Amplify

WPI students working in makerspace

Amplify the power of innovation

Project-based learning transformed our campus in 1970, and now we're sharing what we've learned with universities around the world to further the scope of its strength and influence––while providing our own students with the skills and support necessary to create lasting impacts of their own.

CONTACT
Location: Boynton Hall
Office Location: 1st floor
Phone: 508-831-5200
Innovation & Entrepreneurship
Center for Project-based Learning
Download Impact Multiplied 2019 (PDF)

Amplifying WPI in the World

Entrepreneurship is more than a class or a program— it is a mindset that is woven into the fabric of WPI. By integrating entrepreneurship throughout the WPI curriculum, students see problems as opportunities and learn to develop innovative solutions that create personal, economic, and societal value. 

Making space for experimentation and discovery on the campus is also critical—and the Innovation Studio is the front door and hub for innovation, entrepreneurship, active learning, making, and collaboration. There, students in the McDonough Makerspace and Fitzgerald Prototype Lab can access state-of-the-art tools, technology, resources, and support to ideate, design, model, and tinker to take an idea from concept to prototype.

With resources and advice from the Global Lab, students, faculty, and staff collaborate in a different way, bringing ideas to life through  transmedia storytelling, participatory art, mixed reality experiences, among other forms of expression.

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The "Front Door" to Innovation

The "front door to innovation” at WPI, the Innovation Studio brings WPI’s distinctive project-based approach to life. With makerspaces, rapid prototyping labs, and opportunities for active learning, our students and faculty have the space to design, collaborate, and build on ideas to change humanity for the better.

More about the Innovation Studio

Impact of the Institute on Project-based Learning

Representatives from the University of Maryland Baltimore County share the impact of WPI's Institute on Project-based Learning on their campus.

Institute on Project-based Learning
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Patent and License Success at WPI

The success of WPI's new invention disclosures and patent licensing has come from careful planning, a distinct strategy, and a willingness within the WPI community to trust the innovation & entrepreneurship process. The university also benefits from this success—as products receive licenses, they can return royalties to WPI and create a valuable revenue stream. 

Read more in The Herd
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Implementing Project-Based Learning in Taiwan

In late 2018, the Center for Project-Based Learning at WPI welcomed its first visiting fellow, Anny Chang, to campus. During this time she immersed herself in WPI’s project-based curriculum from the perspective of both students and faculty, with the goal of ultimately advancing project-based learning in her home country of Taiwan. 

Read more in The Herd
WPI's model offered a whole new way of interacting with students, getting beyond teaching and helping me understand how to motivate a group of students to truly collaborate to solve a problem.
  • Steven McAlpine, Assistant Director of Interdisciplinary Studies
  • University of Maryland, Baltimore County
Roys Family Collection

This collection is comprised of materials of Francis Roys, WPI Class of 1909 and WPI professor, dean and acting President of WPI; and his son, Alden Roys, WPI Class of 1940 and laboratory instructor at WPI. It includes Francis Roys' unpublished history of WPI.

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If you are doing a project, you want to make sure it’s a project people care about. Solving a problem that people have—that’s what leads to innovation.
  • Len Polizzotto, ’70
  • Co-led KEEN Value Creation Workshop at WPI

Andrew Nagal ’19 (left) and Mitch Gaines ’20 give a presentation on their medical device manufacturing company, Bakku Technologies.

Project-based Learning
2015-19 Strategic Plan
Office of Technology Commercialization