The expectations that I'm going to tell you about are shaped by my experience as a student, engineer, and teacher.
What is expected of you at WPI?
I expect you to work hard, be honest, and be intentional about your education.
You've probably heard people telling you how important it is to manage your time. How much time should you budget for each course?
As a student at WPI, learning is your job. A typical professional will spend 45 to 60 hours of work per week on the job. Divide that by the three courses a term that you'll usually be taking, and that's 15 to 20 hours per week for each course. Lectures are just a small part of that time, 4 or 5 hours per week. That leaves 10 to 15 hours per week outside of class.
Certainly there's homework, problems sets, maybe lab work to be done, and all that takes time. But more important to your understanding is the less structured, reflective time spent reading and discussing material.
By the way, how many of you spent 10 to 15 hours per week outside of class for each class in high school? Don't all raise your hands at once! Some of you may have breezed through high school pretty easily, and WPI will be the first time you struggle at school. If any of you ever find yourself struggling - that's a good sign! Don't worry -- you are not alone! There are lots of people here to help you - take the time to talk with someone: fellow students, peer learning assistants, graduate student teaching assistants, even your professors. Anyone who's struggling, and needs time to talk about what they're learning (or not learning) in my class, is welcome in my office.
I challenge my students to work hard because I believe they are capable of great things - and the students I have worked with have risen to the challenge time and time again. I know that you can, too.
The whole academic enterprise depends on an atmosphere of mutual respect and honesty between you and everyone around you: fellow students, professors, administrators, staff -- everyone. This is especially true at a school like WPI, where teamwork and group discussion are not only allowed but encouraged as essential parts of the educational process.
In each of your courses, the professor should state the academic honesty policy for that course. In my courses, I go by a simple general principle: what you present as your work should represent your understanding of the material. Other professors in other courses will have different policies. If you have any questions, talk to your professor!
Prof. Richard Vaz, a friend and colleague of mine in the ECE department, is fond of quoting William Cory, who said that "you go to a great school for self-knowledge." Two questions you might ask about yourself are:
First of all, how do you learn best?
A phrase you'll hear quite often at WPI is "learning how to learn." You're supposed to be here not just to learn about calculus, or chemistry, or physics -- but also for the larger purpose of "learning how to learn." I would sharpen that point to be "learning how YOU learn". Certainly there are different learning styles: some students learn best from a "hands-on" lab experience; some students pick up theory easily from a textbook; and I try to incorporate different styles in my teaching. But I'm talking about something deeper and even more personal.
For example: How do you motivate yourself to work hard and maintain an attitude of honesty and integrity even when times get tough? In my own experience as a student, the challenge has always been to find the appropriate balance of confidence -- and fear.
Confidence -- Yes, I can understand this!
Fear -- I'd better work hard to understand this!
Even as a professor, I walk this line in every course I teach. I want to tell my students, "The material in this course is simple -- you can understand it!" But as a student -- if I'm having a hard time understanding something the professor says is simple -- I'd feel pretty bad!
On the other hand, if I pound the table and say how difficult this course is going to be, and how hard you'll have to work -- some students will be so paralyzed by fear that they won't do as well as they could have.
Ultimately, we want you to succeed, and we're here to help you. We may not always strike the right balance -- but try to discover what works for you -- and talk to us!
For the second question, what do you want to learn? Let me tell you a story ...
By now, you've heard about the projects program at WPI - the Sufficiency, the IQP, and the MQP. Most of the projects I advise are MQPs. The Major Qualifying Project, usually done during the senior year, is the "capstone" design experience that demonstrates the student's ability to pull together knowledge from different subdisciplines of the major field, and solve a "real world" problem.
In the past few years, all of the MQPs I've advised have been supported by local industry sponsors. I believe this is beneficial to my students, since the these sponsored MQPs are an even better demonstration of "real world" engineering.
Usually, we'll start the project with a "kickoff" meeting at the sponsor's facility. The student team and I will meet with the sponsor's engineering and management team to go over the project and why it's important. Often we'll get a tour of the sponsor's facility after the meeting. I look forward to these tours, because they show students that what I'm teaching in my courses and projects is actually useful in the "real world". It's also a great way for students to become aware of different career options.
On one of these tours at a local semiconductor manufacturer, three students and I followed as a member of the engineering staff guided us around the building.
"Here's the wafer fabrication area" we were told. We looked into a clean room and saw technicians handling the silicon wafers - "Just like the wafers I showed in my advanced analog design course" I thought to myself.
"Here's the test area." We watched as engineers programmed automated machinery to test amplifier chips. And I thought, "testing for specifications that students learn about in my junior level course."
"Here's product engineering." The oscilloscopes and test instrumentation in this lab should certainly look familiar to the students who have been though my labs, I thought!
And finally, "Here's the design area." We looked out over a sea of cubicles, each with a high-powered workstation on the desk. As I basked in the glow of all these electrical engineering career options presented so effectively to the students in my project team, I overheard one student whisper to another:
"I could never do this for a living."
And the other student nodded in agreement!
You're here not just to get good grades, but more importantly to find out what you can do for a living for the next several years of your life, and maybe even something you enjoy doing for a living. There are so many things to occupy your time and attention here -- don't just get swept along in trying to get good grades. Don't get me wrong -- there's nothing wrong with good grades! But do take the time, once in a while, to reflect, to be intentional, to be aware of what's going on in your education.
And if you don't know, right now, what you want to do - don't worry! Those two students are now happily well along into graduate study for careers that have little or nothing to do with electrical engineering. What they learned about electrical engineering wasn't as important as what they learned about themselves, and how they learned, in the course of getting their degree.
In conclusion, my expectation and hope for each of you:
Thank you for your time. Welcome to WPI! It's great to have you here!