Vertically Integrated Projects (VIP) provides UMD students of all backgrounds, disciplines, and levels of experience with the opportunity to engage in scaffolded, multidisciplinary team-based projects.
About VIP
Program Features
VIP Teams engage in work related to a broad range of academic and professional disciplines. All of them have the following features in common:
Scaffolded Engagement & Support
Teams are comprised of first-year students through graduating seniors. New VIP Team members learn from and replace those who graduate by engaging in peer-to-peer learning and mentorship.
Multidisciplinary Engagement
The VIP program is meant for students from all backgrounds, levels of experience, and disciplines. VIP drives the completion of ambitious, multidisciplinary projects, which strengthen and expand faculty scholarship while providing students the opportunity to work with peers from heterogeneous disciplines.
Multi-Semester Participation
The VIP program extends project-based learning beyond a single semester, with students participating for multiple semesters. This provides time and context for students to gain deeper insights, learn and practice professional skills, make contributions to projects, and experience a broad range of team-based roles.
Degree Advancement
Participating VIP students enroll in VIPS courses each semester and earn academic credit.
Authentic Engagement & Skill Building
VIP Teams use authentic and contemporary practices, deal with real-world uncertainties, and engage in the creation of multifaceted outcomes.
Student Impacts
Students who participate in the VIP program build broad personal and professional skills directly related to their academic discipline and applicable to a broad range of long-term professional career paths:
Marketable Skillsets
Develop broadly marketable and contemporary skillsets that will allow you to succeed in a broad range of long-term professional destinations.
Communication
Learn to clearly and effectively exchange information, ideas, facts, and perspectives with persons inside and outside of an organization.
Critical Thinking
Grow in your ability to identify and respond to needs based upon an understanding of situational context and logical analysis of relevant information.
Leadership
Excel in your ability to recognize and capitalize on personal and team strengths to achieve organizational goals.
Professionalism
Understand how work environments differ and demonstrate effective work habits.
Teamwork
Build and maintain collaborative relationships to work effectively toward common goals, while appreciating diverse viewpoints and shared responsibilities.
VIP Team Projects Engage Research, Innovation & Entrepreneurship
Each VIP Team targets clear, defined, and achievable objectives related to research, design, entrepreneurship, or community outreach & service. Projects are derived from the research agendas, interests, scholarship, and expertise of the VIP Faculty Mentor.
Current VIP Teams
Biosensors
Go with the Flow! Empowering Hands-on Fluid Dynamics Education
TestuGo: A Bluetooth Navigation & Exploration App
Engineering on the Edge of Space
Researching Innovative Tools for Meaningful Digital Engagement
3D-Printed Video Game-Playing Soft Robots
Exoskeleton Explorers: Arthropod-Inspired 3D Printed Robots
Research/Research
Wind TERPines
The VIP Movement & UMD
Originally created at Georgia Tech and Purdue University, Vertically Integrated Projects has been making an impact for over 20 years at universities across the globe.
Vertically Integrated Projects is a transformative approach to enhancing higher education by engaging undergraduate students in ambitious, long-term, large-scale, multidisciplinary project teams that are led by faculty. The program has been rigorously evaluated and refined over more than two decades.
UMD's initial investment in Vertically Integrated Projects was led by the A. James Clark School of Engineering. Engineering and the Office of Undergraduate Research are now moving forward as collaborative partners to support a broader range and number of students and ensure campus partners from all UMD disciplines have the opportunity to benefit from this opportunity.