New Trier Senior Projects Create Greater Impact on Student Learning through Mentorship and Design Thinking
Senior Project allows students in their culminating year in high school to design and complete their own learning experience, like an internship. Each project is completed outside of school during the last five weeks of the school year and replaces most of a student’s traditional classroom work. Support from community mentors enable students involved in Senior Project to gain valuable experience in a career-oriented, creative, service or academic area of study while also recognizing that the spirit of Senior Project is about adventure, exploration, passion, and creativity. Students gain real-world insight, make connections across various disciplines, and get on a career-readiness pathway.
“Being able to work with deeply motivated, self-directed, and highly intelligent students is one of the gifts of being in this position,” says Chris Van Den Berg, Social Studies and Human Centered Design Faculty. “Students will be able to apply human centered design in the imagination and brainstorming stages of Senior Project.”
Design thinking, also known as “human centered design,” is a problem-solving approach in which participants identify the unmet needs of a population to design solutions collaboratively and across disciplines - all with the end user in mind. According to Van Den Berg, this learning approach also calls for each student to bring their own unique strength and perspective as an essential component to the collective process.
The New Trier Educational Foundation has been partnering with the District since 2001 to explore new and innovative ways to enhance the New Trier educational experience. To help students approach real-life complex problems and develop skills and mindsets that are highly desired by colleges and employers, New Trier has partnered with Educational Foundation and the Siebel Center for Design at the University of Illinois to launch the design thinking program.
For Senior Project, the Foundation aims to showcase the work of students to the larger New Trier community, especially to alumni, and to thank the mentors who give of their time and knowledge for students to have exceptional learning experiences.
Help us to continue building and growing our community connections throughout the District and beyond. For more information or to get involved, email Liz Mayer ’02, NTEF Executive Director at mayere@nths.net or call 847.784.2346.
New Trier Embraces Design Thinking in Pilot Program
At the November, 2023 Board of Education meeting, Assistant Superintendent Peter Tragos told the Board that a design thinking approach aligns closely with many of the District’s strategic planning goals in the framework of Intellectual Engagement, Growth, and Readiness. He noted that a World Economic Forum report in 2016 found that 65% of students entering kindergarten that year would work in jobs that did not yet exist. Those students are New Trier’s Class of 2029, and providing them with durable skills like adaptability, collaboration, and learning how to learn will serve them well in the future. To see the full video, click here.
The District has been refining ideas for a human-centered design program at New Trier since 2019, when a small group of teachers from different departments proposed an all-day workshop to present ideas for a design thinking school. Tragos said the group has since had four successful retreats bringing together teachers, staff, students, parents, the New Trier Educational Foundation, alumni, community members, and industry professionals.