MITES
Encyclopedia
MITES, or Minority Introduction to Engineering and Science, is a highly selective (5-6% acceptance rate) six-week summer program for rising high school seniors held at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
. Its purpose is to expose students from minority, or otherwise disadvantaged backgrounds, to the fields of science and engineering. The program also aims to foster an interest in these subject matters and prepare students for the pressures of college life.
Also, they take one of five electives:
All classes are taught by professors who are assisted by the TAs who help run the program.
. They enjoy full use of the facilities at MIT such as the student center, the libraries, and the athletic facilities. Also, students get to know the cities of Boston
and Cambridge
.
The students also participate in activities such as a Fourth of July barbecue, a trip to Martha's Vineyard
, a tour of Boston
, a tour of the MIT Museum
, a trip to labs in fields of vanguard research, a dinner with the Director of Admissions at MIT, a talent show, a college fair, a Dining Cruise, and a variety of speaker's luncheons with people such as the new Dean of Science at MIT and Eric Lander
.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...
. Its purpose is to expose students from minority, or otherwise disadvantaged backgrounds, to the fields of science and engineering. The program also aims to foster an interest in these subject matters and prepare students for the pressures of college life.
History
MITES was founded in 1974 as the MITE (Minority Introduction to Engineering) Program with the purpose of increasing the number of people from underrepresented backgrounds in the engineering profession. It started out as a two-week intensive program, and later evolved into what is now a six-week program for 60-80 students from the fifty states and Puerto Rico.- The current Head of the MITES program is Shawna Young.
Curriculum
Students take four core classes all six weeks from the following choices:- BiologyBiologyBiology is a natural science concerned with the study of life and living organisms, including their structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, distribution, and taxonomy. Biology is a vast subject containing many subdivisions, topics, and disciplines...
/BiochemistryBiochemistryBiochemistry, sometimes called biological chemistry, is the study of chemical processes in living organisms, including, but not limited to, living matter. Biochemistry governs all living organisms and living processes...
/ChemistryChemistryChemistry is the science of matter, especially its chemical reactions, but also its composition, structure and properties. Chemistry is concerned with atoms and their interactions with other atoms, and particularly with the properties of chemical bonds.... - CalculusCalculusCalculus is a branch of mathematics focused on limits, functions, derivatives, integrals, and infinite series. This subject constitutes a major part of modern mathematics education. It has two major branches, differential calculus and integral calculus, which are related by the fundamental theorem...
I/CalculusCalculusCalculus is a branch of mathematics focused on limits, functions, derivatives, integrals, and infinite series. This subject constitutes a major part of modern mathematics education. It has two major branches, differential calculus and integral calculus, which are related by the fundamental theorem...
II - PhysicsPhysicsPhysics is a natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion through spacetime, along with related concepts such as energy and force. More broadly, it is the general analysis of nature, conducted in order to understand how the universe behaves.Physics is one of the oldest academic...
I/PhysicsPhysicsPhysics is a natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion through spacetime, along with related concepts such as energy and force. More broadly, it is the general analysis of nature, conducted in order to understand how the universe behaves.Physics is one of the oldest academic...
II/PhysicsPhysicsPhysics is a natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion through spacetime, along with related concepts such as energy and force. More broadly, it is the general analysis of nature, conducted in order to understand how the universe behaves.Physics is one of the oldest academic...
III - HumanitiesHumanitiesThe humanities are academic disciplines that study the human condition, using methods that are primarily analytical, critical, or speculative, as distinguished from the mainly empirical approaches of the natural sciences....
Also, they take one of five electives:
- ArchitectureArchitectureArchitecture is both the process and product of planning, designing and construction. Architectural works, in the material form of buildings, are often perceived as cultural and political symbols and as works of art...
- Students learn the concepts of folding, design, and architecture in order to build full scale models of structures they design at the end of the program. - ElectronicsElectronicsElectronics is the branch of science, engineering and technology that deals with electrical circuits involving active electrical components such as vacuum tubes, transistors, diodes and integrated circuits, and associated passive interconnection technologies...
- Students learn the elements of Electronics using a breadboard and create a functioning demonstration of an electrical concept at the end of the program. - GenomicsGenomicsGenomics is a discipline in genetics concerning the study of the genomes of organisms. The field includes intensive efforts to determine the entire DNA sequence of organisms and fine-scale genetic mapping efforts. The field also includes studies of intragenomic phenomena such as heterosis,...
- Students research DNA and genetic diseases at the Broad Institute, where one third of the human genome was sequenced. - Engineering Design - Students team up to build robots for specific tasks and compete against each other at the end of the program.
- Digital DesignWeb designWeb design is the process of planning and creating a website. Text, images, digital media and interactive elements are used by web designers to produce the page seen on the web browser...
- Students learn computer skills applicable to designing web pages and working toward a final project. In 2009, students built iPhone applications instead of websites.
All classes are taught by professors who are assisted by the TAs who help run the program.
Student life
MITES students live at Simmons Hall, on Vassar Street. Simmons Hall is an undergrad dorm designed in an unconventional style which resembles a giant LegoLego
Lego is a line of construction toys manufactured by the Lego Group, a privately held company based in Billund, Denmark. The company's flagship product, Lego, consists of colorful interlocking plastic bricks and an accompanying array of gears, minifigures and various other parts...
. They enjoy full use of the facilities at MIT such as the student center, the libraries, and the athletic facilities. Also, students get to know the cities of Boston
Boston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
and Cambridge
Cambridge
The city of Cambridge is a university town and the administrative centre of the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It lies in East Anglia about north of London. Cambridge is at the heart of the high-technology centre known as Silicon Fen – a play on Silicon Valley and the fens surrounding the...
.
The students also participate in activities such as a Fourth of July barbecue, a trip to Martha's Vineyard
Martha's Vineyard
Martha's Vineyard is an island located south of Cape Cod in Massachusetts, known for being an affluent summer colony....
, a tour of Boston
Boston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
, a tour of the MIT Museum
MIT Museum
MIT Museum, founded in 1971, is the museum of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It hosts collections of holography, artificial intelligence, robotics, maritime history, and the history of MIT. Its holography collection of 1800 pieces is the largest in...
, a trip to labs in fields of vanguard research, a dinner with the Director of Admissions at MIT, a talent show, a college fair, a Dining Cruise, and a variety of speaker's luncheons with people such as the new Dean of Science at MIT and Eric Lander
Eric Lander
Eric Steven Lander is a Professor of Biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology , a member of the Whitehead Institute, and director of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard who has devoted his career toward realizing the promise of the human genome for medicine. He is co-chair of U.S...
.
College Matriculation
Of 1,765 MITES alumni who have taken part in the program over the past 33 years, 34 percent (over 600 students) have matriculated to MIT. Those MITES students who attend MIT are consistently strong performers. Since its inception, the graduation rate of MITES alumni at MIT is as much as 12 percentage points higher than that of minority students who did not have the privilege of attending MITES. A recent analysis found MITES students graduated with grade point averages comparable to the majority population.- Of the 62 students who attended MITES 2006, 29 (47% of the class) enrolled at MIT in the fall of 2007. Other highly-ranked universities welcomed MITES alumni: Stanford (7), PrincetonPrinceton UniversityPrinceton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
(5), Harvard (5), ColumbiaColumbia UniversityColumbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
(2), and YaleYALERapidMiner, formerly YALE , is an environment for machine learning, data mining, text mining, predictive analytics, and business analytics. It is used for research, education, training, rapid prototyping, application development, and industrial applications...
(1).