During his time as a student at MIT, the late professor emeritus Woodie Flowers SM ’68, MEng ’71, PhD ’73 engaged mainly in paper-and-pencil tasks with established answers. Flowers had a talent for creating and making things functional. When he transitioned into teaching, he opted to integrate this methodology into his teaching style, consequently transforming the education of engineering students — at MIT and globally.

Flowers passed away in 2019, yet his influence endures, and the scale of the educational transformation he fostered was significant.

In the 1970s, Flowers assumed responsibility for the course 2.70, now known as class 2.007 (Design and Manufacturing I). This culminating course is one that many first-year students eagerly anticipate, although it wasn’t always viewed this way. Prior to Flowers’ leadership, the teaching approach was principally dependent on chalkboard illustrations.

“Their concept of design back then revolved around sketching parts,” recounts Professor Emeritus David Gossard PhD ’75, a close friend and colleague of Flowers. “Woody envisioned it differently. He suggested providing the entire class a set of materials [and] a shared objective— to construct a machine— to ascend a hill, or collect golf balls, or whatever function it had— and to compete over it. It was a tremendous success. The students enjoyed it, the faculty appreciated it, and the Institute valued it. Over time, it truly became, I believe, an institution.”

Under Flowers’ guidance, 2.70 evolved into an experiential, hands-on, robotics-competition-centered journey. Furthermore, he made the experience extraordinarily enjoyable — a quality he cherished in his own life. He was an enthusiast of skydiving and frequently seen rollerblading down the Infinite Corridor. The course, influenced by his distinctive approach, was at the forefront of a transformation in engineering education, quickly enhancing the Department of Mechanical Engineering’s standing for innovative teaching practices.

“Many students had never started from zero and constructed anything,” Flowers once stated to The Boston Globe. His advisor, Robert Mann, shared similar convictions regarding hands-on, contemporary teaching methods. Building upon Mann’s philosophy and merging it with his own, Flowers revitalized and established a novel foundation for “the MIT way” of educating. This rejuvenation came at a fortuitous moment that ultimately created a global butterfly effect on the appeal of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) education.

“Over time, lectures had supplanted the hands-on elements, and Woodie restored it,” states Sanjay Sarma, the Fred Fort Flowers (1941) and Daniel Fort Flowers (1941) Professor in Mechanical Engineering. “I can’t think of anyone who has influenced the domains of robotics and design in undergraduate or high school realms as much as Woodie.”

Flowers developed an interest in mechanical engineering and design early in life, largely due to the influence of his parents. His father was a welder with a knack for inventiveness and construction, while his mother worked as an elementary school educator. Flowers spent his childhood disassembling and reassembling items — an act he believed enhanced students’ abilities as engineers.

Reflecting in 2010 with InfiniteMIT, a digital archive of Institute history enabled by the generosity of Jane and A. Neil Pappalardo ’64, Flowers narrated a story about a student in her group tasked with investigating if a piece of reinforcement steel rebar could be bent into a tight loop to function as a bearing.

“She arrived at the lab early, and I was there as well; she had a slightly bent piece of rebar. It was evident it had been heated, and she intended to report that it just wouldn’t work,” Flowers remembered. He proposed trying a different method.

“We moved to the lab where I sourced another large steel bar and the biggest vice I could find,” he recounted. Flowers tightened the rebar against the bar he intended to wrap it around, then employed a four-pound sledgehammer. “My father had a blacksmith pit, so that environment was familiar. I wrapped [the rebar around the steel and] created a functional bearing. As I landed the last blow, I glanced up and three of the top students in the class — exceptionally bright people — were standing there, their mouths agape. They had never witnessed anyone striking a piece of steel hard enough to reshape it.”

He continued, “that tactile comprehension of mechanical behavior is incredibly vital. It doesn’t simply appear out of nowhere, nor does it emerge from a textbook, it arises through tangible engagement. I consider myself fortunate because when I encountered Castiglione’s theorem regarding material deflection, it made intuitive sense.”

Course 2.70/2.007 is regarded as a milestone class in engineering education. It was among the first hands-on courses teaching students not just how to conceive an object, but also how to construct it, and by showcasing the significance of practical, project-based learning along with robotics competitions, it has shaped the strategies adopted by numerous other programs. Today, it continues to cultivate students’ aptitude and confidence as design engineers, focusing on the creative design process complemented by the application of physical principles, durability, and manufacturability.

Importantly, the course also inspired the creation of the FIRST Robotics program, which Flowers and inventor Dean Kamen established in 1989. FIRST offers programs for preschool through high school participants, and to date, more than 3.2 million young individuals from over 100 nations have engaged in FIRST competitions.

In the 1970s, the materials kit — or as Flowers lovingly called it, the “bag of junk” — contained items such as springs, tongue depressors, and rubber bands. Flowers’ wife, Margaret, remembers many evenings spent assembling these kits and hosting advisees in their residence. “We viewed ourselves as a team,” she recalls.

Today, besides utilizing the mechanical components kit, students in 2.007 may also produce 3D-printed parts and integrate electronics into their robots for an autonomous segment of the final challenge.

The spring 2024 contest, inspired by Cartoon Network’s popular animated sci-fi sitcom “Rick and Morty,” showcased a spaceship that students’ robots could engage with for points, vats of “acid” for collecting balls and depositing them in tubes, and game elements paying tribute to iconic episodes. The final challenge required the robot to ascend an elevator and send a character down a zipline.

In recent years, other themes have revolved around stories from “Star Wars” to “Back to the Future” and “Wakanda Forever.” Nonetheless, the 2022 theme possibly resonated the most: “Legacy,” a tribute to Flowers’ life and contributions.

“[Woodie] unequivocally demonstrated that designing, fabricating, assembling, and building was enjoyable,” states Gossard. “It captured the essence of engineering. There was genuine joy in it.”

A version of this article is featured in the Spring 2025 issue of MechE Connects, the magazine of the MIT Department of Mechanical Engineering.