Olin’s curricular triangle is separated into Engineering, Entrepreneurship, and Arts/Humanities/Social Science. However, distinguishing between Anthropology, Entrepreneurship Capstone, and Dynamics from the class codes AHSE1199, AHSE4590, and ENGR2340 is difficult. By lumping entrepreneurship, arts, humanities, and social science into the ‘other’ category, we are simply left with engineering.
Instead of consolidating these other disciplines, we should strive to incorporate them into our engineering classes.
Though Olin is a school with no departments, there is stratification between many of the subject areas. The very idea of an AHS Capstone discourages integrated classes and urges us to stick to a single path within a narrowly defined subject matter. During out entrepreneurship foundation class, we struggle to come up with an idea in two weeks, when we could instead be doing this in parallel with UOCD’s market research. Rather than dismissively combining classes, we have an opportunity to meaningfully integrate them.
By simply asking for a change in the way that class codes are written, we can open up the discussion of potential changes to the curriculum as a whole. Olin is advertised for our innovative educational approach, and limiting the curriculum to a single field does not represent what we want to accomplish.
