HPR 124: Welcome to Planet Honors is a new course being offered to Honors students with a goal of acclimating them to life at URI as an Honors Student, and helping bring their awareness to local manifestations of global issues here on campus.
As the home of the changemakers, Honors courses focus on providing students with hands-on learning opportunities that will teach them how to think critically about issues and equip them with the tools to take appropriate actions.
Under the instruction of Dr. Cynthia Taylor, students in HPR 124: Welcome to Planet Honors were guided through 5 units: Community Immersion, Design Thinking, Food Waste & Recovery, North Woods Conservation, and Microplastics in the Narragansett Bay. In each unit, the students completed projects that demonstrated their understanding of core concepts and generated a variety of proposals for addressing different aspects of the problems. Below are samples of their work throughout this past semester.
Highlights for Unit 3: Food & Waste Recovery
In this project unit, students collaboratively mapped the problem of food waste and/or insecurity on campus, identified possible leverage points to intervene, engaged in stakeholder analysis, brainstormed solutions and created an infographic summarizing the problem and ideas on how to address the problem.
View Selection of Infographics
Highlights for Unit 4: North Woods
In this project unit, students collaboratively created a proposal to submit to the DWELL lab’s 2023 Call for Proposals.
View Sampling of ProposalsHighlights for Unit 5: Microplastics in the Narragansett Bay
Students engaged in a 5-day design sprint challenge to address the problem/generate solutions through product redesign, the creation of a zero waste business model, or creative data visualization. Design teams pitched their idea to the class in a 5 minute presentation.
View Presentations