Olin College

The purpose of Olin's academic partnerships is to enhance Olin students' opportunities for learning, growth and career development. Our closest partner is also our closest neighbor: Babson College. Babson, known for its commitment to innovation and entrepreneurship, is the perfect partner for an engineering college that wants to incorporate business and entrepreneurial thinking into its curriculum. Strong relationships also exist with other local colleges and with local industry.

Babson College Partnership

The Olin/Babson partnership builds on exciting synergies between business and engineering to enhance the resources and opportunities available to both institutions for innovative teaching, learning and research. For example, Babson faculty members are collaborating with Olin to provide liberal arts instruction in the Olin "foundation" (the first two years of Olin's academic program). Additionally, the Olin faculty is working closely with the Babson faculty to develop modules in entrepreneurship and business basics that can be integrated into the Olin curriculum. Joint planning is underway for a junior/senior level entrepreneurship program. The two institutions have also made several joint faculty appointments, and sponsor a joint academic center, the Sloan Center for OnLine Education (SCOLE).

Three College Collaboration

The Three-College Collaboration is a joint effort among Babson, Olin, and Wellesley Colleges. The goals of the collaboration are to:

• Expand educational opportunities for students
• Develop interdisciplinary approaches to teaching and problem solving
• Facilitate faculty research and teaching projects across campuses
• Assist one another in administrative functions

The vision behind the three-college collaboration is to provide our students with the creative and collaborative skills, knowledge, and ways of thinking needed to function successfully today and into the future. The global challenges of our time, which will define the world our graduates enter, are complex and inherently interdisciplinary, and require teamwork. Because of the distinctive strengths of each of the institutions involved and the leadership commitment from the three presidents, we are well poised to address these issues from varying perspectives and to engage students in cross-disciplinary and collaborative ways. The new collaboration moves beyond the activities of most consortia by taking advantage of the schools’ complementary curricula to create innovative approaches to student learning and problem solving and to provide all students with the tools to work across disciplines.

Visit the BOW website for more information.

Other Collegiate Partnerships

Olin has cross-registration agreements with Wellesley College and Brandeis University to increase the academic offerings available to Olin students in the natural sciences, arts, humanities and social sciences.

Partnerships with Industry

As you move through the Olin program, our hands-on approach is designed to provide you with increasing opportunities for corporate experiences and real-world learning. Olin has reached out to the local high-tech community, home to some of the most innovative companies in the world, to provide these learning experiences. Olin is currently developing opportunities for internships, corporate sponsorship of research and design projects and, ultimately, permanent positions. Moreover, the college is seeking to involve corporations and corporate leaders in the development of the college in such areas as curriculum, career planning and student recruitment.

Study Away Partnerships

The Committee on Study Away has negotiated direct exchange agreements with ten institutions:

• Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (Santiago, Chile)
• King Mongkut's University of Technology Thonburi (Thonburi, Thailand)
• College of the Atlantic (Bar Harbor, Maine)
• Universidad Adolfo Ibánez (Chile)
• KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology)
• La Rochelle School of Industrial Systems Engineering (France)
• Information and Communications University (Daejeon, South Korea)
• The Department of Signals and Systems at Chalmers University of Technology (Sweden)

These no-tuition exchanges are one of three groups of opportunities for Olin students to study off-campus for a semester. The other two are: (1) pre-approved programs at more than 30 institutions around the world, and (2) self-designed programs approved by the Committee on Study Away and the Course Substitution & Transfer Board. The Committee hopes to expand the list of direct exchange partnerships, especially in Asia and Australia.