Leonardo da Vinci – Self portrait
“Very mature and balanced view,” is a comment I received concerning last week’s post. The e-mail continues, “The maturity of the views expressed in today’s blog was extraordinary I think, and way out in front of the crowd. The reference to Peter Thiel was particularly apt.” I agree. So this week’s post is a continuation of last week’s guest blog post. The arc of the story underlying my ethnographic research is the strategic shift in support of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (“STEM”) and the implications for how students are preparing themselves as 21st century knowledge workers. This story of the ascendancy of STEM is juxtaposed to an emerging debate about the role of the humanities in American education and concerns about the STEM disciplines eclipsing humanities fields in relevance and career prospects. Interestingly, the wide toolbox skill-set is formed at the intersection of the humanities and technology.
Excerpts of the Q&A continued:
Extracurricular activities are an important part of the Yale undergraduate experience. Describe the extracurricular activities you are involved in, and why?
Design for America: I’m a studio leader of DFA, a club that aims to make local, social impact through interdisciplinary design. There are about 20 students in the club, who are divided into four project teams. Each project team is given a different design challenge at the beginning of the semester. Last year’s projects focused on education, natural disaster relief, homelessness, and improving quality of life for the blind. Every other week, we hold studio-wide workshops where we walk teams through the different steps of Design for America’s design process. The focus is on going out into the field and getting a good grasp of the users’ needs before you start designing for them. The DFA process is a way of making sure that teams develop a very deep understanding of the problem they’re working on before they dive straight into brainstorming solutions.
I’m involved in this club for a few reasons. One, because I really enjoy working in interdisciplinary teams on problems that really matter. It’s a little frustrating that we spend so much time in classes working on problem sets and homework assignments and not that much time engaging with the surrounding community. DFA gives me an opportunity to use design—a considered approach to problem solving—to help make an impact in people’s lives. I’m also very interested in DFA from an organizational design perspective. It’s a huge challenge to take 20 freshmen, split them into teams, teach them about design, and keep them motivated for eight months to keep working on their project. The process of figuring out how to best run this mini-organization has been very fun and rewarding.
Describe your view of the Center for Engineering, Innovation and Design as a physical place, and a place to garner intellectual inspiration.
I’m in the CEID all the time. Design for America as well as the magazine that I’m editor-in-chief of hold their meetings there. It’s a really exciting place to be because everyone is working on such crazy, interesting things. This semester I saw everything from a Mars Rover, to a quad-copter, to a violin that was being played with an electric transducer rather than strings. I often describe the CEID as an “aquarium of creators” because the giant glass wall reminds me of a fish tank. Tourists peer in and tap on the glass when they walk by. The CEID opened my freshman year, so I’ve sort of grown up with it in a way. My experience at Yale would certainly be a lot different without the CEID. It’s a constant reminder to me that people are working on interesting things, and I should be too! The atmosphere and the creativity is contagious. It’s hard to describe, but being there really makes me want to make things. I also associate the CEID with Joe Zinter, who has been one of my mentors throughout my college career thus far. He’s one of the most creative, thoughtful people I’ve met at Yale so far. The CEID is in many ways an embodiment of him.
How would you describe the intellectual environment at Yale?
I’d say the intellectual environment at Yale varies as a function of what you study. I’m generalizing here, but Math/Computer Science people tend to be very dedicated to what they’re studying and less concerned about their GPAs. There’s a website where the Computer Science department posts advice from past students to future CS majors. One of the most common suggestions is that it doesn’t matter what grades you get in the classes, so long as you really learn. I think the Political Science/Econ folks don’t really see it that way at all. They’re very focused on GPA because most of the jobs they’re going for (Wall Street/consulting) have GPA cutoffs. As a result, they’re more likely to take “gut classes” (easy classes) and not be as intellectually engaged. I’m making huge generalizations, of course, but this seems to be the trend at least from my experience. Overall, people seem to be very curious and interested in things.
But Yale is also definitely not filled with stereotypical nerds who spend all day talking about their classes. I think Brad Rosen, a professor of a class I took called Law Technology & Culture, put it best: “Assume everyone is silently brilliant until proven otherwise.”
I have stated that the rising junior who has been featured here and in last week’s post is emblematic of the wide toolbox metaphor. He is cutting edge and innovative in how he is going about preparing himself as a future leader of 21st century knowledge workers. Thinking strategically about the cohort that he is a part of, I will attempt to answer a set of questions:
- Which larger population are they representative of?
- How representative are they of the Yale student body?
- In what ways are they distinct?
- What do they have in common with the general student body?
- What do they have in common with other students who are developing a wide toolbox?
- What are the critical demographics among students who are developing a wide toolbox?