Educators, researchers, and government officials have concluded that today’s students, at all levels of the educational system, are lacking in the skills needed to ensure their success in the workplace. This awareness is driving a movement to change educational curricula to include skills training in the areas of communication, collaboration, critical thinking, and creativity. Collectively, these areas make up what are called “21st Century Skills.” The question becomes how to develop a program that effectively teaches these skills to students and how to get that program implemented into a usable curriculum. This thesis asserts that the direct study and application of the framework and specifically identified processes of project management (i.e. the key fundamental elements) is an effective methodology for building a foundation upon which to teach students “21st Century Skills”. Using the term “direct study” means that students are explicitly taught key terms, concepts, and processes of project management and then instructed to implement them in a project. The distinction being made here is the belief that, whereas some types of skills are better learned by simply doing, introduction to 21st century skills should be prefaced with some amount of theory and discussion and then reinforced with practical application. Several of the student project management programs discussed in Chapter 3 offer data that backs up this assertion. Additionally, a course outline for a proposed high school curriculum to teach students the key fundamental elements of project management is included in Appendix A. / text

The College of Public Health at East Tennessee State University started a program in 2011 to teach the skills needed to protect and promote health and well-being in resource-limited settings. The need to provide public health services in resource-limited settings exists in both wilderness and isolated settings and when a disaster disrupts basic societal infrastructure. In these settings, lives may depend on the ability to provide water, sanitation, hygiene, shelter, first aid, and other basic services. Over the last decade, the college expanded the program considerably into what is now known as Project EARTH (Employing Available Resources to Transform Health) that now includes several different academic courses as well as programs designed to develop innovative solutions to address the needs of people in resource-limited settings. Working in a resource-limited setting requires effectively utilizing locally available resources to improve and protect people's health and well-being. Project EARTH focuses on teaching students to design and create specific products for these situations while progressively honing those cross-cutting skills necessary to work effectively in these settings-notably teamwork, creativity, and resilience. To this end, Project EARTH implements a sequential learning process that includes significant hands-on training and simulated experiences with debriefing opportunities at the end of each activity. Project EARTH may serve as a useful model for others considering a similar training program.