Living Labs & Penn State Values
By design, Living Lab Projects are collaboratively designed to meet big goals through incremental research, projects, and hands-on activities.
Living Labs serve to address Penn State Values and priorities in the Penn State’s strategic plan to ensure a sustainable future. They address and align with the UN SDGs, integrate sustainability into our research, teaching, outreach, and operations, and enable leading with innovative and aggressive programs that reduce impact on the environment and foster resilient, equitable, thriving communities.
Penn State Values
Integrity
Living Labs support action that supports reaching our highest academic, professional, and ethical standards.
Respect
By working with a diverse group of students, faculty, and staff, Living Labs respect and honor the dignity of each person, embrace civil discourse, and foster a diverse and inclusive community.
Responsibility
Living Lab projects take place on campus, by campus, and for campus. They inspire us to act responsibly, and be accountable for our decisions, actions, and their consequences.
Discovery
Living Lab projects seek to address and solve challenges faced on a regular and consistent basis on campus. Planning and conducting them is part of the process of seeking and creating new knowledge and understanding, and fostering creativity and innovation, and benefiting our communities, society, and the environment.
Excellence
Projects done hyper-locally helps hold us accountable and inspire us to strive for excellence in individual and institutional endeavors and as a leader in higher education.
Community
Living Lab projects enable the campus community to work together for the betterment of our University, the communities we serve, and the world.
Read more about Penn State Values at Penn State Mission and Values
Living Labs Advance Penn State’s Strategic Plan Goals
Enhancing Student Success
Experiential learning with Living Labs is a curricular high-impact practice. Living Labs can address a range of topics, such as water purification and desalination, energy recovery, genetic crop analysis, stress-tolerant food production, better understanding of the human microbiome, responsible energy production from unconventional gas and oil reserves, and many more. These class experiences prepare students for their academic and professional futures.
Growing (inter)disciplinary research excellence
Living Lab Projects often need to be interdisciplinary as they enable the exploration and pursuit of enabling physical, biological, agricultural science, and engineering technologies that encompass environmental, economic, policy, and sustainability considerations. They can include water filtration and irrigation; power management; green building design; energy production, distribution, efficiency, and storage; critical mineral extraction from coal and coal-associated waste; and crop precision application, storage, and refrigeration. Living lab projects can be used for undergraduate research and contribute towards student achievements. They are projects and initiatives with direct community benefits.
Increasing land-grant impact
By working with Penn State Sustainability on Living Lab projects, we can leverage our assets and strategic partnerships to build resilient, sustainability communities for the betterment of the Commonwealth. Penn State led community-centered resilience and sustainability-oriented efforts/initiatives is one way we track and measure success. Living Lab projects provide experiential learning opportunities for students and often support sustainability and operations.
Fostering diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging
Living Lab projects help to cultivate a deep sense of belonging for faculty and staff by building connections through shared project work, which fosters a stronger sense of place and responsibility.
Transforming internal operations
Living Lab Projects can help make significant inroads against operational challenges related to water, energy, and food by fostering research partnerships, attracting funding sources, and engaging end users.
See the Penn State Strategic Plan for more details about each goal.
