Sketch Model / Presented by Olin College of Engineering

In episode six of Sketch Model, Sara is joined by Olin colleague Erhardt Graeff, assistant professor of social and computer science. In the series so far, we've talked with theorists and historians about why engineering education struggles to include contextual and ethical concerns and about what it looks like in concrete practice to mix ideas in the arts and humanities with engineering in the classroom. In this final episode, Sara and Erhardt discuss the horizon for engineering education as ...

In episode five of Sketch Model, Sara is joined by Olin colleague Amon Millner, associate professor of computing and innovation and director of the EASE Lab (i.e. extending access to STEM empowerment). In the episode, Sara and Amon talk about how Amon got his start as a young person, why the performing arts mix so well with code, and how he's built a technology lab that reaches both college students and school-aged kids. Millner trained at the University of Southern California, at Georgia Tec...

In episode four of Sketch Model, Sara is joined by Mimi Onuoha, an artist and creative technologist who also held a creative residency at Olin as part of the Sketch Model program on Olin's campus. In the episode, Sara and Mimi explore what happens when technologies find their way into art forms, and when questions—strong, open-ended questions—are a hallmark of creative practice, in the things we build and in classrooms where we teach. Sketch Model / Presented by Olin College of Engineering ...

In episode three of Sketch Model, Sara is joined by Olin College's Lynn Andrea Stein, professor of computer and cognitive science. In this episode, the podcast takes a look at the origins of our own institution: Olin College of Engineering. Olin was started a little over 20 years ago to reinvent engineering education for the 21st century. What would engineers need to know and experience? And then what kinds of curricular structures might bring those ideas to life? There was a partner year bef...

In episode two of Sketch Model, Sara is joined by scholars Matthew Wisnioski and James Malazita, as the series takes a look at the history of engineering education to find some clues about how we got to the familiar pattern of depoliticization in engineering education. Why do social and political concerns about technology come up regularly for engineers only to be smothered pretty easily, by a sense that technological progress is inevitable and impossible to tame? Wisnioski is an interdisci...

In episode one of Sketch Model, Sara is joined by Erin Cech, associate professor of sociology at the University of Michigan, where she also has an appointment in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. Cech, who's been looking under the hood at engineering education for a long time, has found some counterintuitive and troubling things happening in the engineering classroom. In this episode she'll tell us about it: how engineering students grow less interested in social and civic matters ove...

There are lots of podcasts about the ethics of technology, but Sketch Model is different. During this special 6-part series, host Sara Hendren and her guests will zero in on engineering education and the classroom as a formative site that shapes the ethics of technology. How do students in the much lauded STEM field learn to address the humanistic concerns about technology? The "why" and "should" questions about what they make, whether in code or with robotics or AI. How is it that social and...