Leadership

Olin College is a residential, undergraduate, engineering college that provides a hands-on engineering education grounded in human-centered design. Olin has 350 students, 39 full-time faculty members, and no departments. With a vision for “Engineering for Everyone,” Olin seeks to to change who identifies as engineers and what counts as engineering. In a 2018 MIT-commissioned report on “The Global State of the Art in Engineering Education,” Olin was ranked first, just above MIT, in the list of “current leaders in engineering education.”

 

Caitrin has served in several leadership roles in her nearly 20 years at Olin. These have included chairing the Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences committee and chairing the Reappointment and Promotion committee.

Most recently, Caitrin was Dean of Faculty at Olin College from July 2021 to September 2023.

The responsibilities in this role included the following:

 

  • Support the work of faculty to create and sustain transformative educational experiences focused on engineering, access, and equity. 

  • Provide developmental support to faculty, including feedback on teaching effectiveness and mentoring partnerships.

  • Supervise nearly 60 direct reports, including full-time faculty (39), adjuncts, visitors, and Academic Life staff.

  • Hire and support new faculty (seven faculty on long-term tracks, and roughly a dozen faculty on visiting or adjunct positions).

  • Provide annual reviews (evaluative and developmental) of faculty performance.

  • Make recommendations to the President regarding reappointments and promotions. 

  • Assign faculty to service roles in the College, aligning faculty goals and the college’s needs.

  • Collaborate with the Provost to create initiatives to advance Olin’s 2022 Strategic Plan.

  • Support faculty-led curricular change work to advance Olin’s 2022 Strategic Plan.

  • Liaise with the Board of Trustees on curricular and faculty topics; represent the interests of the faculty to the Board of Trustees.

  • Collaborate with the Provost on decisions about College topics including faculty salaries, summer grant funding, and sabbatical requests.

  • Co-lead with the Provost the process for assessing teaching load and assignments (in light of co-teaching and variable class sizes).      

  • Approve and support teaching assignments and scheduling.

  • Support Academic Life staff instructors.

  • Liaise with Human Resources.

  • Co-lead the College Council (leadership group to facilitate communication across the College leadership).

  • Co-lead the fall Convocation, and the related Summer Book Program (selecting the reading, convening and leading discussion groups, creating discussion questions and engagements).

  • Participate in the “Employee Experience” sub-team of the DEI Champions group, a Strategic Plan initiative to create conditions for thriving among all members of the Olin community (aligned with Olin’s Engineering for Everyone vision).

  • Serve as Olin representative to the EDGE Consortium. Representative to this group of women presidents and deans of the nation’s leading research universities and schools of engineering, working collaboratively to transform semiconductor-related education to be more accessible and aligned with industry workforce needs. An initiative in response to the CHIPS and Science Act. (January to August 2023.) https://www.edgeconsortium.org/.