Engineering

Leader: J. Kim Vandiver, Professor of Ocean Engineering and Dean for Undergraduate Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Recorder: Emily Gillett, Undergraduate Student, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Professor Vandiver began the session with a description of the ways that students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) can engage in meaningful research projects. These include working for credit or pay on sponsored research projects, pursuing independent research projects, joining competition teams such as the autonomous underwater vehicle team, and participating in public service projects. He discussed the incentives for both students and faculty, as well as the most common difficulties encountered along the way, and posed the following questions to the participants:

• What are the benefits of an undergraduate research program?
• What are the primary obstacles to success?
• What methods can we use to eliminate the obstacles?
• Are we really ready and willing to help students pursue their own ideas?

Professor Vandiver directs The Edgerton Center at MIT, named for Harold E. ("Doc") Edgerton, Professor Emeritus of Electrical Engineering, who was one of Professor Vandiver's mentors. After Dr. Edgerton passed away in 1990, his laboratory was turned into a hands-on project resource center, providing equipment and workspace for MIT students as well as K-12 outreach programs. In his introduction to the session, Dr. Vandiver cited one of Edgerton's favorite sayings, which aptly describes the benefits of involving students in research activities: "The trick to education is to not let students know they're learning something until it's too late."

Main Points

Fostering undergraduate research requires stimulating interest from and offering incentives to both students and faculty. It is important to be creative and open, to support as many vehicles for undergraduate research as possible, and, when necessary, to look outside the university to companies and individual sponsors for financial support and additional research opportunities.

Challenges

The primary challenges include:

• Finding financial support for undergraduate research.
• Creating incentives for faculty -- especially younger faculty without tenure -- to advise and support undergraduate researchers.
• Making students aware of the research opportunities available within a university.
• Providing incentives for students to participate, such as academic credit or financial stipends.

Examples of Effective Programs

MIT has a number of methods for encouraging student participation in research:

• The Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP), through which students carry out semi-independent projects under the guidance of faculty advisors.
• Independent research projects, for which the Institute provides workshop space, advising, and financial support.
• Competition Teams, in which students work in groups on specific projects or inventions such as solar cars.
• Public Service projects, generated either by individual students or as part of a class, in which students investigate 'real-world' problems and try to devise solutions.
• Engineering Extension Programs and Co-ops, which allow students to work on research projects within small companies.

The Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP)
UROP can be broadly defined as referring to the mechanism through which students can join lab teams or otherwise participate in research or scholarly projects initiated by a faculty member or carry out research on a question of their own choosing under the guidance of a faculty member. The UROP umbrella covers many kinds of experiences in all disciplines, in both the summer and the academic year. The experiences may be as short as a single term or as long as a year or more, depending on the nature of the project and the student's interests. UROP is the most popular option for students who wish to become involved in research; approximately 80% of MIT students complete at least one UROP project before they graduate.

Students are offered either course credit or payment, but not both. In either case it is noted on their transcripts. About 75% of students choose to receive payment (a minimum of $8.75 per hour), and about 25% choose to receive course credit. Only 20% of the funding for UROPs comes directly from the UROP office, with the remainder coming from faculty grants. Students at all levels participate: in 2001, among UROP students were 18% freshman, 24% sophomores, 30% juniors, and 28% seniors. All MIT students must complete a senior project or thesis to graduate and they often find that their UROP project leads into a thesis topic. UROP projects are very diverse, with topics ranging from language acquisition in twins to molecular dynamic simulations of liquids.

Faculty participation is relatively high: 50% of the faculty are involved in a given year and 76% of science and engineering faculty regularly participate. Factors which prevent a larger proportion from participating include faculty concerns that their research productivity will not benefit from including undergraduates and that students do not have the time to do research or will break laboratory equipment. Most faculty who participate do so because they enjoy working with students.

For students, the major challenge is making connections with faculty and finding a UROP project, and both the UROP Office and the individual departments help students do so. Departments all have their own faculty coordinators who assist students in finding placements, ensure that projects are appropriate for students and worthy of academic credit, suggest the kind of skills and experiences students need before they attempt research in that department, review student proposals, encourage students to participate in symposia and other events, and oversee the administrative aspects such as submission of UROP project grades to the Registrar. The UROP Office maintains a Web site listing the faculty coordinators and the projects available in the departments; students are encouraged to seek out faculty members on their own as well if they have an area of particular interest. Faculty may also identify talented students from among those enrolled in their courses.

Most of the work involved in making placements and administering UROP activities (i.e. payroll, keeping track of students' hours) is distributed among the individual departments. There is very little bureaucracy; students who wish to apply for a UROP complete a brief proposal outlining the goals of the project and the contribution they will make, and submit the proposal along with a coversheet signed by a faculty advisor. The UROP office, which is staffed by only two people, reviews the proposals to make sure they seem appropriate, but the faculty supervisors themselves interview and choose the students.

MIT does not offer a formal class on 'how to do research,' although individual departments sometimes organize activities such as lab-safety courses for their UROPs and the UROP office runs meetings during the Independent Activities Period (IAP, MIT's January term) to introduce students, particularly freshmen, to the UROP program.

A senior survey given every four years includes questions about UROP experiences, and the responses range across the spectrum "from poor to terrific." Students who have a negative experience often still find it useful in that it directs them into a field that is of greater interest. Among the consequences of the UROPs, students report, are that they get to know faculty members, acquire new skills and knowledge, confirm their choices of major and decide whether or not to attend graduate school, develop supervisory skills, gain familiarity with ethical research issues, and may even publish papers or develop new products or processes. Alumni surveys indicate that students highly value their UROP experiences. One very successful 1995 graduate said that he appreciated not so much what he learned in his particular discipline, but rather the self-confidence he gained from knowing he was capable of learning new skills and accomplishing things.

Support for Individual Research Projects
MIT's Edgerton Center encourages students who would like to pursue their own inventions or other independent research outside of UROP or other academic structures to do so, and gives them some financial help along with access to workspace and equipment. Students, for instance, asked the Center to sponsor a seminar, taught in their residence hall, on how to program micro-controllers that they could attach to appliances and other devices in order to indicate on the Internet whether the appliance is off or on. The Center paid a student instructor to teach the Random Hall living group the micro-controller technology, resulting in the Random Hall Bathroom Server (http://bathroom.mit.edu). Detectors, updated every 30 seconds, monitor if the bathroom doors are open or closed and the results are transmitted to a Web site where a color-coded floor plan shows the status of each bathroom: yellow means the door is closed and the room is in use; blue means it is open. The students developed a Web-based washing machine and dryer monitor as well.

Competition Teams
Extra-curricular teams and clubs are another highly effective way to support students' interests. Team projects at MIT involve projects such as the construction of solar cars, autonomous underwater vehicles, robots, and other inventions. Teams are composed of students primarily in the sciences and engineering and include members at all levels from freshmen through graduate students; in some cases, high school students are included as well, for instance in the annual FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Contest Robotics Competition. Recruitment events are held during the first week of the fall semester.

Design-oriented team projects enable students to carve out niches for themselves and discover their aptitudes. Some students, for instance, have an excellent theoretical understanding of a subject but little mechanical or technical ability, while others may not do as well in analytically-based classes but are good at building things and can contribute that expertise to a project.

A drawback to the team approach is that these projects usually require expensive supplies and equipment. MIT has designated some endowment income to support clubs and teams and provides tools, a workshop, and places to meet, but the rest of the expenses need to be covered by other sources. The students themselves approach both departments and external sources such as tire manufacturers to raise funds; in the latter case, after students make the initial overtures, the Development Office may help to bring in sponsors. Alumni provide continued support as well. Several alumni who participated in the solar car teams now work at Ford and other automotive companies, and they encourage their employers to support the MIT teams. Other outside agencies may sponsor projects of interest to them. The U.S. Navy, for instance, sponsors an autonomous underwater vehicle competition for college and high school teams from around the country. The MIT team, called ORCA, won first place in last summer's competition, which required that the vehicle independently complete a series of tasks using sonar navigation, without communication to team members, after being turned loose in a tank or river basin.

Engineering has an advantage over many other disciplines in that its focus on applied design projects attracts corporate funding. Professor Vandiver cited the example of Harvey Mudd College, his undergraduate alma mater, which, despite its small size, offered research opportunities to students through what the College called the Engineering Clinic. The College contacted local companies and asked them to propose projects and provide a small amount of funds to support their implementation by students; in exchange, the companies were invited to an event at which students presented their solutions to the projects. The College requires that the projects be original and that students try to do something that has never been done before. The companies have genuine questions: a motorcycle company, for example, asked students to rethink the instrument layouts on motorcycles.

Public Service Projects
These projects integrate community service and academics both through classes and as part of UROPs, senior theses or other independent activities, and at the request of community groups. Projects undertaken by students have ranged from building learning tools for developmentally disabled children to field testing grain mills in Senegal. One of the instructors in the Edgerton Center served in the Peace Corps in Botswana and based on her experiences there created a design seminar on "Inventions for Developing Countries" in which students pose solutions to problems such as the "digital divide" and the need for clean drinking water.

A new team competition provides an additional forum for such projects. In 2001, MIT initiated the IDEAS Competition to "promote student innovation and inventiveness for community needs." Teams of students, working in collaboration with community partners and others with expertise in the area, submitted proposals for projects that addressed the needs of a specific community in a "feasible and innovative way." The Institute solicited donations for prize money from companies and private individuals. Many projects focused on the needs of developing countries. One group designed an incubator for premature babies that doesn't need electricity, for use in Sri Lanka. Several proposals focused on improving water quality: one group developed a filter for homes in Nicaragua and Bangladesh, and another team whose members were mountain climbers concerned with fecal contamination of drinking water traveled during the January Independent Activities Period to a frequently-climbed mountain in Argentina, bringing with them water quality testing equipment in order to complete an environmental impact study.

Examples From Other Institutions

Session participants described initiatives for engineering students at other institutions.

Engineers Without Borders (EWB) is an international organization that sends volunteers (mostly young engineering graduates and retirees) to developing countries to apply their expertise to issues such as sanitation and access to information technology. Advanced undergraduates can participate. EWB was founded by a group of young Canadian engineers and has a number of chapters affiliated with Canadian universities.

Binghamton University has an engineering extension program in which students work with small companies. While the experience is different from working in a university research facility, it teaches students how to learn and shows them how they can contribute to a project.

Yale University encourages students from different disciplines, including Business, to participate on their solar race car competition team, with students in different majors taking on different aspects of the project.

Recommendations

Universities should stimulate conversations about the benefits and advantages of incorporating undergraduates into research programs. It is especially important to stimulate these discussions among younger faculty who are just establishing themselves and developing their teaching styles. Faculty should realize they can have fun working with undergraduates and that undergraduates can contribute meaningfully to projects.

Promotion and tenure committees should reward faculty for supporting undergraduate research projects and incorporating undergraduates into research groups.

There are many vehicles to stimulate interest in and facilitate undergraduate research - centralized programs, team projects etc. - and universities should support a range of these vehicles in order to reach the greatest number of students. Engineering design projects, in particular, can take the form of team projects for competitions, individual projects proposed by and sponsored by small companies, subprojects within faculty-directed research programs and service directed/oriented projects geared toward solving real world problems of humanitarian concern. In many of these cases, private companies are good sources of both funding and additional research opportunities for students.

Institutions need to stimulate dialogue and communication between departments in order to spread the word about opportunities and to open the door to more interdisciplinary projects, for instance through forums in which faculty from different departments present their work to students and colleagues.

Resources

Web sites:
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program: http://web.mit.edu/UROP/
The Edgerton Center: http://web.mit.edu/Edgerton/
Independent Activities Period: http://web.mit.edu/IAP/
IDEAS Competition: http://web.mit.edu/ideas/www/compete.html
Haystack Observatory Educational Resources:
http://web.haystack.mit.edu/education/education.html
Random Hall Bathroom Server: http://bathroom.mit.edu

Engineers Without Borders: http://www.ewb-isf.org/