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Session 3422

Crossing Professional Boundaries: The Interprofessional Projects Program at IIT

Thomas M. Jacobius, Gerard G. S. Voland Illinois Institute of Technology

Illinois Institute of Technology is transforming its undergraduate program through the concept of interprofessional education by requiring project-based team experiential learning across the span of disciplines within the Undergraduate College and by involving graduate programs from across the university, including those in engineering, science, law, business, psychology, design and architecture. Through the IIT Interprofessional Projects [IPRO] Program, the distinctiveness of this learning model has been tested for more than four years via 100 pilot projects to-date, involving more than 600 students and 60 faculty.

The core of our IPRO Program is the formation of project teams, each with a mix of 5-15 students from across the professional disciplines and from multiple levels (sophomore through graduate). All undergraduate students are required to complete a minimum of two such semester- long interprofessional team-based learning projects before graduation. Workplace organizations (e.g., corporate, entrepreneurial, non-profit, government) supply multifaceted topics and interact with the teams in a co-mentoring role, along with a faculty mentor and graduate student project leader.

I. Examples of IPRO Projects1

One successful IPRO project {which involved separate teams working sequentially over several semesters) used the power of cyberspace to help restore the rule of law in Bosnia following the 1992-96 war that devastated the country. Undergraduates in computer engineering, conputer science, and psychology, together with graduate students from IITs Chicago-Kent College of Law, formed the Project Bosnia IPRO teams. They successfully acquired donated equipment from Sun Microsystems, U. S. Robotics, Cisco Systems and Motorola, together with significant monetary contributions from the Soros Foundation and the United States Information Agency. These teams created a first-ever digital infrastructure for Bosnian courts and legislature, established Internet servers and forums to help assure the free flow of information both within and from Bosnia, and traveled to the Balkans over spring break to install the equipment. This computer system provided a new and unanticipated benefit beginning in 1998: the documentation of thousands of Albanian refugees displaced by ethnic repression in Kosovo. Our Operation Kosovo IPRO group established a system to track and reunite these refugee

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Jacobius, T. M., & Voland, G. (2000, June), Crossing Professional Boundaries: The Interprofessional Projects Program At Iit Paper presented at 2000 Annual Conference, St. Louis, Missouri. 10.18260/1-2--8253