school possible. Here are a few recent examples…

The new red bridge at Elm Park is the perfect example of these relationships at play. WPI designed the bridge, but it was constructed by students at Worcester Tech. Read this article to see how the different technical programs collaborated to deconstruct the old bridge, and replace it with a new version that is now fully ADA compliant.

Cosmetology students team up with the American Cancer Society by offering Look Good Feel Better workshops that help women suffering from cancer get a fitted wig for free. Students also assist the patients with a 12-step make up guide. It’s a chance for these students to improve their skills while also “paying it forward.”

Construction students work with non-profit organizations like Habitat for Humanity, Mathew 25, Heifer International, etc. They renovated and developed triple-deckers in the city with Habitat for Humanity using LEED (Leadership in Energy and Design) certified equipment, heating systems and solar panels. The houses then became Section 8 housing for the community.

The Massachusetts State Police fleet of vehicles often received damage to their electronics when officers threw their bags inside the vehicles. They were spending a lot of money getting these issues fixed, so they went to Worcester Tech for some help. The manufacturing students designed a metal cage that would house the electronics. The machining students fabricated the cages, and now the automotive students are inserting the cages into the vehicles on a rolling basis.

Responsibility

Worcester Tech students have a lot of freedom and responsibility. They manage the school credit union (which many teachers and administrators use). There is no IT department. The students ARE the IT department. Students are sometimes given the WiFi administrator password. They are trusted to make the right decisions. They are just kids though, and kids can and do make mistakes.

The school doesn’t want students to make mistakes with their judgment. However, they prefer it happens now in school and not in the real world, where consequences can be much more severe.

Project-Based Learning

This engaging, hands-on approach to learning was evident throughout the various learning spaces we visited. While the school prides itself on the collaboration among the different shop programs, it also recognizes its need to find more ways of connecting shop teachers with academic teachers. It all come down to professional development time.

Here is a great example of what can happen when the Worcester Tech faculty is able to brainstorm together. It began when a math teacher observed her students struggling to understand “pitch” in a plumbing class. When she reminded them she taught them the same concept in math class, only she referred to it as “slope,” the students were able to make the connection. Soon after, the academic and shop teachers were given time to collaborate, and they created a list of common vocabulary to be used in all shops and academic classrooms.