One of WPI's greatest strengths is its project-oriented academic program. Upperclassmen get to go out and apply what they learn in real-life projexts, instead of sitting in a lecture hall listening to a professor droning on and on about Bernoulli's principle or some such nonsense. For this, WPI has been on the vanguard of educational development, with its students benefiting greatly from the more practical approach this school takes to education.
Of course, this only really benefits the upperclassmen. Freshmen must endure the rigors of a static classroom whether they like it or not. A small group of professors congregated to address the issue of static freshmen classes. These pioneering professors believed that WPI's project-oriented curriculum should be extended to the freshmen as well. With support from the Davis Foundation, the same organization which sponsors the Insight and Bridging programs, all of which have proven beneficial to students, the idea for an experimental freshmen project oriented class was presented. The professors involved are John Zeugner of the Humanities Department, John Goulet of the Math Department, Thomas Keil of the Physics Department, and Arthur C. Heinricher. At first the idea was criticized by a majority of the Faculty. The argument against Project 2000, as it was called, was that it would create a class for elite students. To solve this dilemma, the professors involved turned the class into a lottery where 23 students would randomly be chosen from a pool of 79 applicants. In the end, Project 2000 came to be known as the Davis Tutorial.
The primary mission of the Tutorial, according to Professor Zeugner, is to combine Physics, Calculus and the Humanities into a single integrated course. Instead of the traditional lecture-and-test routine, the professors chose to follow a new methodology for teaching. Students will be evaluated according to projects they do in specially designed groups of students. The groups themselves have been created using a psychological evaluation system known as DiSC in which 4 people may form the best group possible. Currently, the Davis Tutorial has a very large budget with which to work. The class has its very own room in the basement of Founders' Hall, fully equipped with state-of-the art computers and classroom equipment.
Perhaps what makes this great experiment all the more promising, however, is the stunning array of talent present in the faculty teaching the course. Professor Zeugner has been at WPI for almost 30 years, and is greatly admired by a vast majority of his students as an exceptional Humanities professor. Professor Keil is the head of the Physics department, and has been tutoring the 23 students very closely in their Physics courses. Professors John Goulet and Arthur Heinricher are both superb professors in the Math department. They will be personally teaching Calculus to Davis tutorial students while integrating it with Physics starting in Term B. Students will be evaluated on their mastery of the course material and not through the tired testing and examination method.
The professors involved, along with the Davis Foundation, are putting their bets that this is what the future of teaching will hold in WPI. By combining Physics, Calculus and Humanities in an integrated course, the Tutorial may well successfully pave the way for a new age of educational enlightenment here at WPI.