Ricky M. Bates

“The Greenhouse of the Future”: Using a Sponsored Competition in a Capstone Course

Educational objectives of capstone courses such as critical-thinking and problem-solving skills are among the most cited needs in curriculum revitalization efforts. Sponsored competitions present an important vehicle for achieving these educational objectives. Opportunities such as the Greenhouse of the Future Competition provide students a diverse range of critical experiences not easily simulated in traditional classroom settings. The objective of the competition was to provide an opportunity for US university students to conceptualize, design, integrate, fabricate, and demonstrate innovative greenhouse or controlled environment ideas. The students achieved a great sense of accomplishment and satisfaction by converting their ideas into proposals, developing proposals into experiments, tracking the data generated by the experiments and translating that data into a meaningful communication locally and to the scientific community at large. Most of these important learning experiences would have remained as components of the project even if the team had not advanced as the winning entry.