discover product design

Context

Discover Product Design (DPD) is a freshmen pre-orientation program for incoming MIT students. It is a weeklong crash course program intended to introduce students to the product design and engineering process, help students get acclimated to the city and MIT community, and expose students to career possibilities in the field of design.  

My Role

I have served as a mentor (1 year) and co-coordinator (2 years) of DPD. Mentoring involved guiding students in ideation, foam core prototyping, sketching, and Solidworks CAD modeling. Co-coordinating involved organizing lectures, contacting companies and on-campus groups for tours, creating the program schedule, planning meals, managing mentor schedules and responsibilities, and communicating with students. In my second year co-coordinating, I sought to restructure and streamline the program to reduce the time investment of mentors while maintaining and enhancing the core experiences for the freshmen. As a result, we reduced the program costs by about $2,000 (1/3 of spending) and received positive feedback from mentors and students. 

Skills practiced

Leadership, management, teaching, program development