Page 117 - Educating the Engineer of 2020: Adapting Engineering Education to the New Century

Educating the Engineer of 2020: Adapting Engineering Education to the New Century
http://www.nap.edu/catalog/11338.html

100 EDUCATING THE ENGINEER OF 2020

their B.S. degrees), 15 “virtual Olin partners,” who received deferred
admission from the Partners Program, and 30 additional new students.
Before the first employee was hired at Olin College, the F.W. Olin
Foundation began planning an entirely new campus consisting of about
500,000 square feet in eight new buildings. The first four buildings,
completed in the fall of 2002, include Olin Center (faculty offices, ad-
ministrative offices, a library, a computer center, and an auditorium),
Campus Center (a dining hall, student-life offices, a central heating and
cooling plant), an academic center (27 major classrooms, teaching, or
research laboratories [about 1,100 square feet each], and numerous
smaller teaching and laboratory spaces), and the first residence hall (188
beds in double rooms, each with a private bathroom); the new con-
struction totals about 300,000 square feet. Subsequent construction will
be phased, as needed, and will include additional residence halls and
another academic building. The second residence hall is under con-
struction and is scheduled to be completed during the coming academic
year.
In early 1999, the Olin Foundation hired the founding president,
Richard K. Miller, who hired the founding leadership: David V. Kerns,
provost; Sherra E. Kerns, vice president for innovation and research;
Stephen P. Hannabury, vice president for administration and finance;
and Duncan C. Murdoch, vice president for external relations and en-
rollment. The founding faculty was then recruited by the provost and
explicitly charged with leading the development of the new curriculum.
The college looked for faculty members with a passion for undergradu-
ate teaching and innovation in engineering education. However, be-
cause Olin College is not just a teaching institution, faculty members
are also expected to maintain a high level of research, innovative cur-
riculum development, entrepreneurship, creation of intellectual prop-
erty, and other creative activities. This kind of intellectual vitality will
keep faculty members current in their fields.
The provost was looking for faculty with the following characteris-
tics (Kerns, 1999):

• a passion for teaching and education and a strong commitment
to improving student’s lives
• strong evidence of creativity through research, publications, in-
ventions, entrepreneurship, commercialization of technology,

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