The Great Problems Seminar (GPS) is a two-term course that immerses first-year students into university-level research and introduces them to the project-based curriculum at WPI. The course gives students and faculty the opportunity to step outside their disciplines to solve problems focused on themes of global importance, culminating in annual Poster Presentation Days that celebrate students’ innovative research on a wide range of solutions to some of the world’s most critical challenges.
Business Officer magazine features WPI’s distinctive project-based learning curriculum and the impact of the program on student engagement in addressing human needs and social challenges.
[“Teaching Students to Care” originally appeared in the November 2017 issue of Business Officer, the monthly flagship magazine published by the National Association of College and University Business Officers in Washington, D.C.]
From the very beginning, WPI students are engaged with current events, societal problems, and human needs as they delve into issues of global importance in their first project experience. As one student explains, the Great Problems Seminar helps students understand the problem first—from food sustainability to water conservation to sanitation solutions—and “find the humanitarian way to fix it and implement it in a community...".
