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Notes from the Conference: The Olin Experiment

What if you could start over? How would you create a school? How would you create learning?

Imagine that! What if you could, even as a thought experiment, liberate yourself from your current structure, your current trappings? What would learning look like? How would you dare to do things? How would you do things differently?

3 Founding Precepts that Olin was challenged with:

1. You are prohibted from creating academic dvisions/departments because they are roadblocks to success

2. No tenure -- tenure is a roadblock to change

3. You must be committed to continuous understanding and improvement (assessment)



4 Key Founding Learning Principles

--communication, leadership, & teamwork

--creativity, inventiveness, & design

-- entrepreneurial thinking & innovation

--ability to keep exploding in the field (learning how to learn) force students to take classes for which they don't have the prerequisites--force them to make the connections--after all, life doesn't present one with smooth preparations...


How do you reinvent engineering education?

How do you reinvent art and design education?


You start with people and you rethink your fundamental principles


Focus on:

--VISUAL THINKING

--VIVID THINKING (deliberate collisions of worldviews, conversations between divisions & disciplines)

--STUDIO-BASED PEDAGOGY

--ENTREPRENEURIAL EXPERIENCE

--"EXPO" w/ 5 INDEPENDENT EXTERNAL ASSESSMENTS