MIT’s Undergraduate Advisory Group: Amplifying Student Voices to Shape the Future of Computing
At MIT, ensuring a vibrant and relevant student experience within the ever-evolving landscape of computing requires direct and consistent feedback from the students themselves. Enter the Undergraduate Advisory Group (UAG) of the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing (SCC), a committee of around 25 undergraduate students who serve as a crucial sounding board for the college’s leadership.
Matthew Caren ’25, a jazz musician with a major in computer science and engineering and minors in music and theater arts, joined the UAG during his first year at MIT. Drawn to the SCC’s focus on the intersections of computing, engineering, and the arts, Caren found the UAG to be a valuable platform for contributing to the college’s direction. “The ethos of the UAG is the ethos of the college itself,” Caren explains, emphasizing the importance of bringing together diverse perspectives to foster engaging discussions and innovative ideas.
The UAG provides a direct line of communication between students and the college’s leadership, including Dean Dan Huttenlocher and Deputy Dean Asu Ozdaglar. In monthly meetings, students openly discuss challenges and offer recommendations on various aspects of the student experience. “This group is unique in the sense that it’s a direct line of communication to the college’s leadership,” says Caren. “They make time in their insanely busy schedules for us to explain where the holes are, and what students’ needs are, directly from our experiences.”
Dean Huttenlocher values the students’ insights, 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 echoes this sentiment, stating that the UAG has been an invaluable space for understanding the student experience more deeply.
One notable example of the UAG’s impact involves 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 feedback directly influenced the floor plan, leading to the inclusion of the hybrid study and meeting booths that are now heavily used. Caren reflects, “It’s super cool walking into the personalized space and seeing it constantly being in use and always crowded. I actually feel happy when I can’t get a table.”
Beyond providing feedback, UAG members also take initiative in addressing student needs. Rising senior Julia Schneider, double-majoring in artificial intelligence and decision-making and mathematics, joined the UAG to contribute to the college’s mission of fostering interdepartmental collaborations. She and her peers developed NerdXing, a course visualization website, to help students navigate the vast array of course options at MIT. The tool allows students to explore course paths taken by others with similar interdisciplinary interests.
Guided by Rob Miller, Distinguished Professor of Computer Science in EECS, NerdXing uses a dataset of EECS course enrollments to reveal connections between seemingly disparate fields. For example, a CS major interested in Theory of Computation might discover that many of their peers went on to take courses in Machine Learning and even Harmony and Counterpoint II, an advanced music class. “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,” says Miller.
The UAG exemplifies MIT students’ proactive approach to problem-solving. As Schneider puts it, “We are MIT students. We have the skills to build solutions… 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.” By amplifying student voices and empowering them to shape their educational environment, the UAG plays a vital role in strengthening the MIT student experience.
