Student opportunities – MIT Climate & Sustainability Consortium

Engaging with MIT students is central to the MCSC’s mission and efforts, and is interwoven into some of the core conversations and solutions we are tackling, as well as the programming we are hosting. There are many ways for MIT students to collaborate with us, including undergraduate research opportunities, internships, providing feedback to our Student Council, and helping with event planning.

Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROPs)

The MCSC supports undergraduate research through the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP). This is a chance to work directly with our member companies as well as MIT faculty and graduate students. A flexible model, UROPs allow students to either join established research projects or pursue their own ideas.

Students working on MCSC UROP projects will:

Participate in meetings with the MCSC team at the beginning and end of each UROP period.
At the end of each UROP period, give a brief presentation on the work that they did during their UROP.
Have the opportunity to work with MCSC postdoctoral Impact Fellows and representatives from member companies.
Be able to come to the MCSC office to meet and socialize with other MCSC students, postdocs, and staff, including complimentary food and beverages.

We recruit our UROPs through a UROP Rush event that happens every term. Find out more information.

Read what some recent UROPs have been up to, and read this Q+A with Pamela Duke, a former UROP and MIT Climate & Sustainability Climate Scholar.

Some students participate in a program called MIT Summer Research Program (MSRP). Read more about a recent experience in a Q+A with Abigail Idiculla, Penn State.

Next steps

Don’t hesitate to email mcsc@mit.edu to connect with us and learn more about the MCSC!

Search for opportunities on the Experiential Learning (ELX) website; filter by UROP (Type) and MCSC (Department / Program). If you have a specific professor you would like to work with, we encourage you to alert them about MCSC opportunities as well; the Consortium is open to review any climate and sustainability related UROPs for funding.

If you have any questions before submitting your applications to MCSC-funded UROPs, please contact Jeremy Gregory, Executive Director, at jgregory@mit.edu.

Please review MIT’s UROP full guidelines before applying.

"It's been a pleasure researching with people who are passionate about creating solutions for climate change. Working with the Consortium helped me consider a greater variety of options for a profession in the future!"

David Kwabi-Addo
MIT Undergraduate Student

MIT Climate & Sustainability Scholars Program

The MCSC’s new Climate & Sustainability Scholars Program enables MIT undergraduates to have a unique, yearlong, interdisciplinary experience developing and implementing climate and sustainability research projects. Inspired by MIT’s successful SuperUROP program, the Climate & Sustainability Scholars Program has three elements: Climate.UAR course, experiential learning opportunities, and mentorship. Students in the program will enroll for a fall-spring sequence in a Climate.UAR course and will be engaged with a complementary research project during that time, which can be on or off campus. Students will also be encouraged to participate in on- or off-campus research or internships related to the MCSC during the summer. Learn more below; applications are open to rising juniors and seniors from all departments and all majors. If you are interested, please apply.

More information about the Climate & Sustainability Scholars Program.

Careers in Sustainability

The MIT Fall Career Series provides students the opportunity to connect with employers over multiple sectors of industry; it is many MIT students’ first step into the professional world. The MIT Fall Career Fair Sustainability Initiative supplements the Career Series by giving students the tools to engage potential employers in a conversation about their responsibilities to the planet and their actions to meet those responsibilities. Through this initiative, students can learn what types of questions to ask companies and how to ask them, as well as view company emissions data from the past ten years. Click here to learn more about careers in sustainability. Also stay tuned for career profiles – on the Career Fair Sustainability Initiative’s website – from MCSC member companies, which showcase the unique and varied paths individuals can take to enter and succeed in a sustainability and/or climate-focused role.

I saw a real-world application of environmental science and now, I can better communicate my research to various audiences.

Abigail Idiculla, Penn State Undergraduate Student
MIT Summer Research Program (MSRP)

Events & Programming

The MCSC hosts and co-hosts several workshops and events, and student participation is crucial to many of these. Please keep your eye on the Events section of our website; if you have an idea for an event or would like to make the MCSC aware of one that you or a student organization is working on, please email mcsc@mit.edu.