Students engage in independent or small-group interdisciplinary creative inquiry projects. Students take on questions and challenges that emerge from their own curiosity, from problems presented by professors, or from compelling needs expressed by local and global partners. Faculty and subject matter experts provide mentoring support as students take radical ownership in their projects and take the risks necessary to solve problems and get answers. Students increase their capacities for independent inquiry and discovery while project outcomes build up their portfolios.
Credits: 1-4
Prerequisites: None
This course provides students across campus an academic vehicle to engage in independent or small-group interdisciplinary creative inquiry projects. Creative Inquiry projects encourage interdisciplinarity and radical ownership in striving to find answers that advance knowledge and/or praxis. Students take on problems that spring from their own curiosity, from a professor's challenge, or from pressing needs of the world around them. These projects may arise from or lead to Inquiry to Impact Group Projects conducted through the CINQ 397 course. Students take radical ownership in their projects and take the risks necessary to solve problems and get answers. Student learning outcomes emphasize independent and small-group learning and engagement centered on open inquiry and discovery. The outcomes from the creative inquiry projects are externally calibrated and help them build up their portfolios.
While projects offered and undertaken in the CINQ 397 will be multi-semester group efforts facilitated by the Mountaintop team, projects undertaken in the CINQ 395 course will be negotiated between students and faculty mentors with limited support from the OVPCI. These projects will benefit from the emergence of the Creative Spaces Network being championed alongside the CI curricular efforts.
Current, project funds are made available by the OVPCI, with an offered amount of $300 per student (up to $900 for a three-student team) for project-related expenses. The establishment of this provisional course is being pursued in parallel to the development of the CFP for CI projects. Another parallel effort is the development and coordination of funding support to help undergraduate and graduate students present their original works at scholarly and practitioner forums or to implement projects.