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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.
Just what the world needs, more Stephen Wolframs.
-Sean
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
The second red flag comes from the wording: "Creating a curriculum"? That smells like they haven't been accredited yet.
As an Anonymous Coward has already posted, they're not. Two of my friends considered being part of that pre-freshman class last year, and it was made very clear to them that the school was not yet accredited, but would hopefully be in 5 years before the first class graduates. Neither of them wanted to risk that.
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.
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
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
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