NVCA Today

Is it possible to educate engineers to be entrepreneurs? Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering, an unusual educational start-up in Needham, Mass., thinks so. The college has updated the traditional engineering curriculum for the 21st Century, adding considerable entrepreneurial coursework and emphasizing communication, team work, and real-world problem solving. Some observers are comparing Olin's learning environment to that of a start-up company, with its flat organization and focus on entrepreneurial thinking and creativity.

Every Olin student is required to start and run a business during their four years at the college. Students can develop their entrepreneurial ideas at the "Foundry," an on-campus business incubator. Venture capitalists and successful entrepreneurs are regular speakers at Olin. Supplementing the opportunities at Olin is the college's partnership with neighboring Babson College, ranked number one nationally in entrepreneurship, as well as cross-registration with liberal arts powerhouses Wellesley College and Brandeis University.

The idea is to produce a "broad spectrum" engineer with a much wider skill set than the narrow technical focus of many engineering schools. Olin is banking on its pioneering program to produce engineers with the imagination to envision new products, the technical ability to create them, and the business savvy to bring them to the marketplace.

To produce this new breed of engineer, Olin has created a unique culture. Olin's project-based curriculum demands a maximum of engagement, creativity and teamwork from students. Students become involved in engineering design projects from almost their first day at Olin. The curriculum culminates in the Senior Consulting Project for Engineering (SCOPE), a year-long consulting assignment for a corporate sponsor.

Olin's pervasively real-world orientation produces graduates with highly developed problem-solving skills and the ability to become immediate contributors in companies.

"Unlike graduates from traditional engineering schools, Olin graduates are ready to be productive as soon as they are hired," says Ed Tuck of the Falcon Fund. "Olin's teaching culture is deliberately designed to be like that found in young, fast-growing companies, where each person works well and cooperatively with minimal supervision. Olin graduates have learned to be enthusiastic, creative and involved."

Olin is the brainchild of the F. W. Olin Foundation, a longtime leader in higher education giving. Looking in the mid-1990s for a way to boost U.S. competitiveness, the Foundation hit upon the idea of starting a new undergraduate college that could become a sort of Petri dish for implementing innovative ideas in engineering education. The Foundation would eventually commit nearly half a billion dollars to the project. To support innovation at the new college, the Foundation stipulated that there would be no faculty tenure and no traditional academic departments. Every student receives a scholarship that pays for the majority of the costs of attending the college. The college graduated its first class in 2006.

Olin's scholarship policy and innovative curriculum are attracting some of the best and brightest engineering talent in the country-including a student body that is more than 40 percent female. Prospective Olin students cross-apply at Harvard, MIT, CalTech and other top programs-and turn them down in favor of Olin's entrepreneurial approach to engineering. For more information on Olin and its innovative programs, visit www.olin.edu.