CAB Courses

The objective of the groups was to work with the Girls Scouts to build a solar suitcase, a portable, solar powered generator device that is highly valuable in developing countries with energy insecurity. As Victoria Vricella reported in 2020, "In addition to helping the Scouts build the solar suitcase, students in Bates’s and Jaksch’s class enhanced the Scouts’ environment curriculum, and the revised materials will be used by troops throughout the Lawrence, Ewing, Trenton area."

The Trentoniana archive of the Trenton Free Library preserves a catalog of recordings of oral history projects that have collected testimony from Trenton residents. Even though these recordings are publicly available on the site archive.org, they have limited usability. The audio files are not transcribed, and as a result, researchers can not search the data for personal names, locations, topics, historical events, or examine them for what they might tell us about the linguistic and discourse practices of English speakers. Many of the speakers recorded are recent immigrants to the United States, so their speech can give us a sense of the languages practices of speakers who learned English in the United States after World War II or who learned English abroad and then adapted to New Jersey language and discourse standards.  The goal of this collaboration project is to examine ways to enhance the usability of the Trentoniana material. Students in LNG 372, American English, in Spring 2021, began to improve usability by transcribing 20 of the audio files. Students in LNG 371 will continue this transcription project, each contributing one transcript and proofreading three. Their first transcription activity will be to proofread and discuss the transcripts completed by the Spring 2021 students, and then begin their own transcripts. These transcripts will become one part of the data used by students in CSC 315. Students in the two sections will examine the Trentoniana archive.org site and collaborate on ways to improve the usability of the data.

TCNJ students from WGS 350 (Gender Equity in the Classroom) and ETE 341 (Environmental & Biotechnology Systems) will partner with students at General Raj School (GRS), an affordable private English Medium school located in New Delhi, India and Sprouting STEMS, a tier-one after school program for ages K–5. The collaborators (TCNJ & GRS = 30/40 in total) will develop a series of STEM based, transnationally informed, and intersectionally situated design activities to be piloted with Sprouting STEMS cohort. The activity our collaborators will work on is to design a STEM oriented toy, game or other project that will engage one several themes that fuse equity and environmental issues, such as: nature inspired design; pollution, remediation, and recycling; and biotechnologies. The collaborators will then create a plan for teaching the concept, building the toy and exploring the overall topic to their target group, and once approved, pilot the teaching of the toy for Sprouting STEMS and assess all aspects of the pilot activity. ETE 341 students will learn about intersectionality, feminisms, and inequality as it relates to pedagogy from WGS 350. WGS students will learn about design thinking and how to incorporate STEM learning into their different classes from ETE. 

This collaboration produced the CCYVC project. In Spring 2021, the Statistics Capstone (STA 498) and Software Engineering (CSC 415) classes collaborated with each other and with The Capital City Youth Violence Coalition (CCYVC – pronounced as ‘civic’). This local coalition is a grassroots effort that aims to reduce juvenile delinquency and promote positive youth development. Teams comprising students from both classes, with different disciplinary backgrounds, worked closely together and with representatives of CCYVC to identify specific challenges and questions. The teams then proposed, designed and developed statistical models and web-based applications to address these questions. Some of the primary objectives of the collaborative project were for students in both classes to apply statistical and computer science concepts and skills to a project; strengthen problem solving and critical thinking abilities, communication abilities, project management skills, and teamwork; and develop a deeper understanding of the significance of social issues, especially related to youth violence.

The New Jersey Sustainability Reporting Hub is the flagship project of the solutions journalism nonprofit Civic Story. NJSRHub’s mission is to support and elevate reporting on efforts to make New Jersey communities more environmentally sustainable. Students from the Database Systems class and Race, Gender and the News worked with NJSRHub’s project manager to come up with ideas for improving the website’s functionality and accessibility. In the summer of 2020, a Computer Science student collaborator was hired to implement some of those ideas.

This collaboration produced the EndNJC project. Teams made up of students from both courses collaborated with each other and the community partner to develop web applications that build awareness about racial injustice in the criminal justice system, and enable concerned residents take advocate for change.

The students in SOC345 and LIT499 will be divided into five groups, and each group will complete the following elements, collaborating with Joanne Mullowney, the chair of the Ewing Green Team: (1) background research for interviews with certified and non-certified Ewing gardeners (certified through the National Wildlife Federation’s program for creating more wildlife-friendly gardens).  Interviews will be conducted by SOC students with gardeners drawn from a list provided by the Ewing Green Team, as well as with other community members who have not sought certification.  Research will focus on areas that likely influence decisions by gardeners on whether to certify or not, including the history/allure of lawns and local ordinances on yards and lawns. (2) the creation of the content for five profiles of certified Ewing gardeners (through interviews with certified and non certified gardeners in Ewing) for the Ewing Community Wildlife Habitat Project website. Analysis of the interviews will also address, at Joanne Mullowney’s request, the question of why some people do not seek certification. (3) a presentation of the results of each group’s interviews and gardener profile to classmates and Joanne Mullowney (at a joint meeting). (4) the creation of content for new web pages for the  Ewing Community Wildlife Habitat Project website (using information from #1, #2, and #3 above).  Depending on the needs of the Ewing Community Wildlife Habitat Project, the new web pages may include book reviews, pages for elementary-aged children, a press release, or something else.

The Innovation (BUS/MGT 375) and Electronics I (ELC/251) classes are collaborating with each other and with the City of Trenton to identify problems and challenges faced by the City, and to propose, design and begin development work on innovative "internet of things" (IOT) solutions to address those challenges. Teams composed of students from both classes and with different disciplinary backgrounds will work closely together on the projects.

Teams made up of students from both classes worked with Randy Solomon, director of community partner Sustainable Jersey, to propose and design computational solutions to address problems such as climate change, pollution, etc. The mid-semester shift to remote instructions due to the pandemic resulted in some projects not making as much progress as others.

This Virtual Reality project is a first-person simulation where the player takes on the perspective of an African-American male teenager living in an urban community. The project aims to create empathy among teachers and police officers who hopefully will better understand the various issues those kids encounter, the stress that they endure, and the decisions that they make.

Students from both courses analyzed Arthur Honegger’s King David and conducted research on the play’s background. Their work informed the plans for a final performance, and was the basis for program notes that would be made available to the audience.

In the spring of 2021, we worked in teams composed of students from Race Gender and the News and Environmental Anthropology. Each team chose a specific vulnerable population within our food system on which to focus. Our community partner is FreePress’ News Voices project. News Voices helps news organizations better understand and respond to the needs of the communities they serve. During the course of semester-long project, each team addressed the following issues: (1) Through primary and secondary research including ethnographic interviews, we identified the information needs of specific sets of vulnerable stakeholders in our local food system. (2) Through research and interviews, we identified experts capable of addressing how journalists can overcome structural impediments to explaining the links between food insecurity and climate change. (3) We curated examples and convened conversations about how local journalists and news organizations address those information needs while avoiding the pitfalls of journalism - described by Lewis-Raven Wallace as “reporting on communities without input or accountability.” The project deliverables will took the form of a final report with research findings and recommendations, as well as webinars including the perspectives of journalists, civil society leaders and community members who can speak to the issues that you have identified in our research.

CSC 415: Software Engineering and CRI 202: Penology students collaborated to develop an application for Atlantic Center for Capital Representation (ACCR), a non-profit organization that focuses on the injustice that leads to death sentences, death by incarceration, and other excessive punishments through direct representation, impact litigation, training and assistance to legal teams. Students developed modules such as a mail manager, an interactive map, a pro bono hours logger, and more!

CSC 315: Database Systems students and ACC 311: Cost Accounting students collaborated to develop an application to depict the energy distributions around The College of New Jersey's campus and their costs in order to help the college pinpoint where they can target more sustainably energy management.