History
Olin College is named for Franklin W. Olin (1860–1951), an engineer, entrepreneur, and professional baseball player. He founded the company known today as the Olin Corporation, a Fortune 1000 company.
In 1938, Mr. Olin transferred a large part of his personal wealth to a private philanthropic foundation. In 1997, the Foundation announced its intention to create Olin College, a total commitment of $460 million, one of the largest grants in the history of American higher education. The Foundation’s generosity enabled Olin to start from a “clean slate” in designing its academic program. The faculty worked with 30 student “partners” in the year prior to the formal opening of the college to design the curriculum.
The college welcomed its first freshman class in August 2002 and graduated its first class in May 2006. Members of that class and subsequent classes have gone on to graduate study and employment at many of the nation’s top graduate schools and corporations. A significant proportion of the graduates have started entrepreneurial ventures, while others have sought alternative post-graduate occupations.
In creating the college, the Foundation was responding to calls for fundamental reform of engineering education from the National Science Foundation, the National Academy of Engineering, the accrediting organizations and the corporate community. To better prepare graduates for the challenges of the twenty-first century, these groups recommended that engineering education include more project-based learning, interdisciplinary teaching, and a greater emphasis on entrepreneurship, teamwork and communication. Olin College incorporated these suggestions, along with creative ideas of its own, into an innovative, hands-on curriculum that is attracting worldwide attention as a new model for engineering education.
Engineering education at Olin is in the liberal arts tradition, with a strong emphasis on the arts, humanities, social sciences, entrepreneurship, and design. Olin is committed to producing graduates who recognize the complexity of the world, who appreciate the relationship of their work to society and who are dedicated to creative enterprises for the good of humankind.
In 1999, Richard K. Miller was appointed Olin’s first president and first employee. Over the next 21 years, he guided the college to being ranked among the top two undergraduate engineering schools in the country by US News & World Report. Miller stepped down from his role leading the unique engineering college on June 30, 2020, and became President Emeritus and Professor Emeritus of Mechanical Engineering.
On July 1, 2020, Gilda A. Barabino became Olin’s second president and Professor of Biomedical and Chemical Engineering. The arrival of Olin’s next president offered an opportunity for the community to reflect on the accomplishments of the college’s first decade, to recommit to the founding values of innovation and collaboration, and to set an ambitious agenda for Olin’s future. Under Barabino's leadership, Olin has increased its representation of women and people of color among faculty and students under its mission of “Engineering for everyone,” where engineering is open to all, and engineering is done in service of everyone.