When three WPI students began a project in the fall of 2022 to understand how fracking to extract oil in a village in Albania is affecting the women who live there, the students didn’t know their work would earn them a prestigious honor on campus. Alexandria Sheehan said she and her teammates were focused on their research and the women who entrusted them to share their stories. “We felt it was our duty to put ourselves as close to ‘in their shoes’ as possible,” Sheehan said. “We were greeted with grace, warmth, and welcoming. Our part was to amplify their voices.”
A little more than a year later, Sheehan and her teammates Samuel Darer and Sara Frunzi, all seniors, found themselves presenting their project work along with four other student groups at the Rubin Campus Center. A few hours after their presentation to President Grace Wang, university leaders, faculty, staff, project advisors, parents, and a panel of judges, the trio learned they had won the 2023 President’s IQP Awards.
(L-R) Frunzi, Sheehan, and Darer present their project at President's IQP Awards
The annual awards recognize outstanding student work conducted in the Interactive Qualifying Project (IQP). A signature element of WPI’s project-based education, the IQP allows interdisciplinary student teams to work full time for seven weeks in an immersive experience at a global, local, or on-campus project center through The Global School’s Global Projects Program. IQPs seek to address a problem at the intersection of science, technology, and the needs of society.
The 2023 awards, recognizing IQPs from the 2022-23 academic year, were held January 26, 2024. Five student team finalists, selected by a panel of faculty and staff who reviewed dozens of student-submitted nominations, gave 30-minute presentations on their work and fielded questions from judges who later selected the winning team. All five teams were honored, and the winning team was announced at an award presentation and reception for finalists, advisors, and families at Higgins House that evening.
President Grace Wang addresses finalists at President's IQP Awards reception
“This was my very first experience listening to the IQP presentations, and our students are so inspirational in how they address real-world problems,” said President Grace Wang, who congratulated the finalists. “I have always known that project-based learning is profound and powerful, and the students’ descriptions of their experiences – ‘amazing experience’, ‘life changing’, ‘life transforming’ and coming out of their comfort zone and gaining confidence – were particularly meaningful.” Wang also thanked the faculty advisors, The Global School leadership, project center directors, and staff for making the Global Projects Program possible.
For the winning project, “Living with Fracking: Women’s Narratives from Zharrëz, Albania,” economic science major Sheehan, chemistry major Darer, and mechanical engineering major Frunzi interviewed women who live near the largest onshore oil field in Europe. The students, who worked out of the Tirana, Albania project center, focused on the women’s own experiences to help describe the impact of oil fracking on the quality of life in the region. The women painted a bleak picture of a region where water is unusable, air pollution makes residents feel sick, the land is visibly contaminated from oil deposit wells, agriculture has been hindered, and compensation for damage to homes caused by fracking-induced seismic activity has been inadequate.
Given this powerful experience and the compelling narratives of the women, the students wanted others to have the same research tools to apply to future disaster risk management planning. They created a narrative elicitation guidebook detailing the activities they developed and produced a synopsis of the frameworks they utilized. The IQP team also produced a multimedia exhibition of the women’s stories including photos, quotes, and narratives.
Instructor Robert Hersh and Assistant Professor Leslie Dodson, both in The Global School, advised the IQP project, which was sponsored by the United Nations Development Programme in Albania. “The sponsor was very impressed with the participatory methods the students used to obtain life stories from the women of Zharrëz,” Hersh said. “The sponsor will use some of these methods going forward. Also, the students established a wonderful rapport with the women they interviewed, and this was clear during the final presentation in Albania, which the women attended.” Sheehan, Darer, and Frunzi identified three United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as being most relevant to this project: gender equality, clean water and sanitation, and reducing inequality. The IQP program is one example of the many ways WPI students and faculty are working to advance the SDGs.
"We felt it was our duty to put ourselves as close to ‘in their shoes’ as possible...Our part was to amplify their voices.” - Alexandria Sheehan
The other finalists for the 2023 President’s IQP Awards, all students from the Class of ‘24:
Story Bikes in Somers Town For The People’s Museum. Students: Luke Barckholtz, Connor Dowgielewicz, Claire Higginson, and Sydney Smith. Advisors: Laureen Elgert, Dominic Golding, and Sarah Riddick. – London, England Project Center. The team conducted a feasibility study for and advanced a community museum’s goal of providing an environmentally friendly bicycle transportation service for commuters and guided historical bike tours.
Melbourne Project Center: Telling Our Story through Engaging Media. Students: Tara Desrochers, Erin Murphey, Bailey Norris, and Justin Weintraub. Advisors: Lorriane Higgins and Stephen McCauley. – Melbourne, Australia Project Center. The team organized information on 25 years of partnerships and project work at the Melbourne Project Center, managed, and created visual displays for a 25th anniversary event for the project center.
The Taiwanese Backpacker: In Search of Purpose. Students: Abigail Boafo, Randy Huang, and Alexander Sun. Advisors: Grant Burrier and Jefferson Alex Sphar. – Taipei, Taiwan Project Center. The team conducted a study for a local nonprofit on the potential inclusion of solo backpacking into its youth programming to promote finding purpose and personal development.
The Damage Behind the Bruises: Mitigating Interpersonal Violence Through a Demonstrative Simulation of Blunt Trauma on Soft Tissue. Students: Isabelle Benson-Clarke, Benjamin Breslov, Amitai Erfanian, Zoe Goodman, and Theodore Winter. Advisors: Ivan Mardilovich and Svetlana Nikitina. – Haifa, Israel (originally planned for Moscow, Russia Project Center). The team, on an accelerated four-week schedule, developed for a trauma surgeon a model thigh with a sensor and software system to demonstrate the physical injury caused when someone strikes another person. The goal of the model is to provide a new tool for batterer intervention programs.
The following projects received honorable mention:
Investigating Localized Air Pollution Exposure in Thessaloniki, Greece. Students: Mikaela Enax, Mark Gagliardi, Alexander Lucero, and Alexander Wadsworth. Advisors: Robert Hersh and Darko Volkov. – Thessaloniki, Greece Project Center. The team conducted interviews and community air pollution monitoring for a local college to bolster existing data and provide analysis suggesting a need for greater understanding and awareness of air pollution in the city.
Improving Cross-Program Collaboration with the Australian Red Cross Victorian Emergency Services. Students: Dante Amicarella, Bryce Curtin, Owen Krause, and Antone Mello. Advisors: Lorraine Higgins and Stephen McCauley. – Melbourne, Australia Project Center. The team developed a framework to analyze coordination efforts between Victorian Red Cross programs and made recommendations to the organization for improvements with a goal of better serving people in emergency scenarios.
The judges who observed the finalist presentations and decided the winners were Mimi Sheller, dean of The Global School; Scott Harris ’82, a mentor in residence at WPI and distinguished partner in engineering and entrepreneurship at Olin College of Engineering; Giselle Rivera-Flores, director of communications for State Senator Robyn Kennedy and co-host of “Business Beat” on WICN Public Radio; Jennifer Wyse ’94, a trustee and former senior executive at Philips and GE; and Carrie Jung, senior education reporter at WBUR radio.
Click here for a list of President’s IQP Awards finalists and winners from previous years.
