“You don’t learn this in class”
Antje Danielson loves summer. And it’s not just the weather or the lighter traffic around campus. It’s the UROPs, she says. Common enough to be referred to as a verb as well as a noun, MIT’s Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program (UROP) gives students the opportunity to do advanced work alongside professors and graduate students. Danielson, the director of education for the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI), says undergraduate research isn’t just one of the “best-known and best-loved” features of the undergraduate experience at MIT. It’s also “one of the most important ways we help students prepare to put MIT’s 'mens-et-manus' ['mind-and-hand'] motto into practice,” she says. And, she adds, summer research is especially valuable because it lets students focus on one project with limited interruption. With MITEI, summer UROP students get an additional layer of experience. “The MITEI UROP is special because we encourage contact between industry sponsors and students, and because we help bridge disciplines to prepare...