This extraordinary volume provides the rare opportunity to explore in one volume the wisdom, experience, and original contributions of some of the most impactful and respected thinkers and researchers in higher education in the world. Their broad focus on undergraduate education writ large is of fundamental importance, providing the reader with a very rich learning experience. As a result, it is therefore an unexpected great privilege that the recent experiences of rethinking engineering education at Olin College have been included alongside the work by these prestigious authors.
The field of engineering is often set aside from the liberal arts as a “vocational” program by university faculty in educational discussions. Indeed, the history and development of the traditional curriculum in engineering is heavily based on natural science and mathematics, concerned primarily with understanding what is possible in the physical world. But this is changing. Perhaps the field of engineering presents an alternative approach to the fundamental purpose of education – one that is driven more by necessity than curiosity and one that produces graduates whose role in society is to envision what has never been and do whatever it takes to make it real in order to make a better world.
Few areas of human endeavor have had greater impact on human life at scale than engineering and applied science (Somerville & Constable, 2003). Consider the history of human population over all time. The sudden explosion of population growth in the last 100 years is largely the result of widespread reduction in causes of death through the application of science and technology, resulting in doubling the human life span in one century. Indeed, some have predicted that humans may become extinct in the next century due to overpopulation, and its consequences of environmental destruction and climate change. The US National Academy of Engineering has identified additional emerging threats in their Grand Challenges of Engineering including sustainability, global health challenges (e.g., pandemics), security threats (nuclear, cyber, etc.), and enhancing life. The emergence of these existential threats across the globe raises urgent questions about what the next generation needs to know, and how they need to be educated, to address the challenges of the next century. These fundamental questions about higher education are underscored by the observation that our entire concept of higher education was established about 1000 years ago, before the field of experimental science
These are the motivations and the questions that drove the founding of Olin College of Engineering. In 1997, the F.W. Olin Foundation invested about $460 million to start over in higher education in order to achieve breakthrough thinking and fresh approaches to the education of the next generation of scientists and engineers – and ultimately of society as a whole. In exploring these questions in a new independent institution established without academic departments, without tenure, and with a deep commitment to continuous experimentation, the importance of the integrated learning involving human sciences, arts and a culture of collaboration and experimentation emerged as essential in addressing the complexity of the challenges we face. The fundamental questions at the heart of the institution are (1) what does it mean to be educated in the 21st century, and (2) what does it mean to be an engineer in the 21st century. The methodology involved incorporating students in conducting experiments that were not expected to succeed so we could observe and experience what happens when fundamental assumptions are challenged. The evolving program at Olin College provides one answer to the question: how could you address the educational imperatives of the 21st century within a four-year undergraduate engineering program if you could literally start over – from the ground up? The chapters on these experiments at the end of the volume are intended to supplement the many seminal contributions in the liberal arts.
Reference
Somerville, B., & Constable, G. (2003). A century of innovation: Twenty engineering achievements that transformed our lives. Washington, DC: Joseph Henry Press.