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From Senior Project to Industry Showcase.
For Interactive Media and Game Development (IMGD) project collaborators Ryan Dasey, Mike Frankfort, Jill Sauer, and Alex Thornton-Clark, the senior Major Project was more than a WPI graduation requirement. It was the perfect vehicle to showcase their collective talents to industry experts and potential investors.
Pandora, their first-person puzzle game based on the myths of Pandora’s Box, features lush hand-drawn art, digital imagery, animation, and custom-designed puzzles. The team pitched its creation at the 2013 Mass DiGI Game Challenge and came away prizewinners. Having grabbed the industry’s attention, their game is now available on the hot games site Indie DB.
The Power to Change the World.
At Worcester Polytechnic Institute, at the core of our learning model are the projects—a deceptively simple name for a profoundly transformative experience. Want to program a humanoid robot? Advance regenerative medicine? Build a solar house? Projects give students a chance to innovate around their passions, while getting career-launching experience.
Higher education is discovering that students must learn how to solve unstructured, real-world problems, something WPI students have been doing for decades. At any given time almost everybody is working on at least one project that involves pioneering research or interdisciplinary innovation—almost always as part of a team. The goal is to prepare students to be technological humanists—leaders and innovators who understand the potential and limitations of science, engineering, and technology, and apply this knowledge to meet a real-world need.
The Global Classroom.
In virtually every corner of the globe, WPI students are working intently, focusing their time and talent on environmental conservation and sustainable development, on socioeconomic concerns, water conservation, and on renewable, urban planning, and other important societal issues.
Through the WPI Global Perspective Program, more than 50 percent of students travel to one of over 35 project centers across six continents for their project work, collaborating with peers, faculty advisors, and local community members on projects that matter to real people.
A Lifetime of Difference.
The young women and men of WPI are making immediate and lasting impact, and they are forever changed by their experiences. Project work opens students’ eyes to the world around them, preparing them to be globally minded, responsible, and capable leaders who understand the relationships between science and humanity, technology and social issues.
Many students come to WPI expecting to be prepared to get good jobs when they graduate. But they’ve found their global project experiences have given them much more. “Somehow, something changed. I felt like a different person when I came back. I saw the reason why I went to college, because I saw something taken to completion in the real world,” elaborated a recent graduate.
This newfound global perspective may help uncover a true passion, leading to greater success and personal satisfaction in work and life. Employers who know WPI ask students about the impact of their project experience—and they value the polished performance that comes from students who have had to apply open-ended inquiry to solve real-world problems.
Find out more about the power of projects. Plan a visit at admissions.wpi.edu.
The post The Power of Projects Makes a World of Difference appeared first on TeenLife.
