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Introducing the Olin Learning Lab! 

Join us for a series of content-rich seminars designed to build your skills and enrich your knowledge on a range of topics. The best part? The seminars are led by Olin alumni. Our lineup of virtual summer and fall seminars range in topic from Thermodynamics to Software Engineering. This is an opportunity to spend some time with Olin alumni, gaining access to lessons they have learned on the job and in grad school.  At Olin, the learning doesn’t end with graduation.  

These learning labs are part of lifelong learning and are designed to be multi-faceted. Join to enrich your own professional development, your curiosity, or just for fun.  The time commitment for an Olin Learning Lab seminar can be as little as a few hours to a deeper dive requiring more of a time commitment. These are live, virtual seminars – and will be recorded in case you have to miss a meeting.  

Entrepreneurship

Lee Edwards ‘07, Leif Jentoft ‘09,  Hari Iyer ‘13 

Entrepreneurship can mean innovation inside a company, at your own early stage startup, or at someone else's. In this introductory session, Hari, Leif, and Lee will explore innovation in each of these areas, and discuss which approach might be right for you. This is a precursor to a longer seminar series later this year which will explore these topics in more detail. This session will cover key venture concepts, as we begin to take a holistic look at entrepreneurship. 

Tuesday, January 25 7-9 pm ET (Virtual); 1 hour of shared learning (20 min from each) and 1 hour optional discussion/Q&A 

Audience: Anyone who hasn’t (or has!) founded a startup and is interested in entrepreneurship 

About this team: 

  •  Leif co-founded a fast-growing warehouse robotics company called RightHand Robotics in Boston, after he finished a graduate program in robotics at Harvard. 

  • Hari founded two startups - one in construction and one in childcare that was acquired a couple years ago. He now runs a new internal innovation division at Cisco that is their version of Google X.  

  •  Lee has been the first employee at a small e-commerce startup acquired by Groupon, and CTO of a larger rapid-growth one. He is now a partner at a hard tech focused VC firm. 

Register

How to Get the Computer Science Job of Your Dreams

Jonah Spear ‘19

Are you stressing about getting that summer internship? Your first job after college? I will cover practical advice that will help you reach your career goals. In addition, we’ll make sure that your career goals align with your personal mission. Topics covered include strategies for getting a great internship/job, the CS career ladder, and resume Do's and Don'ts - from someone in the field. 

Wed, Jan 26th, 8pm ET
Hybrid: at SLAC in the Library *and* on Zoom!

About Jonah:  

Jonah Spear ‘19 is a Software Engineer based in Boston. He currently works at a small software development consulting firm, and before that, he worked at Tableau and Amazon. While at Olin, Jonah was the Representative to Operations on CORe and heavily involved in music. 

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Ethics in Technology

Shane Skikne and Evan Dorsky – Class of ‘16 

Technology work is full of choices with ethical implications, but ethics often ride below the surface, out of view. This seminar series will offer talks from tech leaders who have identified ethical dilemmas in their own work and taken stances. The series will also provide cognitive tools and background for reasoning about ethical dilemmas latent in technology work, forming and justifying your own opinions, discussing them with others, and changing your own mind. 
 
Alongside talks from speakers, the series will host full group and small breakout discussions to give every student an opportunity to learn from each others’ perspectives on ethics in technology and refine their own points of view. 
 

Audience: 

  • Olin Students, Faculty and Alumni + Babs/Wellesley Students and Professors.  We’re looking for a variety of perspectives. 
  • Ideally, you have spent some time at a tech company, not necessarily in a technical role 
  • You've come across something in your work that made you wonder whether your company was doing the right thing, or whether your work may have the potential to cause harm. Maybe you have a specific concern you’d like to discuss
  • You’re looking for techniques for articulating and raising your concern, forming an opinion, grounding it, and standing by it, discussing it with coworkers / stakeholders 

Thursdays 8 – 9:30 PM ET  - Optional zoom hangout after    

February 3, 10, 24, and March 3


HYBRID EVENT – Participants welcome on zoom and in person (Virtual for now) 
(Interested in hosting a watch party? Contact PGP!) 

About Shane and Evan: 

  • Shane Skikne is currently a Senior Software Engineer at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative where he works on the Summit Learning Platform. Between CZI and Olin, he co-founded a small non-profit that developed and taught courses combining entrepreneurship, design, and fabrication for their partner schools. 

  • Evan Dorsky is an engineer currently taking a sabbatical from tech work. After Olin, Evan spent three years in the autonomous technologies group at Apple before joining an early sensor hardware startup as a founding engineer. He enjoys reading media studies literature, learning about climate tech, and engaging with new perspectives on tech and culture. 

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Registration

Space is limited. Rolling registrations will be processed as space is available in each seminar. If the seminar is at capacity, you may join the waitlist and will be notified if a spot becomes available. Questions? Contact Sally.Phelps@olin.edu or Kristin.Casasanto@olin.edu.

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Interested in Teaching?

NOTE: If you are interested in teaching a future seminar, please contact Kristin Casasanto and Sally Phelps.  The topic can be technical or non-technical. If you enjoy it, your fellow alumni, parents, and students probably will too!

The Olin Revolution

 

A look at Olin College's inspiring culture and mission to revolutionize engineering education.