WPI Launches Global Projects For All Initiative to Give Every Student Access to Off-campus Project Experiences

Since 1970, project-based learning has been the core of WPI’s undergraduate curriculum. Known as the WPI Plan, this approach builds upon WPI’s core philosophy of balancing theory and practice in education. The WPI Plan is a flexible and academically rigorous program that synthesizes classroom experience with projects that challenge students within important professional and social contexts. Throughout their four years at WPI, students work closely with faculty—and each other—on projects that allow them to apply their acquired skills, knowledge, and abilities to develop solutions for authentic, open-ended, real-world problems. All students must complete two significant research projects: one is a high-level design or research experience conducted within their major, the other solves a problem at the intersection of science, technology, and culture, and emphasizes the need to learn about how technology affects people, societal values, and structures. In addition, all WPI students engage in the integrated Humanities & Arts Requirement, which allows them to become immersed in art, theatre, music, and other forms of creative expression whereby they can explore themes of complexity, diversity, and the richness of human experience by examining art/architecture, history, languages, literature, philosophy, or religion. The goal is to build well-rounded, globally aware graduates with superior analytical thinking skills and a handle on the ambiguous problems that will characterize their future careers.

In 1974, WPI launched a global component to its project-based curriculum and now sends 72 percent of its students to 40+ project centers around the world, which are overseen by the university's Global Projects Program. At these centers, students work in teams to focus on issues such as energy, food, health, and urban sustainability. The Global Projects Program offers students the opportunity to gain hands-on experience in tackling real problems, develop an understanding of other cultures, and see how their lives and work can make a real impact. It calls for small teams of students to work under the guidance of faculty members from multiple disciplines to address a specific problem or need.

More than four decades after the launch of the WPI Plan, the university’s approach to education remains powerfully effective: A UMass Donahue Institute study of WPI alumni revealed that project-based learning significantly enhanced their professional abilities and advancement, their interpersonal and communications skills, and their world views. This was especially true for women.

Because of the university’s deep commitment to project-based learning, WPI has become an internationally recognized leader and has gained particular recognition for its work. In 2017 the NAE named WPI a Grand Challenge Scholars School for the university’s approach to preparing students to address the major engineering challenges of our time. And in 2016 the NAE awarded the university the prestigious Bernard M. Gordon Prize for Innovation in Engineering and Technology Education for the WPI Plan. Funding from this award went towards the creation of the Center for Project-Based Learning, through which WPI helps other institutions develop approaches to project-based learning that fit their own needs and culture. Since its launch in 2015, the Institute on Project-Based Learning—a two-day intensive workshop, and the flagship offering of the Center for Project-based Learning—has hosted teams from nearly 60 colleges and universities from around the world who are interested in implementing project-based learning in their own curriculum.