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Olin has launched SCOPE (Senior Consulting Program for Engineering), a year-long effort in which teams of students will undertake a major project for a corporate or other client. The program is one of the most important elements of Olin's hands-on, team based curriculum, because it offers students the opportunity put their education to use tackling real challenges. "We can't do what we're hoping to do in producing leaders without your help," Olin President Richard Miller told the company representatives gathered with their teams on launch day, September 15. Team members and advisors met throughout the day to discuss the 13 projects that have been outlined as part of the program.
Over 250 Olin community members attended the September 1 Book Convocation featuring Ophelia Dahl, Partners in Health President and Executive Director. Ms. Dahl, who founded the public charity Partners in Health with Dr. Paul Farmer, discussed the Olin summer reading assignment, Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World. Her full remarks are available for review.
The following is an update on grants from the Office of Innovation and Research (OIR).
- April 2005: John Bourne was awarded $105,000 by the Sloan Foundation to conduct the seventh annual ALN workshop on areas critical to the continued success of Asynchronous Learning Networks (ALN). Steve Holt and Gill Pratt were awarded $125,000 by NASA to build upon their previous summer project and help establish a long-lasting connection between Olin and NASA.
- May 2005: John Bourne and Gill Pratt were awarded $45,730 jointly by Babson and NSF to attend the Symposium for Engineering Entrepreneurship Educators (SEEE) and present a plan to improve prosperity in America by educating engineering faculty about how to teach and apply entrepreneurship as a core feature of engineering education.
- June 2005: John Bourne was awarded $1,000,000 by the Sloan Foundation to continue the transition of Sloan-C from an ad-hoc network of colleges, universities and organizations into a robust professional organization that can support quality online education for decades to come. The purpose is to improve learning and cost effectiveness, student and faculty satisfaction and access for everyone to opportunities for high quality learning.
- August 2005: Brian Storey was awarded $60,066 by NSF for the RUI: Electrohydrodynamic Flow in Microchannel. This project will focus on taking the understanding of the basic instability mechanisms in regular flow channels and developing new computational tools for evaluating EKI (electrokinetic instabilities) flows in more complex and realistic geometries. This project extends the computational framework in order to investigate new application areas.
You may have already noticed that www.olin.edu has a new look and feel. This change is the result of survey data collected from the Olin community and the research of the Web Evaluation Committee, which pinpointed a couple perceived weaknesses in the old website – namely not enough flexibility on the homepage, community members and events not displayed prominently and the amount of dynamic content was not sufficient enough for this energetic institution. Based on the research and survey data, the strengths of the old site were identified as its strong, clear navigation and content. The navigation has been updated just a bit and more lively graphics introduced. We are pleased to have already received a lot of positive feedback. Some tweaks will be made to the site in the coming days. If you have feedback you would like to offer, kindly send it to webmaster@olin.edu. Feedback from all those who already sent in info has been documented.
While the main audience for the Olin website is prospective students, many community members expressed concern over not having a space on the Olin website for their “internal stuff.” To address this need IT will be rolling out a portal (my.olin.edu) in the next couple of weeks. Stay tuned for more information.
The One Card Transaction website is live at http://onlinecardoffice.com/olin. Here, you can put funds onto your dining dollars or convenience dollars account for use in the cafeteria, some vending machines, and laundry. Please Note: If you're experiencing an issue where the site declines your card and does not give a specific error, try entering your billing address in all capital letters.
Campus Services asks for your cooperation and patience as these projects are completed:
- Great Lawn –Please stay off the roped-off area while the new sod settles.
- East Hall –Final irrigation connections around the building are being completed, trees and assorted plantings are arriving and the final grass areas around the North and East sides of the building will be hydro seeded before the end of the month.
- AC/Heating Units –Manufacturer and assorted contractors are reviewing the problems reported by students and the College. Students having problems with room AC/Heating units that have not filed a work order should do so. Prior work orders have been documented.
- Electric Issues/Warranties –The electrical contractor is certifying their electrical installation. Students experiencing electrical issues that have not filed a work order should do so. Prior work orders have been documented.
- Parking at East Drive / B Lot –Students should continue to park in tiers 4, 5 and 6 of Lot A until all construction work is completed and new parking signs installed.
- Campus Wide –The soccer field and Parking Lot C will be returned to their original conditions and all signs of the Olin Mod Residence Hall will be removed. Within the next month, NSTAR will begin installing the new permanent underground electrical conduit run for Olin College, which will result in minimal ground work along Olin Way (soccer field side), East Drive (soccer field side), and the roadway behind the Olin Center. Campus Services will update the community with more information as the project develops.
The IRS has increased the mileage reimbursement rate for personal vehicles used for business to 48.5 cents per mile from 40.5 cents per mile. Since Olin's rate is tied to the IRS rate, please request 48.5 cents per mile for travel on or after September 1, 2005. There is a new form from Blackboard that contains the new rates. Please contact Jack Mui at ext. 2421 if you have questions.
The Library is offering bulletin board and display area space to clubs and co-curriculars for displaying information in the space that is currently occupied by the Origami display in the Library. The displays will be put up for a set amount of time (depending on the number of groups interested). Please email Emily Cullen, library assistant by September 30 if you are interested by.
The College is currently seeking qualified candidates for several positions*. Employees are reminded that HR is always happy to accept referrals.
* Olin currently has a need for a temporary, part-time administrative assistant for the Provost Office. The individual will be covering for a maternity leave beginning mid-September; the hours are flexible. Please send any referrals directly to Pat Berardi (781-292-2429).
* REMINDER: Community Calendar Changes
The Olin Community Calendar, which includes information on all community events, is no longer a moderated document. You can now post your events directly to the calendar, instead of waiting to have them “approved.”
Now that Olin is "established" with four classes of students studying, faculty and staff hired and a campus built, it's time to take a look into the future.
In response to
feedback from the Big Conversations wiki, Dr. Woodie Flowers has been selected to facilitate a discussion with the Olin community about our future as members of the Olin community, as Americans and as world citizens. The activities of the day will address the question, "what can we do now to impact the quality of our future?"
Dr. Flowers is the Pappalardo Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a Distinguished Partner at Olin College, and co-founder of FIRST's cornerstone program, the FIRST Robotics Competition. Big Conversations is a day-long event that will be held Wednesday, November 2.
All members of the community are invited to drop in on Friday, September 30 from 2-4:00 p.m. and Wednesday, October 5 from 3-5:00 p.m. to interact with the IT staff. They will be available to answer your questions and discuss networking, web development, AV, wireless, Linux, email and more. Check the IT bulletin board outside Suite LL10 for further info.
Revisit Newton's famed Norumbega Park in this video history written and narrated by the late Bob Pollock, a former Babson employee, and produced by Olin's Joe Hunter. Bob spent the last 15 years of his life gathering photos and memorabilia from Norumbega, which closed in 1963 after nearly two-thirds of a century as one of New England's prime recreational sites. Joe has taken Bob's extensive collection of historical photos and audio and assembled it into a video history of the park and the Totem Pole Ballroom, the famous dance pavilion it was home to. The video will be shown as part of the Lunchtime Seminar Series at Babson's Reynolds Hall, Room 241, from 12 - 1 p.m. on Tuesday, October 4.
On Saturday, October 15 from 7:30 a.m. (registration) – 4:30 p.m. (closing keynote) Babson College will host the 8th Annual Women's Leadership Conference at the Sorenson Center for the Arts and Olin Hall. The conference features more than 50 entrepreneurial, corporate, and not-for-profit women leaders who will share their captivating stories and life lessons. Throughout the day you'll have the opportunity to meet and work with women who are role models for the type of leader we all aspire to be. These women have successfully made it happen - enriching both their personal journeys and the performance of their organizations. You will walk about with new insights, new tools, and new colleagues. To register, visit www.babson.edu/cwl/conference. The cost is $40 for Babson and Olin faculty, staff and students.
“If you have the evening open, Arlene is an incredible speaker and worth a trip to the Wellesley Free Library. She led the first all women expedition to the top of Annapurna and wrote a great book about the experience. (HP stored many of her supplies in their CA warehouses prior to shipping them to Nepal fort her.) Hope you can get to see her speak - she's worth the trip,” says Pat Hafford (Lauren's mother).
Arlene Blum will speak October 17 at 7:00 p.m. at the Wellesley Free Library, 530 Washington St., Wellesley.
On October 1 at 8:00 p.m., the Homegrown Coffeehouse will open its 23rd season with a performance by sisters Chris and Meredith Thompson. These powerful performers with natural warmth for the concert stage will weave vocals flute, guitar and percussion together to create a sound that is genuine, beautiful and moving. The Homegrown Coffeehouse is located at the First Parish Unitarian Church, at the corner of Great Plain and Dedham Avenue in Needham center. There is free parking and wheelchair access. General admission is $15 and $12 for students and seniors. Proceeds benefit the Church. For more information, visit www.uuneedham.org.
On Saturday, October 15 from 9 a.m. – 5 p.m., Y Combinator, a Cambridge-based organization that provides seed funding for technology startups will host the Startup School. This is a free, one-day event, which will feature a range of experts speaking on all the things you need to know to start a company: where to get ideas for startups; what to look for in a co-founder; how to get funding; how to incorporate a company; patent and intellectual property law; how to build something users will like; what can go wrong in a startup; what acquirers look for; and how the acquisition process works. The event will be held in Science Center B at Harvard.
The latest Olin HR/Training update is now available. This includes information for faculty and staff on Weight Watcher at Work, CWL Author Series, the fall Boston Consortium schedule and more.
Olin President Richard Miller served as a judge at the 2005 American Council of Engineering Companies (ACEC) Engineering Excellence Awards completion. The competition's 25 judges spent three days analyzing and examining the merits of the 175 entries in this year's competition, which recognizes exemplary engineering achievement among ACEC member firms. The panel of judges included engineers, architects, and representatives from government, media, business and academia.
Sarah Spence Adams, assistant professor of mathematics will be included in the forthcoming editions of Who's Who of American Women and Who's Who in American Education, which provides in-depth, personal biographical information on American educators at the top of their profession. The new sixth (2004-05) edition highlights educators from all levels as well as administrators, chancellors, deans, and other accomplished professionals from a wide variety of specialties. The Marquis Who's Who family of directories includes the biographies of millions of leaders and achievers from around the world, and from every significant field of endeavor.
Rachel Weinstock, Ed Frackiewicz and Wellesley College's Assistant Vice President for Finance, Linda Murphy Church, made a panel presentation to the University Risk Managers and Insurers Association (URMIA) annual meeting in Charleston, South Carolina on September 13. The title of the presentation was, “Creating Collaborative Relationships On Campus and Beyond.” The purpose of the talk was to discuss how to increase risk management awareness through building and maintenance of on-campus relationships, and also speak about the successes we've achieved through Olin and Wellesley's relationships as members of the Boston Consortium for Higher Education's Risk Management Advisory Group.
The Link's new section, “Meet that Oliner” provides information on a featured Olin community member. This week's spotlight shines on Stacy Riseman, Director of Research and Sponsored Projects. Her primary responsibility is sponsored research programs, which includes the development of proposals, grant closings and all aspect of institutional compliance. She also provides assistance to faculty and staff in submitting/completing proposals for grant and contract support, and identifies funding opportunities, prepares filings and negotiates facilities and administrative rates, administers the effort certification process and conflict of interest reporting. LINK : When did you start working at Olin?
SR: June 27, 2005
LINK: What is your favorite thing about your job?
SR: I'm hoping to reshape the website for grants and plan to solicit constructive inputs from others in the college in tackling this project. I also look forward to the opportunity to create new policies, procedures and forms which should make gaining external funds for research and sponsored projects a smoother and less cumbersome process. I envision a sponsored programs process that is easy to navigate.
LINK: How do you spend your spare time?
SR: I have three kids - I don't have spare time. My son, Jackson is 10, and my twins, daughter Emerson and son Benjamin are almost five. They take all of my time (and then some), but I love it!
“An Engineering Experiment,” By Courtney Humphries, Technology Review, October 2005
EXCERPT: "Is something wrong with engineering education? That's the question raised by two schools, Smith College and the Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering, that claim to offer a better approach."
In the last issue we recognized Constitution Day by asking who said, “Science is my passion, politics my duty.” Alex Dorsk ('07) was the first to correctly respond Thomas Jefferson and he will receive Olin gear for his correct response. Olin trivia buffs...
Q: What big breakthrough in scientific theory occurred 100 years ago?
A: First person to correctly respond to Jennifer Thomas receives a prize. |
