Summer Sandbox Grants 2024

Post-IQP Academic Publishing 

John-Michael Davis, Assistant Professor of Teaching, The Global School 

The course will be open to students who completed their IQPs in Puerto Rico in C-term 2024. In E term 2024, I plan to work with 2-3 teams to repackage their IQP report into a journal article. The course will be a 1/6 credit course. Students will deepen their knowledge of their IQP research and its relevance both within Puerto Rico and more broadly, further develop their academic writing skills, learn firsthand the process of academic publishing, and (ideally) co-author a peer-reviewed article offering a major achievement as an undergraduate student. I plan to balance offering teaching opportunities with modeling strong academic writing. The course will involve regular Zoom meetings with teams that will follow Wendy Belcher's book "Writing Your Journal Article in 12 Weeks." 

Afro and Indigenous Voices in Latin America 

Lina Munoz-Marquez, Assistant Teaching Professor, Humanities & Arts 

I propose to develop a Spanish Special Topics Course that explores the narratives and experiences of indigenous and Afro-Latin American activists, artists, writers, filmmakers, and singers. Starting with a critical analysis of racial, gender, and class inequalities in Latin America, students will be exposed to cultural and artistic products that present social justice responses. Through this approach, students will be able to engage at a deeper Spanish level with their study of the diversity of cultures and identities in Latin America. This project involves designing modules, lesson plans, interactive projects, and activities that will be made available to other professors and will benefit students who are completing the HUA Requirement in Spanish, and who are preparing to complete study abroad programs or to work at WPI’s Project Centers in Latin America. 

Social and Political Philosophy 

Geoffrey Pfeifer, Associate Professor of Teaching, The Global School  

This will be an upper-level course to my intro to the course where I use Perusall the social annotation reading app to help build community in addition to offering short lecture videos and a once-a-week live drop-in session for students to discuss course material in person. I plan on doing something similar in the upper-level PY 2712 class and I also want to re-imagine some of my content for an asynchronous format. I am thinking about adding different forms of media to help with philosophical content and new video assignments to help students connect with the material, and each other, in the asynchronous space. Much of what I do in this course will differ from what I do in the introductory course as it is a higher level. 

Topics in Modern Physics: A Roadmap of Women Contributions 

Izabela Stroe Associate Professor of Teaching, Physics 

In this project, I will create a Roadmap of Women Contributions to discoveries and technologies related to topics taught in the Modern Physics course PH 1130. Further, I will redesign the course structure to best incorporate and align these contributions with the required learning course outcomes. Creating the roadmap and incorporating it in this course and other courses is one important step to acknowledge women contributions in science, provide role models to women students, and ultimately help bridge the gap of women’s participation in these fields. 

NeuroPhysics of Yoga 

Snehalata Kadam Assistant Teaching Professor, Physics, (PI) Jagan Srinivasan Associate Professor, Biology & Biotechnology 

Our major goal is to create novel pedagogical approaches for learning concepts in STEM-oriented subjects and provide an atmosphere for acceptance and equity for all students. This endeavor will help students adopt exercising regularly, develop problem-solving skills; and learn to manage emotions. The holistic practice of yoga will allow individuals to appreciate the biomechanics of the human body by increasing strength, flexibility, balance, and awareness of physical sensations within the body and emotions.  Increased awareness of the body and emotions improves mental well-being and can also impact decision-making by creating some between registering a stimulus and engaging in a behavioral response. We are collaborating with the Center for Wellbeing at WPI to assess the impact of the program on well-being by administering the Well-being Improvement Survey in Higher Education (WISHES) to participants and developing wellness courses related to these activities.  

Hey, AI! Is That a Scarlet Tanager in My Yard? 

Marja Bakermans, Associate Teaching Professor, The Global School 

I aim to create a new online course that redesigns an introductory biology course, making it accessible, engaging, and building community. This course will be offered in the summer in an online format, integrating a component of field biology into a course to connect students to outdoor ecologies and ecosystems. The course will embed AI-informed nature apps in the course structure to engage students in the natural world. It will integrate an online data analysis software platform that promotes exploration of the data in science in a user-friendly, drag-and-drop platform. The course will promote the exploration of ecosystems and nature while building a welcoming community. Students all over the globe will be able to participate in this online class and encouraged to integrate local cultures and values around nature, biodiversity, and conservation and share this with their classmates. We will take lessons from using nature-based apps and the online data analysis platform in this setting and consider how to incorporate similar elements into the in-person version of this course. 

AI for Agency and Identity 

Thomas Patrick Noviello, Instructor, Physics 

Efforts have been made within the physics community to ensure that students have agency in the classroom, which has been accomplished through the adoption of inquiry-based activities and active learning philosophies. These settings offer students a glimpse into what professionals do and how they think, thus forming a preliminary sense of professional identity. However, agency and identity can fall short when homework problems are assigned through a textbook, which are often contrived problems that are not tailored to student needs and/or interests. It is proposed that students use AI in the form of ChatGPT 4 to generate their own problem sets based on their interests, analyze the output problems, thoroughly compare their work to AI-generated solutions, and write targeted reflection pieces to document skills obtained, areas of improvement, and to create a plan for subsequent assignments. 

GPThermo: An In-House GenAI Tutor for Thermodynamics 

Alireza Ebadi, Assistant Professor of Teaching, Mechanical & Materials Engineering  

As generative AI becomes more widespread, educators should consider how to apply it responsibly to education. Current commercial systems sometimes struggle with technical prompts. However, with careful in-house training focused on course materials, AI could provide students with rapid feedback to reinforce key concepts. This project aims to train a GPT model focused on thermodynamics using in-house resources, such as ES 3001 lecture notes and video transcripts. The model shall serve as a baseline to create similar models for other courses. 

Beyond Boundaries: Expanding Access to Chemistry Education Through Virtual Reality Technologies in First-Year Labs 

Raúl Orduña Picón, Assistant Teaching Professor, Chemistry & Biochemistry (PI), Robert Dempski, Professor, Chemistry & Biochemistry 

To address first-year students’ learning challenges in chemistry laboratories, this proposal aims to design, implement, and assess new extended reality tools to foster students’ opportunities to learn when engaging in project-based learning in the CH1010 laboratory at WPI. This pedagogical tool's development and assessment will contribute to the recent redesign of the CH1010 laboratory by offering an additional mechanism to teach laboratory safety, basic chemistry skills, and the use of instruments/glassware. 

AI as a Cognitive Mentor in Troubleshooting 

Ahmet Can Sabuncu (PI), Assistant Professor of Teaching Mechanical & Materials Engineering 

The goal of this project is to experiment the utilization of generative Artificial Intelligence to help students master their troubleshooting skills. This is a pilot project in which we would like to understand the potential of AI as a cognitive assistant to students. We explore AI platforms such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot. We look for options to train language models using our laboratory handouts and frequently asked questions we collected from students. Finally, we model the AI prompts so that it provides meaningful support to students as they excel in their troubleshooting skills. 

Esther Boucher-Yip (HUA) A Student Toolkit: How to Read Art

Co-PI Michelle Borowski

This project is a collaborative effort by two HUA faculty from different disciplines. We plan to develop a toolkit that helps students connect art and culture. Faculty advisors and students in the summer HUA project center programs can use these materials to acquire knowledge needed to reflect critically and analytically about art and culture. The toolkit is designed for students with no or limited background in art and art history to help them develop an appreciation for artistic and cultural knowledge of people, culture, and context.

Alireza Ebadi (MME) March CADness: An annual Computer-aided Design competition

I propose creating an annual tournament using a bracket system, where students who have learned computer-aided  design  (CAD)  can  compete  against  their  peers.  This  tournament  aims  to  promote  class  rivalry, departmental recognition, and the opportunity to gain a certificate that can be included on resumes, which I hypothesize will increase student engagement and interest in the CAD course.

Ingrid E. Matos-Nin (HUA) Women in Humanities and Arts

I'd like to explore tools to better improve the teaching of the course HU 2901: Topics in Sexuality and LGBTQ+ Studies. I will use films, books, and any other primary sources available. Particularly, I will concentrate on Women's Studies/LGBTQ+. The collected information will be posted on Canvas. This project will start a data base that can be expanded over the years for the benefit of instructors who will teach this course in the future as well as the students who will use it to learn more about the subject.

Benjamin Pollard (PH) Integrated Lecture-Lab intro Physics

Co-PI Thomas Patrick Noviello, L Dana, Kateryna Friedman

The principles of physics provide a foundation for all areas of engineering and natural sciences, making introductory physics courses high demand and high priority. Existing courses include laboratory exercises as stand-alone components, complicating meaningful connections between lab activities and lecture material. To professionalize our students’ understanding of the nature of science and epistemology, we will transition our class to integrate problem-solving and hands-on learning that meets students’ needs for deep comprehension of physics concepts and their practical applications.

Carly Thorp (MA) WPI Math Readiness Program

Co-PI Debra Boucher, Jennifer Cluett

This new program will enable successful enrollment at WPI for students who would be greatcandidates but are missing the necessary prerequisite math knowledge for admissions. By creating a math pathway, prior to A-Term enrollment and taught by our own Mathematical Sciences faculty, we can provide needed remediation, build strong relationships, and open doors to successful matriculation.

Koksal Mus (ECE) ECE2029 redesign

I have been assigned to teach ECE2029 during the summer 2023 (E2 term). ECE2029 is a core course and is suggested prerequisite for ECE3829 and ECE3849. Throughout the year, it is a high-enrollment class with students from various departments and is offered 3 times a year. This year, there are 160 students registered from 3 different departments (ECE, RBE, and CS). The current curriculum of the course is designed to provide a comprehensive learning experience through daily lectures, along with 3 exams, 4 quizzes, and 5 labs, in7 weeks. Additionally, students are required to utilize 3 different software programs for specific purposes and work with a Digilent Basys 3 Artix-7 FPGA Trainer Board ($170) which can be demanding and requires additional time and effort from students. The course is designed to be challenging, but it is also designed to provide students with the opportunity to develop their skills and knowledge in hardware design.

Jim Cocola (HUA) Teaching Speculative Fiction Across Delivery Modes

This summer I'm teaching speculative fiction (yes, science fiction, but also alternate history, dystopian and utopian fiction, fantasy, horror, superhero, and supernatural fiction) in both hybrid and remote modalities, in person and/or online. Teaching speculative fiction across these delivery modes will also enable speculative thinking about teaching: its superheroes, alternate histories, present practices, and future possibilities. In the process, I aim to discern fantasies from horror stories and utopian possibilities from dystopian outcomes in and beyond the twenty-first-century classroom.

Pradeep Radhakrishnan (ME) Software for Kinematics, Dynamics, and Statistics

The project aims to develop and test tools that can be used by students to verify their work in courses such as Kinematics (ME 3310 and RBE 2001), Statics (ES2501) and Dynamics (ES2503). Two software tools, PMKS+ (Planar Mechanism Kinematic Simulator Plus) for linkage analysis and GearTrain for gear analysis are being developed. These tools can be used to verify analytical equations, numerical solutions, and free body diagrams. Besides, the programs can generate CAD models to enhance student understanding.

Gizem Arslan Yunt (HUA) German for Professional Purposes

This project’s goal is to integrate career readiness into the German program at WPI by finalizing a new course in development titled “German for Professional Purposes,” as well as developing shorter modules that can be integrated into first-year German language courses. Through interactive projects and tasks in which students apply their language and intercultural competence to professional situations, the five-week course and the shorter modules will prepare students to study abroad, work and intern in German-speaking contexts.  

Joseph Cullon (HUA) Jumpstarting the HUA Experience: Building Summer HUA Courses for Incoming First Year Students

                Co-PI Althea Danelski, Esther Boucher-Yi, Emily Gioielli, Abigail Koo, Joshua Rohde.

While increasing numbers of incoming first year students started taking HUA summer courses during the pandemic, these courses had not been consciously designed to initiate student to college-level HUA work. This project seeks to create a coherent experience for incoming FY students by redesigning and running introductory courses to explicitly meet the academic needs of first years, initiating them into a culture of care and resilience where durable faculty-student relationships can be formed. 

Buddika Peiris (MA) Designing STAT labs

                Co-PI Fangfang Wang

The Math Department is seeking this grant to support the modernization of the Statistics labs for two undergraduate applied Statistics courses, specifically MA 2611: Applied Statistics I and MA 2612: Applied Statistics II to establish a foundation in statistical software essential to understand the statistical concepts practically.

Ahmet Can Sabuncu (ME) Remote Controlled Camera Assistant System

Any live or recorded experimental demonstration in teaching requires a camera system. This proposal seeks to design and validate an automated camera assistant in the Mechanical and Materials Department courses. The camera system employs multiple cameras with zoom and focus capabilities to provide varying depth of view and multiple viewpoints. The cameras are motorized along different axes. Finally, we use an automation system for remote control of cameras.

Farley Chery (CS) Studio tool for rapid creation and adoption of Diversity in animated media

Building on the theme of diversity, representation and technology, this projects goal is to finalize the development of an auto-rigging tool with advanced features not seen in commercially available character rigs. Programmers will code the methods and procedures researched throughout 2021 to create a rapid development interface, bringing students’ diverse characters to life at a level beyond what today’s industry standard.

Developing an Experiment with Virtual Connectivity

Ahment Sabuncu (ME) Developing an Experiment with Virtual Connectivity 

In this proposal, I aim to develop an evaporative cooler for teaching psychometrics, namely thermodynamics of atmospheric air. Evaporative coolers   are widely used for air conditioning in dry and hot climates. While this setup will reside at WPI, one distinctive feature is that the setup will be virtually accessible to remote students to collect data and to control the setup.  

Joshua Cuneo (CS) Open Educational Video Resources for Computer Science  

This project is part of an ongoing effort to generate OER video materials for WPI computer science classes. In particular, this project will focus on CS 4731: Computer Graphics. These materials will incorporate animations and coding demonstrations, will be tailored to WPI’s 7-week curriculum, and will be narrated by WPI computer science instructors. The videos will also be broad enough in scope to be applicable outside of WPI, and they will be publicly available online for educators around the world.  
 

Creating Interactive Scenes to Project on Zoom and Other Platforms using OBS Studio

Maqsood Mughal (ECE) Creating Scenes using OBS Studio for Streaming Virtual Classroom over Zoom and other Platforms 

The idea behind this project is to improve student engagement and creating an environment that increases student participation during a virtual class. The goal is to deliver a high- performance real time video/audio capturing and mixing, creating scenes comprised of multiple sources including window captures, images, text, browser windows, multiple webcams, videos and much more. This will allow us to set-up number of scenes for a class on a given day one can switch between seamlessly via custom transitions. For example, one great scene to stream over Zoom for a coding class can be seen below: (1) The students can see the instructor through a webcam or an external camera, (2) students can see the software window where instructor is teaching how to code, and lastly, (3) instructor can monitor students' response and answers questions posted in the chat window. 
 

Ahmet Sabuncu (ME) Leveraging History to Teach Engineering 

Co-PI Maqsood Mughal 

We prepare open educational resources on historical background and socioeconomic impacts of technological inventions with this project. Learning about interesting stories behind inventions could incite curiosity and develop insight in students as most incredible technical innovations originated usually in interesting ways. We believe this lacking aspect in engineering education increases student engagement and facilitates learning. 
 

Calculus Lab Design

PI: Marcel Blais (MA) & Co-PI's Michael Johnson (MA); John Goulet (MA); Barry Posterro (MA)

The Math Department is seeking this grant to support the modernization of the calculus labs for 2 of the 4 primary WPI calculus courses, specifically MA 1023: Calculus 3 and MA 1024: Calculus 4 to establish a foundation in mathematical software essential to success in upper-level courses both in math and outside of math. 

Summer Sandbox Calculus Lab Grant
 

Olufunmilayo (Funmi) Ayobami (BME) Virtual Internship in Biomedical Engineering 

Co-PI Kristen Billiar; Solomon Mensah 

The Virtual Internship in Biomedical Engineering (VIBE) program aims to increase access to minoritized students, through an 8-week team-based, virtual experience targeted to underrepresented and first-generation students. Culminating in a BME design deliverable focused on global health, students will gain hands-on experience with the biomedical design process, learn professional development skills, and engage with current biomedical faculty and professionals. The program will also provide a platform through which we will examine the experiences of underrepresented students with remote/hybrid learning. 

Summer Sandbox Grant Video Report

Esther Boucher-Yip (HUA) Grammar-flip for the ESL writing classroom 

Grammar Flip for the ESL Writing Classroom

Co-PI Althea Danielski 

Using the flipped classroom as  an  instructional  strategy,  this project  involves  designing  and building interactive online grammar modules for multilingual writers. These modules would be used to supplement the teaching of writing and improve students’ mastery of grammar and writing concepts. These self-paced activities would also serve as learning resources for student writers. 

Farley Chery (CS) Novel approaches to 3D modeling and World heritage Aesthetics 

 Novel approaches for 3D modeling, applies traditional art concepts to digital sculpting. Traditional principles such as rhythm, blocking out and iterative evaluation, the course introduces speed sketching as integral to the process. Focusing on translating drawing principles into applicable methodologies for 3D, the pedagogy seeks to simplify learning 3D software, concentrating on the application of inclusive aesthetic across multiple projects. Student will be given historical context to style modern styles, to develop anti-racist aesthetics in character design.