Thinking Global While Staying Local

WPI has earned a reputation not only as a pioneer in project-based learning, but as a leader in integrating a global perspective into undergraduate education. Its Global Projects Program (GPP), through which teams of students travel to one of more than 50 sites around the world to complete projects in partnership with local sponsors, is unique in its scale and in the impact it can have on young lives.

When the emerging COVID-19 pandemic led the university to suspend all travel, it threw the off-campus project program—and the plans and hopes of hundreds of undergraduates—for a loop. But by adapting the scale and focus of planned projects and using virtual tools, like the ubiquitous Zoom meeting platform, WPI found ways to offer students, even those studying remotely, the opportunity for valuable, multicultural experiences in finding solutions to real-world problems.

Virtual experiences also marked the launch of The Global School, WPI’s fourth academic school, which builds upon the success of the GPP. It aims to infuse the benefits of global engagement throughout the university, according to the school’s inaugural dean, Mimi Sheller, who joined the faculty in July 2021.

“Now more than ever,” Sheller says, “after the disruption of the pandemic, we need to rebuild global connectivity. The Global School gives students the opportunity to contribute to partnerships around the world. Many students are even more committed to working together on community climate adaptation, global health challenges, and sustainable development. We want all WPI students to connect with and learn from the lives of people everywhere who are facing challenges—like the need for clean water or sustainable food systems, generating renewable energy, or co-designing new technologies. As the pandemic demonstrated, WPI can provide those opportunities in diverse and fluid situations.”

The school’s motto might just be, “You can’t have too much of a good thing.” Its wide-ranging umbrella encompasses groundbreaking programs that have long been introducing undergraduates to the challenges and rewards of tackling important global problems and developing locally appropriate solutions. They include the Great Problems Seminar (GPS), which offers first-year students not only a chance to get accustomed to project work by tackling problems of a global nature, but an opportunity to acquire marketable skills such as time management and critical thinking.

Also within The Global School is the university’s renowned Global Projects Program, through which undergraduates may complete their required projects at off-campus project centers. Many of those off-campus experiences are Interactive Qualifying Projects (IQPs), a degree requirement through which students work with team members outside their majors to tackle societal problems in areas such as energy, the environment, education, and technology.

Building on this global footprint, the new school, which recently launched its first graduate programs, Community Climate Adaptation and Science and Technology for Innovation in Global Development (offered in partnership with the School of Arts and Sciences), with others in development, aims to make opportunities for global learning, research, and partnerships available to all students and faculty members, notes Kent Rissmiller, who served as the school’s interim dean during the 2020–21 academic year. “Our new graduate programs are built on our network of project sites,” he says. “They are unique in bringing project-based and team learning to graduate students.”

The launch of The Global School in February 2020 coincided with the emergence of COVID-19 as a national public health emergency. Accordingly, the school’s formal kickoff was delayed until October of that year. It was observed with a series of virtual events focused on Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Oceania, the locations of current and future global hubs that will serve as focal points for the school’s global engagement. Keynote speakers included Robert Langer, Institute Professor at MIT, Carlos Nobre, co-author on the Nobel Prize–winning Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and Mark Leonard, co-founder and director of the European Council on Foreign Relations.

While the school celebrated virtually, the GPP had to quickly adapt to the halt on global travel. In March 2020, students who had made preparations for project work off-campus now found themselves traveling back home rather than boarding a plane for India, Melbourne, or Zurich. For GPP administrators and project center advisors, the immediate challenge was to find ways for students to still have a meaningful and academically rigorous project experience.

About half of the IQPs scheduled for D-Term went off as planned, albeit remotely, Rissmiller says; other project teams quickly pivoted to new projects and new sponsors. “Some students ended up working with organizations in Worcester instead of in Iceland,” he notes. “Instead of going to South Africa, some students worked with African immigrants in Worcester. There was anger and disappointment, but by the fall of 2020 there was a greater appreciation for the danger represented by the pandemic.”

Students, faculty advisors, and global project partners all demonstrated creativity and resilience, says Sarah Stanlick, assistant professor of integrative and global studies. “They handled the challenges so gracefully,” she says.

Stanlick says some attempts to carry out planned projects remotely were thwarted by the pandemic. In London, for example, projects sponsored by government agencies could not proceed after public-sector employees were furloughed. On the other hand, new partnerships were forged with SOAS University of London and London’s National Organization for Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD).

Laura Staugler ‘22 completed her IQP virtually with FASD in March 2021. Her project focused on alcohol use in pregnancy in the Gen-Z age group. With teen and young-adult participants already assembled from a previous sponsored project and by a polling firm, the project was on sure footing, she said.

“Differing views on drinking in the United States and in the U.K. made the project interesting,” she says. “And the sponsoring team members, which included an American now living in Britain, “were fantastic. We hit the jackpot with them.”

Students who completed projects virtually, instead of in person, missed out on some of the non-academic aspects of global project work, like getting to know people in other countries and experiencing other cultures and points of view firsthand, says Esther Boucher-Yip, associate teaching professor of humanities and arts and director of the London Humanities and Arts and Bangkok project centers.

She says the students made good use of technology. In Bangkok, for example, where WPI students traditionally work in teams on projects with students from Chulalongkorn University, the WPI students—despite the distance—got to know their Thai counterparts and experienced their culture

“We had students present mini-sessions on cultural information,” she says, “ranging from discussions of favorite areas of Worcester, to Buddhism, to cultural superstitions and food in Thailand and the U.S.” The experience for students completing works through the Bangkok Project center included a virtual cooking demonstration by a regional Thai celebrity chef coordinated by a project center partner.

“They have friends there now,” she says. “Many of the Thai students mentioned that the WPI project team members are welcome to stay with them when they visit.”

Even completed virtually, IQPs can produce lasting results. Lorraine Higgins, teaching professor in humanities and arts, says an IQP team that was supposed to work at the Puerto Rico Project Center instead completed a project for the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) on land-acquisition planning for El Yunque National Forest.

“Our students developed a process for mapping community interests in the areas under consideration,” she says, “revealing where perspectives on land access and use diverge from those at the Forest Service.” The process of looking at historical tensions around the issue of public access included assembling focus groups, conducting interviews, and investigating zoning and land ownership. The process, now established, can be used by the USFS for future decision making, she says.

Stephen McCauley, associate teaching professor of integrative and global studies and co-director of the Melbourne, Australia, Project Center, said it was remarkable how much students used innovation and benefitted from the IQP, even remotely. “I had a few really excellent teams,” he says, “that developed creative deliverables, including animations, interactive games, and an online induction platform, which reflected deep understanding of the social context. It was remarkable to me how much they seemed to get of the IQP learning outcomes even in the remote context.”

In a year when a global pandemic curtailed global connections while simultaneously making the value of those connections clearer than ever, WPI found ways to maintain and even strengthen its commitment to making the world a better place. With the launch of The Global School, the university deepened its reputation as a leader in global education and scholarship. And by creatively pivoting its Global Projects Program, it demonstrated the power of project-based problem solving.

“This year showed that even amid adversity,” Rissmiller says, “we can provide global learning opportunities that touch every student, enhance our global reputation, and expand our global reach as an institution.”