MIT’s Undergraduate Advisory Group: Amplifying Student Voices to Enhance the College Experience

At MIT, the student experience is constantly evolving, thanks in part to the dedicated efforts of the Schwarzman College of Computing’s (SCC) Undergraduate Advisory Group (UAG). This group, formed in April 2020, serves as a crucial link between the student body and the college’s leadership, offering feedback and innovative ideas to enhance academic and community life.

Matthew Caren ’25, a jazz musician with a major in computer science and engineering and minors in music and theater arts, discovered the UAG during his first year. Drawn to the SCC’s focus on the intersections of computing, engineering, and the arts, Caren eagerly applied and remained an active member throughout his four years at MIT.

The UAG comprises around 25 undergraduate students from diverse academic backgrounds, including both traditional and blended majors in electrical engineering and computer science (EECS) and other computing-related programs. The group advises Dean Dan Huttenlocher and Deputy Dean Asu Ozdaglar, who is also the department head of EECS, on various issues and provides constructive feedback on new initiatives.

“The ethos of the UAG is the ethos of the college itself,” Caren explains. “If you very intentionally bring together a bunch of smart, interesting, fun-to-be-around people who are all interested in completely diverse things, you’ll get some really cool discussions and interactions out of it.”

The UAG’s monthly meetings provide a platform for students to openly discuss challenges and offer recommendations. Their input is highly valued, with Dean Huttenlocher noting, “The students in the group are keenly interested in computer science and AI, especially how these fields connect with other disciplines… Hearing their perspective is refreshing — their honesty and feedback have been incredibly helpful to me as dean.”

Deputy Dean Ozdaglar adds, “The UAG has been an invaluable space for understanding the student experience more deeply. They engage with computing in diverse ways across MIT, so their input on the curriculum and broader college issues has been insightful.”

One notable example of the UAG’s impact is their feedback on the design of the new SCC building. When architects presented their initial renderings, the UAG voiced strong opinions about the need for open-plan, community-building spaces. Their input led to significant changes in the floor plan, resulting in the popular hybrid study and meeting booths seen today.

Rising senior Julia Schneider, double-majoring in artificial intelligence and decision-making and mathematics, joined the UAG to explore interdepartmental collaborations. She and other UAG members have formed subgroups to address specific programmatic goals, such as curating a public lecture series and developing tools to help students navigate course selection.

Schneider’s subgroup created NerdXing, a course visualization website designed to help students discover interdisciplinary course pairings. Guided by Rob Miller, Distinguished Professor of Computer Science in EECS, NerdXing uses a dataset of EECS course enrollments to provide personalized course recommendations based on students’ interests.

“The really cool idea here is to help students find paths that were taken by other people who are like them — not just interested in computer science, but maybe also in biology, or music, or economics, or neuroscience,” Miller explains. “It’s very much in the spirit of the College of Computing — applying data-driven computational methods, in support of students with wide-ranging computational interests.”

The UAG’s work exemplifies how student voices can drive meaningful change and enhance the college experience at MIT. By empowering students to identify problems and develop solutions, the UAG is strengthening the college and its offerings.

“We are MIT students. We have the skills to build solutions,” Schneider says. “This group of people not only brings up ways in which things could be better, but we take it into our own hands to fix things.”