"Although this program seems to give the students warm and fuzzy feelings about engineering, it seems to miss out on the fundamentals of engineering itself. In order to know what is possible and why is grounded in know the basics of math, physics, chemistry, and (depending on the major) biology."
I'm not going to list all the bio, physics, math, electronics, and engineering courses I've taken at Olin so far (as a sophomore), but when you say "warm and fuzzy feelings about engineering" I assume you're talking about our project-based courses. Rather than doing a page of physics problems a week, we look at a handful of open-ended, huge physics problems (Describe an orbiting satellite using Newton's law of gravitation.) and we come up with modeling equations, describe various implications of those equations, write computer simulations, analyze simulations, try simulations with a variety of scenarios (what if we want to steer our satellite? How can we make it stationary over the US?) build physical models (not of satellites perhaps, but there are plenty of problems we get that are great for model-building), write papers about our findings and do a formal presentation.
We started with "this is a derivative" and ended the year with "this is a partial differential equation, we're going to show you some techniques to work with them, so you'll be prepared for PDEs when you take it in the next year or two."
The electronics/systems class taught at the same time is equally amazing -- not for its "warm and fuzzy engineering" but for the fact that I learned SO FREAKING MUCH in such a short period of time while taking it. The NY Times article is crap; talk to some actual Olin students.
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"Although this program seems to give the students warm and fuzzy feelings about engineering, it seems to miss out on the fundamentals of engineering itself. In order to know what is possible and why is grounded in know the basics of math, physics, chemistry, and (depending on the major) biology." I'm not going to list all the bio, physics, math, electronics, and engineering courses I've taken at Olin so far (as a sophomore), but when you say "warm and fuzzy feelings about engineering" I assume you're talking about our project-based courses. Rather than doing a page of physics problems a week, we look at a handful of open-ended, huge physics problems (Describe an orbiting satellite using Newton's law of gravitation.) and we come up with modeling equations, describe various implications of those equations, write computer simulations, analyze simulations, try simulations with a variety of scenarios (what if we want to steer our satellite? How can we make it stationary over the US?) build physical models (not of satellites perhaps, but there are plenty of problems we get that are great for model-building), write papers about our findings and do a formal presentation. We started with "this is a derivative" and ended the year with "this is a partial differential equation, we're going to show you some techniques to work with them, so you'll be prepared for PDEs when you take it in the next year or two." The electronics/systems class taught at the same time is equally amazing -- not for its "warm and fuzzy engineering" but for the fact that I learned SO FREAKING MUCH in such a short period of time while taking it. The NY Times article is crap; talk to some actual Olin students.