A Response Board for Enhancement of Student Experience | MIT News

In its first year at MIT in 2021, Matthew Caren ’25 received an interesting email inviting students to apply to be a member of the Undergraduate Advisory Group (UAG) of the MIT Schwarzman School of Computer Science (SCC). He immediately developed an application.

Caren is a jazz musician majoring in computer science and engineering and training in music and theatre arts. He attracted the university because it focused on the intersection of application between computing, engineering, art and other academic pursuits. Caron eagerly joined UAG and spent four years at MIT.

First formed in April 2020, the group brings together a committee of approximately 25 undergraduates that represent a large number of traditional and hybrid majors in electrical engineering and computer science (EEC) (EEC) and other computing-related programs. They recommend the Academy’s leadership on issues, provide constructive feedback, and provide a voice committee for innovative new ideas.

“The spirit of UAG is the spirit of the academy itself,” Karen explained. “If you’re very intentionally bringing together a bunch of smart, fun, fun people who are all interested in something completely diverse, you’re getting some really cool discussions and interactions.”

Along the way, he also became a “dear” friend and found a real colleague. During the group’s monthly meetings with SCC Dean Dan Huttenlocher and Associate Dean ASU Ozdaglar, who is also the department head of EECS, UAG members speak openly about challenges in the student experience and advise guests throughout the institute, such as the faculty that is developing new courses and looking for students.

“This group is unique, and it’s a direct communication with university leaders,” Karen said. “They spend time explaining the location of the holes and the needs of the students directly from our experience in a crazy busy schedule.”

“The students in the group are very interested in computer science and AI, especially how these fields connect with other disciplines. They are also passionate about MIT and are eager to enhance the experience of undergraduates. It’s refreshing to hear their views – their honesty and feedback have been very helpful to me as a Dean,” Huttenlocher said.

“Meeting students every month is a real pleasure. UAG is a valuable space to get a deeper understanding of the student experience. They do calculations with MIT in a variety of ways, so their investment in courses and wider university issues are very insightful.”

“ASU and Dan do a great job in nurturing a space to make students feel safe to come up with things that aren’t positive,” said Ellen Rushman, UAG program manager. The group’s recommendations are also implemented frequently.

For example, in 2021, architects Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, who designed the new SCC building, introduced their renderings at a UAG meeting to ask for student feedback. Their initial interior layout provided few mixed research and conference booths that were so popular in today’s first-floor lobby.

Hearing strong opinions about the open, community-building space that students really value, this is one of the things that makes the current floor plan change. “It’s so cool to walk into a personalized space and see it constantly used and always crowded. I’m really happy when I can’t get the table,” Karen said.

Caren’s co-chair, Rising Senior Julia Schneider, a dual commission for artificial intelligence, decision-making and mathematics, joined UAG for his first year to learn more about the college’s mission to promote inter-departmental cooperation.

“Since I’m a student in electrical engineering and computer science, but I’ve done mechanical engineering research in robotics, the college’s mission is to foster cross-departmental collaboration and to make them really talk to my personal experience through their first year at MIT,” Schneider said.

During his time at UAG, members joined subgroups around achieving the different program objectives of the Academy, such as planning a public lecture series for the 2025-26 academic year, exposing MIT students to faculty in other disciplines related to computer-related research.

At one meeting, Schneider and some UAG peers formed a subgroup to find solutions after hearing the challenges of students understanding all possible courses during their tenure.

The students agreed that some of the best courses they took at MIT, or course pairings that really had interdisciplinary interests, were because they talked to seniors and got advice. “This tribal knowledge doesn’t really penetrate all MIT,” Schneider explained.

Schneider and the subgroup have been working on the course visualization website Nerdxing, which was proposed from these discussions for the past six months.

Under the guidance of Rob Miller, a distinguished professor of computer science in EECS, this subgroup has used the EECS course registration dataset over the past decade to develop different types of tools than MIT students typically use, such as Courseroad and others.

Miller regularly serves as an education officer for the college’s cross-cutting program, a common foundation for computational education, comments: “The real cool idea here is to help students find the pathways that others like them take – not just interested in computer science, but rather in computer science, but in biology or economics, or in the spirit of computers, which are computational. Support students with a wide range of computing interests.”

Open the Nerdxing pilot, which will be launched later this spring, Schneider gave a demonstration. She explained that if you are a computer science (CS) major and want to create a course that visually demonstrates potential, after choosing your major and interests, you can expand on a huge chart showing all the possible courses you have spent with your CS companions over the past decade.

She clicked on Class 18.404 (Computational Theory) as the starting class for interest, which led to Class 6.7900 (Machine Learning) and then unexpectedly reached 21m.302 (Harmony and Counterpoint II), Advanced Music category.

“You start to see aggregate statistics that tell you how many students there are in each course, and you can cut it further to see the most popular courses in CS, or follow the lines of red dots between courses to see the typical courses you need.”

By granularity on the chart, users start to see courses they may have never heard of anyone talking about in the program. “I think one of the reasons you came to MIT is to be able to take something cool exactly like this,” Schneider said.

The tool is designed to show students how to choose courses that go far beyond the requirements for filling degrees. This is just one example of how UAG empowers students to strengthen colleges and the experience they provide.

“We are MIT students. We have the skills to build solutions,” Schneider said. “Not only did this group of people come up with better situations, but we took it in our own hands to solve problems.”