Building a Better Engineer
With No Tuition or Tenure,
Olin College Aims to Produce
Grads for a Global Economy
NEEDHAM, Mass. -- Olin College is the answer to an extraordinary question: If a foundation offered $460 million to start an undergraduate college of engineering from scratch, what would it be like?
And Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering is like few other schools. It has no academic departments. No tenure. No tuition. And more female students and professors, percentage-wise, than almost any other U.S. engineering school.
Then there are the classes. In an innovative course that integrates math, physics and engineering, freshmen David Gebhart and J.P. Pechan huddle over a cardboard-and-foam model they've built that looks like a seesaw with a wagon wheel rolling along it. The assignment: to design a gizmo controlled by a motor, write equations to describe its motion, simulate it on a computer, and build a working model that can be controlled from their laptop computers.
Michael Moody, dean of Olin's faculty and professor of mathematics, with students.
Prof. Mark Somerville -- a Rhodes scholar who majored in engineering and English as an undergrad and earned a doctorate in electrical engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology -- looks over their shoulders and points to a sprawling equation they've written in pencil on butcher paper. "Is this your controlling equation? What's this term?" he asks, pointing to a jumble of Greek letters. They answer. He asks something else, and moves on to another cluster. It's physics and calculus taught by the Socratic method, though the course does include weekly lectures.
"In most engineering schools, it's learn, then do," says Olin's president, Richard Miller. "We turn that around: Do, then learn. It's learning to swim in the deep end."
Olin College was spawned by the F.W. Olin Foundation (F.W. Olin being the founder of a predecessor company of today's Olin Corp). The F.W. Olin Foundation's trustees, having spent decades financing science buildings on college campuses, decided to go out of business rather than recruit a cadre of younger trustees. To the disappointment of fund-raisers at every other engineering school, the trustees decided to start a new college.
"We found out the National Science Foundation was spending a lot of tax money trying to reform engineering education," says Lawrence Milas, the foundation's president. "Although there were some areas of success, it was a very difficult thing for existing institutions to accomplish. Academia moves at a glacial speed."
The college's founding team gathered ideas being tried at other engineering colleges, and added a few of their own, attracting faculty -- despite the no-tenure rule -- by offering the excitement of building a college. Among those consulted was Michael Moody, chairman of the math department at Harvey Mudd College, a 50-year-old undergraduate engineering school in California with some similarities to Olin.
Says Mr. Moody, now dean of the Olin faculty: "In one of my first meetings with the provost, David Kerns, I said, 'Olin is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for you.' And he responded, 'Actually, it's much rarer than that.' "
Olin students
The school, with just under 300 undergraduates, will graduate its first class this coming spring. It has the air of a start-up. David Barrett, who left iRobot Corp. to teach at Olin, says his job often is like building a bridge six inches ahead of an advancing army. When another professor talks about "the way we used to do it," he means "how we did it last year."
To a visitor, the school resembles any other small college. What's different about it is its almost messianic mission: to change the way engineers are educated in the U.S. so that they can help the U.S. compete in a global economy with lots of smart, ambitious engineers in China, India and elsewhere. "If they become another good engineering school, they will have failed," says Woodie Flowers, an MIT professor advising Olin. "The issue is to do it differently enough and to do it in way that will be exportable" to other colleges.
Olin's "founding precepts" rule out tenure and tuition, and admonish the college to avoid becoming "resistant to change." The goal of gender balance came later. Today, 13 of the 32 faculty (or 40%) and 43% of the students are female. Nationally, it's about 20% for students. "It's nice not being a novelty," says senior Mikell Taylor, who turned down MIT for Olin.
Professors occasionally intervene to make sure the women thrive: In forming groups of students, for instance, they rarely put one woman with three men. President Miller says the school's female students have just as impressive SAT scores and grades as the men. He speculates that young women may do better at Candidates' Weekend, an audition of sorts in which applicants are evaluated, in part, for how well they work in teams and communicate.
That emphasis reflects pressure from business to produce engineers who can do more than turn concepts into working prototypes but can work in interdisciplinary teams and focus, more than earlier generations, on conceiving and designing products. It's too soon to tell if Olin is delivering that, but corporate executives say early signs are encouraging.
Olin freshmen developing prototype toy animals for a course called Design Nature.
"They've ended up with an outstanding student body," says Olin fan Wayne Johnson, Hewlett-Packard Co.'s vice president for university relations. "They're exposing them to things that it might take you 10-15 years to learn in a corporation -- the whole aspect of how to develop an approach that works in an organization. It isn't just intuitive; you've got to learn how to do it."
Still, important questions preoccupy Olin observers, both inside and outside the college: Would Olin's techniques work in a bigger school? Is Olin's main advantage its unusual wealth? Or its exceptional students? Can Olin sustain the energy of a start-up as it matures?
"Is it a model that can be scaled nationally in some way?" asks Richard Taber, who oversees the National Academy of Engineering's "Engineer of 2020" project. He's not sure. "Their students are unique. They aren't representative of the population of engineering students, and the resources of the school also are unique."
"I don't think it's an open question whether their students will do well," says Gary Gabriel, director of the National Science Foundation's division of engineering education. "Will they change engineering education? That's the open question."
For Larry Marturano, a Motorola Inc. researcher, there is no question about the abilities of Olin senior Drew Harry, who worked last summer in the company's Schaumburg, Ill., research labs. "He was probably the best intern we ever had," Mr. Marturano says. "He had a unique combination of research maturity coupled with passion coupled with entrepreneurial spirit." So when Mr. Harry asked if Motorola might be interested in being one of 13 companies paying $50,000 to engage a team of Olin seniors working on their senior project, Mr. Marturano bit.
Mr. Harry and a handful of other seniors are trying to design, build and test a service that takes advantage of the fact that modern cellphones know where they are, perhaps a service that will remind a user when he is near a store that he has bookmarked or in range of friends.
As for Messrs. Gebhart and Pechan, as of 10:30 p.m. last Thursday, they were trying to get their seesaw to work. "We have a working simulation, a working circuit, and a program to control the balance beam through our computer," Mr. Gebhart emailed from his laptop (which has red duct tape forming the word "MINE" on the cover). "We are confident, determined, and full of caffeine. It will get done."
The next morning, having pulled an all-nighter, Mr. Gebhart reported: "Basically, all portions of our project work separately, but we are having trouble getting them to all work together." But he and his partner were planning to display it at an all-school exposition today. "So that means we get another shot at having it work," he said.
At 12:52 a.m. Tuesday, Mr. Gebhart emailed: "It works!!!"
奥林工学院：培养更优秀的工程师
如果一个基金会出资4.6亿美元创办一所工学院，这所学校会是什么样子呢？富兰克林?W?奥林工学院(Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering)回答了这个不寻常的问题。
这所工学院确实与众不同，它没有院系设置、没有终身教授，学生也不用交学费，而且女学生和女教授的比例高于美国几乎任何一所工学院。
学校的课程设置也别出心裁。在集合了数学、物理和工程学的一门创新课程上，一年级学生戴维?格布哈特(David Gebhart)和J.P.佩汉(J.P. Pechan)正围坐在一个用纸板和泡沫塑料制作的模型前仔细研究，他们自己建造的这个模型看起来像跷跷板，上面还有个轮子滚来滚去。他们的作业是：设计一个由发动机控制的机械装置，写出解释其运动方式的方程式，进行电脑模拟，并建造出一个可由笔记本电脑控制的模型。
曾获罗德学者(Rhodes scholar)殊荣的马克?萨默维尔(Mark Somerville)教授本科时主修工程学和英文，后来在麻省理工学院(Massachusetts Institute of Technology)得到了电子工程学的博士学位。他走到这两个学生身边，指著他们用铅笔写在包装纸上的一大片方程式问道，“这是你的控制方程式么？这表示什么？”他们回答了问题。教授又提出一些其他问题，然后走向其他同学。物理和微积分正是通过这种苏格拉底式的问答法教授的，不过学生们每周也要听老师讲课。
奥林工学院的校长理查德?米勒(Richard Miller)说，“大多数工学院都让学生先学习然后动手做。我们反其道而行之：先做后学。这就像是在深水中学游泳。”
奥林工学院是由F.W.奥林基金会(F.W. Olin Foundation)创建的（F.W.奥林是奥林公司(Olin Corp)的创始人）。该基金会数十年来一直对大学的理科建设提供赞助，但令其他工学院的募资人员失望的是，奥林基金会的管理人决定自己创建一所新的大学。
基金会主席劳伦斯?米拉斯(Lawrence Milas)说，“我们发现美国国家科学基金会(National Science Foundation)将很多税收资金用于改革工程学教育，他们虽然在某些领域取得了成果，但却很难改变已有学院的现状。学术的进步速度非常缓慢。”
奥林工学院的创建者们既借鉴了其他工学院的办学思想，也不乏自己的创见，虽然该学院不提供终身教职，但还是有一批教师被吸引了来，因为他们在这里可以体验白手起家办学的兴奋感。教师中包括50岁的迈克尔?穆迪(Michael Moody)，他曾担任哈维玛德学院(Harvey Mudd College)的数学系主任，这所位于加州的工程学校和奥林有些相似之处。
现任奥林工学院院长的穆迪说，“我第一次和教务长戴维?克恩斯(David Kerns)碰面时对他说，‘加入奥林工学院是我终生难遇的机会。’而他的回答是，‘实际上这个机会百年难遇。’”
这所只有不到300名本科生的学校将于明年春天送走第一批毕业生。奥林工学院有著新学校的新鲜气息。离开iRobot Corp.加入奥林的戴维?巴雷特(David Barrett)说，自己的工作就像是在为紧随身后的行进队伍架桥。如果有教授说“我们过去的做法”，他的意思是，“我们去年是这么做的”。
在参观者看来，这所学校和其他小规模的学院没什么不同。奥林工学院真正的与众不同之处在于其如救世主一般的使命：改变美国培养工程师的方式，从而帮助美国在全球经济中与来自中国、印度和其他国家那些聪明能干的工程师竞争。麻省理工学院教授伍迪?弗劳尔斯(Woodie Flowers)对奥林的忠告是，“如果它也成为一所优秀的工程类院校，那就意味著失败。奥林要非常与众不同，而且它的方法可以被其他学院借鉴，这才是关键。”
奥林在“创建准则”中取消了教授终身聘用制和学费，并劝导奥林不要“拒绝变化”，后来它又确定了男女比例平衡的目标。如今32名教师中有13位（相当于40%）是女性，学生的43%是女性。从全国的情况来看，工学院的女生比例只有20%。四年级学生米凯尔?泰勒(Mikell Taylor)说，“很高兴在这里我不是稀有动物。”她拒绝了麻省理工学院，选择了奥林。
有时为了保证女生的健康发展教授也会出面协调：比如在学生分组的时候，他们一般不会把一个女生和三名男生分在一起。米勒校长说，奥林工学院女生的入学成绩和男生一样出色。他觉得在“候选人周末”(Candidates' Weekend)活动中女生的表现可能还要更好些，这项活动的目的是培养学生的团队精神和沟通能力。
上面谈到的这些教学重点都是企业界现实需求的反映，企业希望自己的工程师能够超越前人，在产品的构思和设计方面不仅做到将构想变成样机，还能在跨学科的团队、跨学科的领域工作。现在对奥林工学院能否做到这一点下结论还为时过早，不过企业管理人士们说，有些迹象令人鼓舞。
惠普公司(Hewlett-Packard Co.)的大学合作部副总监韦恩?约翰逊(Wayne Johnson)说，“他们拥有一流的学生，学生可以接触到那些可能要在公司里花15年学习的知识──一整套教你如何在组织中事半功倍的方法。这不仅仅是直觉，你需要学习。”
不过有个重要问题困扰著关注奥林工学院的人们：奥林的经验在更大规模的学校也一样适用吗？奥林最大的优势是拥有巨大的财富还是拥有出众的学生？随著奥林的发展，它还能保持活力吗？
负责美国国家工程院(National Academy of Engineering)“2020年工程师”项目的理查德?泰伯(Richard Taber)问道，“奥林模式可以在全国推广吗？”他的回答并不肯定，“他们的学生独一无二，这在工程学学生中不具普遍性。他们学校的资源也无法复制。”
美国国家科学基金会负责工程学教育的加里?加布里埃尔(Gary Gabriel)说，“他们的学生今后会表现出色──这一点我毫无疑问，但是他们的做法会改变工程学教育吗？这就见仁见智了。”
摩托罗拉公司(Motorola Inc.)的研究员拉里?马尔图拉诺(Larry Marturano)对去年夏天曾在该公司实验室实习的奥林四年级学生德鲁?哈利(Drew Harry)赞不绝口。马尔图拉诺说，“他也许是曾为我们工作过的实习生里最出类拔萃的，他的身上集合了研究能力、热情和事业心。”因此，当哈利询问摩托罗拉公司是否愿意和其他12家公司一起花5万美元赞助一小组奥林四年级学生完成他们的项目时，马尔图拉诺爽快地答应了。
哈利和其他几个四年级学生正在设计、构造并测试一项服务，该服务利用了现代手机的定位功能，当使用者接近指定商店或与朋友相距不远时，手机便可以提醒其注意。
而一年级学生格布哈特和佩汉在上周四晚上10点半仍在努力让他们的跷跷板动起来。格布哈特用笔记本电脑发送的电子邮件上写道，“我们的电脑模拟和电路都一切正常，我们还设计出了一个可以通过电脑控制平衡木的程序。我们满怀信心和斗志，还有一肚子咖啡，我们会成功的。”
第二天早晨，熬了一个通宵的格布哈特报告说，“基本上所有部件都分别可以正常运转，但放在一起就不灵了。”而他和他的伙伴本打算今天在全校展览上展出这个装置。他说，“也就是说我们还要试试弄好它。”
