Throughout his first 12 months at MIT in 2021, Matthew Caren ’25 acquired an intriguing electronic mail inviting college students to use to develop into members of the MIT Schwarzman School of Computing’s (SCC) Undergraduate Advisory Group (UAG). He instantly shot off an utility.
Caren is a jazz musician who majored in laptop science and engineering, and minored in music and theater arts. He was drawn to the school due to its give attention to the utilized intersections between computing, engineering, the humanities, and different tutorial pursuits. Caron eagerly joined the UAG and stayed on all of it 4 years at MIT.
First shaped in April 2020, the group brings collectively a committee of round 25 undergraduate college students representing a broad swath of each conventional and blended majors in electrical engineering and laptop science (EECS) and different computing-related packages. They advise the school’s management on points, provide constructive suggestions, and function a sounding board for progressive new concepts.
“The ethos of the UAG is the ethos of the school itself,” Caren explains. “In case you very deliberately convey collectively a bunch of good, fascinating, fun-to-be-around people who find themselves all all in favour of utterly various issues, you will get some actually cool discussions and interactions out of it.”
Alongside the way in which, he’s additionally made “pricey” mates and located true colleagues. Within the group’s month-to-month conferences with SCC Dean Dan Huttenlocher and Deputy Dean Asu Ozdaglar, who can be the division head of EECS, UAG members converse overtly about challenges within the scholar expertise and provide suggestions to visitors from throughout the Institute, comparable to college who’re growing new programs and searching for scholar enter.
“This group is exclusive within the sense that it’s a direct line of communication to the school’s management,” says Caren. “They make time of their insanely busy schedules for us to clarify the place the holes are, and what college students’ wants are, instantly from our experiences.”
“The scholars within the group are keenly all in favour of laptop science and AI, particularly how these fields join with different disciplines. They’re additionally captivated with MIT and keen to reinforce the undergraduate expertise. Listening to their perspective is refreshing — their honesty and suggestions have been extremely useful to me as dean,” says Huttenlocher.
“Assembly with the scholars every month is an actual pleasure. The UAG has been a useful area for understanding the scholar expertise extra deeply. They have interaction with computing in various methods throughout MIT, so their enter on the curriculum and broader faculty points has been insightful,” Ozdaglar says.
UAG program supervisor Ellen Rushman says that “Asu and Dan have carried out an incredible job cultivating an area during which college students really feel protected mentioning issues that aren’t constructive on a regular basis.” The group’s options are often carried out, too.
For instance, in 2021, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, the architects designing the brand new SCC constructing, offered their renderings at a UAG assembly to request scholar suggestions. Their authentic interiors structure supplied only a few of the hybrid research and assembly cubicles which are so in style in right this moment’s first ground foyer.
Listening to robust UAG opinions in regards to the type of open-plan, community-building areas that college students actually valued was one of many issues that created the change to the present ground plan. “It’s tremendous cool strolling into the customized area and seeing it always being in use and all the time crowded. I truly really feel completely happy after I can’t get a desk,” says Caren, who has simply ended his tenure as co-chair of the group in preparation for commencement.
Caren’s co-chair, rising senior Julia Schneider, who’s double-majoring in synthetic intelligence and decision-making and arithmetic, joined the UAG as a first-year to grasp extra in regards to the faculty’s mission of fostering interdepartmental collaborations.
“Since I’m a scholar in electrical engineering and laptop science, however I conduct analysis in mechanical engineering on robotics, the school’s mission of fostering interdepartmental collaborations and uniting them by means of computing actually spoke to my private experiences in my first 12 months at MIT,” Schneider says.
Throughout her time on the UAG, members have joined subgroups centered round attaining completely different programmatic objectives of the school, comparable to curating a public lecture collection for the 2025-26 tutorial 12 months to offer MIT college students publicity to college who conduct analysis in different disciplines that relate to computing.
At one assembly, after listening to how difficult it’s for college students to grasp all of the potential programs to take throughout their tenure, Schneider and a few UAG friends shaped a subgroup to discover a resolution.
The scholars agreed that a number of the finest programs they’ve taken at MIT, or pairings of programs that actually struck a chord with their interdisciplinary pursuits, got here as a result of they spoke to upperclassmen and acquired suggestions. “This sort of tribal data doesn’t actually permeate to all of MIT,” Schneider explains.
For the final six months, Schneider and the subgroup have been engaged on a course visualization web site, NerdXing, which got here out of those discussions.
Guided by Rob Miller, Distinguished Professor of Pc Science in EECS, the subgroup used a dataset of EECS course enrollments over the previous decade to develop a unique sort of device than MIT college students sometimes use, comparable to CourseRoad and others.
Miller, who recurrently attends the UAG conferences in his function because the schooling officer for the school’s cross-cutting initiative, Frequent Floor for Computing Training, feedback, “the actually cool thought right here is to assist college students discover paths that have been taken by different people who find themselves like them — not simply all in favour of laptop science, however possibly additionally in biology, or music, or economics, or neuroscience. It’s extremely a lot within the spirit of the School of Computing — making use of data-driven computational strategies, in assist of scholars with wide-ranging computational pursuits.”
Opening the NerdXing pilot, which is about to roll out later this spring, Schneider gave a demo. She explains that if you’re a pc science (CS) main and want to create a visible presenting potential programs for you, after you choose your main and a category of curiosity, you possibly can increase an enormous graph presenting all of the potential programs your CS friends have taken over the previous decade.
She clicked on class 18.404 (Principle of Computation) because the beginning class of curiosity, which led to class 6.7900 (Machine Studying), after which unexpectedly to 21M.302 (Concord and Counterpoint II), a sophisticated music class.
“You begin to see combination statistics that let you know what number of college students took every course, and you may additional pare it all the way down to see the most well-liked programs in CS or comply with traces of pink dots between programs to see the everyday sequence of courses taken.”
By getting granular on the graph, customers start to see courses that they’ve most likely by no means heard anybody speaking about of their program. “I feel that one of many causes you come to MIT is to have the ability to take cool stuff precisely like this,” says Schneider.
The device goals to point out college students how they’ll select courses that go far past simply filling diploma necessities. It’s only one instance of how UAG is empowering college students to strengthen the school and the experiences it affords them.
“We’re MIT college students. Now we have the abilities to construct options,” Schneider says. “This group of individuals not solely brings up methods during which issues might be higher, however we take it into our personal arms to sort things.”
Throughout his first 12 months at MIT in 2021, Matthew Caren ’25 acquired an intriguing electronic mail inviting college students to use to develop into members of the MIT Schwarzman School of Computing’s (SCC) Undergraduate Advisory Group (UAG). He instantly shot off an utility.
Caren is a jazz musician who majored in laptop science and engineering, and minored in music and theater arts. He was drawn to the school due to its give attention to the utilized intersections between computing, engineering, the humanities, and different tutorial pursuits. Caron eagerly joined the UAG and stayed on all of it 4 years at MIT.
First shaped in April 2020, the group brings collectively a committee of round 25 undergraduate college students representing a broad swath of each conventional and blended majors in electrical engineering and laptop science (EECS) and different computing-related packages. They advise the school’s management on points, provide constructive suggestions, and function a sounding board for progressive new concepts.
“The ethos of the UAG is the ethos of the school itself,” Caren explains. “In case you very deliberately convey collectively a bunch of good, fascinating, fun-to-be-around people who find themselves all all in favour of utterly various issues, you will get some actually cool discussions and interactions out of it.”
Alongside the way in which, he’s additionally made “pricey” mates and located true colleagues. Within the group’s month-to-month conferences with SCC Dean Dan Huttenlocher and Deputy Dean Asu Ozdaglar, who can be the division head of EECS, UAG members converse overtly about challenges within the scholar expertise and provide suggestions to visitors from throughout the Institute, comparable to college who’re growing new programs and searching for scholar enter.
“This group is exclusive within the sense that it’s a direct line of communication to the school’s management,” says Caren. “They make time of their insanely busy schedules for us to clarify the place the holes are, and what college students’ wants are, instantly from our experiences.”
“The scholars within the group are keenly all in favour of laptop science and AI, particularly how these fields join with different disciplines. They’re additionally captivated with MIT and keen to reinforce the undergraduate expertise. Listening to their perspective is refreshing — their honesty and suggestions have been extremely useful to me as dean,” says Huttenlocher.
“Assembly with the scholars every month is an actual pleasure. The UAG has been a useful area for understanding the scholar expertise extra deeply. They have interaction with computing in various methods throughout MIT, so their enter on the curriculum and broader faculty points has been insightful,” Ozdaglar says.
UAG program supervisor Ellen Rushman says that “Asu and Dan have carried out an incredible job cultivating an area during which college students really feel protected mentioning issues that aren’t constructive on a regular basis.” The group’s options are often carried out, too.
For instance, in 2021, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, the architects designing the brand new SCC constructing, offered their renderings at a UAG assembly to request scholar suggestions. Their authentic interiors structure supplied only a few of the hybrid research and assembly cubicles which are so in style in right this moment’s first ground foyer.
Listening to robust UAG opinions in regards to the type of open-plan, community-building areas that college students actually valued was one of many issues that created the change to the present ground plan. “It’s tremendous cool strolling into the customized area and seeing it always being in use and all the time crowded. I truly really feel completely happy after I can’t get a desk,” says Caren, who has simply ended his tenure as co-chair of the group in preparation for commencement.
Caren’s co-chair, rising senior Julia Schneider, who’s double-majoring in synthetic intelligence and decision-making and arithmetic, joined the UAG as a first-year to grasp extra in regards to the faculty’s mission of fostering interdepartmental collaborations.
“Since I’m a scholar in electrical engineering and laptop science, however I conduct analysis in mechanical engineering on robotics, the school’s mission of fostering interdepartmental collaborations and uniting them by means of computing actually spoke to my private experiences in my first 12 months at MIT,” Schneider says.
Throughout her time on the UAG, members have joined subgroups centered round attaining completely different programmatic objectives of the school, comparable to curating a public lecture collection for the 2025-26 tutorial 12 months to offer MIT college students publicity to college who conduct analysis in different disciplines that relate to computing.
At one assembly, after listening to how difficult it’s for college students to grasp all of the potential programs to take throughout their tenure, Schneider and a few UAG friends shaped a subgroup to discover a resolution.
The scholars agreed that a number of the finest programs they’ve taken at MIT, or pairings of programs that actually struck a chord with their interdisciplinary pursuits, got here as a result of they spoke to upperclassmen and acquired suggestions. “This sort of tribal data doesn’t actually permeate to all of MIT,” Schneider explains.
For the final six months, Schneider and the subgroup have been engaged on a course visualization web site, NerdXing, which got here out of those discussions.
Guided by Rob Miller, Distinguished Professor of Pc Science in EECS, the subgroup used a dataset of EECS course enrollments over the previous decade to develop a unique sort of device than MIT college students sometimes use, comparable to CourseRoad and others.
Miller, who recurrently attends the UAG conferences in his function because the schooling officer for the school’s cross-cutting initiative, Frequent Floor for Computing Training, feedback, “the actually cool thought right here is to assist college students discover paths that have been taken by different people who find themselves like them — not simply all in favour of laptop science, however possibly additionally in biology, or music, or economics, or neuroscience. It’s extremely a lot within the spirit of the School of Computing — making use of data-driven computational strategies, in assist of scholars with wide-ranging computational pursuits.”
Opening the NerdXing pilot, which is about to roll out later this spring, Schneider gave a demo. She explains that if you’re a pc science (CS) main and want to create a visible presenting potential programs for you, after you choose your main and a category of curiosity, you possibly can increase an enormous graph presenting all of the potential programs your CS friends have taken over the previous decade.
She clicked on class 18.404 (Principle of Computation) because the beginning class of curiosity, which led to class 6.7900 (Machine Studying), after which unexpectedly to 21M.302 (Concord and Counterpoint II), a sophisticated music class.
“You begin to see combination statistics that let you know what number of college students took every course, and you may additional pare it all the way down to see the most well-liked programs in CS or comply with traces of pink dots between programs to see the everyday sequence of courses taken.”
By getting granular on the graph, customers start to see courses that they’ve most likely by no means heard anybody speaking about of their program. “I feel that one of many causes you come to MIT is to have the ability to take cool stuff precisely like this,” says Schneider.
The device goals to point out college students how they’ll select courses that go far past simply filling diploma necessities. It’s only one instance of how UAG is empowering college students to strengthen the school and the experiences it affords them.
“We’re MIT college students. Now we have the abilities to construct options,” Schneider says. “This group of individuals not solely brings up methods during which issues might be higher, however we take it into our personal arms to sort things.”
