Unlike the CommKit which contains guides written by Comm Fellows, the following posts are a collection of voices from in and around NSE about communicating in academia. If you’d like to suggest topics or contribute your own post, please email Marina Dang (dangm@mit.edu).
Weathering the Undergrad Thesis: Survival Tips from a Recent Graduate
August 31, 2022 So you have an undergraduate thesis to write? No stress, the semester hasn’t even started yet. When it does, you have an entire academic year to write it. And most of the work will be done Spring semester, so there’s no need to worry about it now! Oh, if only… As someone who recently went… View Article
Writer’s Jet Lag: Overcoming Cultural Barriers I Didn’t Know Existed
October 26, 2021 Imagine two people on the phone. One is in Boston and says it’s “9 am.” The other is in Paris and says it’s “3 pm” (or more likely, “15 h”). Who is right? Obviously, time zones are universally recognized and we accept that this discrepancy isn’t a matter of opinion but of location. Both people… View Article
What Is Your (Statement of) Purpose?
October 21, 2021 “When I was 8, my mother bought me a science encyclopedia, which opened my mind to the wonders of the universe. This fueled my passion for physics and engineering and has motivated me to apply to the Nuclear Science and Engineering department at MIT.” Grad school admissions committees have read countless stories like this in… View Article
Claim, Evidence, Reasoning: How to Get More Value Out of Your Research Presentations
August 27, 2021 One of the first things I learned after joining the Comm Lab was a framework known as Claim, Evidence, Reasoning (CER)—a pedagogical tool with interesting applications in technical communication. I was in the process of shadowing a coaching session as part of my Comm Lab orientation when this beautiful piece of communication wisdom was dropped… View Article
How Do We “Trigger” Effective Communication?
May 12, 2021 The concept of a threshold or trigger is common in engineering. Once a variable exceeds a particular value, another response variable changes rapidly. Signal strength as a function of applied voltage, semiconductor optical response as a function of photon energy… With experience, an experimentalist will know with confidence at which level of the independent variable,… View Article
Code-Talk for Any Audience
April 30, 2021 Gone are the days when obscure, hour-long PowerPoints filled with complicated math results derived alone can win awards. The modern engineer must be communicative, creative, and collaborative to be successful. As a graduate student in neutronics, this can be especially challenging. My publications often center on subtle approximations to the neutron transport equation and their… View Article
Writing Strategies from NSE PHinisheD
April 21, 2021 “Just write, sleep, write, sleep, etc.” Such is the life of one thesis writer hoping to defend soon. He is also one of the dozen members of NSE PHinisheD, a community of graduate students who are months away from receiving their doctoral degrees. Together and under my lead, they’ve discussed deadlines, examples of thesis outlines,… View Article
Here to Help
April 8, 2021 People often joke that MIT made a “mistake” letting them in—a small sign of the widespread imposter syndrome among students. I first arrived in 2015 as an undergrad and I’m now a Master’s student, so I’ve had two opportunities to make this joke! Many of us feel the need to prove that MIT didn’t make… View Article