Clarkson Magazine

Spanning Old Boundaries in A New Global Age

How Clarkson is transforming the learning experience to produce leaders for the 21st century

Undergraduate Civil Engineering major
Chase Gerbig, graduate student
Matthew Fox, and advisor Prof. Stefan
Grimberg collect water and soil samples
as part of an NFS-funded
multidisciplinary research project.

Step by step, across the curriculum and in extracurricular activities, too, undergraduate learning at Clarkson is being transformed through innovative new majors, courses, programs and opportunities geared to the rapidly evolving needs of society. Spanning traditional boundaries and creating new connections, education in all three schools — Arts & Sciences, Business and Engineering — mirrors the changing world so that young Clarkson alumni continue to hit the ground running in the fast lane.

Fundamental academic rigor remains the foundation of professional preparation in all of our majors," says President Anthony G. Collins. "But we are creating new opportunities to broaden the knowledge, skills and perspectives of our students. More and more, learning at Clarkson involves teamwork that spans disciplines. It emphasizes hands-on, real-world experiences and a collaborative approach to solving problems, whether that challenge is in running a business or researching a new nanomaterial.

Junior Alison Johnson hiked
along the Great Wall of China
during a semester abroad at
City University of Hong Kong.

"And beyond our classrooms and laboratories," he says, "we are augmenting traditional learning with professionally oriented extracurricular activities, co-op and internship work experiences, and study abroad. At Clarkson, none of these experiences in itself is new, but we are systematically building on our traditions and expanding opportunities to define an approach that is putting the University at the national forefront in higher education."

Multidisciplinary Courses

Clarkson's leadership is being noticed by foundations that support the most promising new curricula in the nation through funding competition. Consider two examples from the past semester:

Virtual Product Development — In March the Procter & Gamble Fund announced a $150,000 grant to support Clarkson's development of a multidisciplinary course in virtual product development. The project is leveraging virtual reality (VR) technology to test market new products and packing in lieu of producing actual prototypes. Led by Associate Professor James Carroll of Electrical and Computer Engineering, this collaboration also involves faculty and students in the departments of Communication & Media, Computer Science, Mechanical & Aeronautical Engineering, Software Engineering, and Interdisciplinary Engineering & Management. It is one of just three curriculum projects in the nation to win P&G Fund support.

The Clarkson student
chapter of the Collegiate
Entrepreneurs Organization
(CEO) has won eight national
awards in three years.

Expanding Entrepreneurship Education — In May the Coleman Foundation announced a $150,000 award to support strengthening and broadening of Clarkson's highly acclaimed entrepreneurship program, ranked by Entrepreneur Magazine as one of the top 50 in the nation. Expansion of the program under Director Marc Compeau will include more opportunities for participation by students majoring in Engineering and Arts & Sciences. The Coleman "Excellence in Entrepreneurship Grant" will also enable Compeau to create courses so students can follow through with concepts developed in their first year with a venture capital management program.

Meanwhile, Clarkson faculty from different departments and schools are collaborating on the development of other new courses that rely on combining areas of expertise. For example, Profs. Ian Suni and Don Rasmussen of Chemical Engineering are collaborating with Prof. Brent Faber of Communication and Media to develop three undergraduate curriculum modules in Nanomaterials Science and Engineering funded by a $100,000 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF). Nationwide, most undergraduate materials courses have scant coverage in nanomaterials. The modules will be available worldwide via Internet-distributed hypermedia software in 2006.

New Interdisciplinary Majors

During the past year, the University obtained state approval of two new interdisciplinary majors:

Environmental Engineering — Administered through the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, this new B.S. degree program will be one of the few in the nation grounded in a systems approach, looking at ecological, societal and economic aspects of problems and including courses such as earth science, organic chemistry, microbiology, thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, and physical chemistry.

Digital Arts & Sciences — An interdisciplinary B.S. degree administered through the departments of Mathematics & Computer Science and Communication & Media, it will provide an education in both artistic and graphic aspects of digital graphic arts, with career opportunities in fields as diverse as entertainment, education, and computational science.

"Thanks to our size we can minimize bureaucracy. We are flexible and responsive as an institution. Our experts from different areas readily work together."
— Tony Collins

Defying Convention

"Historically, we have defied convention by remaining relatively small while, at the same time, we have developed strong research programs," observes Collins. "In addition, we have broken the mold by staying focused on undergraduate education as our primary mission."

"We are, in fact, the eighth smallest nationally recognized research university. A big reason we are succeeding with our small departments," Collins explains, "is that today the most significant discoveries occur at the intersections of previously distinct disciplines — and for us collaboration is easy. Thanks to our size we can minimize bureaucracy. We are flexible and responsive as an institution. Our experts from different areas readily work together. Our hallmark multidisciplinary Centers for Advanced Materials Processing and for the Environment are internationally recognized as research powerhouses."

A year ago, Clarkson recruited James R. (Dick) Pratt as Dean of Arts & Sciences from Idaho State University due to his extensive experience in interdisciplinary research, teaching and administration. A biologist with particular expertise in microbial ecology, he was attracted to Clarkson because it "has a history of crossing boundaries among disciplines to work on interesting problems. The strong faculty is a true community of scholars and the University is small enough and creative enough to change with the times."

"Knowledge does not come in the 'boxes' we have created in traditional disciplines," Pratt observes. "In materials science, for example, knowledge from chemists, physicists and biologists combines with engineering science to create new materials ranging from nanoparticles to novel polymers for products as diverse as skin lotions and artificial teeth. Biological technology is helping to make new pharmaceuticals, new diagnostics for disease, even new security systems."

Business Dean Tim Sugrue

Business Curriculum Revolution


The emergence of a revolution in undergraduate education at Clarkson was signaled by a dramatic restructuring of the business curriculum five years ago under the leadership of Dean Timothy F. Sugrue. And the success of this new direction has been dramatic.

Clarkson's program in Global Supply Chain Management has risen to be ranked No. 14 in U.S. News and World Report. Princeton Review's Best 143 Business Schools includes Clarkson in its latest edition, while Entrepreneur Magazine's Top 100 Entrepreneurial Colleges has ranked the entrepreneurship program among the best in the nation for the past three years. Clarkson student chapters of the Collegiate Entrepreneurs Organization (CEO) and Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE) have won an unprecedented string of national honors.

Guided by the school's Business Leadership Council, a group of top executives from major corporations and private investors, Sugrue and his faculty moved beyond traditional majors, such as accounting or marketing, to produce graduates with a broader, more integrated set of skills. At the same time they built a common core foundation and framework for all business students.

All students learn how to use state-of-the-art, company-wide ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) software because it is integrated in all core business courses. And because all first-year business students begin by taking a course in which they actually start and run a business, every student gains a critical "big picture" perspective on courses that follow. "We learn best by what we do, not by what we learn by rote," says Sugrue. "It sets a context on all that will follow."

What was wrong with traditional majors?

"Let me give you an example," the dean explains. "I'm a finance professor and today finance graduates are usually criticized for knowing too little accounting. And accounting graduates are criticized for knowing too little finance. They are both criticized for knowing too little information systems. So we've combined the three into something we call Financial Information and Analysis, a synthesis. We don't ask a company to hire an accountant and retrain that person for their purposes. With flatter organizations and more work being done in a team environment, employees need to be versatile and have a broader base of knowledge. We're providing what employers want by spanning boundaries within business disciplines."

The other new majors are: Business and Technology Management (specialization in international business, entrepreneurship, human resource management, and project management); e-Business (specializations in either e-commerce or supply chain management); and Information Systems and Business Processes (working both with people and technology).

"We educate a student to take on key roles in Fortune 500 companies," says Sugrue. "But we're also educating them to start and to run their own business."

The Virtual Reality laboratory
facilitates multidisciplinary projects
and courses, such as virtual product
development, and cross-disciplinary
majors such as Digital Arts & Sciences.

Pioneering Cross-Disciplinary Combinations


Spanning boundaries is certainly not a new concept at the University. In 1954 Clarkson defied tradition when it became the first school in the country to offer a degree program that combined Engineering and Business. Originally called Industrial Distribution (ID), the major was renamed Interdisciplinary Engineering and Management (iE&M) in the early '90s. At the program's 50th Reunion celebration last summer, President Collins described it as "a model for the interdisciplinary programs we are now developing throughout our Schools of Arts & Sciences, Business and Engineering."

Other pioneering interdisciplinary degree programs followed. In the 1970s, student interest in biomedical engineering and pre-med led to a biology B.S., which led to a B.S. in Industrial Hygiene-Environmental Toxicology (Environmental Health Science) that combines biology, hazardous waste engineering, environmental chemistry, and human physiology.

In 1989 with NSF support, Clarkson began Areté, combining business and liberal arts degrees in response to a call for executives with broad perspectives on social responsibilities.

More recently Clarkson has also developed undergraduate majors in Environmental Science & Policy (law, philosophy and government policy with a foundation in science); Biomolecular Science (chemistry and biology); and Software Engineering (computer engineering and computer science).

Clarkson's Physical Therapy Program
has opened up new connections with
the health care community and new
collaborative project opportunities
for students in engineering.

Physical Therapy and Rehabilitation Engineering

In 1996 the University's bold decision to create a master's degree program in Physical Therapy (PT), with Pre-Physical Therapy undergraduate preparation, paved the way for a new realm of collaborative possibilities in health sciences. The University has also recently received state approval for a doctoral degree program. Working in conjunction with electrical, computer, and mechanical engineers, for example, faculty in physical therapy have begun to pursue collaborative research, and Clarkson now offers professional engineering concentrations in Biomedical and Rehabilitation Engineering and in Biomolecular Engineering.

Assisted by PT faculty, mechanical engineering students have developed many prototype devices to assist those with disabilities, such as an iron lung adapted for user self-release. Computer engineering, computer science, and mechanical engineering students have developed a virtual reality power wheelchair training system. At Good Shepherd Rehabilitation Hospital in Pennsylvania, a team of Clarkson students guided by PT and Electrical Engineering faculty developed a prototype robotic arm.

This spring the University announced the appointment of Charles Robinson as the Herman L. Shulman Endowed Chair and director of the newly established Center for Rehabilitation Engineering, Science and Technology (CREST). Having held teaching and research positions in engineering, medical and allied health schools, Robinson most recently served as director of Biomedical Engineering and Rehabilitation Science at Louisiana Tech University. The CREST initiative is one of the research and programmatic expansions being funded by the $30 million grant from the Wallace H. Coulter Foundation in 2002.

Application through Commercialization

Research experience also adds an important dimension to boundary-spanning curricular initiatives for undergraduates, points out President Collins. "Integrating business concepts into engineering, arts and sciences," he says, "can make it possible for these students to understand — and experience firsthand — how commercialization is a final necessary step in turning good ideas into practical applications that serve humanity."

Faculty-mentored undergraduate research has become a significant differentiator of a Clarkson learning environment that emphasizes individualized attention and collaborative problem solving. And Collins sees an advantage over competitor institutions in such student research, thanks to the University's expanding cross-disciplinary opportunities for entrepreneurial experience. "Clarkson graduates can emerge a step ahead," he says, "because they understand how technological innovation creates 'wealth' in the broadest sense. They have learned how to envision the end at the beginning — and what it takes to reach that point.

"Today one Clarkson graduate in 12 is CEO, president, vice president, or owner of a company," says Collins. "And for alumni over 40, that number is one in seven. Our business and iE&M graduates have even higher leadership percentages. I am confident that as we pursue our new, boundary-spanning initiatives, the proportion of Clarkson alumni in leadership positions will rise to even more impressive levels."