Over the course of the semester, students work on projects to address large, complex and seemingly intractable real-world problems.
Topics
The three projects topics are:
- An Environmental Analysis of High-Speed Rail and Aviation: The Northeast Corridor
- The Stroke Care Chain
- The Internet: Governance and the "Digital Divide"
A complete set of materials are available for the project An Environmental Analysis of High-Speed Rail and Aviation: The Northeast Corridor:
Environmental Analysis of High-Speed Rail: Overview
Environmental Analysis of High-Speed Rail: Calendar
Environmental Analysis of High-Speed Rail: Readings
Environmental Analysis of High-Speed Rail: Recitations
Selected materials are available for the other two projects:
The Stroke Care Chain
Overview (PDF) (Courtesy of Dr. Stan Finkelstein, Amparo Canaveras, Kenneth Gotleib, and Abby Horn. Used with permission.)
Calendar and Reading List (PDF) (Courtesy of Dr. Stan Finkelstein, Amparo Canaveras, Kenneth Gotleib, and Abby Horn. Used with permission.)
The Internet: Governance and the "Digital Divide"
Overview (PDF) (Courtesy of Jesse H. Sowell. Used with permission.)
Deliverables
Group Presentation
Each group will have 25 minutes plus 5-10 minutes of questions and discussion for their final presentation. The goal of this presentation is to summarize the goals, analysis, key insights and any recommendations from your semester project.
Written Report
Each group should submit one (1) written report per team. Your final report should be essentially complete by Lecture 12; however, you are encouraged to incorporate any feedback you found useful from the instructors or the other students on your Lecture 12 presentation.
The written report should include an introduction to your project, the motivation behind your project (why does this project matter? is it representative of a "Critical Contemporary Issue" (CCI)? describe your project in terms of a broad systems view), an overview of the analysis that you conducted, a brief description of the methods and tools that you used, the results of your analysis, and your conclusions/ recommendations.
The final report should be roughly 10 to 15 pages (at 12 point font, double-spaced), not including figures and tables. Figures and tables that are essential to describing your results may be placed within the main body of your paper. Additional tables, charts or figures that you wish to include can be provided in the Appendices of the report (e.g. after the first ˜10-15 pages). All facts and data must have reference sources, which should be listed at the end of the paper.