Robert Martello Professor of the History of Science and Technology, Olin College
He received his Ph.D. in 2001 and in the same year started working at Olin College in Needham, Mass., where he is now a professor of the history of science and technology. Martello chaired Olin's Arts, Humanities, and Social Science Committee for many years and helped to shape Olin's curriculum, taking particular pride in its interdisciplinary and self-study components. He has written several papers and offered numerous presentations on his National Science Foundation–sponsored educational research, which explores connections between interdisciplinary education, student motivation, and self-directed project-based learning.
Martello has also written several articles on the subject of industrialization, and his book, Midnight Ride, Industrial Dawn: Paul Revere and the Growth of American Enterprise, was published by Johns Hopkins University Press in 2010. This book combines a biographical narrative of Paul Revere's long manufacturing career with a comparison of America's managerial, labor, technological, and environmental practices before and after the revolution. Martello has more recently started researching Benjamin Franklin's printing career, investigating Franklin's many impacts upon early American printing as well as the ways his artisan experiences set him apart from America's other founding fathers. Martello has enthusiastically presented these new interpretations of Revere and Franklin for over 30 historical societies, libraries, and other public audiences.
Martello attempts to connect theory to practice in both his education research and his studies of early American industry. He has recently offered workshops for American, Chilean, and Guatemalan universities and K-12 schools, suggesting techniques for fostering intrinsic motivation through interdisciplinary project-based learning experiences. He is also the university scholar for two Mass Humanities grants aimed at developing new history of technology exhibits at the Paul Revere House and USS Constitution Museum.