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, WPI science, engineering, and business students immerse themselves in new cultures and tackle unstructured 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.
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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.
The latest expansion of WPI’s Global Projects Program opened this past fall in the Land of the Northern Lights--Reykjavik, Iceland-- and from what center director Aaron Sakulich has to say, there’s no lack of interest from the WPI community in visiting the newest project locale. “We were initially just going to send one team [last August], but there ended up being around 80 students on the waitlist, so I thought, ‘Let’s put together three projects so we can send 12, instead," he says.
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.
Thanks to the student organization Global Ambassadors (GAs), returning home from a project experience doesn’t have to mean the end of the experience for students. From speaking in travel prep classes and sharing their experiences with students at the Global Fair to helping students summarize their experience for interviews and resumes, GAs help students reinforce the value of off-campus programs to their academic, personal, and professional lives.
Through partnerships with the Forum on Education Abroad, the Overseas Security Advisory Council, and other institutions, the Interdisciplinary and Global Studies Division (IGSD) works nonstop to ensure the safety and security of all WPI students, faculty, and staff who participate in the Global Projects Program. Extensive pre-departure prep, training for faculty advisors, and round the clock travel, medical, and security assistance services are an added measure of safety for all travelers during their time off campus.
Provost Wole Soboyejo was interviewed by the Telegram & Gazette as WPI announced the launch of The Global School and its search for an inaugural dean. The Global School will reinforce WPI’s global project centers with students working on advanced degrees, as well as additional faculty support, and will lead to the development of more sophisticated and sustainable solutions to local issues, Soboyejo said.
