Strategic Initiative: Transitional Graduation Requirements Team

Update: June 2023

Goal 4: An Engine for Change

Creating an Impact-centered Education and advancing our mission of broader educational transformation both require that we create curricular and operational structures that enable ongoing experimentation and learning and that facilitate our connection to and collaboration with others who aspire to transform engineering education.

To that end, for the past year Olin has engaged in an examination of Transitional Graduation Requirements (TGR).

The TGR system is a proposed new approach to graduation requirements that will serve the needs of current students and maintain Olin’s accreditation status while creating an opportunity for developing a strategically-oriented curriculum. 

In February of 2023, Olin faculty voted affirmatively on the first component of the TGR system that involves shifting from a course-based requirement structure to a set of specific learning outcomes that can be obtained through a variety of course options. Once a learning outcome-based structure is implemented, required learning outcomes will be diffused throughout course content. This framework will allow for more flexibility in which courses can be taken to satisfy learning outcome requirements and will empower faculty to develop courses that incorporate learning experiences and outcomes in new and interesting ways. 

Following the February vote, the Academic Recommendation Board (the ARB) presented to the faculty almost weekly to address different facets of potential systems that would replace the course-based requirements.  The culmination of this work was the May all-day faculty retreat. The retreat focused on curriculum change processes, but also with an eye toward a potential direction for TGRs. The retreat concluded with a strong signal from the faculty supporting a Maximum Flexibility version for TGRs. 

The next phase of the project is to identify all the learning experiences that students will be required to complete and map them to existing and future courses. If approved by the end of the fall 2023 semester, the new TGR system and list of required learning experiences will take effect in the 2024-25 academic year.