URGE

Welcome to URGE's wiki!

Contents 1 About 2 Quick Links 3 Program Structure 4 Application Process 4.1 Timeline for Spring 2011 5 People Involved 5.1 URGE Staff 5.2 Sponsors 6 Testimonials

About

URGE - the Undergraduate Reading Group Experience - is a new student-run program that launched in Fall 2011 to encourage deep technical learning in a casual/social environment. Too often for MIT undergrads, the social and the technical are separated. URGE brings together people with similar technical interests to interact as friends and colleagues, crossing the formal boundaries of classes, year, and living group.

URGE provides a framework for discussing technical papers over several dinners in the course of a semester. Through these dinners, your learning of a particular field will be made rich by the camaraderie of others who care about the same topics as you.

In short, URGE = learning + 10 friends + 5 free dinners.

Quick Links

• Read through some tutorials and instructions here: Tutorials
• Take a look at our current reading groups here: Current Reading Groups
• Go to our archive of past years: Archive
• Some results of our pilot program in Spring 2011: Pilot Program Results
• Check the scheduled meeting details here (you will need to be logged in): Meeting Schedules

Program Structure

URGE stands for the Undergraduate Reading Group Experience, and it seeks to bring students together to form reading groups for a semester of low-stress learning. These reading groups of about 10 students will meet five times throughout the semester to discuss over dinner (reimbursed by URGE's sponsors) different technical papers in a given field or area of interest. Each reading group will be led by one or two student reading group leaders who are responsible for the well-functioning of the entire group, and will also be responsible for selecting papers and leading discussion. Participants will be responsible for reading the selected material ahead of time and coming to the dinners ready for discussion. Other tasks - such as ordering food, scheduling meetings, and taking notes at each dinner - will be spread out among the participants so that no one person is doing all the work, while also allowing everyone to have a part in making the group a success.

For more information about these responsibilities, go to our How to be a Reading Group Participant page.

Application Process

1. The first step in the process is the selection of group leaders and reading groups - students who want to lead a group will submit applications detailing their ideas for the group, any relevant background, and leadership experience.
2. The topic proposals will be released along with the participant application.
3. From the participant application, we are looking for students with interest in learning, interest in meeting people with similar interests, as well as appropriate experience levels.
4. After we assemble the groups of students, it will be up to the group leaders to decide on a time that works best for everyone.

Timeline for Spring 2011

Absolute dates are still TBD, but the tentative schedule for Spring 2012 will be as follows:

• Applications to be a reading group leader are live - closed
• Applications to be a reading group leader are due midnight, January 27, 2012.
• Applications to be a reading group participant are live! Apply here: http://goo.gl/f9Sxu
• Applications to be a reading group participant will be due 2/25
• The kickoff event will be shortly afterwards
• Meetings will happen throughout the semester
• The closing ceremony will be sometime in the beginning of May

People Involved

URGE Staff

• Go to the staff page to check out the people involved in URGE: URGE Staff
• If you would like to be one of these wonderful people, we'd love to have you! Let us know at rg-staff[at]mit.edu and we'll get back to you shortly.

Sponsors

• MIT ACM/IEEE Club
• MIT Undergraduate Mathematics Association (UMA)
• MIT Brain and Cognitive Science Society (BCSS)
• MIT Society of Physics Students (SPS) (certificates required)
• MIT American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME)

Testimonials

"This is the first time that I saw collective intelligence at work, i.e. different people putting together different pieces and being able to figure out the entire picture. A couple good at mathematics, robotics, signals, AI, all pitching in to contribute in the understanding of different parts of the paper."

"Excellent [discussion atmosphere]; rarely do I feel so free to ask dumb questions."

"We got food there, we had papers, we had people. Discussion happened; people made friends. I think we hit our goals."

"You did well in getting everyone together, staying on task, and making people feel included."