The Changing Composition of the School

The fastest growing majors at Olin are actually not majors in their own right but rather are concentrations within the Engineering major. Engineering with Computing (E:C) has grown an incredible amount just between my class and the current sophomores, and Engineering with Robotics has also grown. E:Robo became more popular starting with my class or the class above us because it became an official concentration instead of a self-design, and it has stayed popular.

Note that these are both related to software. Software Design has become an increasingly popular class for people to take as first years or sophomores; it often has a wait list in the spring with multiple sections offered, and there's now a section in the fall as well. As more people take SoftDes, the popularity kind of reinforces itself; Oliners who have taken the class tell other students that it's a good and useful class, and so more people take it. Post Graduate Planning is also reinforcing the class's popularity by encouraging everyone to learn to code and telling people it's easier to get jobs if you know how to code.

Here are the computing related courses offered in the fall:

• Software Design (two sections ran this semester): 18 students enrolled
• Computational Bayesian Statistics (2 credits, fulfills ProbStat requirement): 23 students enrolled
• Human Factors and Interface Design (the Design Depth focused on software): 25 students enrolled, 6 students on the waitlist
• Computer Architecture: 25 students enrolled, 1 student on the waitlist
• Foundations of Computer Science (was also offered this semester): 25 students enrolled, 11 students on the waitlist
• Complexity Science: 25 students enrolled, 5 students on the waitlist
• Programming Languages: 25 students enrolled, 5 students on the waitlist
• Discrete Math (was offered this semester and last semester): 30 students enrolled, 16 students on the waitlist

Other than SoftDes, which is running a single section in its off semester, and Computational Bayesian, all of the computing courses have waitlists. For the two E:C requirements on the list (FoCS and Discrete), those waitlists are significant. For a few semesters now there has been demand for more computing classes, which is why both Complexity Science and Programming Languages are being offered as electives in the fall. Our number of faculty who do something computing related has grown over the past couple of years to help with the increased demand, and the popularity of some of those faculty members has encouraged further growth in interest.

E:C isn't really a computer science degree, but increasingly students want it to be, at least partially. Students have been asking for more content explicitly addressing data structures and algorithms, and so the faculty has started incorporating that in different courses. FoCS has shifted to partially address that need, and Computational Robotics and Data Science both spend time on algorithms. The conversation about how best to incorporate that content is a continuing one because traditional DS and Algorithms courses wouldn't work well here.

Based on conversations with seniors, I think the growth in E:Cs is not just due to growth in interest in software but also to a destigmatization of the degree. In the classes above mine, E:C was often seen as the easy version of ECE ("E with cop out"), even though there aren't actually that many requirements in common. As more computing faculty were hired, though, people have started to see E:C as more legitimate, and the classes below me now think of E:C and ECE as very distinct paths.

The growth in robotics is partially due to the interest in software, shifting some people who would have been mechEs to a major where they can do both mechanical and software work. E:Robo being an official concentration has also helped. There's been lots of activity in robotics at Olin for a long time, but declaring an existing concentration is a lot easier and is sometimes seen as more legitimate than self-designing.

In addition to that, the largest and flashiest research groups on campus are in the Robo Lab, and they aren't the only robotics groups on campus. The Robo Lab has tea and cookies every week, tours always go by there, and the lab encourages candidates to come by during Candidates Weekend. The professors in the Robo Lab are also incredible about finding lots of interesting projects to work on and getting funding to work on them, so lots of students can work in the Robo Lab during the school year and the summer. Because of the friendliness and openness of the lab, a lot of people join as first years. The more first years join, the more prospies hear about it, and again, there's a cycle.

Olin also heavily recruits at FIRST Robotics competitions, so a huge number of Oliners come into Olin with experience in high school robotics and existing interest. This again creates cycles; I think for three years in a row the captain of the (pretty prominent) team at a particular school came to Olin. High school robotics is one of the areas in which Olin has really succeeded at becoming known.

It's interesting to think about the movements towards E:C and E:Robo in terms of Olin as an interdisciplinary place. The shifting of students from ECE to E:C is a move away from being interdisciplinary; E:C is a major that focuses just on software, whereas before lots of people interested in software would have also done the electric engineering and computer engineering courses required by the ECE degree. The growth of E:Robo, though, is a move towards being more interdisciplinary. E:Robos can lean mechanical or software (or even electrical, though that's less common here), but they still have to have some competency in each, and they have to be interested in working with integrated systems.

I'm not sure what to conclude from all of this. I think these trends will continue. The other populations in the student body aren't going away, of course. There will be plenty of mechEs, a consistent if small group of bioEs, and a group interested in sustainability and/or design.  (The population of true EEs might actually go away. It's hard to tell.)

Based on faculty search this year, I actually expect sustainability to grow, and design has grown over the past couple of years, again because of a new faculty member. One faculty member can make such a big difference in the direction Olin moves. But the existing interests of the student body also affect what faculty we hire. With a growing population of E:Cs and E:Robos, much of the research and projects on campus are going to be in software and robotics, so those are the projects the school is going to show off. The interesting work students are doing is a lot of what attracts both prospective students and faculty. The more Oliners we send out in the world doing software and robotics work, the better known we'll become in those areas, and that will reinforce those identities here. It'll definitely be interesting to see how this plays out over the next few years.