The first exercise that McCormick professor Joseph Holtgrieve came up with for his “Engineering Improv” class didn’t use a single equation, a complex problem or any numbers.
Instead, he took his students on an imaginary picnic.
The picnickers began splitting into pairs before undergoing three rounds of suggesting what or what not to bring for the picnic. Some wanted to bring strawberries, while others argued for peanut butter sandwiches. However, deciding on the best picnic snack wasn’t the point. Rather, it was about showcasing the power of improvisation and how words as simple as “Yes, and” could influence collaborations and relationships, Holtgrieve said.
“Engineering Improv” is a Northwestern University class offered to all undergraduates as part of a Curious Life Certificate (CLC) launched in the 2023-24 school year in the McCormick School of Engineering.
Though the class title may seem like an oxymoron, it’s far from the only unique course offering that can be found at an engineering school. If students are curious enough, they can also enroll in certificate-satisfying courses that teach swing dancing, emotional intelligence and even yoga.
Curiosity is something that needs to be nurtured just like any healthy relationship, according to Holtgrieve, who is also an assistant dean at McCormick. Multiple studies have shown that as people get older, their level of intellectual curiosity tends to decrease – or in other words, they get less curious about the world around them. The good news is thanks to neuroplasticity, or the brain’s ability to form and reorganize connections between nerve cells, adopting the intention to be curious can create new pathways in the brain that lead to a greater sense of self, Holtgrieve said.
The certificate curriculum has a foundation centered on mindfulness principles, according to Holtgrieve, who likened the practice of mindfulness to an ocean in the midst of a storm – a comparison that may seem contradictory at first.
“If we’re on the surface of the ocean, we’re getting knocked around by deadlines and crises and unexpected circumstances, our own internal dialogue,” he said. “But if you drop down 50, 75, 100 feet into the ocean, what do you experience? Calm, stillness.”
His role as a university counselor at the Office of Personal Development has given him the opportunity to observe how students may struggle with their own oceans in their academic and personal lives.
Holtgrieve said he noticed busy students often flounder at the surface of a turbulent sea. However, he said everyone has an inner calm that they can tether to. Students can use improv and meditation to respond to events from a “grounded” place, as opposed to swimming against squalls of waves.
But, students often incorrectly value duration over consistency when implementing those methods, he said.
“If five minutes feels like a reasonable amount of time to commit each day, then do three [minutes],” Holtgrieve said. “That’s the standard wisdom, right? Decide what seems reasonable. Instead, our students say five seems reasonable, I’ll do five hours.”
On a more personal level, his attention to mindfulness arose from an epiphany that struck him years ago at an optometry appointment. The optometrist told him he had astigmatism – a condition that affects the eye and makes it hard to focus on objects.
He soon realized that this diagnosis went one step deeper. The optometrist wasn’t only describing a physical condition, but one that matched his personal life: a “mental astigmatism,” Holtgreive said, where focusing on and showing up for everything in his life seemed harder than ever.
“The reality is, I can’t change the shape of my eye, but I can buy corrective lenses that allow me to focus clearly on one point,” Holtgrieve said. “I can’t change the fact that I’ve got really important things that I want to show up for in my life – my job, my spouse, my kids, my community – but I can adopt a practice that helps me be more centered and grounded so I can be present one thing at a time.”
The challenge for students is distinguishing between what’s important and what’s not. Cultivating intentionality becomes key, and that arises from tuning into the present moment from a position of curiosity, Holtgreive said.
From this perspective, the “present moment” becomes far more than a set of cliché words. Instead, he believes the present moment consists of three channels: Sensations, Emotions and Stories, or SES for short. Students are often more aware of their stories, but not of their sensations and emotions. This leads them to operate with a large deficit of information about the present moment.
As a result, the CLC has a special focus on plugging students into all three channels. In addition to a foundation and capstone course, each of the channels represents one of the requirements for the four-credit certificate.
The CLC lives within the Personal Development StudioLab in the School of Engineering, which offers classes, resources and events in addition to the certificate to enhance the personal development of undergraduate students. Holtgrieve co-founded the lab in 2022 with fellow engineering professor Bruce Ankenman after years of work as colleagues. They realized the courses they separately taught at the time connected with one another.
“The [McCormick] dean of the time, Julio Ottino, said ‘The two of you need to get together,’” Holtgrieve recalled. “We call it an arranged marriage.”
Dean Ottino is credited with the development of the School of Engineering’s unique whole-brain engineering philosophy. The ethos brings together both the elements of the left brain – analysis, logic, synthesis and math – with the right brain, which fosters intuition, metaphorical thought and creative problem-solving. A whole-brain engineer must master both ways of thinking, according to the philosophy.
In addition to ushering new ways of thought, the philosophy has developed collaborations across different departments and institutions. Bridging the analytical components of engineering with disciplines like design, entrepreneurship, leadership and personal development has resulted in offerings that would otherwise seem strange within a School of Engineering.
For instance, the certificate ropes in Ankenman’s “Designing Your Life” as a capstone course – one he co-developed with Professor Pam Daniels after he was inspired by a popular course of the same name at Stanford University.
There’s a fundamental question that underlines the course purpose, according to its synopsis: “What if you approached your life as a series of design projects?”
The course invites students of all disciplines to learn the design process for physical and digital courses and see how that same process can be applied in designing their own lives. Unlike a traditional lecture course, it consists of many individual and team activities, such as illustrating an in-depth “relationship tree” of the networks of relationships in one’s life.
Since the course kicked off in 2016, Ankenman said it has received high praise from students.
“‘I’m so excited to see what happens in my life,’” Ankenman said as he read a student testimonial aloud. “‘I don’t know what it’ll entail, what my jobs will be, who I’ll fall in love with or where I’ll settle, but for once I’m OK with the ambiguity. What was once a cause for all my stress is now something I’m learning to appreciate.’”
When it comes to the certificate, the lab co-founders noted how there is a direct connection between curiosity and design thinking – the latter of which can be defined as a “willingness to be an amateur with expertise.”
Curiosity is the fundamental quality that unlocks what the lab considers the big three C’s of the Self: calm, clarity and compassion. With enough experience and practice, these components empower the next four C’s, which include authentic courage, confidence, connection and creativity.
Since the certificate’s announcement last year, Holtgreive said that dozens of students have already registered, and a few have already completed it. The program is available for undergraduate students of all schools to explore, and he recommends interested students take the foundational PATH course to decide whether to commit to the CLC. The skills students learn will not only appeal to prospective employers, he said, but also prevent one’s curiosity from atrophying and falling into a rut down the line.
Ankenman also believes the skills can build a foundation that will serve students for the rest of their lives in ways that surpass traditional definitions of success.
“Having a good life involves having some career at some level, but different people have careers at different levels,” Ankenman said. “I’ll be perfectly honest with you – I am much more concerned that they have a good life than they have a good career.”
