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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."
#1: Engineers don't take any other courses (from what I've been seeing) besides the engineering courses. No history, humanities, fine arts, etc. It makes for a more well-balanced person. It should be required.
#2: From the engineering programs I've seen lately, it seems as though they're shoving a bunch of formulae at the students and are saying "Here, memorize these." without explaining/proving how/why they work. That is vital. The engineers being churned out now are book smart, cannot apply their knowledge, and do not know where their "knowledge" comes from.
This is why I switched to physics. Generally the same material, except more in depth/proven/etc.
At my BS school, they cut optics out of the physics classes because "Engineers don't need that". What's up with that?
Mike
Mmmm......sacrelicious.
olin01 writes "more information on their website."
/., at least be straight with us. We're smart enough to see through it.
Their website, or yours? If you're going to advertise on
Just what the world needs, more Stephen Wolframs.
-Sean
Will be interesting to see how this school grows.
Say hello to zMac.
With all students getting a full scholarship, the school can more easily compete for the best students. Most of the Ivy League schools have large enough endowments to significantly reduce or eliminate their tuition fees, but they don't because they don't have to. Perhaps schools like this one will help push them in that direction.
In France schools like Ecole Polytechnique, Ecole Centrale or Ecole des Mines have been doing that for 200 years, with a total output of around 1000 "renaissance engineers" (ingenieur generaliste) per year. In French companies these diplomas usually make you start your career as a supervisor/manager in the industry, in consulting firms or financial services.
For example:
American Heritage (6 hours): [boring information] NOTE: Not required for engineering majors.
That's what I'm talking about.
#2: I am quite well adjusted. I just want to make sure that I know something when I get out. It's my money I'm spending, and you'd better be sure that I'm going to get the best education out of it.
Mike.
Mmmm......sacrelicious.
I'd hire someone with an education like this in an instant. When I interview someone, there's two aspects I look at: technical ability and communication/leadership ability. Both are reasonably easy to find in a person. It's the people with a good combination of the two that are hard to find. It looks like this will foster that.
As well, the kind of hand-on learning that they talk about here is what you need in a good R&D engineer. I want people who can mock up a prototype with duct tape and zap straps to do proof of concept before they sit down to design it in Solid Works.
Brant
What about Cooper Union? All students recieve full tuition scholarships.
Not many people have heard about it, but those who do know that we're hard core.
How are they going to graduate well-rounded people who still want to be engineers?
"Consider yourself a member of a virtual corporation with Mr. Torvalds as your Chief Executive Officer." - Linux Advocac
I agree. The whole concept is exactly what Harvey Mudd set out to accomplish in 1955.
The mission of HMC ("Harvey Mudd College seeks to educate engineers, scientists, and mathematicians well versed in all these areas and in the humanities and social sciences so that they may assume leadership in their fields with a clear understanding of the impact of their work on society.") seems the same, as well as the class size (~650), and naming convention (moniker taken from rich donor). The biggest difference seems to be the price. And the fact this school has yet to form a reputation for excellence.
When it was time to apply to college, I actually nursed the idea of applying to this school, after all the posters and free shit they sent me in the mail. Until, of course, I came to my senses and realized that it will make MIT look like Florida State.
:-)
I actually go to a great school now (30,000+ attendance) where I get a top of the line education, yet get to socialize with liberal arts girls, party if I want to --- all things from the "college experience" that help you become a well rounded individual street-smarts wise. These guys from FWO will be as well rounded as a home-schooled college student, if you can think of such a thing. I'm surprised if they'll ever see female genitalia in their life. Sure they may be the college of the future -- but hey, they may figure out how to have sex without intercourse! (Anyone remember Demolition Man with the wireless helmets and all? Kind of reminds me of the Coneheads and the sens-0-rings... ahh, my mind is in the gutter
Aw, fuck it. Let's go bowling. - The Big Lebowski
Free tuition and housing. Sounds like a tasty deal!
Makes you wonder if there's an agenda. What kind of grads will this place really churn out? How does the college pay for its operations? There's some big bucks involved: A $400 million pledge from the FW Olin Foundation. (Not my intention to sound critical -- but if, say, Microsoft were to sponsor parts of a university program, it does raise eyebrows...)
I guess my question is, how will the market value (the holder of) a free degree? I scraped through countless crap jobs and jumped through inane scholarship hoops to pay my way through. Guess I feel a bit jealous.
Engineers need classes other than engineering ones.
By taking classes in history, humanities, etc. it will help them relate to other college students including the ones that party half the week at neighboring colleges. They might even have sex before they graduate.
c.
Depends if you're talking grad or undergrad. UofT is #1 for grad (I think), Waterloo is #1 for undergrad.
My two cents:
I graduated from The University of Iowa College of Engineering during Dean Miller's last year. (As the article mentions, Miller is now president of Olin College.)
This concept is very appealing to me. The UI COE prides itself in a student body comprised of those who are "engineers and more." This is one of the reasons I choose to attend Iowa over That Other School. Admittedly, Iowa's curriculum is not much different from the basic curriculum of any other ABET-accredited school. (BTW, we were required to take Rhetoric, like all UI grads, and a number of courses in the humanities and social sciences. In fact, to fulfil, say, the humanities requirement, you had to take a lower-level and upper-level course in the same field.) Yet, the exposure to, and opportunity in, many diverse areas was invaluable. As a hiring manager, I would be very reluctant to hire an engineer that wasn't "well-rounded," with excellent written and verbal communication skills, and a broader perspective on his work.
I don't know, but when I read the part about the copressed air cannon, the first thing that came to my mind is ...
They're training these kids to be on Junkyard Wars!!
Can't get to the site, but it sounds exactly like the program I graduated from. I was in the first graduating class, and I have to say if it wasn't for this program I would have never finished my engineering education.
The Engineering and Society program at McMaster is a 5 year program instead of the usual 4 for a standard engineering degree. You still "belong" to a particular branch of engineering (chemical in my case), but you spread the technical portion of your education over the entire 5 years, freeing up time for other areas of study. I studied anthropology and philosophy outside of engineering, as well as a number of targetted Engineering and Society courses on social impacts of technology, environmental issues, history of technology, etc. And these were far from bird courses, critical thought was stressed and the work load was high. Math and physics were for the most part easy for me, defending my arguments critically was hard. But it is the skill I took from university that I am most proud of.
For me, it was the best education I could have had. I'm good at the technical part, and always wanted to have a career in engineering. But I always had in mind that sometimes technology doesn't always make the world a better place. I think that as engineers, we need to have a broader world view of how what we do affects the world around us. Both the human societies and environment. Engineering education requires a huge amount of content, and in order to pack it all into 4 years, there isn't much room for anything else.
I think that anyone looking to get into engineering should look closely at programs like this, the extra year may seem like a lot now but the rewards in the end may far outweigh it.
Laugh while you can, monkey boy!
School of Engineering is different than School of Arts and Science/Letters and Science.
... Man, my parents forgot the check for my books."
They have less general education requirements. At UCLA they only had to take 8 units of non-School of engineering classes. That's TWO classes.
They studied about 5-8 hours a day, never got laid and rarely showered. These guys needed to be saved from themselves by showing them women (yes there are a few women in engineering but they're widely underrepresented) getting them to understand the world can't be solved by an equation or logic. And for God's sake, get them to know at least an iota of what they love to argue about with economics, psychology and liberal arts majors.
Examples (All of these are true things said by engineers in my presence.)
"All communism is evil. A free-market economy is what is best for the world...Bill Gates is evil."
"Women are evil. Here's a proof explaining it."
"All people should pick themselves up by their bootstraps and make their own way in the world.
Keep fighting the good fight, mhore!
c.
Hm. Coincidence? olin01... Olin college... nah!
.NET coding tools from "billg@microsoft.com"?
They could at least have tried to make it less obvious. Next week, will there be an announcement about hot new
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
I would have loved a course like this. But, I still think it may be solving the wrong problem. My experience is that there are fewer engineers who could do with a dose of liberal arts (though there are plenty) than there are liberal arts students who desperately need at least some basic grounding in science and math.
I have met countless Americans with liberal arts backgrounds who have tremendously difficulty dealing with even the most basic concepts of logic, reasoning, argument and math. This can seriously damage your career.
There are relatively few engineers who would admit with pride that they don't read books or go see films. There are plenty of liberal artists who seem only too happy to flaunt their ignorance of basic math and science.
So I like this course a lot, but I'd rather see something working in the other direction.
Sailing over the event horizon
Olin College Engineers are FULLY ENDOWED
She sat at the window watching the evening invade the avenue.
Don't get me wrong, this sounds like a great idea. But how can you seriously get all of this without spending over 8 years time? There's only so much you can pack in before extending the time until graduation else you lose important class time for engineering.
Either that or you go in overkill method and give the students the worst four years of their life.
Berto
The Existential Pleasures of Engineering by Samuel C. Florman was required reading when I attended the College of Engineering at the University of Florida. A detailed look at engineering as an art form. Highly recommended.
Their accreditation says:
Accreditation: Creating a curriculum and facilities that meet requirements for accreditation with the New England Association of Secondary Schools & Colleges (NEAS&C) and the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET)
First of all, the regional accreditation that means something is called the "New England Association of Schools and Colleges (NEASC-CIHE)", which is similar, yet different from what they claim. Mistake? Or attempt to mislead?
The second red flag comes from the wording: "Creating a curriculum"? That smells like they haven't been accredited yet.
If they're not accredited, they should come out and say so instead of all this sneaky crapola. The program might be good, but there are very distinct disadvantages to not going to an accredited school, not least of which your classes and/or degree means absolutely nothing if you want to transfer to an accredited school.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Back in my day if you went to college you had to take humanities and science classes. Stuff like foreign languages, composition, biology and philosophy were requirements. Even the engineering students. To make it fair, the liberal arts students had to take calculus as well.
But you tell that to youngsters nowadays and they won't believe you!
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
At the UW, the honors program requires you to take any 3 year-long sequences to graduate (along with whatever major you're doing). These include:
I choose the first three. Out of world civ, for example, I got to write a 50-page paper on pyramids, study west African feminist literature, and take a really interesting course from a femini-Nazi women's study professor.
Now, while I'm coding OS thread tasks, I can also appreciate a bit of Herodotus (or whatever else tickles your fancy) while taking my breaks. So if you're interested in a well-rounded education, check out your school's honors program.There are a huge number of yeast infections in this county. Probably because we're downriver from the bread factory.
why does their Web site need a splash page?
I dunno about that - my little brother is busy doing the HMC ("If you say it fast enough, it sounds like 'Harvard Med'." - HMC recruiting brochure I got) thing. As best as I can tell, his educational curriculum seems to involve chemical dependancy and blowing shit up while trying to destroy opposing dorms using only the sheer sonic power of their subwoofers.
I'll grant you it's "well-rounded", but I'm sure there's cheaper ways to spend time blowing things up while getting plastered.
Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, will be quoted out of context on
You think an engineering school would have I2 connectivity. Instead they are getting slashdotted, my traceroute is showing 3 second latency. I sure hope this pipe isn't their only connection to the Internet. Otherwise the freshman are probably crying about how slow it is right about now.
4 sd-ul.indiana.gigapop.net (192.12.206.245) 3.003 ms 3.062 ms 2.885 ms
5 so-1-0-0.iplvin1-hcr5.bbnplanet.net (4.24.115.1) 3.103 ms 2.681 ms 3.254 ms
6 p8-0.iplvin1-br2.bbnplanet.net (4.0.2.5) 3.335 ms 3.150 ms 2.890 ms
7 p13-0.phlapa1-br1.bbnplanet.net (4.24.10.181) 18.279 ms 19.185 ms 18.074 ms
8 p13-0.nycmny1-nbr2.bbnplanet.net (4.24.10.178) 20.335 ms 19.719 ms 19.569 ms
9 so-4-0-0.bstnma1-nbr2.bbnplanet.net (4.24.6.49) 26.618 ms 25.659 ms 26.185 ms
10 p2-0.bstnma1-cr8.bbnplanet.net (4.24.5.126) 26.253 ms 26.059 ms 26.384 ms
11 s0-1.folincollege2.bbnplanet.net (4.24.94.114) 30.394 ms 3095.996 ms 2883.122 ms
12 olin.edu (4.21.173.12) 2789.972 ms 2759.551 ms 3040.223 ms
UofT is an excellent school. But for engineering all Canadian schools (that offer engineering, 40+) are good. Due to the strict accreditation standards, from a high level all the schools are very similar. And believe it or not are right up there with the best from the USA. There is a big "however." Each school does somethings better: have different programs, better teachers/funding for field X, etc. Personally I prefer the smaller class size you will find at the smaller Unis. My graduateing year had 300 students across all fields.
For those considering Engineering in Canada, do not get too hung up on which school is best for you. It is good to find a school that you will like, but not worth stressing over. In the end, regardless of where you go, the best the profs can hope to achieve is to expose you to enough topics that you will know enough to find and read the correct book. All the Canadian schools achieve this goal.
FYI, there are 2 Olin Foundations out there which some slashdotters may be familar with -- The FW Olin Foundation, which appears primarily concerned with furthering higher education in science, engineering, and business, and the more conservative John M Olin Foundation, which seems to specialize in throwing money at various right wing pundits.
a ltern atives/1998/june.htm
d ers/john_m_ol in_foundation.htm
FW Olin Foundation blurb: (scroll down to #8)
http://www.capitalresearch.org/publications/
John M Olin Foundation:
http://www.mediatransparency.org/fun
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.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
Holy crap! Are you sure that wasn't Polytechnic University in Brooklyn you went to? It sounds all too familiar...
The Cartoon History of the Universe, Volumes I and II by by Larry Gonick (ISBN: 0385265204, ISBN: 0385420935)
Herodotus: The Histories (Project Gutenberg)
A Distant Mirror by Barbera Tuchman (ISBN: 0345349571)
Full House: The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin by Stephen Jay Gould (ISBN: 0609801406)
Disturbing the Universe by Freeman J. Dyson (ISBN: 0465016774)
Utopian Entrepreneur by Brenda Laurel (ISBN: 0262621533)
How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They're Built by Stewart Brand (ISBN: 0140139966)
The Existential Pleasures of Engineering by Samuel C. Florman (ISBN: 0312141041)
The Immense Journey by Loren C. Eiseley (ISBN: 0394701577)
... at Stevens Institute of Technology, where I got my BsC. So it's not like this is the first school to come up with the idea.
What is kinda neat is that, unlike me, you won't have $50k in student loans when you get out the other end.
I know and understand the exact sort of problem these people are encountering. I just graduated from a major East Coast research university in Chemical Engineering and I took exactly 6 courses in 'humanities and liberal arts'. Three were economic courses, if you could consider them true liberal arts classes.
:)
But, a true Rennaissance man does not learn from the typical professor spouting knowledge like a pool of information and dutifully copying it down, in the vain hope that they interpret this as 'learning' and 'understanding'. From the liberal arts classes that I have taken or have heard about from fellow Engineers, most of these classes involve regurgitating the opinions and judgements of the professor in the form of a bloated essay containing very few of one's own opinions or creative ideas.
A real Renaissance person learns by exploration of the world, of history, of math & science, of politics, on their own terms. The problem is not the availability of information, but the motivation of interest in it.
If any Engineer wants to learn history or politics, all they need to do is pick up a few classic books on the topic. Ever read Adam's "Wealth of Nations" or Machievello's "The Prince"? These are books that are fundamental to modern economics and politics, books that are almost never read in a structured class because there's always that fancy new textbook that costs $75-100, but which says the same thing in baby-talk and with some pretty pictures.
Why learn political science from a guy who's never held office?
Why learn economics from a poor professor?
Want to better understand human nature? Studying sociology will only give you unproven theories made up by professors who write textbooks for a living. Go read "The Brothers Karamazoo".
Basically, my point is...to really understand and learn the liberal arts, to study human nature itself in order to become a better leader, a better communicator, a better businessman or entrepenuer, you can't listen to any ol' professor speak about something which someone else wrote in a textbook (the standard fare today). You need to either experience and experiment with it for yourself or read or speak to people who have done so. Countless classic books expound upon human nature and it hasn't changed since humans left Nature...so they're all still quite accurate.
Salis
Who has learned more about liberal arts by reading enlightening and interesting books (fiction & non-fiction) than in any ol' University setting
Favorite
Speaking as an Olin student, I have to correct some of your points. #1: We have a student-faculty ratio of about 3:1 right now, which is one of the best anywhere (these are faculty that actually teach, as opposed to only doing research.) #2: We don't offer chemical engineering as a major; if we did, we'd have more faculty devoted to it. In Mech. E, which we do offer as a major, we have 3 full-time professors. For ECE, the figure is even higher. #3: Olin won't require its students to take a separate chemistry class, since most engineers don't end up using it anyway. It'll be combined with Materials Science, which is useful.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
The U.S. Military Academy (West Point) already does this to a large extent. The engineering and science majors have to take a reasonable dose of humanities (Psych, Eng Lit/Comp, Int'l Relations, Poli Sci, foriegn language, all kinds of history) over the 4 years, and, perhaps more importantly, the liberal arts-type majors are mandated to take a minor in an engineering field. It makes for much more well-rounded thinkers... it's not the engineering they take, but the engineering thought process associated with it that is important.
It's also full tuition (and room/board/food).
Of course, definitely not for everyone, but a really good education for those who do go.
Naturally all this came at a price. I was carrying more than 20 credits in my busiest semester, and that was for a Comp Sci degree which was heavily math oriented and for which I needed to take many classes that were otherwise graduate level in order to fulfill the requirements. (At only 2.5 credits instead of 3.) Students in the more traditional engineering disciplines carried an even heavier courseload. It builds character, or so I was told...
At Stevens, students often found themselves working in teams. Even outside the classroom, it proved helpful to use a team approach in studying for exams in the more challenging subjects, but besides that I can recall no lab course where I was working alone. In many of the engineering curricula, a major feature of the Senior year was "Superlab", where teams of students would work on individual projects of their own design. I don't imagine a team-based approach to labs and major projects can be all that uncommon in engineering schools. In RL, engineers almost never work alone. An engineer trained to go solo would be woefully unprepared for the working world.
So the only thing we are left with that's actually unique about the Olin curriculum is the practical approach to every technical subject. This, IMO, cannot work. Not every technical subject can be approached this way. Much of mathematics is just too abstract to monkey with in concrete terms, and many physics concepts can't be directly experimented with at all without large-scale, very expensive equipment. That means the resources to teach some subjects will be extremely limited. In either case, they will have to fall back on traditional methods -- methods, by the way, that we know are effective. Which makes me wonder why the Olin faculty believes they need to be discarded in the first place.
And frankly, I'm not altogether confident they know what they're doing. They debated for 2 months on what an engineer is? Puh-leeze!
And the brethren went away edified.
From my view, this new school is doing a lot of things right.
No paying-your-dues classes. Engineering is about solving problems, and most engineering work is done seat-of-the-pants, with the designer researching and learning as he/she goes. The traditional college would have you believe that two or three years of toolbox-building is required before one can solve any real problems. Any practicing engineer will tell you that this is total BS. Real Engineers(tm) just jump into a problem and think/work/caffienate until it's solved, emerging with experience, knowledge and confidence that they can then apply to the next problem. Modeling an educational institution around this iterative process should have been done a long time ago.
Whole-systems engineering. A program cannot be completely designed without taking into account the students' perspective. Most engineering curricula are designed by "captains of industry" and experienced administrative faculty, none of whom know or remember what it's like to be an engineering student. The result is that we (the students) suffer through overlapping or gap-filled coursework, uninteresting classes, and a distinct lack of communication between administration and the student body. More people claim to have survived engineering school than to have graduated from it.
Focus. A traditional engineering department has to compete with the Business school (with its battle-scarred, industry-culled accounting and law faculty) for funding, university resources, and attention. Unless the engineering school is the centerpiece of the university, it will be hard-pressed to get resources. In this case, the entire school offers only three degrees: ECE, ME, and general engineering. The student body will max out at around 650 people, with each class being only about 75 folks; small enough for every student to know every other student. This fosters networking - of a wireless sort - and as we all know, it's who you know.
No tuition. Not so much for the (somewhat fictional) socially-equal nature of a moneyless college, but for the underlying message that it's not about the money. I especially like the story about the cannon project: here's a budget, here's a goal, see what you can do. This monetary constraint makes the game that much more fun; the coolest cannon will be the one with the best ideas in it, not the one on which more money was spent. What's (hopefully) great about this: the coolest cannon will probably get the best grade, too.
Well-roundedness. My experience is that humanities courses are one step in a bureaucratic procedure on your way to a rubber-stamped degree. In order to truly produce well-rounded graduates, you can't just require that they sit through a few lectures on the Roman Empire. You have to make them interested, inquisitive, curious, and driven, so that they will find these things on their own. Knowledge does not make people well-rounded; wisdom and curiosity do. Our educational instutions today are sadly not in the free-thinker-producing business; they are in the business of producing graduates who will follow commands simply because they are given from somebody "above" them.
Personally, I've gained more useful knowledge from a 9-month programming job and two 6-month internships than I have from my 5 years at the university. College has become almost a rite of passage; if thou desirest entrance to the upper echelons of society, thou shalt work in the mines for a period no less than 4 years.
Must...stop...posting...
-- Hamster
No? Damn. I figured that beating the Zulus to Alpha Centauri would be worth a Bachelor's degree for sure. Guess there are some things the Civilopedia can't teach you after all.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
In computer science and engineering, Olin has some of the best professors that didn't fit at MIT because they cared too much about teaching and students, namely Lynn Stein and Gill Pratt. When at MIT, I worked with Lynn and heard many good things about Gill.
Jesus. Almost all these high-scored posts need to think back to their days in school and realize that sure... they might have a great education... but some of the people that sat in class with them were stupid when they were born, stupid in class, and stupid afterwards.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
Your point is damaged by the incorrectness of your cites.
"Wealth of Nations" is by Adam Smith, not someone whose last name is "Adam".
"The Prince" is by Niccolo Machiavelli, not someone whose last name is "Machievello".
Fyodor Dostoyevsky's book is entitled "The Brothers Karamazov", not "The Brothers Karamazoo".
-- Terry
I agree, as long as Microsoft didn't start applying their historically unethical business practices to these markets. I can just imagine getting a utility bill, requiring me to completely re-wire my house and buy all new appliances for Electricity 2.0 because Microsoft stops supporting 120v/60Hz.
Actually I am, of the civil persuasion. But what relevance does it have to do with this discussion?
Silicone.
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
I've heard statistics that put the University of Saskatchewan in #3 or #4. I wish I could find them, but the general consensus is that the U of S has an excellent engineering program. Combined with the Canadian Light Source, it's only going to get better. Plus, they're one of only three (I believe) universities to offer an Engineering Physics program, sort of like EE, but with more theory and emphasis on R&D applications. So far I'm just about half done it, and it's absolutely fascinating.
- Relativistic? That's barely Newtonian!
When I was expelled from school at 16, I got myself jobs in computers, where I was still under the delusion I wanted to work with science and technology. Of course, no way I could be an engineer anymore.
Being raised by an artist exposed me to all sorts of humanities stuff; but it would not really pay-off for about 20 years.
Then I met an engineer for the first time. I was totally dismayed at the utter lack of depth of the character, the extremely closed mind that had not the slightest interest outside the guy's profession, namely calculating the strength of beams going into a building.
I was glad I didn't pursue an engineering education!
Over the years, I interacted professionnally with many engineers, even at one point having two of them under my orders; only a few of those dispelled the initial notion I had of meeting my first one.
Then I worked several years with my father, who was making very-high quality books, and plenty of those were for a major museum. It is at this moment that I cursed myself for wanting to be an engineer, because I understood that I should have become an artist.
Meanwhile, the son of a friend I have known as a kid was growing up, and entered the engineering program of a very good university, of which he graduated with flying colours; two weeks later, he got himself a job, and bought himself a swift sportscar, in which he killed himself several hours later. Six years of engineering school down the crapper.
However, working in art edition circles, as interesting as it was, wasn't very computer-oriented, and it made me miss the OOP "revolution", which took me several years to catch-up; I was fortunate at that time to be hired to work on Internet connectivity just as the Internet was starting to "exist" in the public mind. Needless to say, my previous "artistic" dabblings came handy when some of the company's clients started to want websites...
Then I landed a job of IT manager for a small consulting company who provide turnkey museums all over the world; we are currently working on several projects, the largest of which is a new museum for the Smithsonian, in Washington.
Needless to say, this kind of work calls for a pretty multidisciplinary team. My past exposure to arts and design impressed my bosses enough to have me involved with every design team for several museums.
As you can guess, this makes for quite interesting meetings ("Okay, how should we put-up the Pterodon skeleton?" - "How can we mount those 80 aquariums to achieve maximum visibility?" - "Is it possible to have that subway mockup vibrate so it feels like it is running on the line?") or requests ("Hey, can you find me a planetarium?" - "I need a cable-car and a monorail"). You can guess that I am not ready to let go of that job...
I do not think I could have such an interesting job if I only had straight technical training; exposure to Humanities definitely broaden interests, and allows one to see the big picture and understand how various disciplines interact.
Thank you! It's absolutely scandalous that someone can greaduate from sixteen years of education and not know calculus. The general education requirements at my school (University of Connecticut) at being revamped this year, but it's absolutely certain that students will be able to graduate with a minimum of math and science, because those courses weed out too many people.
For some reason, it's considered acceptable to be mathematically illiterate, but not to be ignorant of history or literature. Bollocks!
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
At the University of Connecticut, the general-eduation requirements are the same for all students studying for a BS (for a BA, there are fewer required courses). These include foreign languages, physics (or biology), philosophy, chemistry, mathematics, non-western cultures, history and social science.
CSE students also have to take multivariable calculus, differential equations and linear algebra (the same classes the math majors take) as well as the civil engineering "statics" class and the electrical engineering "signals and systems" class (which weeds out third-year students like you wouldn't believe). As for learning actual math, the CS curriculum is one course short of including a math minor. (Most students take the extra one, since it's a prerequisite for another CS course.)
Any "breadth"-type requirement that a humanities major would have to take, we also take. We just don't have the free space in our schedules to take fluffy classes. (I get something like five electives over the course of four years.)
I'm not sure where you're getting this idea of well-rounded humanities students and tech-only engineering students.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
He's on scholarships limited to 4 years.
i.e. he doesn't have much of a choice.
That final year won't be so great if you're making great financial sacrifices to achieve it.
$$$ was my final reason to get a job and go to grad school part-time rather than stay for my M.Eng at Cornell (1 more year with 0 financial aid and 0 income)
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Queen's ... definitely up there with Waterloo and U of T as far as the quality of engineering goes.
That is my point exactly. All Canadian engineering schools are right up there with UofT. Although UofT is usually rated as the best overall, UofT is not the best in all fields.
It sounds to me like your alma mater has some very bad priorities. They're structuring their entire curriculum around demands that they produce engineers that pass some absurd shopping list of qualifications. Undergraduate education is supposed to be about developing your ability to acquire knowledge. If you concentrate solely on currently required technical skills, you end up with a set of qualifications that may put you in demand now, but puts you at a nasty disadvantage when (not if) the technology base evolves, rendering your current skill set obsolete.