Robert Martello

Robert Martello is the Associate Dean of Faculty and Professor of the History of Science and Technology at Olin College. He has chaired and initiated efforts that re-imagined Olin’s faculty reappointment and promotion, institutional outreach, curricular innovation, and student assessment approaches. Martello’s NSF-sponsored research, engineering education publications, and faculty development workshops explore connections between interdisciplinary integration, faculty teaming, student motivation, and project-based learning. He has delivered educational workshops for audiences around the world that include instructors and administrators at the K-12, community college, public, and private college levels. Martello implements his findings in experimental courses such as “The Stuff of History,” “Six Microbes that Changed the World,” “Paradigms, Predictions, and Joules,” and “Chemistry in Context.” A graduate of MIT’s program in the History and Social Study of Science and Technology, he is the author of Midnight Ride, Industrial Dawn: Paul Revere and the Growth of American Enterprise, a study of Revere’s multifaceted manufacturing career that pioneered America’s transition into the industrial age. He is now researching Benjamin Franklin's printing and business endeavors, and he regularly lectures on Revere and Franklin, our “Founding Makers,” for audiences of all ages and backgrounds.