CONNECTING THE DOTS: How and why engineering education must change

Richard K. Miller, Ph.D. First President and Professor

Needham, Massachusetts

Connections Keynote Presentation 2015 KEEN Winter Conference CURIOSITY.CONNECTIONS.CREATING VALUE.

January 5-7, 2015 Tempe, AZ

Outline 1.  The Founding of Olin College 2.  The Olin Learning Model

3.  Lessons Learned

Outline 1.  The Founding of Olin College 2.  The Olin Learning Model 3.  Lessons Learned

F.W. Olin Foundation Timeline •  1997 – Charter •  1999 – First employee •  2000 – Founding Faculty, begin campus construction •  2001 – Olin Partner Year •  2002 – first courses taught •  2006 – first commencement

Franklin W. Olin

“There is a lot of unhappiness about the way engineering is taught today…” Lawrence W. Milas, President, F.W. Olin Foundation, Founding Chairman, Olin College Board of Trustees L.W. Milas Joseph Bordogna NSF Engineering Education Coalitions Program

John Prados ABET Criteria 2000

“Olin College is intended to be different, not for the mere sake of being different, but in order to become an important and constant contributor to the advancement of engineering education in America and throughout the world,…” Founding Precepts, Olin College

Olin College is intended to become an education laboratory.

The Role of Olin College Higher Education

Olin College

Visited by more than 420 universities in past 5 years

A recent book resulted from our collaboration with UIUC

Outline 1.  The Founding of Olin College 2.  The Olin Learning Model 3.  Lessons Learned

The current Olin model for engineering education

Olin College Overview •  Undergraduate residential engineering education •  Total enrollment of about 350 •  50% women •  BS degrees in ECE, ME, Engr only •  9-to-1 student/faculty ratio •  75 acres and 400,000+ sq. ft. new buildings •  Endowment > $1 million/student •  Research expenditures > $1 million/yr •  Adjacent to Babson College, Wellesley College •  No academic departments •  No tenure •  Low tuition •  Everything has “expiration date”

Olin College Campus Needham, MA

Some Features of the Olin Curriculum •  Candidates’ Weekend: group interviews required for admission •  Extensive DESIGN THINKING core required •  Each student completes 10-20 team design projects in 4 years •  SCOPE senior project: corporate sponsored, year-long ($50k/project) •  EXPO at end of each semester: EACH student must “stand and deliver” •  Olin Self Study self-directed independent research required for graduation •  AHS/E! Capstone project required for graduation •  Study Away in Junior year encouraged •  Summer internships: REU and corporate experience •  Business and entrepreneurship: all students must start and run a business or enterprise for a semester •  Continuous improvement: continuous curriculum review and renewal (everything has an expiration date – including the curriculum!) •  BUT, the learning culture is far more important than the curriculum!

The Culture Is the Curriculum

“We’ve never worked this hard in our life, and there is nothing else we would rather be doing!”

Outline 1.  The Founding of Olin College 2.  The Olin Learning Model 3.  Lessons Learned

What it Means to be Educated Yeats: not filling a pail, but lighting a fire!

KNOWLEDGE ECONOMY

MAKER ECONOMY

TIME

INNOVATION ECONOMY

imitate content

ideas

perfect

Sage on Stage

Guide on Side

Peers and Mentors?

Rows of seats with Blackboard

Small groups with Maker Projects

Intrinsic motivation, Design Thinking?

What you Know

What you can Do

What you Conceive

Why education must change NAE Grand Challenges for 21st Century

An existential threat!

•  Global, Complex, Multidisciplinary Challenges •  Security, Sustainability, Health, Enhancing Life •  Unintended Consequences, systems thinking •  Coupled Scientific-Social-Economic-Political-Religious •  Need New Kind of Engineering Innovators

The NAE Grand Challenges Attract More Students to Engineering

Vivek Wadwa March 9, 2009 THE GRAND CHALLENGE FOR SCIENCE AND MATH

“Students may resist geek studies. But they’ll flock in for the opportunity to change the world.”

What is Innovation? •  Creativity: •  Inventiveness: •  Innovation:

the process of generating original ideas and insights the process of generating original ideas and insights that have value the process of generating original ideas and insights that have value, and then implementing them in ways that change many lives

Note: Without implementation, it is just an idea!

Our traditional approach to higher education may be actually preventing us from producing innovators!

Broader View of Innovation

Feasibility

Viability

Engineering and Science

Business and Economics

INNOVATION Desirability Psychology, Arts, Humanities, etc.

But the Grand Challenges, while requiring STEM competence, won’t be solved by STEM subjects alone. They will require new levels of sophisticated multidisciplinary INNOVATION. No amount of doubling down on hard science courses will produce the innovators we need. It is not only what you know that matters—it is your attitudes, behaviors and motivations, or SOFT SKILLS, too!

21st century Innovators require more than technical knowledge! Attitude: More often than not, your attitude* determines your altitude in life *not your aptitude SG, LBS

Attitudes, Behaviors, and Motivations: •  •  •  •  •  •  •  • 

Soft Skills Entrepreneurial Mindset Ethical Behavior Teamwork, Leadership Global perspective Interdisciplinary thinking Creativity and design Empathy, social responsibility Employability skills

“Employability Skills” “Innovation Excellence”

“Educate to Innovate” Grand Challenge Scholars Program

“Capacity, Capability, Competiveness”

“T-shaped” engineers Services Science

Grand Challenge Scholars Program •  Hands-on project or research experience related to a Grand Challenge •  Interdisciplinary curriculum •  Entrepreneurship •  Global dimension •  Service Learning White House OSTP Challenge 65 US Engineering Colleges now committed Spreading rapidly through China, India, elsewhere

Six of the eleven ABET requirements (a – k) are focused on Soft Skills, not Hard Science.

Endangered Species: Young U.S. Entrepreneurs New Data Underscore Financial Challenges and Low Tolerance for Risk Among Young Americans By Ruth Simon and Caelainn Barr Jan. 2, 2015 7:48 p.m. ET “The share of people under age 30 who own private businesses has reached a 24-year-low, according to new data, underscoring financial challenges and a low tolerance for risk among young Americans.”

Lessons Learned To produce innovators, we must change: •  Who we teach •  What we teach •  How we teach Learning to Improvise!

Lessons Learned To produce innovators, we must change: •  Who we teach •  What we teach •  How we teach

Are we attracting the right people into Engineering? •  Less than 5% of bachelor degrees go to Engineers in US •  What about:

What is an Engineer?

•  Applied Scientist •  noun: “a person who carries through an enterprise by skillful or artful contrivance,” (Merriam-Webster Dictionary) •  Designer/Architect of a System, Process, or Device •  Project/Team Leader •  “To Engineer is to Make” (D. Chapman-Walsh) •  “An Engineer is a person who envisions what has never been, and does whatever it takes to make it happen” (Olin College)

“Scotty”

Multiple Intelligences: Howard Gardner, Frames of Mind (1983) •  All people have at least 7 “intelligences” •  Linguistic •  Logical/mathematical

Academic Intelligence (IQ, SAT, etc.)

•  Spatial •  Bodily-kinesthetic

Artistic Intelligence

•  Musical •  Interpersonal •  Intrapersonal

Persuasion, Management

Example: Prof. Diana Dabby

Creativity may now be as important as knowledge(!)

What is Creativity?

P

P

P YOUTUBE: Sir Ken Robinson (TED 2006)

Lessons Learned To produce innovators, we must change: •  Who we teach •  What we teach •  How we teach

Are we teaching the right stuff for this century?

Prof. Warren Seering Kristen Wolfe June, 2004 S.B. Thesis Understanding the Careers of the Alumni of the MIT Mechanical Engineering Department Taken from “Man who waits for roast duck to fly into mouth must wait a very long time,” Presented by Prof. Woodie Flowers, MIT, on April 1, 2009, at Engineer of the Future 2.0, Olin College, Needham, MA. (Used with permission; video available on WWW)

survey MIT ME Graduates 1992 - 1996 676 e-mail requests 308 completed the survey 46% response rate

Where did you learn… did not elsewhere job grad school

100%

80%

60%

40%

20%

0%

ME core

professional skills

how and

why

MIT ungd

100%

used pervasively

80%

60%

40%

20%

learned at MIT

0%

ME core

professional skills

how and

why

pervasively never

Frequency of use lead/innovate

none

Expected proficiency

teamwork

not learned but pervasive

communications professional skills and attributes personal skills and attributes independent thinking

underlying sciences underlying mathematics dynamics heat transfer

learned but seldom used

thermodynamics mechanics of solids fluid mechanics systems dynamics and control mechanical behavior of materials

Lessons Learned To produce innovators, we must change: •  Who we teach •  What we teach •  How we teach

What is the best way to teach today?

A New Culture of Learning Traditional

New

Knowledge Transfer

Construct Knowledge

“Can’t Do”

“Can Do”

Follow Orders

Follow Your Passions

Learn in Class

Learn 24 x 7

Learn Alone

Learn in Teams

Problem-based

Design-based

Pedagogy like Graduate School

“For most of the twentieth century our educational system has been built on the assumption that teaching is necessary for learning to occur.”

“Making universities and engineering schools exciting, creative, adventurous, rigorous, demanding, and empowering milieus is more important than specifying curricular details,” Dr. Charles Vest, former President of MIT and of the US National Academy of Engineering.

Outcomes at Olin College 2013 Bernard M. Gordon Prize for Innovation In Engineering and Technology Education US National Academy of Engineering Princeton Review: #3 – Students Study the Most #19 – Happiest Students

Among top producer of NSF Grad Res Fellowships, Fulbright Scholarships

US News & World Report - #3

40% of alumni pursue graduate degrees, 25% of these at Harvard, Stanford, or MIT

Forbes (2014) - #8 SAT scores Newsweek/Kaplan – “New Ivies”

Starting salaries for Olin graduates are typically more than $20,000 above US national average for new engineers