Thinking about an AHS Capstone
Part of the engineering education at Olin is a required AHS or E! capstone. In Olin's life-long goal of making engineers that can do more than work from a cubical and stare at their shoes while conversing, we require that everyone undertake a substantial project in Arts, the Humanities, or Social science (AHS) or Entrepreneurship (E!).
Colin
I'm getting to the stage where I should have a plan for my capstone. I have pretty much no clue. I have tons of interests and not many humanities courses to draw from. I'm not even sure I want to do an AHS capstone. I might do Alight Learning or some other startup as an entrepreneurship capstone.
Regardless, I'm going to plan out an AHS capstone. Maybe I'll become addicted to the plan. Maybe I'll discover that AHS capstone is not for me, but E! is. Regardless, here are some ideas I have so far:
Ideas
* Acceptance of LGBT individuals in the field of engineering. What is the current state? Why? Are there characteristics of LGBT engineers that make them different from non engineering LGBT individuals? What effects do these factors have?
* US citizen perspectives on contributions to Global Warming. What metric do citizens use to judge global warming. How do citizens see their impact on global warming. How do data visualizations affect citizen opinions on global warming and their contribution. How can data visualizations be designed and used to help citizens be more objective and make better choices.
Note: this would have an experimentation aspect to the capstone. Something along the lines of user research, presented available data visualizations or creating simple ones of my own.
* Journalism and access to "reliable," "objective" information in the age of the internet. The internet is heralded as a new age in the free press, democratizing communication. How has journalism been effected by the internet. How does news information distributed on the internet differ from that that was distributed without the internet. How has the quality and objectivity of journalism changed as a result of the internet? Does wider access to information compensate for the hit to publishers and newspapers? What are the incentives for modern news information producers and what does this mean for world citizens?
* Higher education and its applicability to careers. What percentage (or other metric) of college requirements map to career requirements? Would better career focus during college result in higher career performance? How about career satisfaction? Should higher education be structured around a students career, or around their individual motivations and passions? How do degree requirements, standards, and accreditation requirements match the stated intentions for those requirements?
Interests
Psychology
Cognitive Science
Memory
Human motivation
Monetary Incentives
Distribution of wealth
Queer studies
Data visualization
Technology and its affect on society
Vector art
Open Source
Serious Games (IE Global Conflict Palestine)
Dystopian literature
Colin
