Fully Endowed FW Olin College of Engineering Opens

olin01 writes "USA Today has a story on the Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering, which opens this Friday to its freshman class. Olin's goal is to graduate students who are "renaissance engineers," meaning that not only do the have the technical knowledge and skills but also a strong understanding of their context through studies in arts, humanities, social science, and entrepreneurship. This past year, 30 "pre-freshman" worked with faculty, staff, and administration to create the college's curriculum and student live programs. Olin also gives a full tuition scholarship to all admitted students, more information on their website."

Comments

Olin College Came to my high school

[Raul654]

I was a high school senior a couple years ago when they came recruiting 25 graduating kids to help design their curriculum. IIRC, the first 5 years they plan to be free, and offer buisness classes through a partner university up there. (Sorry, I forget which one). They were going to put the 25 kids up in a hotel for the first few weeks, and then in an abandoned church. I decided not to apply when I found out they would give exactly no credit for APs and courses I had already taken. Wonder what become of those people.

Re:Olin College Came to my high school

[olin01]

Heh. I'm one of those people.

What actually happened:
30 students were at Olin this year. In a hotel for a bit, then in modular housing (nice modular housing, but I won't miss it). Well, except for the month we went to France to find out what we did and did not like about international experiences, when we stayed in ENSAM's dorms and worked with Georgia Tech Lorraine.

We worked with the faculty, staff, and administration to design the curriculum (which consisted of a lot of meetings and testing various pedagogies out) as well as student life programs (honor code, student government, clubs, etc). We worked in six four to five week modules. The first, third, fourth, and sixth modules were curriculum development, the second was community service development, and the fifth was the international experience. We also had some side projects, such as competing against upperclassmen & grad students in the NASA MarsPort competition and earning an outstanding in the ICM. Great group of people to work & live with, we got a lot done.

At the end of the week we become freshmen.

it's not really

[Trepidity]

You'll notice a few similarities:

• Olin College is funded by the same people who funded Harvey Mudd's Olin building (home of the C.S. and Math departments).
  
• Olin College's Dean of Faculty is Michael Moody, until last year the head of the HMC Math department.
  
• The mission statement is an almost verbatim copy