An Engineering Prototype for Life

January 2021

This spring, Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, California is offering two new courses to help engineering students apply their technical skills toward thinking about issues of purpose, vocation and the sort of lives they want to live.

Sophomores in the new “Prototyping Your Mudd” course will use the engineering design process to map out a plan for the rest of their college experience, and explore topics such as the purpose of college and how to tailor the engineering major.

Seniors in the “Prototyping Your Future Self” course will use the same process to design their lives and careers. The course is loosely based on Stanford University’s popular “Designing Your Life” course, but is customized for Harvey Mudd Engineering seniors. Topics include the integration of a student’s worldview and philosophy of work as well as how to approach the planning process. By the end of the course, seniors will have developed and prototyped several potential life plans for the 3-5 years following graduation and will be equipped to navigate their career and life, including the changes and challenges that will inevitably present themselves.

“We want to connect with students on the design process,” said Harvey Mudd Professor of Engineering Nancy Lape. “The focus is not just on the academic or careers. We ask students to write about what they want and why as they develop a few ‘design alternatives’ for their life.”

Both the sophomore and senior courses allow students to prototype professional and personal activities to determine which potential pathways best align with their personal philosophy and interests. The courses incorporate small group discussion, in-class activities, guest speakers, discussions with alumni, personal reflection, and individual coaching.

“You only get a few summers to try things out while you’re in college,” Lape said. “We want to help students think of other, lower stakes ways to try things they might be interested in as they explore where they want to invest more time.”

The idea for this course emerged during a workshop at Olin College several years ago, when participants in a small group brainstormed about education. Nancy Lape and Harvey Mudd Engineering Department Chair Liz Orwin took those ideas to a workshop offered by the Stanford Life Design Lab, and began developing the courses for Harvey Mudd students.

“At Olin we had a brainstorming session where we started talking about students creating their own experiences,” Lape said. “At the time, our ideas were vague and wild, but that’s how the best ideas start. We followed the advice of taking the most delightful part of an idea and harnessing that into a more realistic idea.”

Whether in designing a course or the next few years of her life, Lape is convinced that the same skills that make her a good engineer can help her become a better educator and person. This semester, her students will help her test that delightful idea.