Making an Olin Grand Challenges Scholars Program: Co-Creating with Students

Alison Wood; Robert Martello

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Conference: 2021 ASEE St. Lawrence Section Conference
Location: Virtual
Publication Date: April 17, 2021
Start Date: April 17, 2021
End Date: April 17, 2021
Page Count: 3
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--38301
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/38301
Download Count: 312

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Paper Authors

biography

Alison Wood Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering

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Dr. Alison Wood is an assistant professor of Environmental Engineering at Olin College of Engineering. Her academic interests include water and sanitation, interdisciplinary thinking and approaches to environmental and sustainability problems, and decision making in complex systems. Dr. Wood is also pursuing her interests in the areas of equity and justice through education and engagement with context and values. She serves as the Director of Olin’s Grand Challenges Scholars Program and the Director of the Babson-Olin-Wellesley Sustainability Certificate program, and she recently led the creation of Olin’s new Sustainability concentration, among many other internal and external engagements.

After graduating from Harvard University with a B.A. in Dramatic Literature, Dr. Wood worked professionally in theater and wrote and recorded two musical albums. She then returned to school to study engineering, earning a B.S. in Civil Engineering from Rutgers University. Dr. Wood went on to earn a Master of Science in Engineering in Environmental and Water Resources Engineering and a Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from The University of Texas at Austin, while working with the Austin chapter of Engineers Without Borders.

Her love of learning was first fostered by an unusual elementary school education that was deeply interdisciplinary with a substantial arts curriculum, which has informed all her subsequent thinking about the potential for education to transcend conventional models. Her teaching at Olin continues to inspire her to realize the potential for education in the twenty-first century.

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biography

Robert Martello Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering

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Dr. Robert Martello is a Professor of the History of Science and Technology at Olin College of Engineering and recently served as Olin’s Associate Dean of Faculty. A graduate of MIT’s doctoral program in the History and Social Study of Science and Technology, Professor Martello has chaired and initiated efforts that re-imagined Olin’s faculty reappointment and promotion, institutional outreach, curricular innovation, and student assessment approaches. He has been a member of the National Academies Study Committee on the Integration of Education in STEM, Humanities, and Arts, culminating with the release of the National Academies report “The Integration of the Humanities and Arts with Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine in Higher Education: Branches from the Same Tree.” He is currently a member of the National Academies Planning Committee for the Convocation on Promotion and Tenure. Professor Martello is the author of Midnight Ride, Industrial Dawn: Paul Revere and the Growth of American Enterprise, a study of how Paul Revere’s manufacturing career helped pioneer America’s transition into the industrial age, and is currently researching Benjamin Franklin's printing and business endeavors.

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Abstract

[Institution] established its Grand Challenges Scholars Program in 2010, one of the first three of these programs in the country. The original program was designed collaboratively by students, faculty, and alumni, and was intended to be primarily student driven. Over time, as the needs of the student body changed and the leadership of the program turned over, a group of faculty, staff, and students began to reinvent the program. [Institution’s] “GCSP 2.0,” launched in fall 2018, was again created by faculty and students working together to design educational experiences that deliver a valuable GCSP experience attuned to the specific context of [Institution]. While the original program design process was entirely collaborative, the redesign was a hybrid process, with the faculty program director providing a more centralized point of decision-making while still working closely with other faculty and with students. This process was better suited to the changing circumstances at [Institution] and is perhaps more easily replicable at other institutions than a fully collaborative co-design.

A cornerstone of the revised GCSP is the course “Change the World: Personal Values, Global Impacts, and Making an [Institution] GCSP.” This course was co-created and co-taught by a Professor of the History of Science and Technology and an Assistant Professor of Environmental Engineering (who is also [Institution’s] GCSP Director), with significant input from students: another co-creation process in which a centralized figure (pair) made final decisions based on engagement with students. The resulting course, taught for the first time in spring 2019, addressed learning objectives of critical thinking and reflection, identity development, communication, and pluralism (embracing many ways of knowing and being). To continue the cycle of student co-creation, one of the small projects within the course asked students to reinvent portions of the course itself or the larger GCSP program at [Institution]; aspects of many of the students’ submissions are being incorporated into the second offering of the course for spring 2020.

In this talk, we’ll highlight this course as well as the semi-centralized co-creation process used to develop it and to revise [Institution’s] GCSP. We’ll share lessons learned on how co-creation of educational experiences with students can be a learning experience as well as a productive design activity, resulting in development for the students, content creation for the faculty, and enriching engagement for everyone involved.

Citation
Format

Wood , A., & Martello, R. (2021, April), Making an Olin Grand Challenges Scholars Program: Co-Creating with Students Paper presented at 2021 ASEE St. Lawrence Section Conference, Virtual. 10.18260/1-2--38301

TY  - CPAPER
AB  - [Institution] established its Grand Challenges Scholars Program in 2010, one of the first three of these programs in the country. The original program was designed collaboratively by students, faculty, and alumni, and was intended to be primarily student driven. Over time, as the needs of the student body changed and the leadership of the program turned over, a group of faculty, staff, and students began to reinvent the program. [Institution’s] “GCSP 2.0,” launched in fall 2018, was again created by faculty and students working together to design educational experiences that deliver a valuable GCSP experience attuned to the specific context of [Institution]. While the original program design process was entirely collaborative, the redesign was a hybrid process, with the faculty program director providing a more centralized point of decision-making while still working closely with other faculty and with students. This process was better suited to the changing circumstances at [Institution] and is perhaps more easily replicable at other institutions than a fully collaborative co-design.

A cornerstone of the revised GCSP is the course “Change the World: Personal Values, Global Impacts, and Making an [Institution] GCSP.” This course was co-created and co-taught by a Professor of the History of Science and Technology and an Assistant Professor of Environmental Engineering (who is also [Institution’s] GCSP Director), with significant input from students: another co-creation process in which a centralized figure (pair) made final decisions based on engagement with students. The resulting course, taught for the first time in spring 2019, addressed learning objectives of critical thinking and reflection, identity development, communication, and pluralism (embracing many ways of knowing and being). To continue the cycle of student co-creation, one of the small projects within the course asked students to reinvent portions of the course itself or the larger GCSP program at [Institution]; aspects of many of the students’ submissions are being incorporated into the second offering of the course for spring 2020.

In this talk, we’ll highlight this course as well as the semi-centralized co-creation process used to develop it and to revise [Institution’s] GCSP. We’ll share lessons learned on how co-creation of educational experiences with students can be a learning experience as well as a productive design activity, resulting in development for the students, content creation for the faculty, and enriching engagement for everyone involved.  
AU  - Alison  Wood 
AU  - Robert Martello
CY  - Virtual
DA  - 2021/04/17
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - Making an Olin Grand Challenges Scholars Program: Co-Creating with Students
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/38301
DO  - 10.18260/1-2--38301
ER  -