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In our first ever podcast episode, Rose-Hulman Provost Dr. Rick Samper sits down with our student hosts Isaac and Reese to chat about his career path in STEM, becoming okay with failure, learning by doing in labs, and the beauty and creativity in engineering.
With extensive teaching and industry experience, Dr. Stamper’s background includes positions as an area manager at Proctor & Gamble, Design Team Leader at General Electric, and forming a small company to develop medical devices. Dr. Stamper has been featured in the Princeton Reviews Best 300 Professors book, and is among a handful of faculty to have received the Dean’s Outstanding Teacher and Board of Trustees Outstanding Scholar awards. He currently serves as the Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost at Rose-Hulman.
Episode Quotes:
Rethinking the multi-divisional model
02:01: There's lots of opportunities to be challenged, but STEM in general does a really nice job of that. The things you create, your ideas, are tested against reality. So, for instance, at Purdue, I designed a robot in 1988 that would catch a ball as it was rolling along a tabletop. Does the robot catch the ball or not? So, your ideas are tested against reality, and your failures are very evident in that case. So, it does a nice job of that. And as a result, it causes you to constantly question yourself and ask if you're seeing the world correctly. Are your internal models correct and suitable for the situation? I think that does a really nice job of preparing you to go off and actually be an engineer, mathematician, or scientist. And it makes you a little less fearful of failure, too. And I think that's important to not be too afraid of failure.
Creativity in STEM Education
15:57: One of the things our faculty do really well is to work in this creative aspect and give you a chance to exercise your creativity. And that's our own form of art.
STEM is beyond the pragmatic
51:40: There are a couple of different ways to look at why you'd want to study STEM. There are some really pragmatic reasons that everyone seems to be aware of: there are good careers in engineering, math, and science that provide a nice foundation for other careers. And so, you clearly have that return on investment argument; it stands up really well. And, as far as students, I'd encourage them not to overlook what appears to be mundane at first.
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