Thinking Forward
www.OLIN.edu
OLIN ORCHESTRA
Today at the World Bank was a symposium on Creating World Class Universities- mostly
with a developing world emphasis. The usual and unusual suspects of foreign accented individuals at the Bank gave compelling reasons why we (they) need to invest in more than primary and secondary education but at the research level in first class research universities. There is a World Bank Education office and chair looking at the possibility of recreating various educational models in the developing world.
One unexpected speaker was a President of a US University who was involved in creating a first class college out of scratch: Richard K Miller PH.D is the President and Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering on the 128 corridor near enough to MIT just outside Boston.
He is the unintended solution to the Auto Bailout. Are you listening?
Dr. Miller, Professor Miller, President Miller or just "Rick" as his students call him, was the former Dean of the University of Iowa Engineering school who hails from that first rate California University research system.
He got a half billion dollar grant, with a few compatriots to devise an Engineering school with a focus on developing and nurturing creative DESIGN that could be both practically useful to the industries lining the high tech East Coast Silicon Valley outside Boston, and is future thinking and leading. Cutting Edge in fact. Shunning the typical ossification of established Engineering programs that attain an institutional lethargy, he chose instead to create a school where By-Laws and curricula expire every five years, where students are required to create something real from the diagrams on paper, and where "Entrepreneurship" at a neighboring business school is a mandatory class. Every year the kids have to develop a project. Some have actually accidentally duplicated patents.
If ever there is a car that competes with Toyota it will be developed here. Thanks to Richard K. Miller, Ph.D.
Both brilliant and humble, this geniac of the first order who happily spent most his adult life and raised his kids in the bucollic anonymity of Iowa cornfields, would blush from his graying mustache to his baldish head if he heard himself so described, has a paradigm shift under his collar and mortar board- the students are smarter than we think- and they should be given the research tools and resources to maximize their creative potential rather than stiffle it. The competitive future lies in their freedom to create with support. Technology is innovative and constantly changing so the educational environment must follow suit or render itself obsolete.
Olin college was funded originally by the Olin Foundation, named after a graduate of Cornell University (the Engineering building at Cornell is named after him- he no doubt financed that as well as about 75 other buildings on American campuses.)
They do what government could- they invest in Design and Innovation. They invest in the Future through the able leadership of people like Richard K. Miller.
President Miller should be called back to Washington from his brief World Bank appearance to speak to the Secretary of Education and the President. He should be the head of a task force on Design and Innovation. His school is a model- that should be replicated throughout the country, and can be with the government's assistance.
Here is how you get in touch with him (NOW)
http://www.olin.edu/
richard.miller@olin.edu
Olin Way , Needham, Mass 02492-1200
781-292-2314.
No comments:
Post a Comment