Do You Know the Quality of the Water you depend on?
This need sits at the heart of Right to Know H2O, a sustainability challenge advanced through the Gale Epstein Center for Technology, Policy and the Environment at Pace University. It also became the foundation for a growing collaboration between Pace University (New York, U.S.A.) and Häme University of Applied Sciences (HAMK) (Hämeenlinna, Finland). As members of the Design Factory Global Network, Pace and HAMK already shared a common approach to experiential, interdisciplinary learning and collaborative problem-solving across institutional and cultural boundaries. In 2025, complementary student projects around water quality and clean-water technologies brought students from both universities together to explore how water-quality information could become more accessible, understandable, and useful to the public.
Students did more than study the problem. They helped shape the direction of the work by mapping systems and stakeholders, engaging with experts and external partners, comparing local water contexts, and developing ideas for improving how water-quality information is communicated. Working across disciplines and countries helped students see that the same sustainability challenge can take different forms in different communities, from drinking-water concerns to the stewardship of lakes and other water systems. Their contributions informed how the collaboration evolved, while the experience strengthened their capacity for systems thinking, interdisciplinary collaboration, civic engagement, and cross-cultural teamwork.
The Millennium Fellowship became a catalyst for amplifying the Pace–HAMK collaboration beyond Finland and the United States and into a broader global context. By connecting students to a worldwide community advancing the Sustainable Development Goals, the Fellowship gave the work a shared social-impact framework and opened opportunities for the initiative to be shared, adapted, and extended across new institutional and cultural settings. The collaboration has continued into the 2026 Millennium Fellowship, with the goal of bringing additional students, disciplines, institutions, and perspectives into the Right to Know H2O effort.
The impact lies both in what students contribute to the challenge and in what they gain through the process: the ability to navigate complexity, collaborate across differences, and act on sustainability challenges in partnership with others.
The Pace–HAMK Right to Know H2O collaboration is supported by HAMK Design Factory at Häme University of Applied Sciences, the NYC Design Factory at Pace University, and the Gale Epstein Center for Technology, Policy and the Environment at Pace University. The initiative has been developed through the collaborative efforts of Professors Jari Jussila and Markku Mikkonen from HAMK, and John Cronin and Andreea Cotoranu from Pace University.
Article Written by Professor Markku Mikkonen, Häme University of Applied Sciences (HAMK)
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