Linc - What is Linc?

View a brief PowerPoint overview to quickly get an sense of LINC or read the description below on different aspects of the course.

What is LINC and how can I register?
Why is this course offered?
How is LINC different from other courses?
How are projects selected?
Who may propose a project?
Who may advise a project?
What do students learn?

What is LINC and how can I register?

LINC is an innovative course which adds a new dimension to the undergraduate educational experience. It is a campus-wide course which is project-based. LINC offers opportunities for students to work on real-world problems which may have international and/or research and/or capstone components in an environment that provides interdisciplinary team learning. LINC formally integrates service-learning into the curriculum. For information on enrolling in LINC, see our prospective students FAQ section on registering

Why is this course offered?

Undergraduate students face an ever more complicated world where they will need more than just a solid background in their own particular field. To effectively engage with the world following graduation, they will likely be expected to interact with people of widely varying social and educational backgrounds on broad, ill-defined problems. They will be expected to work cooperatively with people from different disciplines from their own on these problems. They need educational experiences that can help them develop these skills.

Community service and educational agencies often have challenges requiring multi-faceted skills. The non-profit organizations are not likely to have the financial resources necessary to solve problems that impede their missions. Often the nature of the problems is that they are long-term and not solvable by one person alone. They need the long-term commitment and assistance of interdisciplinary teams provided on a voluntary, no-cost basis.

In response to these dual needs, we have instituted the project-based course, LINC . The structure of this course encourages engagement in real-world problems through an extended learning experience, providing a model of how students can learn while working together in a multidisciplinary setting, simultaneously benefiting themselves and the community.

How is LINC different from other courses?

LINC is different from traditional courses in the following ways:

Students join large teams of up to 20 people who work on important large-scale projects
The teams are interdisciplinary and horizontally integrated across colleges, including students from the colleges of LAS, Engineering, Commerce, ACES, and others as appropriate
The teams are vertically integrated with respect to academic class, first-year through senior
The projects tackled are significant, ambitious, and long-term spanning several semesters.
The projects are partnerships between the university and the community. Student/partner organization-devised solutions to are found for community-defined problems.
The project teams are highly mentored with each team having an advisor who is either a faculty member, supervisor from industry, or graduate assistants.

How are projects selected?

This course addresses problems with the following characteristics:

Opportunities for Learning: This course is not merely a course which gives academic credit for good works and volunteering. As such, projects selected must provide significant learning possibilities.
Significance: Not all projects can be undertaken, so partners whose projects provide the combined greatest benefit to the community and most significant educational experiences will be selected.
Level of Difficulty: Projects must be challenging, and within the capabilities of undergraduates students.
Expected Duration: Projects that will span several semesters offer the greatest opportunity to provide extensive educational experiences and to address problems of potentially high impact. LINC projects will be a mix of short- (one semester to one year) and long-term (multi-year) projects; the short-term projects build confidence and help establish the relationship between the students and the project partner.
Project Partner Commitment: A crucial element of the program is the commitment of individuals in the partner organizations to work with the students to identify projects, specify the requirements, and provide ongoing critical feedback. Preference is given to those partner organizations willing to commit to such guidance.

Who may propose a project?

Many types of organizations may propose LINC projects. In addition to non-profit agencies in the community and local schools, other less obvious entities may become project partners. University departments may have needs that can be met by the student teams. Research laboratories or centers may also become partners, and these partnerships may provide undergraduate research experiences beyond the traditional single-faculty, single-student model. Various international programs allow extension of the model beyond our local community to our global community.

Who may advise a project?

LINC is a highly-mentored course. Faculty, graduate students, and supervisors from industry serve as project advisors, providing guidance for the student teams. Each project team has at a minimum a designated teaching assistant and possibly a project advisor. Each team is paired with a Project Partner who will also give some guidance to the team.

What do students learn?

At the pedagogical center of this model is problem-based or project learning. When students are presented with an open-ended problem and challenged to work together to find and implement a solution, learning occurs at multiple levels of the educational taxonomy. Students will need to learn new information, analyze data and alternatives, synthesize and create solutions, and evaluate alternatives. Social factors are present in both the need to understand and respond to the client (the Project Partner) and the need to cooperate and accomplish with the project team under the leadership of the advisor.

By working on large, realistic problems, this model allows students to experience the complexity of projects that are often simplified to fit academic calendars. In corporate settings, the future success of individuals has been predicted by the complexity and scope of current job activities; those individuals engaged in large, complicated projects were subsequently more successful.

LINC provides opportunities for capstone, culminating experiences for all participating students, encouraging first-year, sophomores, juniors, and seniors to synthesize all knowledge they have acquired up to that point in their academic careers.