We used the SIU Green Roof, originally a sustainable urban horticulture project, to provide an inclusive space for meeting participatory learning objectives across many disciplines on the SIU campus. We implemented Design Thinking, an iterative process for solving problems by prioritizing the consumer’s needs above all else. Through hosting Design Thinking Workshops focused on the Green Roof, we understood consumers and stakeholders’ desires, discovered out the problems, and generated ideas with several diverse groups of individuals. Following our identification, we built an interdisciplinary team of engineering students for pursuing the Green Roof Project. The project encompasses several projects generated during the workshops from hosting events, building awareness through developing a brand, and showcasing opportunities through engineering design projects. The mission focused on inspiring the future generations to use the SIU Green Roof for discovering their passions through research projects.

The three identified opportunities discovered with the SIU Green Roof is an inclusive space for research projects in an outdoor environment, for inspiring individuals to pursuing their own passions, and for cultivating an interdisciplinary space on campus. These goals were achieved through the progress of two projects: building a brand and engineering design projects. The combination of branding and engineering enabled high quality content to be released digitally and physically for inspiring current and future students to become engaged with pursuing their passions. Developing a brand ranged from consistent activity digitally through social media and website, hosting a ten-year anniversary on the SIU Green Roof celebration webinar, and hosting a weekly podcast. Each activity focused on showcasing our engineering design projects which include work with machine learning in irrigation system as well as small scale wind and solar technology. The project fields, machine learning and clean energy, are two popular topics in the modern world and have gained the interest of students and individuals to follow our journey and share our story.

Through the implementation of leadership principles and communication, we successfully increased student engagement for educational purposes while increasing awareness for students to become engaged with finding the passion on the SIU Green Roof through showcasing opportunities in two popular fields. Moving forward, monitoring the joint ownership of two campus student councils for building awareness and maintenance of the interdisciplinary will determine the long-term success.