Olin College's mission is to graduate engineer-innovators who envision and deliver the ideas, products, services and systems to positively transform the way people live. At Olin, students have always been at the heart of reinventing what it means to be educated in the 21st Century.

Chartered in 1997 with a $460-million grant from the F.W. Olin Foundation, Olin set out to be a new kind of college, one committed to student-centered, project-based learning and unencumbered by traditional notions of how an educational institution had to be structured. One that was intent on making an ongoing impact on the future of engineering education. With no tenure, no academic departments, and at an affordable cost, Olin opened its doors in 2002.