STORY: Olin College of Engineering Celebrates a New Chapter: May Lee Inaugurated as Third President

October 8, 2026

Olin College of Engineering formally inaugurated May Lee as its third President in a ceremony centered on the theme, “Co-Authoring the Living Blueprint.” 

NEEDHAM, Mass. — Olin College of Engineering formally inaugurated May Lee as its third President on Friday, September 25 in a ceremony centered on the theme, “Co-Authoring the Living Blueprint.” It was a fitting frame for an afternoon that highlighted just how many voices have shaped, and will continue to shape, Olin's story.

Guests of the College, which included faculty, students, trustees, alumni, family and friends, gathered to celebrate not just a new president, but a shared commitment to keep building the College together.

Provost Shayla Sawyer Armand welcomed a wide range of dignitaries, including Board Chair Jeannie Diefenderfer and Olin's trustees and emeritus trustees; members of the former President's Council; Massachusetts state Sen. Becca Rausch and state Rep. Joshua Tarsky; Needham Town Manager Katie King; delegates from colleges, universities and learned societies; Olin Professor Emeritus and former provost Mark Somerville; President Emeritus Rick Miller; and alumni from Olin's first graduating Class of 2006, on campus for their 20th reunion.

The Purple Thread: President Lee on Olin's Place in Higher Education

President Lee opened her remarks by dedicating the ceremony to the late Bill Norden, a Founding Member, trustee and former board chair, before turning to the story of her own path— from a childhood in Detroit to careers in law, finance and entrepreneurship, and ultimately to higher education.

Her address centered on several themes for Olin's next chapter, rooted in the metaphor of Olin as the “purple thread” in the white cloth of higher education.

Lee referenced the Stoic philosopher Epictetus, who wrote about how a person preserves their proper character in every situation. “He wanted to be the purple thread, the small part which is bright and makes the rest of the white threads appear graceful and beautiful,” said Lee.

“Olin is the purple thread in the white cloth that is higher-ed,” she explained. Olin exists to try things that larger, more established institutions cannot, and to share what it learns with others. 

“The point of the purple thread is always to bring attention to the beauty of the rest of the cloth.” - President Lee

AI-forward and self-directed students. Rather than defending or rejecting Artificial Intelligence outright, Lee said Olin will graduate students equipped with the discernment to work with AI “or not,” building on a human-first approach to engineering education.

This ability to ask the right questions is illustrated further in the way faculty have evolved Olin's project-based DNA into phenomenon-based learning. “Instead of asking students to build a solar panel (a project),” Lee said, "phenomenon-based learning starts with a real-world event or observation, such as, ‘why did the city's power grid fail yesterday?’"

“The walls between science, math, history, technology, and policy disappear as students investigate how the world actually works, with faculty guiding the way, and go about determining their own inquiry, learning paths, and actionable solutions,” she said.

“Olin 2.0” Partner class. Echoing the original Partner Year undertaken by students who helped co-create Olin's curriculum 25 years ago, the College will recruit a new “Olin 2.0” partner class. The cohort will spend a year exploring what learning looks like with AI and, in keeping with Olin’s mission to transform engineering education, will share those findings with faculty, students and peer institutions.

Engineering entrepreneurs. Lee pushed back on the idea that entrepreneurship belongs to Silicon Valley alone, arguing for an older, broader definition rooted in critical thinking, risk-taking and problem-solving— pointing to Olin's own founders, who risked no capital but bet an entire foundation's assets on a new kind of college, as proof of the concept. 

“We intend to elevate the entrepreneurship already innate to Olin as an inclusive concept, and to build multiple paths for students to pursue new ventures.” - President Lee

Affordability. Lee reaffirmed Olin's founding commitment to substantial scholarships, framing broad access as core to the College's mission rather than separate from it: the opportunity to attend, she said, “belongs to every student who earns a place here— not only to those who can pay for one.”

Other Voices from the Podium 

Shayla Sawyer Armand, Olin's provost, opened the speaking program with the story of how she and Lee first met, recalling their years as colleagues at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. She described Lee as an “intentional wanderer” whose curiosity and refusal to sort people by title before asking what they're capable of, have built an unusually wide and connected community around her. 

“I believe the intentional wander is not a luxury,” said Armand. “It is exactly the discipline this moment demands, the willingness to leave your office, leave your certainty, leave the conversation where everyone already agrees with you, and go find the person in the next room who sees the problem completely differently.”

“She keeps goooooood company.” - Provost Shayla Sawyer Armand

Ally Bell ’24, speaking on behalf of Olin alumni, opened with remarks generated by an AI trained on her own emails— a twist that doubled as her thesis about the moment Olin, and higher education broadly, now find themselves in. She urged students not to intellectualize problems from the sidelines, pointing to former Olin student Alec Radford, a lead architect of early GPT and CLIP models, as proof of what that instinct can produce.

“It's also the most exciting moment of all time to be an engineer, and to be an engineering school.” - Ally Bell ’24

Liam Carlin ’28, speaking on behalf of Olin students, traced his path from childhood inventions to founding seven companies, crediting Olin's culture of building without permission for giving that instinct room to grow. He praised President Lee's collaborative leadership style, recalling how she has offered her own office space, contacts and trust to support student ventures.

“A living blueprint is one that is never finished. Neither is Olin. Neither am I.” - Liam Carlin ’28

Casimir Wierzynski, a longtime friend and former Goldman Sachs colleague of President Lee, offered a “field guide” to Olin's new president built on three lessons drawn from their 26-year friendship: authenticity, connection and calculated risk. He recounted leaving Wall Street with Lee to co-found an early internet company, a leap he credited to her contagious confidence.

“Inaction, May would remind us, is not the absence of risk. It is another choice with risks of its own.” - Casimir Wierzynski

Rob Martello, professor of the history of science and technology, drew on Olin lore— including “save the date” cards mailed to prospective students before the college had faculty or a campus, and the legendary “bouncy castle moment” that followed an overloaded first semester— to argue that setbacks are core to Olin's identity, and to Lee's own embrace of risk.

“Mistakes are the surest sign that you are doing something challenging and learning in the process.”

“Success can be more challenging than anything else, like a beautiful new car that you drive off the lot and right into your garage because you're afraid of getting it wet or dirty.”  - Professor Rob Martello

Jeannie Diefenderfer, chair of Olin's Board of Trustees, traced President Lee's career across RPI, NYU Shanghai and ShanghaiTech University before formally presenting her with the Charter of the College and the Presidential Medallion of Office, leading the ceremony's investiture with Trustee Al Bunshaft.

“The strongest ideas become stronger when they are tested, expanded and brought to life by a community.” - Board Chair Jeannie Diefenderfer

As the recessional made its way out of Norden Auditorium, one thing was clear: the blueprint Olin set out to co-author 25 years ago is still unfinished and, under President Lee, a new chapter of that work is just getting started.

In her own words, “Let's go: Do. Something. Big. Together.”