Spring at MIT: We need your help!

To MIT’s undergraduate students,

MIT’s greatest successes in the fall were a product of partnership, with students, faculty, staff and administrators working together to make the student experience as enriching as possible during this most unusual academic year. As we turn our attention to the spring, we invite you to join us this weekend for MIT COVID Hack, where teams of undergraduate students – this means you! – will develop and submit proposals to improve MIT in four areas:

• Designing Outdoor Spaces: Identify and develop spaces for students to safely socialize outdoors in the cold weather. Pitch your idea to leaders in the Office of Campus Planning and the vice president and dean for student life.
• Reimagining Virtual Communities: Rethink online socialization with innovative methods to meet new people and spend time with friends virtually. Pitch your idea to the vice chancellor and MindHandHeart’s executive administrator.
• Improving the Remote Learning Experience: Develop technology or policy to improve remote learning in the spring. Pitch your idea to the dean for digital learning and chair of the faculty.
• Connecting Students and Policies: Design strategies and tools to improve Covid-19 campus policy communication and compliance. Pitch your idea to senior associate deans in the Division of Student Life.

The judges will choose the winning solution for each track and help it become a reality.

We’re working on a tight timeline – the deadline for registration is tomorrow, Wednesday, January 6. Everything you need to know about the hackathon, as well as a UA-produced video and information about prizes, is here.

If you have a great idea for how to make the MIT experience even stronger this spring, or if you’d like to work together to develop a great idea, we hope you’ll participate. We look forward to making 2021 an exciting year for MIT, starting this weekend!

Sincerely,

L. Rafael Reif, President

Cynthia Barnhart, Chancellor

Danielle Geathers, UA President

Kiara Wahnschafft, COVID Hack Director & UA Chief of Staff