We want every student to be part of a global project experience—including you. Beginning with the Class of 2022, all first-year students receive a Global Scholarship up to $5,000 to complete a project at one of WPI’s 50+ project centers across six continents.
At WPI, we know that the best way for students to understand and appreciate societal issues is to experience them firsthand. Through our Global Projects Program within The Global School, WPI science, engineering, and business students immerse themselves in new cultures and tackle unstructured, real-world problems in ways that are meaningful to local sponsors in real communities. Our diverse project centers—strategically positioned in locations ranging from large international cities to small mountainside villages—are host to interdisciplinary and major capstone projects, and humanities and arts projects. As well, students can participate in language immersion and exchange programs.
Our Global Projects Program is not an ordinary study abroad experience—like everything else at WPI, it’s distinctive. Regardless of if you choose to work across the city or across the ocean, it’s the experience that takes you further—you’ll work to make a profound impact to communities and organizations, and come back a different person than you were before.
There’s no doubting the value of global experiences. The New York Times recently delved deep into the topic—the article highlighted WPI’s Global Projects Program, interviewing students and faculty about their time abroad, the impact of their work, and the importance of being able to adapt to and overcome different challenges.
They say good things come to those who wait, and that’s exactly the case here. For most students, the Interactive Qualifying Project (IQP)—often completed at one of our global project centers in the U.S. or abroad—is more than a year in the making. Follow 13 students through their IQP journey fifty miles away in nearby Boston, Massachusetts, and learn how their experience has forever altered their perspectives of themselves and the world they live in.
of students receive a Global Scholarship to complete life-changing project work
global project centers on six continents
School for a Scientist to Study Abroad
years of undergraduate project experiences through the Global Projects Program
undergraduate students with off-campus project experience
countries with project centers
students completed an off-campus project (2018–19)
At sites as close as our home city of Worcester and at 50+ other locations in 31 countries, opportunities are available to complete any of the projects required for graduation: Humanities & Arts (HUA), Interactive Qualifying Project (IQP), and Major Qualifying Project (MQP). The selection process is competitive and project work is preceded by rigorous preparation.
It’s easy for us to say that the Global Projects Program can be life-changing, so we want you to hear it from those who lived it—a survey of over 2,500 WPI alumni revealed that their project experiences impacted them long after their time at WPI. Even more powerful was the impact of those project experiences through the Global Projects Program.
Professor Joseph Sarkis, Foisie Business School, was quoted in an article by the New England Innovation Academy (NEIA) on WPI’s signature project-based curriculum, the Interactive Qualifying Project (IQP). A group of WPI juniors teamed up to complete an IQP involving sixth-grade curriculum at the NEIA, which served as project sponsor. “The WPI IQPs serve many purposes and were designed as such. We seek to allow the students leeway in the paths they wish to link theory and practice. As advisors, we may provide general guidance, but students need to plan the project and execute it,” Sarkis said.
