The inaugural Sustainability Semester cohort is wrapping up the second week of coursework here at Greenway Institute. Their first cross-curricular project is to design and prototype a solar-powered traffic light. This project integrates learning from several of their core courses: circuit skills are applied when wiring a solar panel to a battery and running a program that will cycle through red, yellow and green lights. Newly acquired statics skills are applied when building a structure that will stand upright while supporting a battery, solar panel, and traffic light. Teamwork skills are honed when students navigate each other’s strengths and areas for growth while solving problems at every turn.
We wish each of you could be a fly on the wall in our fabrication lab – the “Fab Lab” – as students work on their traffic lights each morning. You would see intense focus as they work with materials spread over “Ben” (the workbench they built last week). You would smell wood dust and solder smoke as they experiment with the tools and materials available to them. You would hear quiet conversation as they manipulate the materials and encourage each other to take risks, interspersed with laughter since the cohort already has a number of inside jokes. You would savor their appreciation for their colleagues: “My teammate helped redesign when things went wrong, solving the problems that popped up when building the prototype. They thought ahead and took notes for tomorrow.”
Questioning the students is even more fun. When asked: “What are you up to?” one group answered: “We’re trying to fail!” They went on to explain that during the last class, they had become bogged down with statics calculations, trying to figure out one specific number. After receiving coaching from their Greenway professor, they realized that the best course of action might actually be to start putting together the structure and seeing where exactly it fails, then problem-solving from there. It is not often that you hear college students talk about failure in such a joyful way. It is a signal that they are feeling safe in the Greenway classroom, free to take risks, and supported in the process of problem-solving through failure. (And yes– they figured it out!)
We can’t wait to show you what they come up with.
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