A team of Purdue professors, led by principal investigator Greg Strimel with co-principal investigator Todd Kelley, has been awarded a $1,992,868 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to scale up an innovative approach to undergraduate education that prepares students to solve complex, real-world problems.
The four-year project, funded through the NSF’s Improving Undergraduate STEM Education (IUSE) program, will focus on expanding "convergence education." This model intentionally breaks down the traditional silos between academic disciplines by bringing students and faculty from different majors together to work on socio-technical challenges that don’t fit neatly into a single field.
“Convergence research helps to address society’s toughest challenges by blending perspectives, ideas, and technologies from across different disciplines,” said Strimel, interim department head of the Department of Technology Leadership and Innovation and associate professor.
“With this NSF IUSE Level 2 grant, we’re excited to bring that same organizational approach for convergence research to undergraduate education—helping students work in cross-functional teams, tackle meaningful problems, and develop innovative solutions that make a real impact in their communities and future careers.”
The new grant will build on the foundation of a previous, successful NSF-funded project that helped establish Purdue Polytechnic’s Design and Innovation program. Strimel said this program serves as a real-world example of convergence education in action.
“In this program faculty from multiple colleges co-teach courses for students across a range of majors,” Strimel said. “Our students have tackled challenges from bringing new workforce development ideas into K–12 classrooms to designing solutions for people with physical disabilities to expanding a practical product into a new market. Now, this grant allows us to expand these opportunities, investigating more ways for undergraduate students and faculty across different disciplines to collaborate on complex and meaningful problems.”
The research will develop actionable models that other universities can adopt to implement convergence education, with the goal of enhancing the value and relevance of higher education on a national scale.
The interdisciplinary team of co-principal investigators id comprised of Todd Kelley, along with Douglas Pruim, Sherylyn Briller, and Jung Sohn from the College of Liberal Arts.
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