E6: Global Projects Program at 50 | Stephen McCauley & Lorraine Higgins, WPI’s Melbourne, Australia Project Center

Transcript for The WPI Podcast Episode 6 Global Projects Program at 50 

April 14, 2025

Jon Cain:

Did you know that roughly 85% of students at Worcester Polytechnic Institute travel off campus for a seven week long immersive academic project at least once during their time here at WPI? It's a key element of the project-based learning approach at WPI. WPI has more than 50 project centers on six continents where students can do these projects through our global projects program. This academic year, the Global Projects Program is celebrating 50 years since it all began with the Washington, DC Project Center. Today you'll hear what it's like to be a project center director. It's an important role that helps make these experiences possible and offers a front row seat to what our students accomplish around the globe. Hi, I'm Jon Cain from the Marketing Communications Division at WPI. This podcast brings you news and expertise from our classrooms and labs. I'm excited to be here at the WPI Global Lab in the Innovation studio, and I'm happy to be joined by the co-directors of WPI’s Melbourne Australia Project Center. Lorraine Higgins is a teaching professor and Stephen McCauley is an associate professor of teaching. Both are in the Department of Integrative and Global Studies. Lorraine and Steve, thanks for being here. 

Lorraine Higgins:

Thanks for having us. 

Stephen McCauley:

Thanks, Jon, 

Cain:

Lorraine and Steve, before we dive in, I wanted to give folks a quick summary if maybe they're not familiar. WPI students have to do three projects to graduate. They can do any of them off campus through our global projects program. One project requires students to explore the arts and humanities. One is a professional level design or research experience in their major and one places students from various majors together in teams to work with a community-based sponsor on a challenge at the intersection of science, technology and the needs of society. That last one is called the Interactive Qualifying Project or IQP. It's typically done in junior year, and that's the project that most students will complete off campus at one of our WPI project centers. Steve and Lorraine, the project center that you co-direct in Australia is dedicated to the IQP. Why do you think students benefit from having an off-campus IQP? 

Higgins:

I think it's really critical for our engineers and scientists who work on campus and labs and in classrooms to realize that when you're addressing global problems, you really need to look at the local context in which they occur and how history, culture, demographics, politics, shape the problems and what you can do about the problems in different parts of the world. So, this is an immersive experience where students really get to engage with and talk to community members on the ground to learn about that. 

McCauley:

And just as it says in the name of the project, the Interactive Qualifying Project, the real heart of the learning goals we're trying to achieve with the students is that interactivity. And they get that by working with teams, with teammates and an interdisciplinary team of engineering students with their faculty advisors, with their project partners and with the broader communities. And that whole immersion in that set of things and then going overseas with them to other cultural context just really amplifies the opportunity to navigate the challenges, dynamics and everything that comes up through the arc of a real project, which is what we always have to do in real projects. So it's really an important opportunity to give them that feel for working through the project in that context. 

Higgins:

Groups like Engineers Without Borders publish these failure reports every year, and what they have found is that their projects fail when the engineers haven't bothered to really work with people on the ground and find out what local people need. So I think this is something we know. How do you do that though with students at a university? This is really one way to do it, to bring them there and immerse them for weeks at a time working with locals 

McCauley:

And you hope that those learning outcomes stay with them into their careers where they're designing whatever it is, whether it's in the field of aerospace or in machining, that they'll be thinking about the particular audiences they're designing for, but even the broader context around that and even the ethics around that. So all of that we're able to sort of convey with them through this interactivity. 

Cain:

That's awesome. There's obviously a lot of work that goes into making these experiences possible, and you both are, as project center directors, really a key role in that. So we want to talk a little bit about the role. That project center director really wears a lot of hats just to name a few. You're helping find project sponsors or partners and working with them to develop specific projects to work on that really have to meet both the goal of the sponsor or the partner and the academic goals of the IQP. You're maintaining those relationships with the project partners, In some cases for years. You're helping with the application and the matching process that determines what project centers that the students go to for their projects. You're coordinating housing, preparing handbooks for students to orient them to a new place, setting up cultural activities for students to experience in this place that maybe they've never been to before. You're preparing students for the project and guiding faculty advisors who will be with the students on the ground. And sometimes you're there yourself serving as a faculty advisor. It's a lot. What's it like to sort of see all of that work come together when the students hit the ground and do these projects? 

Higgins:

It does take a lot of effort and preparation, and what we really want is for students to hit the ground running. Seven weeks on site isn't a long time, but if we can give students and the faculty advising them enough prep so they have a little bit of knowledge about the topic, what they're doing, the methodologies that might work in this context, et cetera, they'll be ready to go when they get there. 

McCauley:

It is really rewarding, of course, both when we're a faculty advisor, when we're really working with the team, working through the whole project. But as center directors who term after term, year after year see these projects build to know that we're making a contribution to our partners directly and helping them meet their goals and often honestly making a contribution to important sectors in the city of Melbourne that we are, I think helping to advance a little bit, at least incrementally with every project towards some pretty important goals around either mental health and wellbeing in the community or environmental science and monitoring and policy to climate change in the city. So, lots of things that we actually try to move forward a little bit at a time and it's really amazing to see our students work really moving forward, professional communities in that city. 

Cain:

And I understand some project centers have a local coordinator, as is the case with Melbourne, so you're getting some support from someone who's on the ground sort of full time, right? 

Higgins:

Yeah. Jonathan Chee is our local coordinator and he lives in the Melbourne area. He is Australian. He's very well connected to organizations around the Melbourne community. So, he's been very helpful in introducing us to new folks. Sometimes we find them on our own serendipitously when we're walking through a neighborhood and we see somebody's placard out there saying that, oh, it's the EcoCentre. What's that? And we'll go and knock on the door. But Jon is there year round so he can actually do things that we can't be there year round, so he can do some of that legwork for us until we can get there or meet with folks. 

Cain:

Can you talk a little bit about that experience that you just mentioned of sort of walking around and sometimes stumbling almost into opportunities that lead to projects and partnerships with folks? 

McCauley:

Yeah, I guess that is in a way the heart of our work as center directors is building and maintaining and fostering this network of partners. And we were lucky when we came as center directors to kind of inherit some network of partners already that our predecessors have built and we've continued to grow and build on that. And sometimes it does involve cold calls or just stopping in on folks. And Lorraine started to mention an example at the Port Phillip EcoCentre where we were down at a park or botanical garden right nearby I think. And we saw the sign and just gave a knock and we had to kind of introduce ourselves and explain what we do. And I don't think quite registered fully with them, but they were open enough and then we of built that relationship and they've ended up being an incredibly consistent partner that we've worked with almost every term since then. So that was a great example. There's other ways we cultivate that network too. 

Higgins:

Yeah, we invite, so at the end of the onsite term students do presentations typically for the organization we're partnering with, but sometimes the organization will invite other collaborators and other organizations. And so folks see our student work and often they're impressed and light bulbs start to go off that, oh, maybe students would be interested in working on a similar project with us. So I think that really helps to have these community events and it allows folks to see what we do and what our students are capable of doing 

McCauley:

More broadly, I think, part of it relates to orienting our work and the work that students do toward what they need and what their goals are. So I think when we first started, there had been a little bit of a legacy of students doing sort of academic work and submitting academic work at the end of it, but we came to realize over some time that it serves both our students and the partners better if we orient our final deliverables toward what's going to really serve their needs toward their constituencies. And a lot of them are involved in policy advocacy at the city or state level, or they're involved in awareness-raising around a campaign or they're involved in scientific communication. And if our students can really get into the mind space of what that partner needs to create impact among their constituencies, that's really helped to elevate the impact, so to speak, of the work our students do. and that's really helped us to build the network too. 

Cain:

Do you ever have to have a discussion with a project sponsor or a partner ahead of time that maybe they've got an idea for a project that is a good one, but maybe it doesn't necessarily get all the academic elements that you would want in an IQP and how do you refine that with them so that it's sort of meeting the needs of everybody? 

Higgins:

Definitely. One of the important things that I think directors do is they scope the projects and they realize what students can do in a certain amount of time. Sometimes there are unrealistic expectations about that. But another thing is a lot of nonprofits today, they don't have the staff or the technical expertise to do some of the technical work. And so, they may come down on the technical side of these projects and say, want our students to design some software for them or an app. And that's where we really have to think about the academic goals of the IQP and it really should be a project at the intersection of technology and society. So, we want to make sure our students aren't holed up coding in some room somewhere; that they have a lot of interaction, first person interaction with people on the ground. So, we suggest ways often to the partners where our students can go out, interview folks, meet folks, get a lot of that background research so that whatever technology they're designing is appropriate. 

McCauley:

Yeah, A good example of that is some projects we did with CERES Environmental Park in Melbourne and we've done a series of projects with them around CRMs, customer relation management tools for data management within their organization. And that's really important to them because it's a large organization with a lot of data flowing through it and they need to be able to manage it to do reporting and other things. And it ends up being a somewhat technical exercise to build a CRM and data management platform, but it does actually involve/require a lot of social engagement to do this well, because in order to do that well, the team had to essentially map information flows and information needs through the organization. And so, by doing that, they're really learning that getting that learning outcome of the social context and importance of considering that in the design of whatever it is 

Cain:

For that project, did students engage with individual interviews or focus groups or something like that with the organization and its employees? 

Higgins:

We're doing one of them this term, and the students will do group mapping sessions. So they're going to map the workflow from the point where someone in the organization requests onboarding materials to the point where they receive those materials and what are the steps that happen? Who are all the different departments and individuals that are involved? What kind of resources do they have to call on Google documents or emails? What tools are they using to share that information and complete the task? So it's very complicated. So the group working this term is going to invite all of those folks to the table and together they'll develop a visual workflow map of the process and see where the gaps and the roadblocks are in the process. 

Cain:

I want to talk a little bit more about what some of the students do on the ground, but I wanted to first ask you a little bit about just your work in the project centers. And we've talked about: it's a lot. There's a lot involved, and sometimes you're in Australia or your focus is there if you're not there physically. So how did each of you become interested in project center advising and ultimately becoming a project center director? 

Higgins:

I came to WPI for a lot of reasons, but I think the fact that we have a program like this is really what drew me here because I had, my PhD is in rhetoric and I'd been studying communication in communities and how people argue for change and work across differences to make change and so many elements of that are present in these projects. I thought that's one area where I can bring my expertise and it also allows me to learn about the different problems that communities are facing across the world. And these are problems where initially I didn't have much expertise in: some of the environmental problems, climate change problems. So, I feel like I am a lifelong learner now, and I'm able with each iteration to learn more about these topics. It's such an opportunity to engage with really motivated folks who are trying to create change. That's exciting. 

Every project is new and you’re learning alongside the students, which is important. 

Cain:

How about you, Steve? 

McCauley:

Yeah, same thing. It's my background that drew me, I think appropriate to it. I'm a geographer by training, and so we're trained to understand human environment, technology, relationships and the importance of context. And so that has been a good training that brought me into this work in this program, but then it’s the constant learning that's really kept me here and allowed me to really feel like I'm growing through every project. So, I love the way you put it, Lorraine. There was one interview we did once where I had a quote that was quoted in the New York Times that I had said that what's exciting or challenging for the students is that we sort of throw them in over their heads and then we give them support and coaching to help them figure that out. What I didn't mention is that as faculty, we're often in over our heads too because it's all new. And so it's that collective process of working with the students to tackle something new and to figure out how we would do that, that makes it incredibly rewarding. 

Cain:

It must build a lot of comradery that way as well, amongst not only your fellow faculty, your fellow co-director, but also to be in it with the students too. 

McCauley:

That's right. And that's what actual learning looks like in the real world. That's what work looks like is we're constantly facing new things. So that's where it really is different than a classroom-based education: that facing real new challenges every day. 

Cain:

As we've talked about, the Interactive qualifying project is really focused on this intersection of science, technology, and societal needs and challenges. The Melbourne Project Center has been around since 1998 and for the 25th anniversary a few years ago, a team of WPI students documented the history, which was really cool. At that time, they found WPI students had done more than 270 projects in Melbourne with more than 50 sponsors or partner organizations over the years. These were projects focused on all kinds of themes from education to fire risk, social services and environmental protection. Really impressive. I'm wondering if you can go a little little bit deeper and give me an example of what the students do during one of these projects and how that work really starts even before they travel to Australia. 

McCauley:

Yeah, as you said, there's a lot of examples we could choose from. One that comes to mind is a project, actually we've done a series of projects with an organization called Emergency Services Foundation, and that's an organization that supports 13 different organizations and agencies that deal with emergencies from fire and rescue to police and lifesaving services. And we've done a number of projects with them that focus around the mental health and wellbeing of emergency service workers and sometimes even their families and others who are involved in that environment. So it's been a really interesting set of projects to work with our students on. These are undergraduate engineering students from different engineering fields, and to invite them into this challenge of understanding and then documenting the experiences of emergency service workers and the ways in which their work experiences can be difficult and present challenges for their mental health and wellbeing, and then try to figuring out some strategies for how to support them in that. So, they've been interesting and challenging. Our students have had to learn social science methodologies for how to learn from this community of people, and particularly some strategies for how to do that sensitively and that protects the rights and privacy of these people that they're engaging with. So we do a preparation course before the students go away, in which it's sort of called social science methods for the IQP actually. So we do teach them social science methodologies, which gives them that foundation, enough foundation to be able to go out and start engaging in a bit of a systematic way through interviews or focus groups. And so they get a bit of practice before they go away, and they really design a research plan and research instruments before they even go to Australia. And that's an opportunity to work with their faculty advisors, with their teammates and engage a bit with the partner over Zoom chats or phone calls or anything to sort of refine the plan. And that's been really effective so that they can sort of hit the ground running. They also do what's called A PQP: a pre-qualifying project that goes along with the IQP, and that's an opportunity for the team to meet with their faculty advisors once a week to essentially start the professional team building and the professional project management process. And so, they run meetings and they present their work weekly, and it just sort of gets them in the routine of running the project because something we haven't really said yet, but a real kind of center point of this experience is that we actually do give the leadership of the project to the student team. And so, they do need to sort of chart the course of the project and make sure it's meeting the goals of the sponsor and everything. So, in the case of the Emergency Services Foundation project that I mentioned, part of the work they had to do was to think about how are they going to navigate these somewhat sensitive conversations sometimes with young people who are the family of emergency service workers. Ultimately what we landed on for their focus groups was to have a psychologist in the room actually who could just listen and just be a supportive presence in the room in case anything sensitive did come up. We do, of course, do internal review board applications, human subjects reviews to make sure that their work will meet ethical standards and to make sure we're getting a lot of perspective on thinking through what some of the challenges might be. So that's an example where our engineering students got to engage in topic that's quite at the most sensitive kind of human experiences. So that was one example 

Higgins:

That was a particularly challenging, I think, example because they were working with minors in this case who were talking sometimes about traumatic incidents their parents had gone through as emergency service workers and how that had affected them when they were younger. So, they had to read quite a bit about ethics and risk in working with human subjects and how to handle those things so that they could meet the IRBs criteria and ensured that this was being done safely and appropriately. They also had to do a lot of background research into the work of emergency service workers and the kind of mental health support that they get and that their families might get in these organizations. So, the preparation involves so much. It's learning about the background topic and expert best practices, learning about the research methodology and the ethics involved there. As Steve said, working, learning about project, how do you manage a project and communicate your progress weekly in a professional way in professional presentations, taking minutes at meetings, developing meeting agendas. So they're learning quite a lot about the general process as well as the specific topic. 

Cain:

And when they're on the ground, obviously they're doing the legwork, the research continues, the interviews, the meetings with folks, and then trying to process all that information. And I understand that each project tends to have a final written report, but then sometimes some other deliverables that they've worked out with the project partner or sponsor. Maybe in the case of the Emergency Services Foundation project, can you talk a little bit about what those sort of deliverables, those final touch points were? 

Higgins:

Yeah, that's something that's shifted over the years going from the straight 100 page research report. I think new media now is being used so much in communication, and the groups that we work with are really interested in those kinds of products so that they can disseminate the work they're doing in more interesting ways. So we are delivering more podcasts, animations, online modules. We're using all kinds of new media to communicate the research results and disseminate it more widely. In this particular project, the students developed a video with some still shots and voiceovers of some of the children of emergency service workers talking about their experiences. And that was shown at a sector-wide workshop that we did online, bringing managers from all of these, from the police, from firefighters, et cetera, bringing them all together in the same room to see this really impactful video and hear the voices of these young people to see the need to develop more mental health support. So that's just one example. We've also done podcasts, by the way, to sort of share the staff who are working behind the scenes in emergency services, often we don't recognize how they can be traumatized by the work, and there's a need to normalize that and explain to folks that if you're having feelings or being affected by the stories you're hearing as a dispatcher, et cetera, it's okay. You need to get help and you need to talk about it. So our students last year did a podcast and had some of those folks talking about their experiences and how they got help and how they managed to cope with it. 

Cain:

Yeah, there's a lot of power in personal storytelling. Given that there is this need sometimes for more of a multimedia final product, for lack of a better word, what are some of the ways that WPI prepares students to tackle those challenges and be ready for the needs of project partners? 

McCauley:

Yeah, that's part of the preparation course that the students do before they go away is to start imagining the ultimate deliverables and start doing some preparation around what kind of things they may need to do. And a lot of times it is new for the students. They might come into a project and have very little experience in video or design, but a lot of the projects do involve some kind of design ultimately and a lot of times storytelling. And so, we work with the students through the course of their preparation project. There's just a lot they need to do as part of their training. We do have a service at WPI, the Global Lab that helps students to learn skills for multimedia storytelling, and they're welcome to come into the Global Lab and do some technical training on the media equipment as well as get some consultation advice on storytelling, and they have time to do a little bit of practice before they go to their project site, and then it's through the arc of the project itself. They're starting to do that storytelling as well. 

Cain:

And we're here at the Global Lab today, and I can vouch for the fact that we've got some great equipment here available for the students to work with. In that 25th anniversary report that we talked about that WPI students did, they found 39% of the project partners have collaborated with the Melbourne Project Center on five or more projects. Nine of the partners had participated in 10 or more projects with our students. What do you think keeps so many of these project partners coming back and choosing to work with WPI students? 

McCauley:

We like to think that they are getting a lot for the time that they engage with the students. The projects are pretty often have pretty great outcomes and that really do deliver for what the organization's looking for, so that's definitely a big part of it. I'd also add in that I think our partners really enjoy working with our students, and they wouldn't do it, I don't think, if they didn't enjoy being involved in some way in the learning process, even though they are looking for deliverables, but it is a relationship and they get to know the students well and they enjoy it. 

Higgins:

We hear from our partners that having these young people coming in fresh to work that they've been working on a long time brings a new perspective and reinvigorates the staff. That interaction and having the staff having to explain what they do and talk more about what they do is actually very useful to them. Some of our partners have also talked about in projects that involve students analyzing organizational processes and improving organizational processes, the students will often interview and bring together people from different departments in an organization who otherwise may never talk to one another. So, I think the students can be catalysts for these very critical conversations that normally organizations don't have time for. I think that's a big part of it as well. 

McCauley:

That's right. Yeah. I think the benefits go beyond just the deliverables that our students put together. And a lot of times it is the network building that the students end up doing, both within organizations, cataloging conversations, and even outside of the organizations. Because as the students embark on this effort to learn from the various stakeholders and learn about the social context, they're going out and doing interviews or observations with lots of different folks in the community who might in any way be sort of connected to or affected by the project. And so that sort of work the students do to get out and pound the pavement and learn can really help expand the networks of the partners themselves as well and open up new doors that again, have been sitting there waiting to be open, but our students coming over from the US can often help to do that because they're getting out there and asking questions. 

Higgins:

One good example of that is when we were working with Banksia Gardens Community Services, and they worked a lot with trauma-informed education, and our students did a series of projects on that topic, and in the process, they were interviewing experts in the field and organizations both in the US and from other countries, and putting that information together so that Banksia could improve some of their own afterschool programs, et cetera, teacher training, et cetera. But one unexpected benefit wound up being that the students had connected all of these different organizations across the world, and as a result, Banksia actually hosted an international conference that brought together all of those folks. 

Cain:

It sounds like breaking down silos within organizations and reaching new connections outside. So you've been there nearly a decade and you've seen these project partnerships grow and evolve, and you've seen the sponsors, the partners really benefit from some of this work, and you've seen specific projects sort of build upon the work of earlier projects from earlier students. The students, they're on site for roughly two months. It goes pretty quick. So I'm wondering, in your view, what are some of the ways that the students learn about and appreciate those long-lasting impacts that you've just shared with me: the long-lasting impacts of their work, even after the project is over?

Higgins:

Students really care about that. They really want to know that their project report isn't sitting on a shelf somewhere, that the deliverables they've created are actually being used, that they're making a difference. And some of our partners will actually stay in touch with students who have been in the projects and they'll communicate on a regular basis about what they're doing and where the project work has gone. Some of the organizations publish the work our students do, and they send us that information so we know where it's going, we know it's making a difference, and we also try to make an effort when we build one project onto another, when we're working on a similar topic like microplastics, we will send the new project team back to speak to students in the old project team to learn from them, and that helps them see this continuity of knowledge building that they're actually building on the work of a previous project team. So I think that's a useful thing. 

McCauley:

Yeah, maybe. I guess it's a real thing I really value about our students is how much they are motivated by making a real contribution. Sometimes they might be a little interested in their grade early on, but pretty quickly they get beyond that, and what they're really intrinsically motivated by is knowing that they're making a real contribution and there seems to be nothing that motivates them more to really do their best work. 

Cain:

That kind of ties into my next question. When I think about the IQP and the global projects program and the opportunity to do these projects, in some cases halfway around the world with 50 project centers, six continents, there's a lot to it. There's travel, there's teamwork, there's research, there's learning about a topic maybe you haven't learned about before. What do the students tell you about what they take away from their project experiences in Melbourne? What really sticks with them? And I'm sure it's different for each person, but are there some common themes that emerge? 

McCauley:

Yeah, there sure are. A big one is teamwork. That always ends up being a real important part of the experience, and they learn so much about working closely with others, navigating the ups and downs of a project together, and we give them a lot of support and they get to really experience what that's like, and that's a big one that they take away. 

Higgins:

In terms of personal growth, students often will talk about being shy or not being confident in their ideas and having to present their work to other professionals every week, they grow in their confidence and they grow in their communication skills, whether it's giving a PowerPoint presentation or giving a talk to managers across the sector that they don't know, and exposure too to some of the problems that we're struggling with in our world and how people from different parts of the world are dealing with those problems and how important it is, as we started this podcast with, how important it is to really understand how people in Australia might do something as opposed to their preconceived notions of how things should be done. 

Cain:

What do you love about being a project center director and maybe specifically working with the students on the projects in Melbourne? 

McCauley:

Well, one of the awesome benefits of it for us as center directors is that we do end up spending a good amount of time in Melbourne and working really closely with partners in setting up the projects and then working with them through these projects. So we've built great relationships and friendships with folks over there, and we did have that 25th anniversary event that you mentioned, which was a really great opportunity to bring that whole network together and celebrate them and thank them for being partners with us for so long. But it has just been a wonderful opportunity for us to have professional relationships and friendships all the way around the world that we keep maintaining and working with. And so that's a really great part about this whole global Project Center network that we have. 

Higgins:

Yeah, Melbourne's become a kind of home away from home for me for part of the year. Steve, at one point, I think he was there during Covid and spent, what, 18 months? 

McCauley:

Yeah. Well, that was getting stuck when all the flights stopped, but yeah, that definitely allowed me to get to know the place better. 

Higgins:

But you do get to know folks and fact, we've had some of our partners come to the states to do research or for conferences, and they'll come stop by WPI and visit with us and sometimes visit with the students that they've worked with in the past, which is really fun. 

Cain:

I know we've talked very specifically about Melbourne today, but it's really just one example of the greater network. The Global Projects Program is celebrating 50 years this academic year started with Washington, DC. I'm wondering what you think makes that program so unique and special. 

McCauley:

Well, it's the opportunity for them to work on authentic projects out in the world where they're really contributing to a goal of a partner. 

Higgins:

Yeah, a lot of schools have recognized the importance of project-based learning. We have really developed a model, and we have developed expertise in how to do this right, how to prepare students ahead of time, how to locate ourselves in important places across the world and connect to communities there. I think we've had 50 years of development and knowledge, and I think we have the extra benefits of complete immersion, as we've talked about, and really putting students on the ground. 

Cain:

Thanks for talking with me about your work. 

McCauley:

Thanks, Jon. 

Higgins:

Thanks, Jon. 

Cain:

Lorraine Higgins is a teaching professor, and Stephen McCauley is an associate professor of teaching both in the Department of Integrative and Global Studies at WPI. They're co-directors of WPI’s Melbourne Australia Project Center. You can learn more about student projects, our global projects program, all our project centers and project-based learning at WPI on our website wpi.edu. You can hear more podcasts like this one at wpi.edu/listen. There you can also find audio versions of stories about our students, faculty and staff, everything from events to research. You can also check out the latest WPI News on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube podcasts. You can also ask Alexa to open WPI. This podcast was produced at the WPI Global Lab in the Innovation Studio. Our audio engineer today is Varun Bhat. Thanks for listening.