Program benefits
Project Cities for communities
- Educates a workforce of new sustainability scholars and scientists
- Generates fresh, research-supported ideas for municipal challenges
- Lowers risk in exploring sustainability pathways
- Provides additional student research capacity for project support
- Energizes students for proposed project
Project Cities for students
- Provides hands-on experience applying sustainability principles and practices
- Exposes students to professional work environments
- Allows students to navigate stakeholder engagement experience
- Creates applicable work experience for future employment opportunities
- Makes the classroom experience more engaging, and concepts easier to grasp
Project Cities for faculty
- Forms relationships with stakeholders in the community
- Facilitates collaboration with academic colleagues on transdisciplinary projects
- Works on complex and challenging local issues with top-tier students
- Forms multidisciplinary partnerships between academic programs
- Directs media attention to courses and projects
Program outcomes
- Builds capacity for city staff to tackle stalled projects
- Develops viable solution options to complex, systemic challenges
- Engages stakeholders, students and city staff in transformative exploratory partnerships
- Generates semi-professional project summary reports detailing sustainability pathways and strategies
- Proposes policy and infrastructure improvements and/or innovative solutions to “sticky” community challenges