Great Problems Seminar (GPS)
This two-course introduction to university-level research and project work focuses on themes of current global importance. Everything you do will be tied to current events, societal problems, and human needs. GPS is all about important problems. The skills you’ll develop are exactly what you’ll need to be successful in your project work at WPI, and in your future career.
GPS Examples
Learn about—and work to solve—the current paradoxes of our food situation: The malnutrition of too little and too much food; deprivation and obesity. What political, economic, biological and chemical solutions can be found?
Study the cost of research and regulation required to bring new drugs to market. Learn to examine problems with local complexity and global scale—while studying issues such as cost/benefit analysis, innovation, decision making, and competitive analysis.
Explore the looming water crisis from social and ecological perspectives while examining topics such as water as a human right, pollution, ecosystem services, technological innovation, and global governance. 
While every generation and community have experienced energy crises, people have found ways to proceed—though their solutions have had positive and negative consequences. Learn about the history, policies, and current trends in energy technologies.
Learn to examine problems with local complexity and global scale. Course starts with the biology of an infectious disease and moves on to study both the biology and the moral, political, and cultural aspects of illness.
Explore the intersection of community values and technological advancement, and examine both tangible “edges” (between geographic or physical boundaries) and conceptual “edges” (between negotiated or imposed categories of difference).
Dig deeply into the background of perennial educational issues, examine the forces and factors that promote or compromise educational systems and programs, create informed, persuasive positions of your own, and devote time to educating others. 
Learn how you can make a difference through ingenuity and innovation in this course, which blends engineering with humanities and builds a framework for the world in which students will live.
