- Partnership development
- Facilitation of project scoping
- Writing of project scope document
- Curriculum development consultation
- Logistical support
- Problem solving and trouble shooting project needs
Faculty: Interested in integrating an SCP project into your course?
SCP Projects
SCP projects provide opportunities for students to apply what they are learning in your course to real-world, local sustainability goals, identified by our partners. Projects may address ecological, social, or economic dimensions of interconnected human and environmental well-being. Projects are adapted to your course's learning objectives and goals. Project scale varies by course - from a single assignment to a semester-long project.
Since Spring 2016, SCP has facilitated the integration of over 160 partner-identified projects into courses across 27 disciplines at St. Thomas.
90% of students report that they would recommend an SCP course to their peers. Top skills students report gaining from SCP projects include:
- Understanding complexity of real-world problems
- Applying coursework beyond the classroom
- Critical thinking
- Solving complex problems
- Collaboration and teamwork skills
- Presentation and communication skills
How can your course participate?
SCP leads a collaborative project scoping process with you and our partner to adapt the scope and scale of a project (or project component) to your course's opportunities and constraints. Project integration can range from a single assignment to a semester-long project. No course's contribution is too small.
If you're interested in integrating an SCP project (or a component of a project) into your course, contact Dr. Maria Dahmus, SCP Director, to set up a time to meet to learn more about our SCP partners, available projects, and the project scoping process. This is not a commitment to participate.
If a project (or project component) seems like a good fit for your course, SCP will arrange and facilitate a meeting with you and our partner to discuss the project purpose, adapt the scale and scope of the project to your course's opportunities and constraints, and discuss questions to be investigated, data needs, timeline, and deliverables.
The purpose of this meeting is to collaboratively create a good match between the project and your course by adapting the project to ensure that it:
- enriches your course's learning objectives through real-world application of course content,
- is at a level and scale appropriate for your course and time constraints,
- is logistically feasible (e.g., confirming background information, data, access to sites, etc. needed to complete the project), and
- advances the partner's sustainability goals.
SCP drafts a project scope document that includes the project overview and objectives, questions to be investigated, data the partner will provide, timeline, and deliverables based on the project scoping meeting (Step 2). You and the partner project lead may offer revisions as needed.
The purpose of this document is to ensure that you and the partner project lead share the same goals and expectations for the project and logistical details have been worked out to ensure an enriching experiential learning opportunity for students.
Contact SCP or partner project lead with any questions throughout the course.
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SCP has been essential in showing how our education ties in with the UST mission. This project has allowed us to analyze real-world data, collaborate with classmates, and present solutions to problems that affect real communities. We are applying skills we have cultivated in the classroom to projects that advance the common good.
-Anna Kate '16, Economics