STORY: Global Attendees Help Make Summer Studio 2025 an International Success

September 2, 2025

40+ participants from El Salvador, China, and Ukraine convened to work on educational design projects.

Summer Studio 2025 at Olin welcomed more than 40 participants from academic institutions around the world for an intensive project-based professional development experience.

With the theme of “Accelerating Educational Transformation through Curriculum and Culture,” Summer Studio brought international educators to Olin’s campus for five days to brainstorm on and develop an educational design project of their choosing. Project examples included building out the faculty and curriculum for a suite of new programs, learning about design thinking in the context of engineering education, and promoting a culture of entrepreneurship at an institution.

“Summer Studio is one of the highlights of the Olin year because we get to bring the community together to focus on the part of Olin’s mission to co-develop educational transformation with collaborators around the globe,” says Jess Charlap, program manager for Olin’s External Programs and Partnerships team. “Olin is a wonderful place to discover and develop effective learning approaches and environments, and part of our larger impact is sharing our successes (and failures!) with the rest of the engineering education ecosystem.”

Institutional participants included Key Institute from El Salvador; Shenzhen InnoX Academy, National Elite Institute of Engineering (Chongqing University), Central South University, Hunan University, and University of Science and Technology Beijing from China; and Kyiv School of Economics (KSE) from Ukraine, with whom Olin developed a multi-year intensive partnership this year to help them launch their own new undergraduate program.

“From day one, students learn not just technical skills, but how to work in teams, solve real problems, and build technologies that actually matter to people. It’s practical, intense, and very human. And the most exciting part? We’re bringing this model to Ukraine,” said Mariia Alipatova, CEO at Tova Industries and head of KSE’s Startup Ecosystem Incubator.

“[At Summer Studio], we explored their approach to project-based learning, which was a real eye-opener,” says Mariia Alipatova, CEO at Tova Industries and head of KSE’s Startup Ecosystem Incubator. “From day one, students learn not just technical skills, but how to work in teams, solve real problems, and build technologies that actually matter to people. It’s practical, intense, and very human. And the most exciting part? We’re bringing this model to Ukraine.”

Thanks in part to their learnings at Summer Studio, KSE is launching their new engineering program this fall. KSE will begin by emulating Olin’s Partner Year, in which a small group of students will spend a year assisting in the development of the college’s programs prior to being matriculated as full-time students.

Christopher Lee, professor of mechanical engineering, and Joanne C. Pratt, professor of biological sciences, were faculty co-leads on the programming this year, which included one-on-one coaching from and interaction with Olin faculty, staff, and students. Highlights included a workshop on the Goals, Activities, Products, and Assessments (GAPA) framework by Rob Martello, professor of the history of science and technology, and one on storytelling by Jonathan Adler, professor of psychology, and Gillian Epstein, associate professor of English.

“Participants often come to Summer Studio to learn the ‘secret sauce’ that makes Olin Olin—what they find is that it doesn't exist because every institution is different,” says Lee. “What they do learn is a different way to look at engineering education, as well as tools they can use to create change at their own schools that fits their unique size, culture, and goals.”

“What they do learn is a different way to look at engineering education, as well as tools they can use to create change at their own schools that fits their unique size, culture, and goals," said Christopher Lee, professor of mechanical engineering. 

According to Rob Martello, the Summer Studio welcomes participants into the Olin course and curriculum design process, supported by Olin examples. “The ‘GAPA’ workshop offers our visitors a menu of tools and approaches that Olin faculty use to clarify and prioritize our learning goals, which we then use to design engaging class activities and effective assessment approaches. We use a bunch of Olin courses to illustrate the wide variety of possible teaching strategies - this is not “one size fits all.” Participants love to roll up their sleeves and start designing projects and programs that suit their unique learning environments.”

Beyond Olin’s campus, Summer Studio participants also got to explore other higher education environments including MIT, Harvard, and Babson to give them an even broader experience.

“I [came] back home with a head full of ideas, lots of questions, and a deep sense of excitement about what’s ahead,” says Alipatova. “If this is what the future of engineering education looks like—collaborative, hands-on, and human-centered—then it’s a direction well worth moving toward.”