Thank you!
Welcome to the NEET community!
About the NEET Program
We aim to reimagine and rethink undergraduate engineering education—what students learn and how they learn—in a fundamental way across MIT.
A scholar-focused endeavor, NEET is based on four principles:
In addition to our four core principles, our community is governed by core values.
Simply put, new machines and systems are things that engineers build— including mechanical, molecular, biological, informational, and energetic constructs. These are the things that our graduating students will build during their careers after they leave MIT.
The organization and structure of most engineering programs, especially in the US, is around siloed disciplines (civil, mechanical, electrical, chemical, etc.) and their machines. Reinforced by the accreditation process, this curricular structure is very repeatable, prescriptive, and good at generating certain “types” of engineers—a situation that is then reinforced by many companies that use the labels to inform their hiring practices. The established professional organizations (ASME, IEEE, etc.) further perpetuate the silos.
Preparing young people to design a “new machine” means approaching their overall training very differently. We must work energetically to overcome academic inertia, conservative influences in accreditation and professional societies, and the hiring practices of major companies.
In the future, students must be able to work on machines and systems that are complex, highly networked and part of larger systems of systems, have higher levels of autonomy and are supportive of a sustainable environment.
What makes these machines new, and NEET’s approach relevant, is the degree, nature, and pace of change in modern science and technology. Very few of today’s practicing engineers received training in a whole range of fields that will define the careers of our graduates. For example, the new machines of tomorrow are likely to be facilitated by:
● Machine learning● Internet of Things● Autonomous and robotic systems● Novel materials design and manufacturing systems● Smart grids, cities, and urban infrastructure● Sustainable materials and energy systems● AI-driven healthcare diagnostics and therapeutics
A second principle of NEET is that we should help our students prepare for careers on a spectrum that spans from making to discovering. Makers are people who will have careers conceiving, designing, implementing, and operating systems and products that deliver value. Discoverers will perform research that reveals the underlying principles, mechanisms, and truths that drive our world.
Undergraduate students are often unsure of the exact routes their careers will take, but they should have the option to prepare themselves to work anywhere along this spectrum. NEET gives students the tools and training that affords them a foundation for a lifetime of managing new technologies, new theories, new models, and new methods for making and discovering.
Flexibility along the spectrum from making to discovering is achieved by allowing students to choose projects that suit their interest, and by designing an appropriate structure of supporting coursework that gives them the fundamental knowledge they need. Whether it’s a maker-based project or a student research experience (e.g., SuperUROP), NEET provides flexibility and choice on this axis. Ideally, this flexibility allows students to defer their choice of major to the middle or even end of their second year.
NEET is built around the idea that we should teach students in the ways they most want to learn—engaging them and making them active collaborators in their learning. NEET rigorously documented the best practices, benchmarking, and evidence from stakeholders and institutions around the world in a global undergraduate education benchmarking study that was released in 2018. Based on these findings NEET understands the ways to prepare today’s engineer for the careers of tomorrow.
We have structured our program around ideas and practices that increase the use of the approaches that have been proven to work—more regular and active engagement with students in the classroom, more project-based learning, creative and relevant uses of digital learning, and professional experiences and training, to name a few.
The way our students are learning is rapidly changing. Today, they employ increasingly diverse combinations of learning strategies in any given class. NEET strives to better understand how students are learning so it can be factored into the program.
Given the modern pace of scientific and technological development—and the high probability of sustained or even increasing rate of growth in this area—NEET takes it as a fundamental principle that students need to know how to learn effectively by themselves. Our approach to this challenge is the NEET Ways of Thinking
Based on cognitive approaches and skills used by successful technical professionals, the NEET Ways of Thinking empower students, allowing them to have a greater impact, to be more effective, and to thrive in academic and workplace environments after graduation. These cognitive approaches help them think and learn on their own throughout their lifetimes.
We have identified a framework of twelve NEET Ways of Thinking; this framework also formed the basis for getting inputs and gathering evidence from a range of stakeholders, including thought leaders, industry, alumni, students and faculty.
Core Values
The core values of the New Engineering Education Transformation (NEET) Program pertain to the entire NEET community, including its scholars (enrolled students), leadership, thread faculty leads, faculty, instructors, lecturers, and other NEET staff. NEET’s values complement those of MIT, namely: useful knowledge, societal responsibility, learning by doing, education as preparation for life, and the value of fundamentals. NEET’s values are rooted in our mission to educate undergraduate students to become leaders who tackle the greatest challenges of the 21st century. These values guide our decision-making and inspire us to advance a community in which everyone can thrive. We anticipate that all NEET community members will actively support and promote these values. Note that NEET’s values are not the same as NEET’s principles, which pertain to the NEET curriculum/a rather than to the NEET community. The NEET values are as follows:● We value diversity and inclusion in our community whereby all scholars (enrolled students), leadership, thread faculty leads, faculty, instructors, lecturers, and other NEET staff of all ethnicities, races, sexual orientations and genders, physical and mental abilities, and backgrounds are equally valued and cherished as vital members of our NEET community.● We value multidisciplinary, collaborative, project-based learning in undergraduate engineering and science education. ● We value opportunities for students to learn the arts of discovery and making in a manner that is aligned with real-world challenges, driven by students' passions and interests, and supported by instructors, professors, and experts in the MIT community.● We value the development of attitudes and skills required for students to thrive in and contribute to society as global leaders, engineers, and scientists. ● We value open and transparent communication between students, instructors, staff, lecturers, faculty and others from different departments and disciplines.
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Statement In the New Engineering Education Transformation program, diversity, equity and inclusion have evolved naturally and are intrinsic to our values. We, as a community of students, educators, instructors, lecturers, faculty, administrators and extended partners, are strongly committed to promoting and supporting these ideals. We believe that our extended community thrives when we embrace and welcome the diversity of perspectives and experiences found in our community --- ethnicity, race, religion, social and economic backgrounds, political persuasion, disability, gender, sexual orientation, and national origin. The MIT community is driven by a shared purpose: to make a better world through education, research, and innovation and is welcoming to talented people regardless of where they come from. We at NEET best serve this goal by embracing these perspectives, and by educating ourselves and our students, with a goal of retaining an open discourse within the community.
NEET Ways of Thinking
The Global Undergraduate Education Study
In 2016, NEET commissioned Dr. Ruth Graham, an independent UK-based consultant, to conduct a global undergraduate education benchmarking study as part of its process of gathering evidence from stakeholders.
Published in March 2018, the report has generated world-wide interest. Drawing on interviews with 178 individuals with in-depth knowledge and experience of world-leading engineering programs, the report provides a snapshot of the cutting edge of global engineering education, as well as a horizon scan of how the state of the art is likely to develop in the future.
The report’s findings pointed to three defining trends:
● A tilting of the global axis of engineering education leadership.● A move towards socially-relevant and outward-facing engineering curricula.● The emergence of a new generation of leaders in engineering education that delivers integrated student-centered curricula at scale.
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