The Alumni Magazine for Worcester Polytechnic Institute. (WPI)
Issue link: http://wpialumnimag.epubxp.com/i/65892
Shelley's Frankenstein. "I often tell students that Victor Franken- stein would never have received his diploma from WPI because while he did a beautiful MQP, he did a terrible IQP," says Schachterle. "He never considered the moral implica- tions before creating the creature and, in fact, he ran away from those questions." In the four decades Schachterle has been teaching modern literature, students have applied its lessons to all sorts of sticky ethi- cal, moral, and social situations—including developing a code of ethics for robotics en- gineers. Four students took on that task for their IQP, with Schachterle and Professor Charles Rich advising. Ŕ6LQFH URERWLFV LV D QHZ ƂHOG DQG ZHŒUH making products that can make decisions RQ WKHLU RZQ VD\V ,43 WHDP PHPEHU %UDQ- GRQ ,QJUDP ZH IHOW WKHUH ZDV D QHHG IRU DQ ethical code." The students modeled their work after the ethics developed by the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers and the Association for Computing Machinery. 7KH\ VXEPLWWHG WKHLU ƂQDO SDSHU LQ Since then, their code of ethics has been cited in several research papers. "It's pretty gratifying to know that people have actually read our IQP," says Ingram. SPINNING SHADOWS OR DIRTY HANDS? Charlie Mezak was in full retreat from the humanities when he transferred to WPI in 2006 from the University of Edinburgh, where he had been a philosophy major. His epiphany came one morning when he woke up with what he calls an "intellectual hangover" resulting from a night of argu- ing with a visiting professor who contend- ed that the shadow of a spinning object also spins. The utter pointlessness of the debate FRQYLQFHG 0H]DN WR ƂQG D PRUH SUDFWLFDO outlet for his energy. "I awoke wondering what I spent the last 12 hours of my life doing?" he remembers. "It felt so irrelevant and unimportant. I ZDQWHG WR ƂQG D ZD\ WR VWXG\ WKDW ZRXOG actually uncover something new and use- ful and not just a bunch of ivory tower stuff about how we should speak about things." He left Edinburgh and began searching for a school where he could "get his hands dirty." Mezak's father, Steve, a 1978 graduate of WPI, reminded his son that Dad's alma mater offered a project-based curriculum, which will surely get his hands dirty. It seemed just what Charlie Mezak was look- ing for. He enrolled as a system dynamics major. Because his prior course work in SKLORVRSK\ VDWLVƂHG WKH +8$ UHTXLUHPHQW he planned to stay far away from the hu- department building [Salisbury Labs] is lo- cated literally in the center of this campus." CREATING A BETTER TECHNOLOGIST With the nation's competitive edge begin- QLQJ WR VKULQN LQ WKH ƂHOGV RI VFLHQFH DQG technology, many question the value of teaching the humanities at the expense of a more rigorous STEM curriculum. Boudreau argues that ignoring history, literature, phi- losophy, languages, and the arts comes at a great cost to society; there must be room for both. "There's a lot of hand wringing about whether the liberal arts are relevant any- " Victor Frankenstein would never have received his diploma from WPI because while he did a beautiful MQP, he did a terrible IQP." manities. Except he couldn't rein in his interests—assistant professor Thomas Rob- ertson's class in U.S. environmental history caught his eye. It didn't take long for Mezak to discover that while he wanted to immerse himself in the technical, he was most engaged when he could step back and ask what he calls the "really big questions." And WPI was the per- fect place for him to do that. "The humanities department is constant- ly responding to and interpreting things that are going on in science and technol- ogy," says Mezak, who graduated in 2009 with a degree in environmental history. "I don't know if it was intentional, but the PRUH HVSHFLDOO\ LQ D IDLOLQJ HFRQRP\ VKH VD\V EXW DW :3, LWŒV UHDOO\ ZRYHQ LQWR WKH fabric. There's an understanding that if you don't know something about the human context, you're probably only going to be a second-rate engineer or scientist." Mezak says he learned that lesson in Namibia, where his IQP team worked with the Desert Research Foundation to help identify water management issues in the Fish River Basin. Using waterless toilets was an obvious solu- tion, but, as it turns out, one that was cul- turally unacceptable. The students quickly understood that their recommendations were worthless unless they took into ac- count the population's cultural beliefs as Spring 2012 43