Author Archives: Frankly Speaking

Follow-up: Why Olin Is Racist

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Hi again, here is another article from Olin’s resident angry black lady (a title I’ve heard around campus used to describe me). For freshmen I would suggest reading my previous two Frankly Speaking articles, “Olin Is Racist” and “Follow Up On Olin Is Racist”, before this one to best understand my points and perspective. For those of you who don’t want to go read old articles, I’ll give a quick summary here:

I’m a black female student at Olin and last year I sent an article to Frankly Speaking describing all the ways I have been mistreated, discriminated against, and insulted at Olin for my race. highlighting an instance where another Oliner told me to my face that, “people like you don’t belong here,” insinuating it was about my race. It is an undeniable fact that Olin is racist and needs to be improved, but recently I was asked about my article and I started thinking about why Olin is racist. It’s a good question, and while there is no one decisive answer, I have a few reasons that contribute to racism on campus. 

  1. There are not enough black students: The other day a friend and I were wandering through the Campus Center and ended up in the 3rd floor hallway across from PGP. Shiny class portraits of past and current Olin classes hang on the wall with pride. Jokingly, we decided to look through each class picture and count up the number of black students we see. The game started out fun, like an Olin version of Where’s Waldo, but quickly got depressing when we realized how few black people there have been. Our final count was 52 students. In almost 20 years of graduating classes, only 52 black people have graduated from Olin. You might be thinking: “Olin is a small school, these numbers make sense,” but I did some research: Olin has had approximately 2000 students, so in the entire history of Olin, only 2.6% of students have been black. This is low even compared to other engineering schools. The percentage of black students in the history of MIT is 5%, and at CalTech, 7%. Around 14% of the American population is black, so a diverse school should have approximately 14% black students. Never in Olin’s history has there been a time where the percentage of black students in the student population was 14%. The percentage of black students currently at Olin is 4.5%, that is already an accomplishment for us. Many non-black Oliners will never meaningfully interact with a black Oliner, so how can they fix their internal racism without working with black engineers long-term?
  1. There are not enough black faculty: There are currently 2 black professors and 3 black associate professors at Olin. Out of 39 full time professors, only 12.8% are black. Even still, only in the past 5 years has the number of black professors at Olin dramatically increased, as originally this school was founded with no black professors involved. Non-black Oliners have less chances to interact with black engineers. Without exposure or a guiding hand, Oliners will never learn to let go of biases or hateful stereotypes. Furthermore, prospective black students don’t get to see themselves reflected or represented in the faculty, making this school unappealing to them, and contributing to reason 1. 
  1. Olin is designed to exclude black students: Olin college recruiters go to high schools that are majority white and Asian, and have historically avoided advertising at schools with majority black and brown students. Olin made a decision to not promote at those kinds of schools knowing that many prospective black engineers looking for a great college will not know about us and never apply. On top of this fact, to be admitted into Olin, prospective students are required to have taken calculus. Many schools in low-income neighborhoods that primarily serve black students don’t offer Calculus because of underfunding. When a black person goes to a mostly white high school like I did, it’s a battle for us to get into advanced math and science classes. In my senior year of high school I wanted to take AP Calculus, and requested it, but was placed in Statistics because my vice principal thought I wouldn’t be able to handle “the academic rigor of AP Calculus,” despite the fact I had a straight-A report card. I had to petition my school to put me into AP Calculus, and I ended up thriving in the class (I even got a perfect score on the AP exam, no joke). However, other black students at my school weren’t as lucky. They were also automatically placed in the lowest level classes, but most of them failed in their petition and never got to take advanced classes that could have helped their college applications. It is not a secret in the educational world that black students are systemically excluded from taking this class.  Last year, Olin ran a beta program that partnered with a math camp to sponsor incoming first-years to learn calculus before attending—but this option was not advertised anywhere online, and to access it, students had to personally reach out to admissions after acceptance and organize the lessons themselves. The fact that Olin was designed with a calculus requirement that directly disadvantages students of color demonstrates an internal attempt to keep black students from attending Olin.
  1. Black people at Olin are not respected: Every black student at Olin has been called by the wrong name repeatedly, even by the same people after correction. How would you feel if people don’t work hard enough to remember who you are? How would you feel if your own professors grouped you into a character in their head with all of the other students who share your pigmentation rather than taking the time to get to know you and differentiate you from other students who look like you? This is blatant disrespect and humiliation that black Oliners are forced to live with. People ignoring this issue spreads the internal belief that we are all the same and negligibly different from one another. But it’s more than just names. It’s hard to verbalise microaggressions and small acts of disrespect, but I have a story that I think conveys these effects. At the start of this semester my friend, another black Oliner, and I went on a grocery run together. When we were driving back to campus and turning into Lot B, a white woman stood in front of the car and asked “Are you guys lost? This is Olin College.” We told her we weren’t lost and her reply was “Well, this is student parking.” Once we corrected her and explained we were both students, she walked away with a confused look on her face. For those who can’t understand the racism in this situation, my friend and I were assumed to not be Olin students, which is an odd assumption to make about 2 college-aged students on Olin’s campus. And what’s worse was that we were at first assumed to not even have a reason to be at Olin. This woman’s first thought was that 2 black students shouldn’t be here and tried to shoo us away. We should not be harassed like this on our own campus. 

These are the simple reasons I can name without going into the larger history of deep rooted prejudice in education and eternal biases Americans are raised on. The main point is that Olin is a toxic environment towards black people, and in 25 years of operation has failed to make proper actions to address these issues. Olin needs to change, and until it does, expect more articles from Olin’s Resident Angry Black Lady. 

Spankly Freaking: This Issue’s Rejected Headlines

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We Have Access to A New Supercomputer!

 “Great, this’ll make ModSim so much faster,” says first year

Homecoming Is Coming Up! You Should Get A Sign To Ask That Special Person Out!

Specifically a sign from Babson’s campus, or Wellesley if you’re feeling extra romantic

Brandeis Moves To Overthrow Babson As The “B” in BOW

“How are they even going to know?” states Brandeis’ president

Planned Overcommitment Intervention For Sophomore Class Fails As Time Can’t Be Found To Schedule Anything

OFYI Makes “Lunch” Session Mandatory

Attendance will be taken and a written reflection will be required after

Why Does The Unicycle Club Only Meet At Night?

Because they’re never two tired for it

Olin Releases Official Statement to Babsoners: Get Your Hands Off Our Balls

In retrospect, communication in regards to Ball Room access could have been phrased differently

The Freshman Flu Officially Dropped!

For those in the betting pool: reminder that COVID was 1.5:1 odds, Common Cold was 3:1 odds, and Hand Foot Mouth was 20:1. 

Seniors Respond To Claims That “Wow The Weather Has Been So Nice!”

The whole class turned, looked to the east with hardened eyes… “Winter is Coming”

Faculty Eager To Create Challenging New Curriculum Take One Look At Community Chess Board in Library, Scale Back Expectations

“How the hell did the rook even GET over there??” question faculty before accepting that their curriculum plans far overestimate Oliner’s intelligence

Olin’s Biggest Financial Mistake Isn’t What You Think

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I’ve now been at Olin for more than five years. Every month, I get a copy of Frankly Speaking pinned up right by my office door. The first thing I do is to read the headline of the front-page article, mostly because it’s the largest, most eye-catching thing. But the next thing I do is see the phrase written in the upper right hand corner: “Free, as in beer”. 

I have three major problems with this phrase, and because this has annoyed me so much for so long, I’m going to use this very platform to describe each of those in as much detail as one does when wasting time while waiting for some torrents to finish downloading intensive data processing to finish running. (Should’ve written it in C++ instead of Python, but oh well.) 

First: of course it’s free. I’m not expecting the Association of Frankly Speaking Editors, Emeritus to suddenly send me a massive bill for all of the issues that I’ve taken and placed in a pile somewhere on my desk and not cleaned since 2022. At least, I hope not. 

Second: there’s a troubling implication made by this phrase. To understand this, it’s helpful to know where the phrase actually comes from. It’s from the Free Software Foundation, at least as I understand it, but since I’m not going to go through a bunch of their webpages to figure out where the quote comes from, I’ll just tell you that I copied this quote from a Wikipedia article: 

“Free software” means software that respects users’ freedom and community. Roughly, it means that the users have the freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. Thus, “free software” is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of “free” as in “free speech,” not as in “free beer”. We sometimes call it “libre software,” borrowing the French or Spanish word for “free” as in freedom, to show we do not mean the software is gratis. 

The problem with this phrase is that the term “free beer” is contrasted with “free speech”, and between those two, a newspaper that is arguably a bastion of free speech has decided to bill itself (no pun intended) with…the other definition of “free”. Also, does this mean that Frankly Speaking isn’t free as in free speech? 

Third, and finally: beer is most definitely not free. Where the hell are you guys getting your beer?

A Conversation with President May

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On Thursday, September 28th, Maddy (‘27) and Quinn (‘27) sat down with Olin’s newly appointed president, R. May Lee. Despite it only being the 9th business day of May’s new role, she had plenty to say and share about herself and how she’s approaching new horizons with Olin.

Quinn: 

Can you tell us about yourself, what you like to do for fun, and why you came to Olin?

May: 

I’ve been around for so long, it’s hard to know where to start. So I will start with the last of your questions, which is what I like to do for fun. I love to hike and be outside, and I’m excited to explore this whole area. There seem to be a lot of trails, and I hear Parcel B is excellent for bird watching. I love to read, knit, be with my family—although I don’t love arguing with them about what we should watch on Netflix, but that’s part of being a family!

I came to Olin because I heard so much about the innovation in engineering education that it’s been doing for the last 25 years. In Shanghai, as a dean, I sent some of my faculty from the School of Entrepreneurship and Management to Babson. I wandered over and learned about what Olin was doing for engineering faculty. I went back to Shanghai and told my fellow deans, “You really need to send your faculty to summer boot camp at Olin.” And it turns out that a few years later, they did. I was inspired by the idea that somebody would actually start a new college focused on improving engineering education. That obviously resonates with my own history, having been the person who led the team to start NYU Shanghai, and then being part of the inaugural team at Shanghai Tech. So I love the idea of folks in higher ed trying to do something new and different, that’s focused really on the students. And when this opportunity came up, I was just blown away by the ethos and sense of culture. I thought, “Oh, okay, this feels like a good fit.”

Maddy: 

You touched on some of your work with Shanghai, but we also know that you’re coming from RPI as Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer for Institutional Impact. What aspects of this work are you excited to carry with you to Olin, and how do you see your presidency at Olin as unique from that? 

May: 

One of the things that struck me over the summer as I was transitioning out of RPI and started meeting people at Olin: I realized I was going from the oldest engineering school in the country to the newest. Depending on your perspective, one funny or not funny similarity is the maintenance issues. As a 200-year old institution, RPI is constantly replacing pipes and walkways. Imagine my surprise when I received the email update about the big trench. I saw the pictures of the pipes in the parking lot and I thought, “Oh, this must be my RPI email.” And I looked at it and realized, “Oh, no, that’s actually happening at Olin too!” Maybe it feels like a non-material kind of similarity, but to me, I found it ironic that the 200-year-old and the 25-year-old institutions were wrestling with very similar things. My work at RPI was unusual in that I created a new position focused on strategy.  That was possible because I had a great relationship with the president who understood the importance of strategy and focus. And when you’re looking at a 200-year-old institution, you have a lot of DNA to work with. He pledged to start a brand new strategic planning process. I joined him to do that, and it gave me an opportunity to really introduce a whole new process of dialogue with the community. These are things that you’re really familiar with at Olin, but were really new to RPI. It’s a much bigger place, so there were more people to talk to and more iteration. Over the course of two and a half years, we managed to put together a terrific ten-year vision and three-to-five-year plan under his leadership. To some extent, I think that task also needs to be done here at Olin. You know, Olin was formed 25 years ago and we had a sort of infancy with a partner class and the first-years in the Class of 2006. Extending that metaphor, in preschool and toddlerhood, we were getting the school up and running while being innovative and amazing. Now it’s like we’re in middle school, right? The school’s been up and running long enough that we have to replace the pipes. And we need to think about, “Okay, what do we want to be for the next 25 years?” I know that we have Engineering for Everyone and CALL, which is fantastic. I hope we can refine and focus our efforts a bit across campus as to what we want to spend the next five years working towards. So in that sense, there’s a clear carryover from the work I was doing. I think the difference is maybe I won’t be the person doing all of that work, but I’ll have a team of great faculty, staff, and students. I’m hoping that I can sit in the dining hall, I can go to DesNat, I can be in the Shop, we can have informal conversations and do a bunch of those things with all the members of the community. 

Quinn: 

You talked a little bit about this, but Olin has had a lot of growing pains as the college is trying to find its footing and identity in the higher education space. How do you approach the tensions that come up when an institution tries to change its infrastructure and culture while maintaining the trust that’s necessary throughout this process with the community and the constituency of the college?

May: 

Somebody wise once said that you can only move at the speed of trust, and sometimes you have to go slow to go fast. People have asked me the same question in various forms—”What dramatic change are you going to make? What plans do you have?” My answer is that I don’t know. I’ve only been here for eight days. I have the data points that I’ve been able to accrue over eight days of these kinds of conversations. What I’m really hoping to do is ask a lot of dramatic questions and engage in a lot of active listening to get more data and to start to connect the dots and hear what people care about and what’s really core to the essence of Olin. I think it’s gonna take us some time to actually get to the place that you’re referring to. And I have to say that I’m really pleased that you have identified that getting to the essence of Olin’s identity feels like a challenge at the moment, because I think that’s one of the questions I’d like to answer with everybody. 

Maddy: 

There are, as you mentioned, a lot of things that are unique to Olin and they can also often be fun and quirky. What are some favorite weird Olin things that you’ve noticed since you’ve been here? 

May: 

You mean other than the avalanche of post-its that surround me starting with my front door? I walked up and said, “Oh, look, there’s Post-its covering my door that spell Olin, that’s cool.” I think that’s how this whole place feels to me. I’ll give you one example. I don’t know that it’s weird and quirky, but it did make me feel very welcome. When I first used the term co-creation at RPI, everyone looked at me with befuddled stares. And they’re really smart people, but that’s not the realm within which they operate. I’ve come from that world, but when I said it in my conversation with the search committee for Olin, everybody’s face lit up and I said, “Oh, this must be the place where I belong, these are my kind of peeps.” So it’s not weird and quirky so much as a pleasant surprise to actually enter a community where people were actively engaged in the practice of really ideating, prototyping, learning, trying again. I think that feels like so much a part of what Olin is about. And that is weird and quirky for a higher education institution, right? That’s not something that’s in the muscle memory of many other places. 

Quinn: 

Something that really struck me when I got to Olin was the difference in power structure with faculty and students. I mean, we talk about flipped classrooms all the time, but it’s really a flipped institution. Like professors will come and sit down in the dining hall and eat lunch with us. That wouldn’t happen at most other institutions that I’ve been at. Was that surprising and appealing for you? 

May: 

It’s definitely appealing. I was in the dining hall yesterday, and I’m hoping to be in the dining hall at least once a week for lunch. It does happen in other places, but I don’t think it happens in the same way. I think there is a kind of relationship that the faculty hope to create with the students, likely because of our size, and because of our ethos. Other places do have it, but it’s not consistent, either because of size or some other reasons. I’ve certainly experienced it elsewhere, because when you have talented educators, they’re going to create that kind of relationship, because they understand that their job is about learning. The best teachers are always learning. And the relationship between people who do high-level research and who teach, they understand that’s a holistic circle. That is an ecosystem that feeds itself. The difference here is that you really have that across the board—that’s one of the special things about Olin. 

Quinn: 

Could you tell us about a time that you felt really at home in a community and what you learned from that experience and what you took away from it?

May: 

Something important to know about me is that I grew up moving every couple of years, and it will surprise you to know that I was a very shy child. My mother would tell stories about how I was too embarrassed to say anything to anyone for the first many years of my life. But I think that the exercise of moving so frequently taught me to prioritize understanding the culture of the place that I was in and what was happening around me. I worked to understand the slang, the favorite foods, the habits—things that make up a community. It gives me comfort, and also it helps me meet people and make friends. Over time, I have learned to be comfortable with who I am, and therefore I feel at home in most places, though it took me a while to understand that it was within me and not something that I needed the community to give me. I realized if I could alter my own sense of perspective to be embracing and curious, in most cases it would be paid back. I don’t mean to paint the picture that I’m welcomed by every person in every place, but at least in my own lived experience, over time I’ve managed to feel some sense of community where ever I’ve landed. And I’m certainly feeling very welcome at Olin. I’m feeling very at home, even if I never would have expected that it would be in a suburb of Boston. 

Maddy: 

Life takes us crazy places, like Needham Massachusetts. 

May: 

Yes, exactly. What you learn is sometimes it’s about the geographical place, and sometimes it’s about the spiritual place, right? People say, “Where do you consider home?” My family would say New York City. Sometimes that’s how we define home. For me, home right now is Olin. It happens to be in Massachusetts. And I’m committed to learning about Boston and this whole area. I was really confounded by the idea that I had spent my whole life committed to living in cities and living in New York, and now I would be in the suburb of all suburbs. It’s very quiet at 8 pm here. You can’t walk out and go to the corner deli and get a quart of milk. It took me a while to go from being anxious or worried about that to thinking “Okay, this is going to be an adventure.” I did get lost on my first run. I went out without a phone thinking I’d just run straight and come back… that’s not what happened. Then I realized that every street was looking the same. Every house was looking the same. I had no idea where I was. 

Quinn:

Have you gotten to explore any parts of Boston at all? Have you taken the T?

May: 

Our daughter is a rising sophomore at Tufts, so we have spent some time navigating the Somerville, Medford, Cambridge part of Boston. And last year when we were here visiting, you know, we took the T, explored some areas of Boston, went to the Isabella Gardner Museum. I would not say that I am fluent in Boston yet. I think that will come with time. 

Quinn: 

Understandable!

[As our interview devolved into delightful conversation, the topic of Collaborative Design at Olin came up.]

May: 

I taught a version of Collaborative Design when I was in Shanghai, so I kind of have a sense of the class. I’d love to see how it’s taught here. 

Quinn: 

That’s awesome. What are some highlights from that experience, teaching that class similar to CD? 

May: 

I taught it in Shanghai to Chinese students who were engineers and scientists. They weren’t like you guys. You came into this excited about that, but they came to the class thinking, “Oh my God, this has nothing to do with math or engineering. Why are they making us take this?” The first semester was an unmitigated disaster. They hated it! And I had folks from IDEO teaching all the things that you love—the Post-its, the brainstorming, the put-yourselves-in another’s shoes, go out and do the field interviews, all that—my students hated it. To them, it just was a giant waste of time, and they were not shy in saying that. So I had to cancel the spring semester classes and redesign the whole class. I had to start from scratch. I had to really think about what was the essence of what we were trying to teach. Who were we trying to teach? What was it going to take to kind of get them there? What was the balance of direction versus exploration? They had a much longer road to get to the  starting point for most Oliners, and culturally, they were in a very different place. Asking people about their feelings is not something that really happens in Asian cultures and certainly not in China, right? So there was a lot of just going back to the brass tacks of, well, what are we really trying to achieve here? And then the second piece of that was how big the class was. How many students are there in CD here? 

Quinn: 

About 100, with teams of four to five. 

May: 

Right. Where I came from, you’d have 24 people in a section, and then they would break up into teams of four or five. The leadership in China said to me, “We have over a billion people here, so doing things 25 people at a time is not very sustainable.” And so what they said was, you have to do it with 100 kids in one classroom at a time. So I had to figure out how to break them into teams, and then I had to figure out how to manage the teams. Just think about what you do in CD if you are in a team, and you’re reporting back out and getting feedback. If you have 20 teams and you have one hour to do that, it’s not very much. 

Quinn: 

Here, there’s four faculty dedicated to that process and a whole host of student workers. 

May: 

Right. So I got to a place where I thought, okay, I can do this with two teaching faculty members, but we had no student workers. But it was really gratifying. It was amazing to see when we finally got it right, the “Oh, this is why it matters”. That was almost 10 years ago when I started, and now those students in those first two or three classes are all getting their PhD’s, and I think really embracing the spirit of what we taught them. As a teacher, the most gratifying thing that you can see is that somehow it made a difference in their lives and how they think about their work, which I think is how faculty members here feel about you guys. 

Quinn: 

Yeah, definitely. I hope you get to see part of the CD process in the spring because it’s really quite magical, I think, to see all of that just sort of unfold.

May: 

Yeah, I mean, I’m hoping that I get to. I’m going to sit in on DesNat, and ModSim. I thought my first couple weeks I’d spend more time with the team and the faculty and the students, just trying to get a sense of the place. 

Quinn: 

Is there stuff that you’re going to do to try to maintain that connection, aside from the first couple of weeks? Because students graduate, faculty turnover, and staff turnover. How are you going to keep that fire going throughout your time here?

May: 

My hope is to have at least one lunch a week in the dining hall. When my schedule settles down—let’s say after the first three months—my hope is that I also have regular office hours, one afternoon a week for students who can just drop by and chat about anything. Though it’s also a good learning for people to think, “Oh, I can actually make an appointment and go to the president.” So we’ll see. I think having regular sessions where people could attend, and then opening up so that, whether it’s for Halloween or Chinese New Year—maybe trying to do parties at the President’s house so students have a place to come and be social more than 15 feet away from West Hall. I’m thinking about those things and I’m open to ideas if folks have suggestions.

Quinn: 

It’s awesome that you’re thinking about this; it’s really encouraging. 

May: 

Yeah, I’m thinking a lot about it. I feel that being in community physically together is an important thing for us. 

Quinn: 

Looking broadly in five years when it comes to the end of your term as president, regardless of whether you continue—I hope you do. You seem really awesome and great for this community. What things do you think you’ll be thinking about to determine whether you’ve had a successful term as president of all? 

May: 

I think if we can successfully answer the question, “What is Olin’s identity for the next 25 years?”, and we have some clarity about how we want to do that in five years, that would be a success. So I would include in that, getting us to a place where we’re feeling financially resilient. We’re running an operating deficit right now; we’re spending more money than we’re bringing in. And I’m not saying that every decision has to be driven by financials, but we can’t make decisions without thinking about financials. Getting that balance right and having the community see that and understand it, and getting us to a place in five years where we’re spending what we bring in, or we’re bringing in more than we’re spending, is a really important goal for us to hit in five years. If we want to be responsible stewards of this institution that we love, then we want to make sure that it’s here for another 25, 50, or 100 years. You don’t spend more money than what’s in your bank account; it’s not responsible. And then I think really being able to execute on Olin’s identity and who we are in the next five years, whatever those two or three things are, would feel successful. I would say the final piece, and I don’t want to be presumptuous, but I do sense—both in your questions and what I’ve heard—a sort of yearning for us to be together more as a community, to have a degree of trust and to really be able to have a dialogue. I think if we get to that place in five years, I would be really happy. 

Quinn: 

I would also be very happy to see that. 

Maddy: 

That is definitely important to us. Probably one of the top things on everybody’s minds right now is having that. 

May: 

The other thing that I said to another large group is that as great as some aspects of the Olin culture are, I think that we are not as fluent as we could be in addressing conflict. Often people think, “Oh, I don’t want to speak up because people won’t like me,” or “They’ll disagree” or “They’ll yell at me” or whatever it is. I would like us to work on that. In this moment, we need to learn how to disagree with each other and still be in community. There are many people in my life who, they may not be my best friends, but they are people with whom I’m friendly. They are neighbors. They didn’t vote for the same person, they probably don’t believe necessarily in the things that I believe in, I don’t believe in the things that they believe in, but we’re in the same community, and so we have to find ways to be able to do that. I think that happens less and less. I don’t know if you’ve seen the work that’s been done on migration patterns in this country, but what you’re starting to see is people are moving to places where other people agree with them. If I look back at all the places where I grew up, I realize we likely lived with folks with a totally different worldview t, and yet we were still neighbors. We had potlucks together. We had block parties together. We played with their kids. The adults carpooled. Whatever it was, we managed to live together, even though I’m pretty sure now you would find us completely different in almost everything. But we were neighbors. That’s important for us to do here at Olin. And the truth is, we’re a lot alike here because we all co-create, and so meeting somebody who has no patience in co-creation says, “Look, I just want to decide.” What do you do when you’re faced with that? 

Quinn: 

And how do you resolve that conflict?

May: 

That’s the question. I think the answer is that yes, you won’t always get what you want, and they won’t always get what they want, but understanding how to do that is important. 

Quinn: 

It’s really awesome to hear that you’re thinking about this in a transparent way. Hearing from the next leader of the college that we need as a community to be better at conflict is really encouraging. 

May: 

I have said that to other people. So far, nobody has hit me (literally or metaphorically speaking). So I think that’s a good sign. 

Quinn: 

Well, thank you so much!

May: 

No, thank you guys. Thank you for making the effort. I’m glad we could make it work. I look forward to seeing how silly I look in print.

Tragedy of the Project Team II (I Was Wrong)

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Two years ago, I published an article titled “Tragedy of the Project Team” in Frankly Speaking, which was a slight vent on how project teams at Olin were operated. If you haven’t read that article, I do strongly recommend it for context to the following. The article served as the framework for how I approached team leadership during my time as PM/lead on AERO and Rocketry, and it has been quoted back to me by future leads who have bought into its conclusions. In one unique instance, a sophomore told me that the article made him decide to come to Olin to co-create that kind of future. I am honored by the support I have received and Oliners’ eagerness to co-create, but I want to explore that article’s pitfalls by teaching you what I’ve learnt in the past two years about how to build a team and a culture.

How can a company with a small name, competitive-yet-not-extravagant compensation, and greater-than-average volatility to market performance attract and maintain top-notch employees? This is what I was asking myself this summer while I worked at Second Order Effects, a small engineering services firm based out of LA. The employees (and founders) had stacked resumes including SpaceX, Google, and the rest of Big Aerospace and FAANG. These phenomenal engineers had no shortage of opportunities, yet they came to SOE, they stayed, and they rated it well on Glassdoor. The company had amazing culture and morale, teams that executed in harmony, and a respect for the individuality and humanity of its employees. I think we can learn a lot from SOE and apply it back to Olin project teams to understand retention and loyalty precisely because SOE has to rely heavily on team culture to survive in a world of Goliaths. 

SOE has something I haven’t seen on Olin’s project teams or seen executed properly at other companies I’ve worked at—people management. Oftentimes this role is folded into engineering management, so you don’t see it advertised, but you can always feel its effects. Let’s talk about some definitions. Project management, which you all are familiar with, is making sure deadlines are met, budgets are kept, and quality is assured. People management is about managing team dynamics and hiring, career growth and development, and creating a team/company vision. Project managers become senior project managers, people managers become CTOs. Both of these are critical roles for any team—at SOE, like many firms, they’re kept separate. Each project has an assigned project manager and each employee has a direct mentor/manager that does the people management. Lower-level managers balance managerial duties and day-to-day engineering, while higher-level managers do only mentorship/management.

Having strong people management is the key to a better culture and reduced turnover—it creates lasting loyalty between the team and the individual and vice versa. At Olin you often hear project teams leading with their projects; contrastingly, you rarely hear them lead with a people-before-project focus. In this article I will dive into five factors of people management I learned from SOE: team bonding, learning opportunities, mentorship, goal setting, and reflection. Then, I will focus on how we can improve in these areas without changing our team structures or adding significant work for our leads. Even tiny shifts in the ways we think about our teams can make a huge impact.

At Olin we do a good job with team bonding; unfortunately, we often look to it as a one-size-fits-all Band-Aid for our other problems. While it can support social cohesion on a team, it does not tackle structural issues or promote behaviors that drive loyalty. While team bonding is critical at companies and larger schools, Olin’s small size reduces its efficacy by eliminating two major value propositions: networking and friendship. At a larger school, you won’t have these same people in your classes, projects, and the dining hall—so team bonding builds strong friendships and expands your professional network. At Olin, project teams don’t have to position themselves to be friend groups—attempting to force that is time better spent on the other factors.

The second factor, learning opportunities, is where I need to discuss my conclusions from “Tragedy of the Project Team.” I had claimed that the solution to member retention and interest boiled down to novel projects, more engineering freedom, and less structure. I have seen this in action; SOE as a services firm has rotating projects and these novel projects can spur co-learning amongst engineers across all levels. But in the article, this was mistakenly presented as the sole factor; I was reflecting on what I thought motivated me and gave me purpose. At Olin, I think we can still improve on project novelty and rotation, but this is no longer my main concern regarding our teams’ health.

The third factor is mentorship. This is the chicken-and-egg problem of project teams; mentorship supports retention, and retention creates mentors. A team needs to provide strong mentorship across all fields from technical to operational. Right now, this is the factor that scares me, seeing that in my time at Olin we have had a massive upperclassman exodus from project teams and now have almost ubiquitously sophomore leads. In order to improve here, we need access to upperclassmen who give mini lectures, explanations at whiteboards, and tutorials. While this necessitates focusing less on their own projects, mentorship should be considered desirable, especially for the type of engineers Olin attracts. Teaching and leadership are both rewarding experiences that make for well-rounded engineers. Often these come with learnings of their own; for instance, teaching can help foster a deeper understanding of the subject and allow for exploration of new ideas. How do we jumpstart our way out of this Catch-22? I hope that by focusing on the remaining factors, a stronger team culture and loyalty will emerge, and in turn naturally grow mentors from within.

The fourth factor is goal setting, which is critical to career and technical development. This involves a difficult, but pivotal decision: put people over projects. A team should assign tasks and deliverables based on individual goals and create new projects off the critical path if necessary. It should not sacrifice a person’s goals for timeline or to fit to a Gantt chart—especially those of new members. Loyal members will pay it back by occasionally doing tasks which do not align with their goals, but a new member given an arbitrary task will simply leave and never feel any loyalty. At SOE, I clearly outlined my goals to learn Altium over the summer and when a quick-turn project from a client came through, I was assigned to it despite never having used the software. My coworkers respected my autonomy and never got involved beyond reviewing my work. Did the schedule slip slightly? Yes. Did the final product have some minor issues and inaccuracies? Yes. But do they now have a skilled employee who can operate independently and is loyal to the team? YES. Investing in your people builds a strong set of dedicated future engineers, leaders, and team-builders. 

Lastly, we have perhaps the most important factor: reflection by design. As humans we suck at being optimistic, and we also suck at remembering what has happened (side note: this is why we all should write gratitude journals). Reflecting on learning highlights the value and growth in the experience, reflecting on goals better directs personal focus, and reflecting on areas of improvement creates space to act upon growth opportunities in a safe environment.

So how can our teams focus on these factors with minimal extra effort? First, we can implement regular 15-minute meetings between each member and mentors, keeping in mind that mentors should be different from one’s subteam lead and generally not PM. One-on-ones are opportunities for reflection, goal-setting, and feedback both for the team and for the member. This article is too short to go into the art of running one-on-ones—contact me to learn more. Members should be empowered to set varied goals across: domain-specific technical learning, cross-disciplinary skills that make for well-rounded engineers, soft skills, networking, etc. Members should be required to brainstorm and work towards 4-6 concurrent goals, refreshed and updated as they are completed or need changes throughout the year. Importantly, their tasking should reflect these goals, not a Gantt chart. Next, we can focus on making learning opportunities more explicit, obvious, and efficient through mini-lectures at the start of meetings. This can give people the guarantee that they will learn something new every time. These could be as little effort as 15-minute brain dumps about whatever one of the leads finds cool and insightful (even if completely irrelevant to the team’s project, such as a LinkedIn workshop). If nothing comes to mind, try polling members about blockers on their projects and expand on those as a team. Need help getting a loft working? Continue that CAD tutorial with a lecture on swept bodies and guide curves. Consequently, this reduces open work time at meetings—we should embrace this and prioritize learning and planning over unstructured work time. In a team with strong people management and loyalty, work is mostly done outside of meetings and blockers are resolved impromptu by sending an Outlook invite or DM to relevant resources like a coworking group or leads. Hence, this should not be viewed as a sacrifice, but an investment. Lastly, we can provide notebooks/journals for members and encourage note-taking during lectures and research/project work. These can be filled front-back technically and back-front with goals and reflections. This can ground learning in a quantitative medium. All of the above suggestions are low-effort for the leadership team, but are incredibly impactful to the overall team culture.

I hope that this article serves to highlight some of the ways in which we can think differently about team-building and team culture on project teams, and perhaps Olin in general. I have explained why factors like team bonding play a minimal role and how factors like learning opportunities, mentorship, goal setting, and reflection need to be more thoughtfully engaged with. I don’t believe Olin project teams have ever had a people manager (AKA engineering people manager or engineering manager) and it shows. Recently, our project teams have dwindled due to factors within our control such as culture, and factors outside our control such as difficulty fundraising, problematic space allocations, and time-consuming safety audits. It is now more important than ever to turn our focus inward as project team leadership. To ride out these external turmoils we need people and cohesion more than ever. Thankfully, those are outcomes we can influence directly when we put our minds and hearts into those around us. Even if it means making sacrifices elsewhere on timelines, scope, complexity, etc., start being people-obsessed, not project-obsessed, and slowly, success shall blossom.

From The Spankly Freaking Team…

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We hoped the summer would make it go away, but the heat seems to only have fermented and festered the insatiable appetite for evil that the Frankly Speaking editors so zealously cling upon. In our lengthy investigations, we have found them yet again spewing dark lies, frenetically hiding facts, and engaging in such deep and willing corruption so as to make their deceit and maleficence only comparable to an uneventful, on-par day in the Trump administration. 

So once again, after a summer apart, we, the Spankly Freaking team, humbly stoop to pick up the headlines so callously rejected by the Frankly Speaking editors and deliver Truth to you. Please enjoy…

Say A Big Welcome To The New President of Olin

‘s Cheese Club

After a fierce race between three club members, Parm Esan was proudly crowned the Third President Of Olin

‘s Cheese Club

How Did You All Enjoy The Summer Reading Book??

Reply Seniors, Juniors, and Sophomores: “It was interesting and insightful. Reflecting upon plagiarism and the ethics of AI usage certainly opened my eyes to the vast implications this might have for both my career and for society at large. If you would like a more detailed response to your prompt, writ a brief relfection on the AI Mirror, or some quick talking points, just let me know!”

New Dean of Student Affairs Installs Bouncy House In The Dining Hall “To Show I’m Going To Be A Cool Dean”

“I’ll even let you eat ice cream and stay up past 10 on the weekends” said Dean Harris, asking to be called Stace-Money or Dean-Slicko.

Now I’m Not Saying To Play In The Trenches…

I mean, me? No. I would not say that. That would be dangerous and something that I personally would not encourage. You wouldn’t be hearing that from me. I mean, the Trenches? They don’t look fun at ALL is what I would say. If I were asked.

No one should play in the Trenches, would be all that I would be saying if it came to the point of me being asked about it. The Trenches? Noooo…

“No you simply can’t, Doctor! That would be pushing too far into inhumanity!” Cries Assistant As Mad Scientist In Charge Of Olin Cackles, Cranks Up The Heat More

“I must see the limits of my creation!” they continued before putting a bunch of super fun looking Trenches on campus and forbidding students to play in them

Reminder About Referring To The New Class!

Remember when talking about the new class, try not to say “freshmen” as it’s a gendered term! Instead, you should use the gender-neutral “fresh meat”

An Interview With Alisha

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[Quotes edited for clarity and brevity by Alisha and the editorial team.]

Quinn: To start us off, thank you for meeting with us. It’s super exciting.

Alisha: Thank you for inviting me! 

Quinn: It’s a great honor to be able to talk to you on your last couple of days at Olin, which is so sad. How’s it feeling getting ready to head off to something new?

Alisha: It’s pretty weird because I’ve been here for most of my professional life, which is longer than some of our students have been alive. I have a lot of different feelings. It was really nice having two going-away parties! At the faculty and staff party, it was really touching, because a bunch of people, some I’ve worked with for decades, talked about ways that I had impacted their life. It was really nice to realize I’ve had an impact. People have always asked, “why do you stay so long?” I’ve always said, ”because of the people!” And because I’ve gotten to keep growing personally, and to make positive change. It’s been nice reflecting back on that and having it reflected to me. 

Quinn: In what ways do you think you’ve grown? In the many, many years you’ve been here. What are the notable growth moments?

Alisha: From a purely professional standpoint, I started as this regular faculty member doing bioengineering research, trying to figure out how to grow cells with undergraduates—which turns out to be really hard—and was hugely influenced by all these amazing educators who were really thinking deeply about education and good pedagogy. And so I got to thinking about those things, but also figured out that I really like being an administrator. I have this distinct memory of Mark Somerville, as an associate dean, walking into my office in 2011 and asking me if I wanted to be the associate director of SCOPE. I still felt “new,” had never thought about leadership, and I was still pretty quiet, which I know is hard to believe. I went home and thought about it over the weekend, and I was like, “actually I do want to do that.” Back then, many students felt like it was very disconnected from the Olin curriculum, and had this feeling of kind of “selling your soul”.  As SCOPE director, I focused on how it really is a capstone to our curriculum (and I started drawing pictures of capstones, and telling the story of how the stuff in ModSim, ISIM, P&M, CD, design depths, major classes, et cetera, built up to this capstone experience, and how it was really different than the capstone experiences at other schools where they were like “yeah, do all this stuff at the very end.” But it also made me realize I liked doing that kind of culture change work, and program work, and figuring out how to have an impact on students and colleagues that was bigger than just teaching bioengineering classes with five students. That led to being an associate dean, and then more surprisingly to being a dean of student affairs. I got to do all of these different jobs, and that it made sense in the Olin context. I love that I can see my impact on these different areas. I also need to give a shout out to human-centered design as an approach that aligns with my values and has shaped my research as well as my work as an administrator.

On a more personal note, it has been getting to work with all these cool people—colleagues and students—to have so many different conversations and learn from them. This part about the close-knit community has been incredible. There are still former students who are grown adults with children and lives, and we’re still in touch. Being able to learn from people and also have a positive impact on individuals has been so rewarding.  

Quinn: Do you think you’re gonna miss doing that sort of nitty-gritty technical teaching, like about specific subjects?

Alisha: I haven’t done that in a long time. The last class I taught was Biomedical Device Design in the spring of 2021. I do think I’m gonna miss working super closely with students; that’s gonna be a really big change going forward, because my primary focus will be faculty development. But I also know that if I’m thinking about faculty development, it’s about teaching students, so I’m still going to figure out how to get where the students are. I probably won’t miss having to deal with the shenanigans part of it! I’m excited to go back to focusing on the teaching and learning piece of it, as much as I’ve been an educator when having different conversations with individual students or groups. As Dean of Student Affairs, sometimes that educational conversation is something like, “maybe doing that thing was not a good idea, and let’s look at the bigger picture, and the impact on other people and the community.” Bringing all of that knowledge of what’s going on for students outside the classroom, at school, with their family, in the world, is going to be huge, because it’s not a vantage that most faculty get. 

Quinn: Can you tell us about what you’re doing after Olin and how that relates to what you have been doing here?

Alisha: I’m going to be the executive director of the ATLAS Center—Advancing Teaching, Learning, and Scholarship – at Wentworth Institute of Technology (WIT). The teaching and learning center already exists at WIT, but right now it lives in IT, so they’re kind of seen by the community as the tech support for their learning management system (ours is Canvas). But they’re also trying to do all this great instructional design and support for faculty teaching and learning scholarship. There’s all this great stuff happening, so they’re rebranding it with a new name and moving it under the provost’s office so it’s seen as a more academic department. I’m excited to think about how to elevate that teaching and learning piece, and about faculty development and student outcomes. This comes back to the culture change piece that I enjoy doing.  Wentworth is all about student outcomes, in an OG hands-on learning way, focused on preparing students for engineering careers.  Being mission-driven in this very pragmatic way that makes STEM education more accessible is very values-aligned for me.

Gia: You’ve been exposed to many kinds of – you used the word – shenanigans in your shifting roles at Olin. What shenanigans make Olin “Olin”? How has that informed your work, what you’ll take with you to Wentworth, etc.?

Alisha: I’m going to try to come back to your actual question, but I wanted to reflect on something interesting that’s embedded in that. It’s something I’ve thought about at many different stages, but especially as I’ve gotten involved in the student affairs community: we’re not that special. There are some really funky things about how our culture plays out, mostly with our size, but in terms of the overall stuff that we’re dealing with, I think we collectively have a tendency to think that we’re very different, and therefore we need to do things differently. Going to student affairs conferences and talking to people from all kinds of other schools—everyone’s dealing with the same stuff. People who are 18 to 22 are always pushing boundaries and trying stuff, and people at engineering schools tend to be problem solvers in all sorts of interesting ways. I think our uniqueness comes from a somewhat intentional and somewhat organically-grown lack of certain pieces of infrastructure. Our culture has fostered a real feeling of “students need to do all these things themselves”. This can cause many difficulties and tensions in how students are encouraged to spend their time and energy. 

My biggest focus in the last four years has been trying to build trust. When I started, the thing I heard over and over was “we don’t trust StAR.” And if Oliners don’t trust this entire set of people, even if it’s about one or two people, they’re not going to come for the resources. And we know they need the resources! It’s not all perfect; it’s not sunshine and flowers all of the time, but a lot of progress has been made in that space. 

Back to your question: some of the specific shenanigans are around different opinions about what is appropriate behavior, and what is appropriate for students to do. In some ways, that’s true everywhere. Sometimes when you have those conversations, it’s a total surprise. Whereas I think at other schools, people would be like, “yeah, okay, I kind of knew I broke the rules.” Olin students are like, “There are RULES?!” I mean, I’m overstating that, but I think that’s some of the funny stuff to figure out. 

Gia: Can you tell me more about what you mean by policy and risk? [mentioned in ramblings that were cut]

Alisha: Student group safety! That’s the thing I worked on a lot last year. This has been interesting because I do have a lab safety background and a project advising background through SCOPE, and so I was able to bring some of that in a way that spans some of the different areas, which is not typical in student affairs. But we had not built enough of an integrated infrastructure to provide appropriate oversight of some of the things students are working on. Something hard, and sometimes novel at Olin is that sometimes we’ve had to say “no, we can’t actually support this thing, because we don’t have the space or it’s actually hazardous in a way we cannot support.” I do think it’s this thing where we were okay in the beginning, and then we just didn’t really… stay…

Quinn: We didn’t stay with the times.

Alisha: We didn’t stay with the times! And now we’re sort of trying to catch up. Especially with all of the continuity lost during COVID, there’s been a little bit of a “wild west.” Trying to get that under control in a way that maintains student autonomy and all the things that are beautiful about having these groups, and also brings us into the modern world in a way that creates a manageable infrastructure is super challenging. Because of that, in my last weeks I’ve been working on all these transition documents and trying to pass stuff on for the next dean.

Quinn: You can feel it out?

Alisha: Yeah. I kind of know what’s going on. And there’s so much transition and work that spans student affairs. I think Frankly Speaking is a great example of the evolution of things. There’s a thing that Frankly Speaking used to be, and that doesn’t have to be exactly the thing Frankly Speaking is in the future, while also keeping the really important essence of what Frankly Speaking is. I think that’s what you all have shepherded so well this year, thinking about that, and really leaning into “we don’t have to stick to this tradition—we can keep the stuff that’s integral and modernize.” 

Quinn: How has being in this administrative role, dean of student affairs, changed your perspective of Olin academia and academia as a whole?

Alisha: I think it’s really rare to have both a faculty perspective and a staff perspective. While I always have that faculty perspective, I feel fully immersed in the staff world. In higher ed, there’s usually a divide—it’s a lot smaller between faculty and staff at Olin, but it still exists, and I think it’s something that staff tend to be much more aware of than faculty. I know I was totally clueless when I was purely a faculty. We often talk about how support work is like an iceberg. You see the top stuff, but there’s all this stuff happening underneath that tends to be invisible if it’s going well. 

Quinn: Given all of this context and development and learning that you’ve done, what do you hope to see Olin do with all of that in the next five, ten years?

Alisha: I do hope that folks continue to understand the important role that student affairs plays in the student experience, and that resource that appropriately. I think understanding how much the high-touch services are part of what we are offering to students, and part of that value proposition that students and their families are really looking at with their money and their choices about where they go—that’s an important piece of the puzzle.

Gia: Looking back, what are some things that you’re proud of? You said that you feel like you have your fingerprints in a lot of places, what are places that you look at like “wow, I’m super proud that I did this; this is something that I’m glad has happened here”?

Quinn: Things that current Olin students might not know about at all.

Gia: Yeah, big or small.

Alisha: I think there’s so many phases. I’m super proud of the stuff I did in SCOPE. I led changing the faculty advising model, and grading to make it more consistent for both students and faculty. I started the work to shift the narrative of “SCOPE is all defense and robotics” by really focusing on a broader portfolio of projects to match the interests and values of more students. So much of what I’ve done over my time here is in the equity and inclusion space, starting from when I was a visiting professor. I got immediately involved in the gender and engineering co-curricular. I was one of the people who was focused on that work inside and outside of Olin. When we had our first openly trans student, I put together a training, and I was like “okay we’re gonna do Trans 101, friends!” Initially, there were just these ad hoc things, and then that was a big part of my portfolio when I became associate dean of faculty—faculty development, but also really thinking about equity and inclusion in the classroom. When we had the new strategic plan, we formed a group called the “DEI Champions”, and a lot of what we did is more focused strategic planning of like “here’s what we need—here’s the path for thinking about cultural competency for advising, here’s the path for making sure people are getting the training and education they need for thinking about inclusivity of belonging in classrooms,” and I think that’s been a really core part of what I’ve done, and obviously a core part of what I’ve brought into my work in student affairs. Many of my colleagues are doing incredible work, but I think that’s one of the biggest places I’ve had formal and informal impact. 

I think it’s a lot of little things too, the stuff that I’m proud of. What people have been reflecting over the last weeks, I’m like “oh wow, I didn’t even think about that.” A student was like “yeah, I was going through my emails and my first email from you was doing name change stuff before I came.” Sending 15 emails back and forth to get it right is at the core of how to do this work for me.

Quinn: As we’re wrapping up here, is there anything you want to say to the Olin community as sort of a last goodbye?

Alisha: I think my primary feeling towards the bulk of the Olin community is just a real sense of gratitude. Especially to students, who don’t have to trust me with their shit. For all of it, for the vitriol, and the thanks, and moments of getting things, and being able to witness people grow and change. Because I see it as passion for this community, and that is a shared value that I appreciate. 

Quinn: Thank you so much. We are going to miss you.

Alisha: Thank you, it’s been a pleasure.

Quinn: I hope that you keep reading Frankly Speaking. :)

Alisha: Oh, I will.

& Farewell To Our Seniors

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In our final edition of the ‘24-’25 year, we wanted to shout out the incredible seniors who have worked with us to shape Frankly Speaking into what it is today.

Thank you to Gia, our fiercest editor, for helping our articles be the best they can be, and for always asking the questions we didn’t even know we had. She brings a charmingly critical energy to our monthly formatting sessions that will be sorely missed. 

Thank you to Kelly, our previous executive editor and stellar big SIBB, for paving the way for Maddy to take the reins in her first year. From editing to formatting to writing, they’ve been through it all with Frankly Speaking in their time here, and we believe their dedication will be felt for generations of editing teams.

Thank you to Brooke, our intermittent webmaster, for all the late nights (early mornings?) spent waiting for our last-minute edits and formatting. Her attention to detail and passion for categorization has led us down many delightful archival rabbit holes. 

Thank you all, we will miss you dearly!

(And if you, dear reader, would like to be involved with Frankly Speaking next year, please let us know!)