Global Reach, Lifelong Impact | Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Transforming Students, Communities, and Learning

Since the launch of the university's landmark project-based educational model nearly 50 years ago, WPI has established itself as a pioneer and leader in experiential learning. Throughout their four years at WPI, students work closely with faculty--and each other--on projects both within their own communities and around the globe. They develop solutions to authentic, open-ended, real world problems. Along the way they build an understanding of other cultures and their own potential to impact the world for the better.

Building on this experience, expertise, and passion, WPI--through the Center for Project-Based Learning--is changing the face of higher education by helping other institutions implement facets of project-based learning on their campuses.

Global Projects for All

At WPI, we know that the best way for students to understand and appreciate societal issues is to experience them firsthand. We want every student to be part of a global experience. That's why every undergraduate, beginning with the first-year class entering in the Fall of 2018, receives a $5,000 Global Scholarship to complete a project at one of WPI's global project centers.

An Experience that Changes Students--and Their World

Our Global Projects Program is not an ordinary study abroad experience. Students work to make a profound impact to the communities and organizations, and come back different people than they were before. For most students, the Global Project is more than a year in the making and leaves a lifelong impression. Follow 20 students through their project journey in Bar Harbor, Maine, and learn how their experience has forever altered their perspectives of themselves and the world they live in.

Bar Harbor Immersion

The impact of the students' project certainly will affect us here in Acadia but will also go beyond the boundaries of the park and throughout the country.

Abe Miler-Rushing, Acadia National Park
WPI Project Sponsor - Bar Harbor, Maine Project Center

Center for Project-Based Learning

The Center for Project-Based Learning is another bold first from WPI and is changing the face of higher education. Faculty and administrators from colleges and universities around the world benefit form WPI's experience and expertise--and take what they learn back to their campuses. Center director Rick Vaz and Laurie Leshin recently chatted about what this collaboration means for WPI.

Read the Conversation with the President

Meeting Real World Challenges

Bringing Water Storage and Environmental Education to a Local Farm

A WPI student team constructed a 1,500-gallon rainwater catchment and irrigation system at a local farm to guard against drought, ensuring farm leaders will be able to continue offer key educational programs to area school children.

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Are Our Water Bottles Unhealthy? Student Team Researches Chemical Effects

There is increasing worry that a chemical in common plastic water bottles could be causing of health problems. To avoid these issues, consumers started buying bottles without the problematic chemical bisphenol-A, better known as BPA. But are these BPA-free containers any healthier? Professor Natalie Farny has been working with a team of top biology students to find out.

Student Project Shows How Life Experiences are Passed Down in Genes

A student project team of two Biology and Biotechnology students have taken on the old question of nature versus nurture, and their work has opened up a whole new area of research at WPI, including laying the basis for a project team next year to research the connection between neurodegenerative diseases, like Alzheimer’s, and epigenetics, or the study of inherited gene changes.