Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering

[EduCativ]

Olin was founded to radically change engineering education to fuel the technical innovation needed to solve the world's complex future challenges.
In 1997, the F.W. Olin Foundation established the college with a visionary and unprecedented grant "to be an important and constant contributor to the advancement of engineering education in America and throughout the world." Olin had no departments or tenured faculty from day one, allowing for true collaboration and integration of efforts.
Olin instills passion and ignites innovation by focusing on engineering students on people's needs in the real world. This broad perspective in the hands of creative and motivated students inspires technical mastery for a purpose. Olin "engineer-innovators" envision and deliver products, services, and systems that transform the way people live on this planet. Learn more about our academic approach.
In the past decade, Olin's approach has proven successful by all measures. We are attracting the country's top faculty and students passionate about learning and making a difference in the world. Our student body is gender-balanced and has one of the highest graduation rates in the country. Students are entering the country's top graduate schools, being offered generous scholarships, are actively pursued by employers, or starting their own businesses right out of college. We have also appeared and risen on almost all of the top educational rankings.
Educational, business, and government leaders worldwide are coming to Olin to learn about our new and useful learning environment. Olin's Collaboratory is dedicated to co-designing transformational educational experiences with other institutions. We invite you to learn more about Olin and its unique role in the world and to join us in our effort to revolutionize engineering education.
At Olin College of Engineering, we want our students to experience learning in formal and technical ways and as explorers and creators who design their path. Learning happens everywhere -- in group experiences like faculty-led classes, student-led independent studies, and co-curricular (where students, faculty, and staff come together around shared interests) -- in student clubs and organizations, ranging from highly structured engineering competition teams to service organizations, social clubs, and sports teams -- in exploring the boundaries of knowledge and innovation working on research projects with faculty -- and by pursuing new ideas and passions through independent studies and Passionate Pursuits.
Learning in all of these contexts is fun and inspiring, and it lets students work on things they are excited about. These activities inspire creativity and equip students to use what they have learned to impact the world positively. Our campus culture values engagement and learning, no matter where it happens. Each semester, we celebrate student work at the Olin Expo, where students share the most exciting project.
The Olin curriculum is based on the idea that engineering starts with people -- understanding whom we are designing for, what they value, and where opportunities to create value exist -- and ends with people -- appreciating our work's social context and making a positive difference in the world. At Olin, students learn how to envision positive change and realize and deliver that change.
Olin College was founded because we believe there is a problem with undergraduate engineering education. The traditional curriculum is too narrow; it teaches students how to solve problems, but not how to find the right problems to solve or get their solutions out of the lab and into the world.
Students spend the first semesters at most schools -- sometimes years -- taking prerequisites in math and science before they do any engineering. These programs discourage many of the students who are most interested in engineering. At Olin, students start engineering right away, with three classes in the first semester that provides hands-on experiences in several engineering areas. Moreover, throughout the curriculum, students stay engaged by working on projects connected to real-world challenges. In their first year, students also begin to explore the arts, humanities, social sciences, and entrepreneurship. They can directly integrate and apply this learning in all areas of the curriculum. Every student completes an "AHS" (Arts, Humanities, and Social Science) foundation course in their first semester to build strong communication and contextual awareness skills and may continue to develop these skills through advanced self-designed AHS study. All Olin students also take an introductory entrepreneurship course in their first year. They begin to develop an entrepreneurial mindset and learn the tools essential to realizing real and sustainable positive change. Students are ready to solve real problems for companies and communities by their senior year through the senior capstone engineering experiences (SCOPE and Affordable Design and Entrepreneurship).
A critical facet of an Olin faculty member's role is to engage in meaningful externally-facing work through research, entrepreneurship, technical and educational consulting, creative work, and more. Our externally-facing work is valued for its impact on outside stakeholders such as research communities, companies, other universities, the general public, and others. The majority of our faculty engage in research as part of their "external impact" portfolios, and they typically involve groups of undergraduate students. Research with a dedicated faculty mentor can be a pivotal experience for our students, and these experiences provide excellent preparation for graduate school and other career choices.

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