Project-MOONSHOT ACADEMY

STEM for Girls

Disciplines/Subjects: sociology, education，design thinkings Key Themes: girls，gender equality, STEM/Math，pedagogy, learning interest The Incubator Track in MSA is a year-long, interdisciplinary program that empowers students to develop and launch social impact projects. Students will first define and understand a social problem, and then initiate an action to promote changes around that problem. Along with a variety of social science research and problem-solving methods, learners will also enhance their project management, leadership, and communication skills. The problem we want to solve is that middle school girls cannot maintain their interest in math through school courses. We have done several surveys, which include 50 students and 10 teachers to investigate high school students and middle school students about whether they are good at math or not and their score of interest towards math on a scale of 1-10. Girls have shown a distinct interest in math in middle school and the interest score of math for middle school girls is slightly higher than high school girls, which indicates that girls can not persist in interest in math. The reasons behind this question, include multiple factors, such as parents, teachers, grades, and environment. Our goal is to design a complete action that is effective for middle school girls to maintain their interest in math. The action would be developed based on the interests and hobbies of middle school girls. Our action design will be based on one of the factors that will affect the interest we find.

Sustainable lifestyle for youth

Disciplines/Subjects: sociology, environmental studies, design thinkings Key Themes: teenager, sustainable lifestyle, citywalk The Incubator Track in MSA is a year-long, interdisciplinary program that empowers students to develop and launch social impact projects. Students will first define and understand a social problem, and then initiate an action to promote changes around that problem. Along with a variety of social science research and problem-solving methods, learners will also enhance their project management, leadership, and communication skills. People’s exploits of natural resources and destruction of the environment are causing drastic climate change. However climate change sounds like such a big problem, and individuals can hardly relate to it (Markman, 2018). Specific and personal changes need to be made by individuals to combat climate change. Discover the power of sustainable lifestyles with me. I’m dedicated to inspiring and supporting teenagers in embracing eco-friendly choices every day. Let’s team up to build a greener, more sustainable world for everyone.

Entering the world of elderly

Disciplines/Subjects: sociology, design thinkings Key Themes: elderly, teenager, empathy The Incubator Track in MSA is a year-long, interdisciplinary program that empowers students to develop and launch social impact projects. Students will first define and understand a social problem, and then initiate an action to promote changes around that problem. Along with a variety of social science research and problem-solving methods, learners will also enhance their project management, leadership, and communication skills. The rapidly developing technology is convenient for citizens’ lives, but trouble has been brought to the elderly at the same time. Due to their dissatisfaction with social and emotional needs, the elderly suffer from loneliness and a series of severe consequences brought by loneliness. Loneliness may cause a variety of dangers that can threaten the health of the elderly. We discovered that providing support for the elderly to express and communicate with others reduces their sense of loneliness. We decided to aim at reducing the loneliness of the elderly by building a connection between them.

SDG community challenge

Disciplines/Subjects: Social Sciences，design thinking Key Themes: Sustainability, Marginalized Groups, Community Action Have you ever heard about sustainable development or Sustainble Development Goals? Why are they important? Are they close/relevant to our lives? When more government, organizations, businesses, schools are adpoting SDG in their own daily operation, shall we and can we get more MSAers on board? Your goal in this comprehensive project is to develop a SDG-related campaign to raise community' members's awareness about your chosen topic. This year, we have a specific focus on the interplay of environmental and social problems. You will join the month-long "From Moon to Earth" campaign initiated by the social sciences department, the Blue, and the Green Houses.

Via

"Where is your hometown?" Is it the address on the Household Register, or the place of birth, permanent residence, or the place of origin. Hometown is not defined in black and white compared to the Chinese household registration system, it is too vague for us. People will pass through small and large corners in their life, leaving their own traces. Some traces will disappear with the footsteps of the way, some traces will be burned in the heart for life. After searching, there is always a place that belongs to one's hometown, the hometown of the soul. To me it is home, a place where people are loved. The Way is a series of works, including an art film and an art book. It revolves around "I" and discusses the meaning of the existence of hometown in such a society with a complex structure of Household registration system.

Invisible Pain

Invisible pain refers to the somatization symptoms experienced by people with mental illness. Experiencing mental illness myself, I find that it brings physical pain almost as much as the mental symptoms, and even more overwhelming sometimes. However, usually people's perception of mental disorders does not include these physical symptoms that cause patients to suﬀer. I want to visualize this phenomenon while making mental illness known in a comprehensive way.

Perfect or Imperfect

Every time before I have to make art, write a paper, etc., I always need to spend an extraordinary amount of time thinking about what I'm going to do. That's all right, but I've always hesitated to take action because I've been thinking about a plan. Moreover, the process of thinking about "what to do" brings me a lot of pain and agony. After many similar situations, I slowly realized that this kind of "thinking procrastination" comes from my excessive pursuit of perfectionism and the fear of "not having a perfect solution". I feared it would end badly if I started without a "perfect" solution. I worry about not being perfect, being less than others, about what others think, and being unable to get my work past myself. Therefore, in this work about myself, I want to further understand and break through this state of mine. To break out of this state, I think I can do the opposite: to make some "imperfect" works, not to let myself spend time thinking about the plan, and to create with a "blank paper" state; thus came this work with a little bit of performance art nature. It is based on randomly selected ready-made works. It is a time-limited creation based on randomly selected photos from a ready-made cell phone album; by randomly selecting pictures, repeating them, creating for a limited time, and randomly choosing the medium of creation when necessary, I want to abandon my creative merits and subjectivity, in order to achieve the goal of breaking through my excessive pursuit of perfection. "Pause" means to stop overthinking and over-striving for perfection, and "accelerate" means to start acting quickly.

Project

Real-world projects creating positive impacts for self, others, communities, and the planet.