MIT turns on the Charm School for EEs

Someday, MIT's engineering and technology students will lead multimillion-dollar IPOs, concoct dazzling algorithms and shrink chip geometries to unfathomable levels.

But recently, between classes on Java applets, chip design at the 0.5-micron level and theoretical physics, many stopped by to find out which fork to use in a formal dinner setting.

Or "How to Make Small Talk."

Or "How to Tell Some-body Something They'd Rather Not Hear."

Welcome to Charm School, 1999 style, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

You walk into the large hall of the main Cambridge building at 77 Massachusetts Avenue and understand immediately that one of the nation's top three engineering schools is doing something quirky and different today. Floor-to-ceiling yellow banners hang from the three-story lobby, proclaiming "Please" and "Thank You."

In one corner, couples are waltzing as a band plays ballroom music. In another corner, students are clustered around a "Body Language" demonstration, learning about how to convey confidence, exude enthusiasm and-more currently-avoid bad dates.

Slip past posters of Bill Clinton ("Charm School Dropout"), Princess Diana ("Charm School Valedictorian") and contrasting photos of The Three Stooges ("Before and After Charm School"), and you enter Lobby 10, where you can sit down to a fully appointed dinner table for 10 and unravel one of the mysteries of the universe: What do you use the spoon and fork above the plate for?

A shrill whistle echoes through the hallway; one of the Fashion Police officers has ticketed an offender for clashing colors.

Lest you think, "Oh, come on. Engineering students don't want to know such things," look around and see lines of students craning over heads to hear how to "butter up big shots."

Think about it: How many times have you sat at a round luncheon table at an engineering conference and mulled, "Which glass is mine?" How many times have you walked into an elevator and there, standing silently, is a venture capitalist whom you've been dying to pitch your idea to. What do you say? There's an art to networking, to taking advantage of the unexpected moments.

In case you've been hiding in a cubicle for the last 10 years, engineering is no longer just about peering at test screens anymore.

It's multimillion-dollar IPOs. It's entertaining global clients in Munich. It's getting up and making presentations to convince a roomful of managers to risk millions on your new project. It's being 25 years old and convincing Goldman Sachs analysts that your Internet startup is the next Yahoo.

Technology is hot, engineers have become hip, and the up-and-coming Class of '00-'04 needs to bone up on manners, the social graces and dressing for success.

"Being brilliant is not enough," said Travis Merritt, former dean of undergraduate academic affairs, and founder of the one-day-a-year Charm School at MIT.

Young engineers have to prove to employers that they can work collaboratively, communicate well and be able to stand up on their own two feet and convince decades-older clients they can do the job despite the zit on the nose.

Since joining MIT in 1964, Merritt has heard repeated complaints about technical students "not getting it" in the real world of work. Too many wandered into job interviews without a clue as to how to dress, what to say or how to speak up.

"So," concluded Merritt, "I said, 'let's do something about it.' "

Voil, Charm School. The name is deliberately whimsical. "We knew from the get-go we couldn't be solemn about this," said Merritt, now a professor of literature at MIT. Students wouldn't tolerate a finger-wagging lecture on proper behavior. They have, however, embraced a festive, half-day series of presentations in the main hall designed to enchant, bewilder-and instruct.

Interestingly, little is made of the fact that most of the hundreds of students milling about the School are future engineers. You know engineers-nerdy, bespectacled, heads buried in books?

"That doesn't apply anymore," said Katie O'Dair, assistant dean of student life at MIT. "These are things any student can learn."

Indeed, the Fashion Police were having a hard time finding truly blatant violations: checkered pants with plaid shirts and the like. The most common infraction was a rather lame "wearing a backpack with two straps attached." MIT engineering students, like undergraduates everywhere, have adopted a uniform of blue jeans, dull green striped sweaters, and white T-shirts.

Not that the nerd or geek is dead. One tall student with too-short pants and glasses slipping down his nose, thankfully was listening to a Charm School presentation on "Clothing Statements." Did he learn anything? he was asked.

Back-room future?
"It was mostly about women's things," he mumbled, shuffling away, a walking picture of things to avoid, according to the "Body Language" presenters: slumped posture, loose spectacles, no eye contact. If he doesn't catch on to social skills soon, he'll be some company's smart back-room researcher, but never a millionaire entrepreneur. He can't sell himself.

Money, said Merritt, has transformed the engineering landscape. It's also alerted soon-to-be graduates that if they're going to to be making $60 grand a year at IBM or Netscape, they'd better look the part. At "Clothing Statements," future physicists were struggling with the intricacy of tying proper bow ties. Clip-ons forbidden.

Engineers may never appear on the cover of Details magazine or In Style, but according to assistant dean O'Dair, their MIT Charm School has grabbed the attention of other campuses, who inquired about putting on their own version. It appears, ahem, that even the "cool" campuses struggle with which fork to use.

Tip: Start from the outside and work your way in. And the fork above the plate? Dessert.