Skip to content ↓

Briefly

Electrical engineering and computer science sophomore Sumudu Watugala points to her notes during her UPOP presentation about optimizing the registration process for HASS-D courses.
Caption:
Electrical engineering and computer science sophomore Sumudu Watugala points to her notes during her UPOP presentation about optimizing the registration process for HASS-D courses.
Credits:
Photo / Donna Coveney

UPOP preps engineering interns

More than 150 School of Engineering sophomores spent five days collaborating with industry professionals and MIT faculty in an IAP workshop that offers real-world engineering practice. The Introduction to Engineering Practice Workshop is part of the School's Undergraduate Practice Opportunities Program (UPOP), which helps students develop engineering and business skills while working in industry or government. In only its second year, UPOP has doubled in size and is well on its way to its goal of reaching 60 to 80 percent of engineering sophomores.

"It was an excellent opportunity to network with people from many different sectors of industry and with MIT professors outside of my major," said workshop participant Ross Bland, a sophomore in electrical engineering and computer science.

Aside from benefiting students, the program "has become an outstanding vehicle for engaging alumni," said UPOP director Christopher Resto (S.B. 1999), a former strategy consultant at Cap Gemini Ernst & Young. "It's a win-win situation. Students are eager to pick the brains of their MIT predecessors who have made things happen in all industries, and the alumni have been equally excited to contribute because they really believe we're making an impact on undergraduate education." For more information, see http://web.mit.edu/engineering/upop.

Ian Jose Ybarra

DSpace diversifies

The MIT Libraries have joined six major research universities to broaden and fine-tune the DSpace digital archives for scholarly works. Universities participating in the DSpace Federation with MIT are Columbia, Cornell, Ohio State, Rochester, Toronto and the University of Washington at Seattle. Cambridge University in Engand is also participating through the Cambridge-MIT Institute.

The federation will explore the adaptability of DSpace to institutions beyond MIT, develop documentation for future participants, and investigate services that can be built on federated collections held in DSpace repositories at different institutions.

DSpace, launched last November as an open-source system, is now in full production at MIT and holds approximately 1,000 items.

DSpace is the result of a two-year collaboration between the MIT Libraries and Hewlett-Packard Laboratories, HP's strategic research facility. The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded a one-year $300,000 grant to develop the federation. For more information, see http://dspace.org.

MacKenzie Smith

A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on February 5, 2003.

Related Topics

More MIT News