Last day vibes

Who's taking it... and who’s doubling it and passing it on? 🤩

Happy Space Day! We're recognizing and celebrating our community's incredible achievements in space exploration, like the critical research our PhD student Lydia Ellen Tonani-Penha is doing with NASA. Lydia is finding ways to extract and purify water from Mars—which could have major implications for future missions. What do you think the future of space exploration will look like? Learn more about Lydia's journey from student to NASA researcher here: https://bit.ly/4jC9oq6.

In Episode 2 of Time To Startup, titled "You Have an Idea, Now What?", the i3 Lab team at WPI guides aspiring entrepreneurs through the crucial first steps of turning an idea into action. This episode explores key frameworks and tools like NABC (Need, Approach, Benefits, Competition), how to craft a compelling value proposition, and practical customer discovery techniques to validate your concept early. Packed with actionable insights and expert tips, it’s a must-listen for anyone ready to move from inspiration to execution and start building a real startup foundation.

Online reviews of products give consumers a chance to praise their favorite products and vent about the shortcomings. Now it appears that consumer reviews—not just buying habits—may also signal which products get dropped by companies. A study analyzing over 6,000 online reviews found that products with lower satisfaction ratings, less relevant review content, and reviews that are more subjective, shorter, and harder to read are more likely to be discontinued, according to a team of researchers that includes a WPI graduate and WPI Business School Professor Joseph Sarkis. Even the way that prospective shoppers rate the helpfulness or unhelpfulness of reviews may matter, the researchers say. “It’s known that online reviews can influence shoppers and help companies gauge product demand,” says Sarkis. “This study shows us that reviews also may be factors in the organizational decisions that companies are making.” The study was led by Qingyun “Serena” Zhu, who earned a Master of Science degree from WPI in 2014 and a PhD in 2019. Zhu is now an assistant professor at San Diego State University and has frequently collaborated with Sarkis. Results were published in the Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services. A central concept in the research is “consumer voice,” which encompasses customer opinions, feedback, and critiques about products. This data provides valuable insights for companies making product-related decisions. The study highlights how such decisions can reflect “organizational voice,” effectively bridging the two concepts. It emphasizes the importance of not only listening to consumer input but also translating it into actionable decisions within the organization. “There is significant research into how companies make product-deletion decisions based on factors such as sales, market share, and supply chain capabilities,” says Zhu. “The role of consumer voice, especially in online retailing, is not as well understood.” For their analysis, the researchers collected online review data for each product listed in 2018 on the website of the Body Shop, a skin care and cosmetics retailer based in the United Kingdom. They also collected data from 2022 to determine if the products were still available. Using natural language processing, a form of artificial intelligence, the researchers parsed the wording in product reviews written by consumers. Each review was scored on factors such as readability, length, sentiment about a product, and whether reviews addressed the core attributes of a product. The researchers also collected information on whether reviews had been rated as helpful or unhelpful by other website users. “Results showed that products with longer reviews were more likely to have been retained by companies,” Zhu says. “Products with reviews that were negative, hard to read, or less relevant were more likely to have been deleted.” Zhu and Sarkis caution that the research does not show that reviews cause companies to delete products. Many economic factors can lead to product deletion, they say, and human decision-making is complex. Additional research is needed across a greater variety of companies and industries to validate their findings and produce a more nuanced understanding of consumer behavior, they say. “Product deletion is a fact of life, because it’s inefficient for companies to offer too many products and to continue offering products that do not meet a company’s needs,” Sarkis says. “This study suggests, however, that when companies are making product decisions, consumer reviews can provide important analytical details and enable informed decision-making.”

Infamous for being a “weed-out” course in college, organic chemistry is so hard it can scare off students from pursuing careers in medicine, biology, materials science, and dentistry. In this episode of The WPI Podcast, Anita Mattson, professor of chemistry and biochemistry, talks about a new series of graphic novels she created with United Kingdom-based illustrator Anton Brand to help students navigate the chemistry of carbon. As Mattson puts it, whether you’re a struggling student, a curious nerd, or just someone who enjoys a good acid-base joke, this could be for you. You may also read the transcript below.

Four WPI faculty members have been selected for this year’s cohort of faculty fellows at the Center for Project-Based Learning (CPBL). Now in its third year, the fellowship program is proving a successful—and increasingly popular—multidimensional growth opportunity for WPI faculty. “Our faculty fellows program is a wonderfully symbiotic way for WPI faculty to engage in their own professional development while also producing a practical tool, like a resource guide or sample lesson plans, that enriches the field of project-based learning scholarship and teaching,” says Kris Wobbe, director of the Center for Project-Based Learning. This year’s cohort includes Zoë Eddy, assistant professor of teaching in the Department of Integrative and Global Studies; Ryan Madan, associate professor of teaching in the Department of Humanities and Arts; Stephen McCauley, associate professor of teaching in the Department of Integrative and Global Studies; and Daniel Treku, assistant teaching professor in The Business School. Over the summer each fellow will research an area of their choosing, then produce a related resource that will be accessible to faculty at WPI and beyond. Faculty fellows also meet regularly as a group to discuss their topics and either teach a workshop or coach a team at the Institute for Project-Based Learning. For engaging in the program and submitting their final resource, each fellow receives $10,000.The program is an especially beneficial opportunity for younger faculty who are working toward tenure and promotion, in part because each fellow creates a resource that becomes publicly available. Wobbe notes that the community that develops among each cohort is likewise valuable, regardless of where the fellows are on their professional journey. “Over the summer the fellows have regular meetings, engaging in rich conversations about each other’s projects, providing not just guidance but also new ways of looking at things,” she says. “Faculty don’t often spend much time talking to each other about how they’re teaching or why they’re teaching something in a certain way. The fellows are given the opportunity to have those conversations—and they really enjoy it.” They’ve also told their colleagues: Interest in the fellowship program has grown substantially since it began in 2023, with 23 faculty members applying for this year’s four spots. Last year the CPBL received 13 applications. Thanks to her dual role as senior research associate at the CPBL and at the Morgan Teaching and Learning Center, Kimberly LeChasseur has been able to see and appreciate the fellows’ work from multiple perspectives. She and Wobbe expected the fellowships would yield some exciting insights to the scholarship of project-based learning—which it has. That the fellows have also made significant contributions to the field of research about teaching and learning—all while growing themselves as teachers—has been a happy surprise for LeChasseur. “These fellowships are not really seed grants, but they are investments in people. And they pay off,” she says.Case in point: Fiona Zoutendyk, associate professor of teaching in the Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering and a 2023 fellow, developed a toolkit to help instructors integrate projects with real-world applications into capstone courses, offering guidance on how to gradually increase the level of challenge for students throughout the term. After the fellowship ended, Zoutendyk continued her research into teaching complex, multilayered concepts. This summer she and LeChasseur are presenting a paper to the American Society for Engineering Education about how to teach systems thinking in capstones. “For Fiona, the fellows program became a springboard to go further into the scholarship of teaching and learning,” says Wobbe. Another example of a long-term benefit that has come out of the CPBL fellowship program is the AI Toolbox for Academic Research and Writing, by Laura Roberts, an assistant teaching professor in the Department of Integrative and Global Studies and a 2024 fellow. The toolbox has been accessed by more than 1,000 unique users since December 2024, and Roberts continues to get invitations to speak about her work. Two successful fellowship cycles have prompted Wobbe to anticipate that each new cohort will surprise her in some way. As the start of this year’s fellowship draws near, she is eager to watch the 2025 fellows grow individually and as a group, all while developing insightful resources that can benefit the entire WPI community as well as teachers and learners around the world.