Bland Addison, WPI
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WPI has some 50 project centers throughout the world and the United States. Students at these locations, working in teams, carry out a degree requirement known as the Interactive Qualifying Project, which challenges students to resolve an engineering or technical problem by taking fully into account the social and cultural context of the problem. Prior to their on-site work, students take a course (ID 2050, 1/3rd credit) devoted to preparing them to do project work. (The students also have 1/6th credit Independent Study Project with their future on-site advisors to prepare a “proposal” for their sponsors.) ID 2050 instructors do a wonderful job of equipping students with social scientific tools for field project work–survey procedures, cost-benefit analysis, case study methodologies, and so forth. This paper will argue that there is also an important role for more humanistic instruction in such student preparation, but that such instruction has different, less easily specified functions in project preparation. While basic social science methods can be introduced to students so that they can select those that are most appropriate to the problem they are to address. It is a more difficult task to determine which pieces of literature, or which aspect of local religious practices, or which historical events should be presented to students to inform their technical-engineering work. It’s an old question: What are the USES of the Humanities and Arts? I will argue that the answer lies in showing how the humanities can be used creatively to enhance understanding. While social scientific methods have a functional importance in resolving social issues, the purpose of the humanities is to open imaginative ways of explanation of human connections among peoples and their environment. This paper will be illustrated with student projects done on the rehabilitation of the medinas in Fes and Rabat.