We’ve fallen behind a bit here on the OLINformer, apologies to anyone who has been looking for a new post. Sunday was the Commencement ceremony for the Class of 2008! Congratulations graduating seniors! More about that in a future entry, hopefully with lots of pictures of people in funny hats.
Last week, Olin hosted the semi-annual Olin Exposition. This occurs after finals are over, and every single Olin student is required to create a poster or give a presentation on a favorite project from the semester. The idea is that by the end of their senior year, each student will have presented to external and internal evaluators at least seven times, which is great practice for the Real World. So, last Monday, members of the classes of 2011, 2010 and 2009 presented their work, and then the following day, the seniors followed suit with SCOPE Expo. SCOPE, if you remember, is the year-long engineering capstone project that all students are required to complete.
A sampling of some EXPO project titles:
Investigating Ion Charge to Mass Ratios with Penning Trap Simulation (Rachel, 2011)
Analog Stories: The history of circuit design and why you care (Boris, 2009)
Olin’s class of 2019? Volunteering to supplement STEM education (Alex, 2010)
Investigating the role of stiffness in malignant transformation of breast epithelial cells with 2 and 3 dimensional collagen-crosslinked hyaluronic acid gels (Whew, that’s a long one! Kate, 2009)
I stopped by to talk to Sarah, Class of 2010, about her project entitled “This Is How We Roll: Paul Revere’s Road to Rolling Copper.” She gave me a very thorough and interesting mini-talk about the role of copper in colonial-era warships, and showed me some examples of rolled copper that she made herself this semester.
I then headed to a classroom to listen to Mike and Jillian (both class of 2010) talk about their respective User-Oriented Collaborative Design class projects. Mike worked with firefighters and Jillian worked with cafeteria workers in order to better understand their work environments and improve them in some measurable way. They both did a great job conveying the process that they went through as a team, and the challenges they faced during the design process. I also listened to Erik (also class of 2010) discuss a class he created with a fellow sophomore called Vital Ideation. They had speakers come each week to talk about the process of creating new ideas, and new lenses with which to view the “ideation” process. It’s a really interesting concept, and very Olin. You can see the class website here.
On to SCOPE Expo!
SCOPE tends to dominate the lives of seniors here at Olin, so it’s only fitting that we devote an entire day to the culmination of this experience. In the morning, the team leaders presented their “rocket pitches” to the community, briefly explaining the problem that was set to them by their company and encouraging people to come to their full-length presentations in the afternoon. Some teams were under non-disclosure agreements, so they were unable to fully explain the solutions that they arrived upon. Here are some photos that Allison took from the rocket pitch session:
The Nortel SCOPE team worked on developing a product or service that would be technologically accessible for the growing population of senior citizens in the US.
Here’s Connor presenting Nortel’s rocket pitch.
The ROCONA biosensor team developed a device that would sit in a toilet and analyze urine. This team dubbed themselves the “whiz kids” and always drew laughs during presentations. This photo also demonstrates the ROCONA non-disclosure agreement.
Team leader Vito giving the biosensor rocket pitch.
I hope to add some other pictures of both EXPO and SCOPE Expo soon… until then, enjoy this lovely spring weather!
-Caitlin
Caitlin Snow
Assistant Director of Admission
781-292-2212
caitlin.snow@olin.edu
