Driving Question: How can I engineer the strongest bridge with the most efficient use of the specified material?

Module Overview: Bridges are perhaps the most challenging and fascinating feats of engineering. 

In this module, students became civil and structural engineers by working at the Manchego Fromage Consultancy, where they were responsible for coming up with the most efficient bridge design. 

Students strived to creatively meet their imaginary client’s needs within budget and material constraints. The clients were the City of Rodentia, working in partnership with the Rodent Migration Travel Group. 

In learning about bridge types, students explored the effect of tension and compressive forces, differentiated between brittle and ductile material properties, and investigated the calculations that go into designing bridges. 

Marily M.

I enjoyed the module so much. I love creating and building things, so I had lots of fun building some testing bridges and the final one. I faced some challenges I didn’t think would happen, but I found a way to deal with them.

For this module, we designed and built a spaghetti bridge basing ourselves on our client’s needs from the “City of Rodentia”. I learned about bridge types, the effect of tension and compression, and the calculations that need to be considered to design a bridge. This knowledge helped me design a strong and effective bridge.

My final product is an Open Tender, which is the proposal for our “clients.” It includes the price, design, 2D and 3D model, calculations, and other information pieces.

Diego M.

I learned how much I like to design things and make them physically. It was enjoyable and challenging to build a bridge with pasta because you need to consider many factors and develop techniques to build the strongest bridge.

This project allowed me to learn about the different types of bridges and the engineering process and what it includes (different studies from the area, forces of members, strength to weight ratio, etc.)

Based on our investigations, we had to experiment with building pasta trusses to see what works, what doesn’t work, and which type of bridge truss was stronger than the others.

We created and proposed an open tender to the fictitious Rodent Migration Travel Group after running our experiments.

Driving Question:How can we convey the complexities of ethnic and religious reconciliation through our experience of Bosnia and Herzegovina?

Students Lexie and Gigi decided to tackle an art form that was new to them for their project: crafting a mosaic. The project was filled with symbolism: breaking the tiles represented the destruction that took place during the 90s conflict. Putting the tiles back together in the shape of Bosnia showed that with hard work and time (and given that this was a new art form for the two of them, it required a lot of hard work and time), Bosnia can one again become, regardless of age, culture, ethnicity, or religion.

Lexie and Gigi visited Bosniak mosques, Serbian Orthodox churches, and Croatian Catholic churches to understand what color tiles to use in the mosaic. They learned that green is an essential color in Islam and is Muhammad’s favorite color, that Orthodox churches are often very colorful, and that Croatian Catholic churches heavily feature whites and golds.

Once they had identified color schemes and prominent designs, they created patterns based on what they had seen during their scouting process and featuring the colors mentioned above. Once the tiles were created, they smashed them into pieces (90s destruction). Next, they combined the colored elements with white tiles to form the outline of Bosnia and Herzegovina. To finish the piece, Lexie and Gigi grouted the gaps and glossed the top to make everything shine.

Driving Question: How can I address some of the present threats to global health while promoting human rights and social progress?

Project Overview: In this module, students were introduced to the foundations of global health. They learned about basic concepts, measurements, and determinants of health, and a number of key perspectives for considering global health issues.

For her project, Estelle explored water scarcity in Honduras, which leads to a lack of basic sanitation and clean water for up to 1.8 million people. Non-communicable diseases in Honduras attributed to water cause a DALY rate of 4,540 per 100,000 people. Disease spreads through contaminated food and water tanks, and poor management, climate change, and political unrest worsen the issue.

Project Reflection: “Exploring the niche of environmental global health opened my mind to so many new areas of interest in this field.  I thoroughly enjoyed this module and felt like the skills will be very applicable to other modules.”

Driving Question: How can I become proficient in Australian slang through art?

Class of 2021 student Gigi E. designed her project on Australian slang and how it has become a part of the country’s identity. Her goal was to become competent and confident in communicating slang with the local community. She demonstrated this by creating a mini dictionary documenting Australian slang terms she learned through interactions with the locals. 

“To further my understanding of Australian Slang, I thought there was no better source than the people of Australia themselves. Today I went around Scape and talked to people about their favorite Australian slang words. It was interesting to see how many of the terms that I already knew. Just from my experiences with Lexie and Elyce, I was able to learn a lot more terms than I thought I did. 

The first people I interviewed were the people at the reception at Scape. They were able to confirm a bunch of the other terms that I had in my initial entries. This helped me know that they are still relevant and used today. One new word that they told me (which is now one of my favorite terms) is Eshay, a wannabe teenage gangster. They were able to show us pictures of what they meant and it was quite funny to walk around the city and recognize them on the streets.”

Driving Question: How can I apply an understanding of flow state into physical activity and self reflection order to increase my well being?

Project Description:

For this module, as a way to further learn about the flow state, I began learning how to hula hoop. During this process, I documented my practice each week and made a compilation video of my progress. This video shows my progress from when I first got my hoop, only knowing a few simple tricks, to six weeks in, when I have learned several more complex techniques.

Reflection:

“For me, what was most interesting about this project was not so much the hula hooping aspect, but learning about the flow state. I have been interested in neuroscience for quite some time now, and it was fascinating to be learning about something I could so clearly see demonstrated in my life through the practice with hula hooping.”

Driving Question: How might we produce a product or concept that contributes to a more sustainable fashion future?

Final Product: My summative product for this module was a textile art rug bag that visually incorporated ideas of punk and queer fashion. The bag itself is sort of a tote bag style and on each side there is a different design that I hand punched. For the “punk” side of the bag I designed a traditionally punk aesthetic image of an eye, a large X in front of it, and the words “F**k off”. When designing this, I wanted to keep in mind the traditional punk look as well as the values of being anti-capitalist, anti-oppression, and just generally living outside of the traditional social norms. For the other side of the bag, I wanted to express more ideas of the queer self and experience with a rainbow design around a stick figure body. My aim was for it to be colorful and expressive, just like the queercore fashion movements that intersected with the punk subculture. 

What were your goals for this module? How did you achieve them?

I wanted to have fun creating my own unique textile art piece that incorporated different subculture fashions I was interested in exploring. I also wanted to grow in my creativity and continue to make new pieces as an artist. I got to learn a lot more about the history of punk fashion and the queer community’s influence on it. I’m really happy with my final product because I think it’s a very unique piece that not only visually represents the aesthetics of this movement, but because I also made it myself, it embodies the values of the punk and queercore movements as well. 

What did you learn about yourself or about your creative process or about your medium?

I’m pretty new to making rugs, but I’ve absolutely fallen in love with the art form. Making this rug bag was a bit of a risk, but I’m really proud of how it turned out. I like taking creative risks and having fun with my art. In the future, I hope to continue to have fun and practice creativity with any art project I do. 

Driving Question: How can I use creative art practices to engage in discourse and dialogue on counterculture, social justice or everyday life through zines?

Project Description:

In this module I made a zine (book) about the life of Rupert Murdoch, why he does what he does, and how his influence works.

Quote:

I learned that with a little bit of inspiration and a non-judgemental audience, art becomes a lot easier.

Driving Question: How can we think critically to effectively inform citizens in a media manipulated world?

What were your goals for this module? How did you achieve them?

Our goal was to raise awareness about hemp and show some common misconceptions about this plant while connecting it all to the theme of sustainability. We presented our campaign on Instagram.

What did you learn about yourself or about your creative process or about your medium?

We learned that the process of choosing a font is a very long one and that critical thinking skills can help us find misconceptions in the social media world. 

Driving Question: How can I contribute to solving a problem in my local community?

Project Description:

The project aims to spread awareness on the importance of education to the underprivileged and the existing educational opportunities. I will be directing a documentary that spreads the message of the project’s aim. This solutions fills the gap off the unawareness on the importance of education and the opportunity available to their children.

Reflection:

“I am really excited to work on directing my documentary once the schools of Tamilnadu opens. TGS was an incredible educational opportunity for me and I want to give back to my community by connecting children to existing educational opportunities in India.”

Driving Question: How can we think critically to effectively inform citizens in a media manipulated world?

What were your goals for this module? How did you achieve them?

My goal for this module was to develop my critical thinking skills and learn to make meaningful social messages. I achieved it in my summative video.

What did you learn about yourself or about your creative process or about your medium?

I learnt to deliver social messages effectively by using sarcasm as a tool.