Overview
Our curriculum is based on the idea that engineering starts with people – understanding who we’re designing for, what they value, and where opportunities to create value exist – and ends with people – appreciating the social context of our work and making a positive difference in the world. At Olin, students learn how to envision positive change and also how to realize and deliver that change.
Olin was founded to challenge the models and assumptions of undergraduate engineering education. The traditional curriculum teaches students how to solve problems, but not how to find the right problems to solve, nor how to get their solutions out of the lab and into the world.
At most schools, students spend their first semesters – sometimes years – taking prerequisites in math and science before they do any engineering. These programs discourage many of the students most interested in engineering, people who might have become transformative engineers if they had the chance.
At Olin, students start engineering right away, with three classes in the first semester that provide hands-on experiences in several areas of engineering. Throughout the curriculum, students stay engaged by working on projects connected to real-world challenges. Olin’s integrated curriculum depends upon math and science courses to help students characterize and understand our world and to develop scientific and quantitative analysis tools that facilitate problem solving.
Students also begin to explore the arts, humanities, and social sciences and entrepreneurship in their first year, and directly integrate and apply this learning in all areas of the curriculum. Every student completes an Arts, Humanities and Social Science (AHS) foundation course in their first semester in order to build strong skills in communication and contextual awareness, and continues to develop these skills through self-designed AHS study that might include an AHS concentration and capstone experience. Olin students also take an introductory entrepreneurship course in their first year, where they begin to develop an entrepreneurial mindset and learn the tools that are essential to realizing true and sustainable positive change.
By their senior year, students are ready to solve real problems for companies and communities through engineering capstone experiences (SCOPE and Affordable Design and Entrepreneurship) that draw upon their prior curricular work.
The academic culture at Olin is collaborative. Many of our classes are taught in a studio environment where students have dedicated space, and all classes emphasize classroom activity (not just listening) and cooperative exploration. Students have flexibility to choose projects that align with their interests; faculty act as coaches, mentors and advisors, providing just-in-time instruction and helping student teams find the resources they need.
The curriculum is interdisciplinary. Students in all majors take a common set of classes that connect areas of engineering and integrate math, science, humanities, and social science. In keeping with this interdisciplinary approach, Olin faculty work and teach together. The faculty are organized as a single department that brings together engineers, scientists, mathematicians, arts and humanities faculty, designers, entrepreneurs, and social scientists.
Olin’s collaborative culture actively involves its students as partners in the creation and ongoing development of the curriculum. Students serve on nearly all curricular and policy development committees; offer frequent feedback that helps faculty shape current and future courses; and exercise autonomy in their own education by selecting project goals, topics, and methods.
Program Educational Objective
Olin’s academic programs are designed to support the institutional mission of preparing students to become engineering innovators. From a content perspective, the curricular emphases on engineering, analysis, design, and entrepreneurship are specifically aligned with the mission; through these experiences, students acquire facility in identifying needs, generating concepts that are responsive to people’s needs, turning those concepts into technically realizable solutions, and marshaling the resources necessary to turn a vision into reality. The general education requirements support the graduation of liberally educated individuals who consider the ethical consequences of their work and create paradigms in which they can use their engineering education to effect positive change.
After graduation, Olin students in the Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering and Mechanical Engineering programs will demonstrate attainment of the following objectives:
- Graduates strengthen the teams and communities they are part of by cultivating collaboration, effective communication and leadership.
- Graduates apply a multi-disciplinary engineering approach to solving important technical and societal challenges.
- Graduates create value for society through entrepreneurial and design thinking that transforms needs and opportunities into systems, products and solutions.
- Graduates adaptively and independently extend their learning to excel in fields about which they are passionate.
Student Learning Outcomes
Olin’s Added Learning Outcomes (ALOs)
Olin College of Engineering is committed to preparing graduates who recognize the complexity of the world, appreciate the relationship of their work to individuals, to society and to sustainability, expect to work in diverse and inclusive environments, and are ready to engineer a better future for the world. Olin has for its graduates a vision of the key abilities, skills, and mindsets necessary for success, both in engineering and beyond. The vision has been constructed through careful research and consideration of the engineering practice and competencies necessary to approach emerging technical, environmental, and societal challenges in a global context. This vision is captured in our set of learning outcomes.
What follows are the learning outcomes that are standard for an ABET accredited engineering program, along with added learning outcomes (ALOs) developed at Olin College that help define our curricular vision. Through intentional educational design, the Olin community supports the development of graduates with:
Student Outcome 1
ABET: an ability to identify, formulate, and solve complex engineering problems by applying principles of engineering, science, and mathematics.
An Interdisciplinary Approach to Solving Problems: an ability to integrate approaches from the social sciences, arts, humanities, math, the natural sciences and engineering to holistically understand and address complex problems.
Student Outcome 2
ABET: an ability to apply engineering design to produce solutions that meet specified needs with consideration of public health, safety, and welfare, as well as global, cultural, social, environmental, and economic factors.
Foregrounding Needs of Primary Parties: an ability and inclination to utilize human-centered design techniques to investigate and collaboratively identify needs of primary parties by integrating diverse perspectives, ethics, beliefs, and values when pursuing personal and professional endeavors.
Student Outcome 3
ABET: an ability to communicate effectively with a range of audiences.
Empathic Listening: an ability to actively listen to others to comprehend the meaning, emotions, and perspective of others.
Student Outcome 4
ABET: an ability to recognize ethical and professional responsibilities in engineering situations and make informed judgments, which must consider the impact of engineering solutions in global, economic, environmental, and societal contexts.
Drawing on the Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences: an ability to draw on the arts, humanities, and social sciences to shape, reflect on, and critique one’s own values, priorities, and ethics.
Student Outcome 5
ABET: an ability to function effectively on a team whose members together provide leadership, create a collaborative and inclusive environment, establish goals, plan tasks, and meet objectives.
Team Health: an ability to assess and foster team health by creating and maintaining successful working relationships and identifying & resolving conflict.
Adopting Processes to Handle Uncertainty and Adversity: an ability to structure and sequence tasks to derisk and reduce uncertainty, continuously evaluate project progress, replan when faced with adversity, and iterate as needed.
Student Outcome 6
ABET: an ability to develop and conduct appropriate experimentation, analyze and interpret data, and use engineering judgment to draw conclusions.
Additional Modes of Analysis: an ability to select and use appropriate methods of analysis, such as qualitative/mixed methods or secondary source evaluation
Student Outcome 7
ABET: an ability to acquire and apply new knowledge as needed, using appropriate learning strategies.
Self-Regulated Learning: an ability to diagnose learning needs, set learning goals, identify learning resources, select learning strategies, and self-evaluate and reflect on learning outcomes.
Student Outcome 8
Note: there is no corresponding ABET outcome
Identity Development and Growth: an ability and inclination to actively reflect on one’s background, personal experiences, and professional work and integrate them into one’s evolving sense of self.