Olin College — Re-Engineering Engineering

theodp writes "In its College Issue, the NYT Magazine profiles tuition-free Olin College, which is building a different breed of engineer, stressing creativity, teamwork, and entrepreneurship — and, in no small part, courage. But questions remain as to whether the industry is ready for the freethinking products of Olin, and vice versa. Few of the class of 2006 are going on to grad study in engineering or jobs in the field."

Predicting short term failure and long term succes

[randalware]

Watch the graduates !

They will have trouble with the established firms set in their ways.

Thus they will be unemployed at a high rate.

And because of that they will start their own companies !

And Profit !

Good plan.

[Dragon By Proxy]

Now, let's see it at other levels of communication.

I, as a student of a public high school in America, take in more force-fed facts that are expected to be regurgitated, and get fewer and fewer chances to let my creative juices flow. Rather than writing that a person thinks something happened, I think someone could get more of a benefit out of writing about why it happened.

Perhaps that's why all forms of math are just so hard for me to wrap my head around; I know that things work, but I don't see why it's useful.

That aside, in a post-No-Child-Left-Educated world, would there be any creativity left to teach anything like this?

I'm not a teacher, nor am I always a realist, so I might just be thinking too optimistically about this. I guess it'd be best to just wait and see.

Re:Predicting short term failure and long term suc

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Or they can start their own companies right away and get short term success, maybe even long term success. Engineers without some amount of business sense might be long term failures too, or even short term failures. It's all a gamble in many ways.

A drop in a bucket ( a very empty bucket at that )

[ceallaigh]

Engineering based firms that hire Computer Science and Computer Engineering undergraduates are struggling to meet their recruitment goals today. Although coming up with new ways to shape the skills and experiences of engineering undergraduates is noble and necessary. It hardly helps with the overall lack of new students majoring in those subjects at university in the first place. This program is an interesting experiment at an elite school. But it hardly has any impact on the lack of students choosing this field.

The other problem I have with it is that the ideas espoused are not terribly new. At the University of Nebraska's School of Engineering students can enter the JD Edwards Honors program with an emphasis in Business.

http://jdedwards.unl.edu/ [unl.edu]

I tend to not hire CompSci or CompE students from this program because as entry level hires they have incredibly unrealistic expectations about their first job. They all want to transition to management right away before cutting their teeth on engineering design. So we tend to skip them over when we get resumes.

Sean

Re:Hard facts first

[Acrimonymous]

I'm more annoyed that it has extended to colleges. It used to be that public schools peddled this super-sensitive horseshit. Now kids are not only learning it in high school, they're having it reinforced throughout college.

I don't know whether to be ecstatic that my job is secure, or annoyed that my employees from now on will all be clueless idiots....

Re:Good plan.

[dragoneye1589]

I semi-agree with you saying that you are force fed facts in university. The thing about it is, you aren't being forced to learn, its fully up to you, the informations there for you, but if you don't want it, good for you. Now I haven't had to learn a lot in one week yet (I'm only a first year engineering student), but at the speeds most high schools go at, learning that much should not be a problem. About not being "creative enough" I have been told by my professors, that they will teach us lots of facts, and make us use them, and at times we will feel like we can't have any creativity at all, but the creativity we hold on to will make us better engineers. Now one of the things that always bugged me about primary and secondary education is that they were lacking the creativity to figure out ways to challenge, or at least keep interested the students that found the material in classes excessively easy.

Re:Predicting short term failure and long term suc

[ILuvRamen]

It's just like programming. Every company is turbo-stupid in only taking interns and people with 5+ years of experience for any real programming job. So the fresh grads write their own software and a big company buys and and then they get hired.
I like engineering being like that too cuz then you get more inventions. It takes a company forever to invent something new with all the budgeting and paperwork and meetings and higher ups and blah blah blah. If engineers can't get hired, they just invent something and sell it and they do it waaaaaaaaay faster.

Few take engineering jobs

[Wansu]

  Few of the class of 2006 are going on to grad study in engineering or jobs in the field.

This is no surprise since engineering job opportunities for US citizens have been dwindling in 21st century.

Re:Quasi-Old Fart Observation

[toxic666]

Ahh, it's good to see some thought process going on out there. But an engineering degree does not an engineer make. My education began in earnest after I graduated and worked under experienced engineers in an entrepreneurial situation. It took two years in the field -- 1987 to 1989 -- before I was ready to play. I maintain contact with college profs and its a good two-way exchange. They have the theory and new ideas, I have the practical experience.

But to make new companies it takes experience and a business plan. Enter the bean counters. And the bean counters now control the playing field.

It can be done, and it still happens. But primarily, engineering is no longer respected. The engineer as innovator is underfunded and engineer as quality/safety voice is unheard.

Re:Y-Combinator(Olin)

[IamTheRealMike]

Not convinced about that myself. The Y-Combinator companies seem to be mostly cookie-cutter "let's take this well worn problem, and do it in Rails!" type ventures. Wake me up when one has a truly new idea, executes well, and gets big. Until then it's basically riding on Grahams name.

learning to think differently

[david in brasil]

A couple of times a year, I pull up the following and read it, trying to realign my thinking process. I don't know who originally wrote it; I've had it for years. I apologize for the long post, but it's worth it. ++++++++++++++++++++ Some time ago I received a call from a colleague. He was about to give a student a zero for his answer to a physics question, while the student claimed a perfect score. The instructor and the student agreed to an impartial arbiter, and I was selected.I read the examination question: "SHOW HOW IT IS POSSIBLE TO DETERMINE THE HEIGHT OF A TALL BUILDING WITH THE AID OF A BAROMETER." The student had answered, "Take the barometer to the top of the building, attach a long rope to it,lower it to the street, and then bring it up, measuring the length of the rope. The length of the rope is the height of the building." The student really had a strong case for full credit since he had really answered the question completely and correctly! On the other hand, if full credit were given, it could well contribute to a high grade in his physics course and to certify competence in physics, but the answer did not confirm this. I suggested that the student have another try. I gave the student six minutes to answer the question with the warning that the answer should show some knowledge of physics. At the end of five minutes, he had not written anything. I asked if he wished to give up, but he said he had many answers to this problem; he was just thinking of the best one. I excused myself for interrupting him and asked him to please go on. In the next minute, he dashed off his answer which read: "Take the barometer to the top of the building and lean over the edge of the roof. Drop the barometer, timing its fall with a stopwatch.Then, using the formula x=0.5*a*t^^2, calculate the height of the building." At this point, I asked my colleague if he would give up. He conceded,and gave the student almost full credit. While leaving my colleague's office, I recalled that the student had said that he had other answers to the problem,so I asked him what they were. "Well," said the student, "there are many ways of getting the height of a tall building with the aid of a barometer. For example, you could take the barometer out on a sunny day and measure the height of the barometer, the length of its shadow, and the length of the shadow of the building,and by the use of simple proportion, determine the height of the building." "Fine," I said, "and others?" "Yes," said the student, "there is a very basic measurement method you will like. In this method, you take the barometer and begin to walk up the stairs. As you climb the stairs, you mark off the length of the barometer along the wall. You then count the number of marks, and this will give you the height of the building in barometer units." "A very direct method." "Of course. If you want a more sophisticated method, you can tie the barometer to the end of a string, swing it as a pendulum, and determine the value of g at the street level and at the top of the building. From the difference between the two values of g, the height of the building,in principle, can be calculated." "On this same tact, you could take the barometer to the top of the building,attach a long rope to it, lower it to just above the street, and then swing it as a pendulum. You could then calculate the height of the building by the period of the precession". "Finally," he concluded, "there are many other ways of solving the problem.Probably the best," he said, "is to take the barometer to the basement and knock on the superintendent's door. When the superintendent answers, you speak to him as follows: 'Mr. Superintendent, here is a fine barometer. If you will tell me the height of the building, I will give you this barometer." At this point, I asked the student if he really did not know the conventional answer to this question. He admitted that he did, but said that he was fed up with high school and college instructors trying to teach him how to think. The student was Neils Bohr.

I've known Olin Students for the Past Three Years

[CNothing]

And they are by far some of the most intelligent hands-on people I have ever met. Although I am in no way qualified to comment on their credentials and experience - I am a Junior at Babson College - most of the successful v.c./angel pitches that are done by groups of Babson students at any one of our yearly events events include students from Olin as part of the founding team.

Like I said, I am not qualified on their engineering talent. I do know that they only accept students who can demonstrate a committed dedication to engineering - from what I have heard, if you haven't built anything in your spare time you don't have a chance in hell of getting in. I also know that you can generally find a couple of Olin students at any one time testing one thing or another down by the lower athletic fields. To be honest, I was more under the impression that Olin's curriculum was more pragmatic than the Slashdot summery made out. Although Olin is dedicated to entrepreneurship, (Olin was started by a Babson alum with funds that originated with another Babson alum, on Babson's campus. Given that Babson is largely focused on entrepreneurship, this is pretty much a given.) their students all appear, at least, to have a solid grasp of mathematics, the sciences, and so on. They also haven't had any issues finding their graduates jobs over the past year. What all of this means - I don't know, I'm a Business major.

Re:Quasi-Old Fart Observation

[mmurphy000]

But to make new companies it takes experience and a business plan. Enter the bean counters. And the bean counters now control the playing field.

Speaking as a two-time — soon to be three-time — entrepreneur, there's a mix of internal and external factors at play here.

External factors, like America's sue-happy society and mountains of regulation, can't readily be addressed by any individual firm or college program. We can only hope that enough individual firms and college programs take root that, over time, society's attitudes can change and these problems will shrink.

Internally, though, engineering entrepreneurs can readily avoid bean counters (or attorneys) interfering with business operations...if the entrepreneurs are willing to set some limits. Some of those limits will be for the bean counters and attorneys: hire ones with the proper attitude, give them marching orders for how to best support an innovative firm in their roles, reward those who follow through, and fire the sorry asses of those who don't. Some of those limits will be for the entrepreneur itself, such as not taking on financing (e.g., venture capital) that come with un-controlled bean counters and attorneys attached. While that latter limitation will seem to some to be a show-stopper, understand that an engineering entrepreneur needs to not only engineer technical solutions to meet their vision, but also engineer business models and structures to meet that same vision. For an example, read The Great Game of Business [amazon.com] and A Stake in the Outcome [amazon.com] by Jack Stack and Bo Burlingham.

Re:learning to think differently

[DanielLee50]

Nice verification, gotta love that Internet.

I liked the story, I don't think it even needed a name attached to it to have value.

There was a time in high school art class where I refused to do a project because I did not feel that the teacher had a right to grade it using her opinion of what was or was not art or good art. She gave me an F which was enough to prevent my graduating. I ended up having to stay after school and do an art project where it was preagreed that it was not to be graded. I did graduate. Stubborn little shit I was.