CREATING EDUCATIONAL PATHS FOR UNIVERSITY STUDENTS TO ADDRESS SOCIETAL PROBLEMS

It has been noted in literature that creating educational paths for University students to address societal problems are multifaceted undertakings.They are often driven by federal, state, and local government grant sponsors on one hand, and foundations as well as well non-profit entities, on the other hand.Faculty members write proposals to these sponsors to obtain funding for their research projects with students.Universities typically have offices dedicated to managing these sponsored projects, ensuring compliance with sponsor requirements and University policies.Faculty must meet educational and learning outcomes in their courses through those projects.Project learning has five key characteristics: Project outcomes are tied to curriculum and learning goals; Driving questions and problems lead students to the central concepts or principles of the topic or subject area; Students' investigations and research involve enquiry and knowledge building; Students are responsible for designing and managing much of their learning; and Projects are based on authentic real-world problems proposed by sponsors.Sponsored projects are ideal instructional approaches for addressing societal problems, because they employ the 4Cs: Critical thinking, Communication, Collaboration and Creativity with learning structured in real world contexts.In this paper we present one of those student research projects that focused on approaches from Genetic Algorithms (GA) research to establish an extensive structure-property correlation database library.The collection of recommendations was used to design a range of novel polymers and fibers with improved characteristics such as exceptional stretch, recovery, strength, increased bulk, easy to dye, as well as improved hand and comfort properties.These technically advanced fibers of commercial importance to the U.S. textile industry combined the best properties of nylon and polyester, all through students' research.