The OLINformer

Everyone loves Halloween, right?!? Costumes, candy and general craziness – we can all be kids for at least one day out of the year. So here are some pics from various Halloween-related events over the weekend…

From the FaculStaff Costume Competition:

Professors Zhenya Zastavker, Debbie Chachra, Alisha Sieminski and John Geddes

Asst. Director of Admission/Financial Aid Patty Blanchette (the bow-headed ghost) and Oscar, Zhenya and Debbie (all profs) applaud Visiting Professor Dave Miller’s “Hopper Accident” costume

Kate ‘09 with Debbie, Oscar and Zhenya

Oscar with Sarah ‘10 (I cannot tell you how much I love her costume, especially the udders!)

The Pigtail Crew - Emma Goodman ‘06, Alison Black (Asst. Dean of Student Life) and me

After a long day of Halloweening, Emma and her husky slippers take a break

Halloween Party
As my lame pictures reflect, few students dressed up on Halloween… that is in part due to the fact that many of them got decked out for their own Halloween Extravaganza on Friday night… (Photos below by Chujiao ‘10)
Alice in Wonderland

The Fanta Girls!

Tetris

The crowd, from above

The T (Get it?!? The Red, Green, Blue and Orange lines)

X-Men

The Ant Farm…

Sooo, the story goes that the Class of 2006 referred to the Academic Center as the “Ant Farm.” Why? Well, it becomes quite apparent at night when the entire building is lit up and you can see EVERYONE inside…

Although I usually mention that little anecdote in information sessions when I show the above picture, I was beginning to wonder if the younger Oliners would carry on the tradition. I am happy to say YES!! Check out the little Halloween “prank” below:

That’s the latest and greatest from the Land of Olin! Hope everyone had a great Halloween… and keep working on those applications!

Regards,
Allison

allison.bahme@olin.edu
781-292-2203
IM: OlinAdmission
http://www.olin.edu/

So October has arrived at Olin… the leaves are changing…

The view from my car as I drive onto campus…

So, like I mentioned last time, we just had Family Weekend. Here are few pics from various events that weekend…

Soooo, contrary to popular belief… Olin has trees, pretty pretty trees!

Welcome

Dinnertime - the scalloped potatoes, butternut squash soup and apple pie were my favorite dishes of the evening! And I was adopted by Tiana’s mom (c/o 2008) for the evening.

I volunteered (really!) to help usher on Opening Night for the Franklin W. Olin Players (FWOP) presentation of “The Complete Works of William Shakespeare - Abridged”. It was practically a full house in the Auditorium.

So audience participation is key to “CoWoWSA” - Ben ‘09 and Andrew ‘07 recruited President Rick Miller (the guy in the tie) to join them on stage as Ophelia’s Ego

Ben’s mom “volunteered” (read: dragged from the audience) to be Ophelia… she did a great job!

More audience participation - the first few rows became Ophelia’s Id - “Maybe… Maybe not… Maybe… Maybe not…”

Posters describing some of this year’s SCOPE projects; the 2006-07 SCOPE profiles are not online yet but you can still learn about last year’s projects at http://www.olin.edu/scope/

So for me, the awesomest part of the weekend was when the Olin Soccer Team won its first game. This is our second club team (Ultimate Frisbee was the first) and we play in the Boston Ski & Sports Club rec league. We beat the Red Squirrels with a score of 2 to 0. (I’m also a little sad and jealous because I really wanted to play on the team, but alas, I’m traveling a bit too much to make that work… sigh… maybe in the spring.)

Professor John Geddes acted as coach for the day (Asst. Dean of Student Life, Nick Tatar, usually coaches but he was busy… his wife gave birth to their first child last week!)

Olin Soccer fans!

Marco ‘10 shows off his ball skills

Bennet ‘09 is one of our rockstars on the field (photo by Sarah ‘10)

Keoni ‘07 and Mary ‘10

Team meeting during halftime.

Brittany ‘08 (photo by Sarah ‘10)

Brad ‘08 (photo by Sarah ‘10)

Post-win! 2-0

So that’s it for now.
Allison

allison.bahme@olin.edu
781-292-2203
IM: OlinAdmission
www.olin.edu

Hello everyone!

I am your guest blogger for the day! Let me introduce myself, my name is Emma Goodman. I am an Assistant Director of Admission and an alumna of Olin, Class of 2006 (the first graduating class, whoo hoo!). I am currently pursuing a career in acting in Boston, and the Admission gig is my day job so I can eat, have a roof, get benefits, and so I can give back to the school that gave me so much while I was there.

Enough about me. Recently, Oliners had a day off from classes - not just for some holiday. It was a day which we call Career Initiatives Day, where students learn more about different career paths, how to find a job or apply to grad school, how to use some of the resources we have on campus, which major they should choose, and have a chance to talk to visiting employers in our Career Fair where we had 25 companies come to campus to recruit from our student body of 304. That’s 12.16 students per company! (although I wouldn’t want to a student divided into .16’s)

The day was a huge success, and I think the students liked having the day to pursue their internships and jobs without having the stresses of class.

Here are some pictures from the day to show you a little more what it was like:

This is the obligatory picture of myself at Career Initiatives Day. Now you know who I am, and I get my picture on the website. Oh yaaaaaah. I helped out Leslie Larocca, Director of Post Graduate Planning, and her team in PGP with catering for the event. We had cappuccinos available in the morning for students, staff and faculty.

Between sessions and before the Career Fair started, everyone got together with their advising families (students and their faculty advisors) and had bag lunches from the cafeteria. Corporate guests were invited to join families for lunch as well. It was a beautiful day, and I must say, doesn’t Ben ’07 in the bottom right corner look content?

Speaking of Ben, here he is with Christine Kelly, Assistant to the President. Christine gave a well-attended talk about networking for students earlier in the morning.

Now on the Career Fair. I was not the only Olin alumni at the event that afternoon. Not only was there an alumni panel for current students to ask questions from, but two of our corporate guests were alumni! Here is Mikell “Miks” Taylor, Class of ‘06, with a colleague and two students - Christie ’07 and Meena ’08. Miks was there representing Bluefin Robotics and had some large robots for some of the students to play with.

Bluefin wasn’t the only company with items to attract engineering students. The representative from Case New Holland watches as Madge ’07 looks over some examples from the company.

Here are Andrew ‘09 and Matt ‘09 with the representative from DRS Technologies. Don’t they look happy? I always liked Career Initiatives Day because it was a day where you could see everyone dressed up in their duds to impress their future employers.

Here’s Joe ‘09 with the representatives from Bose. Companies try to give away lots of free things at career fairs to attract students to their company as well as use cool gizmos, and Bose was not an exception! You can also see how companies can go “all-out” by seeing the large display from the company behind Bose.

Overall, it was a good day. I hope you liked my little intrusion here in Allison’s Blog. Maybe I’ll be a guest blogger again at some point in the future.

-Emma

OK… So Olin College is a new school and we don’t have many long-standing traditions. That probably doesn’t come as a big shock to you! However, we do have one SIX YEAR TRADITION that I was honored to join last Sunday… The Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure.

We participated in the 2001 Race for the Cure – our first year with students, the Partner Year – with only a handful of students, faculty and staff. Each year, the involvement has steadily grown and the Race for the Cure has become an annual tradition for the Olin Community. It was an amazing morning – not only was the experience fun and for a good cause, Olin won first place in the Community Team competition by having the largest non-corporate team with 128 members (most of whom were students)!! We’ve come a long way, baby!

Almuna Ann Marie Rynning helps fellow alum (and Asst. Director of Admission) Emma Goodman with her race number.

Bryn ‘09 shows her Race for the Cure pride with a rockin’ pink tattoo on her cheek.

Me being stupid with Ash ‘09

Waiting for the results to come in…

Lots of free food and stuff + college students = loading up with BOXES of free cheese!

Prof. Joanne Pratt chatting with Susan Fredholm ‘06

First place!

Andrew Hollett ‘07 (and amazing co-coordinator for the Olin team) accepts the newest member to our Race for the Cure trophy collection.

#1 Non-Corporate Team, Most Participants

Team photo… good representation, but this was by no means all the Oliners involved!

As you learn more about Olin, you will likely begin to notice a common theme of philanthropy. The idea of giving back to the community is an important part of the Olin Experience and seems to exist at the very core of the school. There is a sense that Olin students will go out and make the world a better place, although we don’t define what that means. Many may become engineers… but not all of them! And that’s fine by us. The point is that our students and alumni will make a difference in their communities by becoming doctors, entrepreneurs, lawyers, volunteers, teachers, and researchers (by the way, that is not an exhaustive list!).

From an admission perspective, many colleges and universities have come to expect a certain level or amount of community service from their applicants. Many of you have already volunteered many hours – whether of your own accord or as a requirement for graduation. So keep doin’ what you’re doin’! We are interested and care a lot about how you spend your time outside of classes.

Take care,
Allison

allison.bahme@olin.edu
781-292-2203
IM: OlinAdmission
http://www.olin.edu/

Sooooo, we’re a couple weeks into the new school year - let me catch you up on what’s been going on…

After three months of waiting and hanging out with about a quarter of the student body (~50 students each year stick around during the summer for work and research opportunities), the first-years finally arrived bright and early on August 26th. The Class of 2010 tracked each other down over the summer, visited each other’s hometowns, figured out each other’s roommates, created countdowns on their cell phones, and even dyed their hair Olin blue in anticipation for arriving on campus! That kind of enthusiasm is contagious and I definitely caught “the fever” as well. Needless to say, even though Orientation is officially an Office of Student Life event, there was no way I could miss it! (I even drove back from New York on Friday night… err… early Saturday morning so that I could be there! Yeah, I’m a big nerd.)

Orientation officially lasts four days, and it’s a rollercoaster ride! The first-years learn about classes and academic expectations, meet their faculty advisors and advising families, participate in team building activities, and generally get acclimated to life at Olin before the upperclassmen arrive. Lots of fun, not much sleep! Classes officially began on Thursday, August 31st.

Teresa (she works with me in Admission) and Bennett ‘09 welcome new students and their families.

Orientation registration (with Student Life Staff working hard… or is it hardly working?!?)

Freshmen group having lunch on the “O” during Orientation. (Photo courtesy of Erik ‘10)

Big Sibb, Tiana ‘08, during the Scavenger Hunt in Boston… yes, that is a large balloon hat on her head! The Sibbs program builds bridges - hence the double “b” - between freshmen and upper class students. Volunteer upper class Sibbs adopt a freshman to help him or her adjust to the unique culture, quirks and inside secrets of Olin. (Photo courtesy of Roland ‘10)

This was awesome! All the Big Sibbs were waiting to welcome the freshmen back after their Scavenger Hunt. (Photo courtesy of Roland ‘10) At some colleges or universities, this would simply be a Hall Meeting… at Olin, this is the entire freshman class! (Photo courtesy of Erik ‘10)

At some colleges or universities, this would simply be a Hall Meeting… at Olin, this is the entire freshman class! (Photo courtesy of Erik ‘10)

So some of the freshmen decided that a Roomba would be a great feature to add to West Hall; the collection box was open and available for anyone to add their donation (gotta love the Honor Code!). I think the new West Hall mascot/mini-maid arrived yesterday… (Photo courtesy of Erik ‘10)

At the end of the first full week of classes, students can browse the Activities Fair on the Oval (a.k.a. the “O” – our equivalent of the academic quad). With over 50 clubs and organizations on the Olin campus alone, there are PLENTY of opportunities for students to get involved and stay busy outside of class. C’mon… you do the math… 300 students/50 clubs = no room for boredom! And, of course, in addition to all that’s available at Olin, students can get involved with clubs and organizations at our partner institutions: Brandeis University, Babson College and Wellesley College.

At any rate, the Activities Fair is an experience best told in pictures… I had a blast! Lots of interesting demos and props, snacks, good music, fabulous weather - a perfect end to the week! To explore some of our clubs and organizations, check out http://core.olin.edu/clubs/

A couple views from above…

Pam ‘10 checks out the SWE (Society of Women Engineers) table

CORe is Olin’s very active student government

Mini Baja

Derek ‘10 explores the Outing Club
Face-painting at the Open table

A member of the Butterfingers Club (juggling)

Midnight Riders (unicycling club)

Suggestions for our Honor Board

This is typical at Olin - casual conversations between faculty and students happens ALL THE TIME! (Pictured L-R: David ‘07, Juliana ‘07, Profs Allen Downey and Brian Storey)

Not to worry… she’s not dangerous - FWOP (the Franklin W. Olin Players) took the opportunity to promote theatre at Olin while painting props for their fall production of “The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged)”

Katherine ‘10 chats with Avery ‘08 about the Olin Disc Club (Ultimate Frisbee is one of two club sports at Olin

Jon ‘08 is showing off his rugged side with a beard and new “tattoo” (it ain’t real, folks!)

Assistant Director of Admission and Financial Aid, Patty Blanchette, takes a break and practices her West Coast Swing with Gui ‘08

Whew! I’m exhausted just giving you the highlights. But I hope you got the idea and a hint of the opportunities available at Olin.

So, I think that’s enough for today. As an admission officer, the past few weeks are like seeing all the pieces finally come together, and in all honesty, is the best going-away present for me – I’ll start traveling to recruit the next group of talented students next week. I hope to see some of you out there on the road! Stay in touch and let me know what’s on your minds…

Have a great week,
Allison

allison.bahme@olin.edu
781-292-2203
IM: OlinAdmission
http://www.olin.edu/