The McCormick School of Engineering currently is underranked but can easily improve its collective picture by becoming less isolated, newly appointed Dean Julio Ottino told about 70 students Monday afternoon in a lecture held in Room L211 of the Technological Institute.
In a lecture that was mostly attended by engineering students, Ottino discussed his views about the current state of McCormick and his plans for improving the school’s overall education and national rankings.
“Whatever we do, we have do it with excellence,” Ottino said. “If we are not excellent in what we do, then there is no point in doing it.”
Ottino was promoted in January from being a professor of chemical and biological engineering. At that time, he stressed making McCormick more competitive.
Ottino began his speech by comparing faculty, undergraduate and graduate student numbers with peer institutions like Stanford University, California Institute of Technology and Massachusetts Institute of Technology and asked students to think about how to be more like those universities.
Ottino said periods of innovation in the technological world are becoming shorter and stressed students’ need to be adaptable to changing “waves” in order to be successful.
“It’s almost safe to say that all of you will leave (NU) surfing one of those waves,” Ottino said. “But if you think you’ll be in those waves for the next ten years, you’re dreaming. Let’s face it, if you are hired for one thing, you are not going to stay doing that one thing forever.”
The school also needs to work on increasing communication between its major departments as well as among alumni, peer institutions and other schools in the university, Ottino said.
“(Our) departments are still much too compartmentalized,” he said. “It’s good to care about your department, but sometimes you need to open the blinds and see how others are doing.”
Ottino also said he wants to communicate with other schools in the university to make students more adaptable to the fluctuations of the market and better prepared to “jump waves.” He said he wants McCormick students “to escape into public policy careers and exploit media resources like those in Medill.”
After his presentation, Ottino engaged in a 20-minute question-and-answer session with students in the audience. Some students questioned Ottino’s priorities of national rankings and research rather than education, but Ottino responded that the two bring more benefits.
“Why be on top? Because (then) everything comes easier to the school,” he said. “You will be able to recruit and retain faculty, and drive the system more effectively. You can be fantastic at teaching, but that will not change the rankings.”
Many students who attended the presentation said they agreed with his goals to improve rankings and research but wish he would make education a top priority as well.
“Teaching (at McCormick) isn’t at its highest quality right now and he didn’t emphasize the importance of improving it in his speech,” said McCormick junior Bill Padula. “But his goals to improve research and his reorganizing methods are good.”
Ottino discussed his vision for McCormick with faculty Thursday, but he said he wanted students to know how things work administratively.
“They should be aware that things don’t happen capriciously,” he said. “I didn’t want them to feel like characters in a play by Kafka, where things happen but they don’t know why they happen to them.”
Reach Allan Madrid at [email protected].
