Project Wrap-up

Olin talks a lot about having a project-based curriculum. This post looks at all the projects I did at Olin. I considered when I did the projects, what kind of class I did them in, how long they took, and how many people were involved.

I started by looking at classes more broadly. Some classes were project-based (structured around one or more projects), some had a significant project but had other components that were key enough that I don't consider them project-based, and some just had minor projects. I did not consider courses structured around well-scaffolded labs to be project-based. For context, in my seven semesters at Olin I took 23 Olin courses (counting SCOPE as one course) and 2 Wellesley courses.

10 project-based classes
4 other classes with a significant project
7 other classes with a minor project (1 at Wellesley)
1 non-project inquiry-based class (taken in Budapest)

Here's the list of all the courses that involved projects. I've color-coded the courses as follows:
Required of all Olin students
Among the limited choices for an Olin requirement (Ex.: SCOPE is one of two capstone choices)
Mechanical engineering degree requirement

Project-based courses: Modeling and Simulation, Design Nature, User Oriented Collaborative Design, The Entrepreneurial Initiative, Materials Science, Principles of Engineering, Mechanical and Aerospace Systems, Mechanical Design, SCOPE, Sustainable Design

Classes with a significant project: Real World Measurements, Transport Phenomena, Thermodynamics, Anthropology

Classes with a minor project: Modeling and Control, Partial Differential Equations, Dynamics, Mechanics of Solids and Structures, Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos, Numerical Methods, Childhood in 19th Century France

You might have noticed that I only took four courses at Olin or Wellesley that didn't make this list. Those were Biology (which had a couple of things I could have counted as projects but decided were too minor), Soviet Union History, Physics of Waves, and Bayesian Inference & Reasoning. The last two were taught by the same professor, who is one of the only Olin professors who doesn't teach with projects.

After looking at courses, I looked at individual projects. Here's the breakdown by semester:

Year 1, Semester 1: 7 class projects
Year 1, Semester 2: 2 class projects, 3 research projects (1 completed)
Year 2, Semester 1: 2 class projects, 2 research projects (1 continued from previous semester).
Year 2, Semester 2: 4 class projects, 1 research project (completed, continued from previous spring), 1 Passionate Pursuit
Summer: 1 research project
Year 3, Semester 1: 0 projects (not at Olin)
Year 3, Semester 2: 5 class projects, 1 competition, 2 research projects (none completed)
Summer: 1 research project
Year 4, Semester 1: 7 class projects (maybe 8), 1 research project (completed, continued from previous semester)
Year 4, Semester 2: 4 class projects (double counts SCOPE from previous semester), 1 competition, 1 research project (completed, continued from previous spring)

So the total was 32 class projects, 8 research projects, 2 competition projects, and 1 Passionate Pursuit. Of the 32 class projects, 12 were at least half a semester long. 15 were on teams of at least 3 people, as were 7 of my research projects and both competition projects. 19 of my total of 43 projects were primarily mathematical (math research, modeling, etc.).

Below are all the projects from the classes above as well as some outside projects I worked on for research or competitions. They're roughly in order by semester, though some of the research projects might be off a bit. The projects that aren't from classes are in blue. I've listed the number of team members and an approximate duration for most projects.

Projects:
ModSim Project 1: Population dynamics. Team of 2. Looked at education and literacy in Uganda. 4-5 weeks.
ModSim Project 2: Thermodynamics or pharmacokinetics. Team of 2. Looked at a passive freezer. 4-5 weeks.
ModSim Project 3: Mechanics. Team of 2. Modeled a Tesla turbine. 4-5 weeks.
DesNat Project 1: Hopper project. Individual. 7 weeks.
DesNat Project 2: Transporter project, team of 5. Built a gibbon robot. 7 weeks.
ModCon Project: Looked at the fluids analogy for electric circuits. Individual. 2 weeks.
Anthro Project: Religion project/paper, individual. Looked at relationship with Sikhism of Punjabi Sikhs and converts. 5 weeks.
Graph Theory Paper 1: L(d,1) labelings and edge-path-factorizations. 4 authors.
RWM Project: In a team of 5. Measured wind on a kite and correlated with tension on kite string. 7 weeks.
PDEs Project: Studied shock waves. Individual. 3 weeks.
Graph Theory Paper 2: L(2,1) labelings of Cartesian products of complete graphs. 4 authors.
Graph Theory Paper 3: L(2,1) labelings of amalgamations and injective labelings of graphs. 4 authors.
Transport Project: Built and modeled a solar water heater. Team of 3. One semester.
Dynamics Project: Modeled, built, and tested two trifilar pendula. Team of 2. 2 weeks.
Graph Theory Paper 4: L(2,1) labelings of generalized flowers. 4 authors.
Soviet Ballet Passionate Pursuit: Studied ballet in the Soviet Union. Individual. One semester.
UOCD Project: Designed with and for recreational mathematicians. Team of 5. One semester.
TEI/FBE Project: Manufactured and sold laser cut coasters. Team of 5. One semester.
Thermo Project: Modeled a combined cycle solar power plant. Team of 2. 3-4 weeks.
French Project: Wrote and illustrated a children's book. Individual. 2 weeks.
SERIUS 2014: Studied phase equilibrium conditions of semi-clathrate hydrates. Individual, supervised by a PhD student. Two months.
Mathematical Contest in Modeling 2015: Modeled the spread and containment of Ebola. Team of 3. 96 hours.
MatSci Project 1: Studied the strength of different steel bolts. Team of 3. 7 weeks.
MatSci Project 2: Made and studied Prince Rupert's drops. Team of 3. 7 weeks.
MechAero Project: Built and modeled an ornithopter. Team of 3. One semester.
PoE Project: Built a digital water curtain. Team of 5. 8 weeks.
MechSolids Project: Studied and wrote about buckling. Individual. 2 weeks.
RIPS 2015: Studied orthogonal polynomials with applications to nuclear fusion. Sponsored by Lawrence Livermore National Lab. Team of 4. 9 weeks.
Graph Theory Paper 5: Radio-k chromatic numbers of cycles. 4 authors.
BioTransport Project 1: I dropped this class, so it's not on the list above, but I put a lot of time into the first project. Modeling diffusion and cell differentiation. Team of 3. 2-3 weeks.
MechDes Project 1: Designed a tree-like wind sculpture, no transmission components. Team of 5. 1 week.
MechDes Project 2: Designed a hammer and anvil wind sculpture with cams and linkages. Team of 2. 1 week.
MechDes Project 3: Designed a Goodnight Moon wind sculpture with gears. Team of 2. 1 week.
MechDes Project 4: Designed a clock wind sculpture with each key type of transmission. Team of 5. 2 weeks.
MechDes Project 5: Designed a phoenix wind sculpture. Team of 5. 3 weeks.
SCOPE Project: Modeled the behavior of gastrointestinal stents under radial compression and bending. Sponsored by Boston Scientific. Team of 4. Two semesters.
NLDC Project: Studied the dynamics of data assimilation. Individual. 2-3 weeks.
Mathematical Contest in Modeling 2016: Modeled the flow of refugees to/through Europe and North Africa. Team of 3. 96 hours.
Graph Theory Paper 6: L(2,1) labelings of crossed prisms. 5 authors.
SusDes Project 1: Studied rice cookers and designed more sustainable products to meet the same needs. Team of 5. 8 weeks.
SusDes Project 2: Studied transboundary water management, particularly with respect to the Aral Sea. Individual. 4 weeks.
Numerical Methods Project: Studied and reproduced part of a simulation of a fluids experiment used to model atmospheric phenomena. Individual. 2 weeks.

The semesters that felt the most project-based to me were my first semester and spring of junior year. The first semester is the intro to Olin, so it is meant to be an intro to project-based learning, to teamwork, and to key concepts in the Olin curriculum like design and modeling. Spring of my junior year was the semester when the greatest percentage of my courses (75%) were project-based, and my fourth course had a minor project and a long lab. My sense of that semester as project-heavy is also influenced by the fact that I had just come back from Budapest, where I had taken mainly lecture-based math courses.

Looking at the numbers, fall of senior year seems like it should have also felt fairly project-y. I did nine projects, all three of my classes involved a project, and two were project-based. So why didn't it? I think both SCOPE and MechDes felt different from my other project-based courses. The SCOPE project was longer and had all day on Wednesday set aside for it. MechDes was almost entirely CAD work with drawings for deliverables, and most of the projects were short. I hadn't had another project-based course like that, so it didn't feel as classically project-y to me. A lot of my focus that semester was also on grad school and fellowship apps, which again changes the flavor of the semester.

If I were going into mechanical engineering industry, my PoE project is probably the one I would talk about the most. I grew significantly as a mechE through that project, and I think I learned a lot through what we did well and what we didn't. Before that project, I tended to tell people about the solar water heater from Transport. Now, going into applied math, I talk far more about my modeling work, particularly the SCOPE project and the first year of MCM, and my graph theory and orthogonal polynomials research.

I don't think I really sought out projects, beyond choosing Olin in the first place. I chose to do research, MCM, and one Passionate Pursuit, but I was never on a large project team. Most of the courses I had significant choice in had only minor projects or none at all. (To be fair, that's heavily influenced by the fact that most of the courses in this category were math or AHS classes.) And yet, I still did 43 projects in four years because that's what an Olin education is. It is projects -- team projects, engineering projects. That's not just something the school says in admissions sessions. Projects are Olin's lifeblood.