 "Photo: SARAH MINOR/MANITOU MESSENGER")
Last April, a team of St. Olaf students won the National Rube Goldberg Machine Contest, where students compete to build a machine that does a simple task in a complicated way.
St. Olaf was the only school in the competition without an engineering program and the only non-engineering college to ever bring home the title.
Our squad was comprised of scholars who hailed from many departments, who laughed in the face of adversity and created a machine performing 260 ridiculous steps. The creativity and ingenuity of the winning machine set it apart from the clearly inferior competition.
“I think why we really won is because we used physics demonstrations instead of just engineering tricks,” physics major Joe Scaramuzza ‘10 said. “We showed both the ability to build a working machine and the knowledge of the theoretical science behind it.”
The success of St. Olaf’s Rube Goldberg team raises the question of whether or not we should invest in an engineering department. We clearly have students with the ability and motivation to succeed in a rigorous undergraduate engineering program, but is it best for the school?
An engineering program would be expensive and expansive. Sure, we have a beautiful new science center, but it was not designed for engineering. All the labs are already being used by existing departments, so the new program would need new space.
It would also require new equipment – which at other schools (state schools especially) is paid for by commercial companies. These companies have special relationships with the schools they sponsor, using the department’s resources for research and development.
“You can’t have a single engineering department. There is chemical engineering, aerospace engineering, industrial engineering, nautical engineering and genetic engineering, to name a few,” physics major Corwin Haapala ‘10 said.
The initial investment would be huge. More faculty and building space would be needed, not to mention that we would probably need to admit more students to fill the department, creating a need for more housing and adding to the already crowded cafeteria scene (a subject for a different article).
Plus, we already have the option of enrolling in a 3-2 engineering program, which offers students three years at St. Olaf followed by two years at either Washington University in St. Louis or the University of Minnesota. In the end, students walk away with a B.A. from St. Olaf and a B.S. in engineering from their host university.
This program, along with the possibility of attending graduate school for engineering, shows that just because you go to St. Olaf doesn’t mean you can’t become an engineer. Investing in a new department would be expensive and unnecessary.
Although currently it might not be practical for St. Olaf to create an engineering program, does that really mean that we shouldn’t aspire to have one someday?
Engineering is considered one of the world’s most-needed professional skills. Many of the world’s problems – sustainability, the worldwide water shortage and the quest for renewable energy – are issues that engineers work to address. They are also issues that many St. Olaf students feel passionately about.
Plus, by having an engineering program, we could attract a talented demographic of students who are only looking at schools that offer engineering degrees. It could raise our prestige and increase national exposure of St. Olaf.
Engineering has never been a large part of what St. Olaf, as a liberal arts college, is all about. It’s not in our well-rounded, multi-departmental blood. This being said, we have already mentioned that Oles can and have become successful engineers. After all, we won the Rube Goldberg Machine Contest.
For the win.
Matthew Geisendorfer-Lindgren ‘10 (geisendo@stolaf.edu) is from Maple Grove, Minn. He majors in math and religion. Olaf Samuelson ‘10 (samueloj@stolaf.edu) is from Albert Lea, Minn. He is a CIS film studies major.
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