Creating an Interdisciplinary Urban Humanities Cluster

FAIN: AK-255461-17

Worcester Polytechnic Institute (Worcester, MA 01609-2247)
Joseph F. Cullon (Project Director: October 2016 to September 2024)

A three-year project to develop an interdisciplinary cluster of seven new and seven revised undergraduate courses focused on urban humanities.

With half the world's population now living in urban areas for the first time in history and with the explosive growth of 21 global cities where populations exceed 10 million, engineering students need to conceive of and analyze the urban in both more concrete and creative ways. Worcester Polytechnic Institute proposes the creation of an Urban Humanities Cluster to develop, coordinate and deliver a set of integrative courses that both emphasizes humanities methods and habits of mind and promotes interdisciplinary perspectives bridging the engineering and social sciences. The goal is to make WPI's six-course Humanities and Arts (HUA) requirement more thematically meaningful so it can better inform and prepare student to integrate human dimensions into their other experiential, project-based graduation requirements.