Summer UROP Opportunity: Real Talk in Your Community

The MIT Center for Constructive Communication (MIT CCC), in partnership with the Office of Experiential Learning at MIT, is launching the Real Talk in Your Community Summer Program. This program is designed for undergraduate students to foster constructive conversations within and across underheard communities using tools and methods designed by MIT CCC. 

Overview

Eligibility & Funding

Program Requirements

Time Commitments

Important Program Dates

How to Apply

Apply Now >

Overview

Bringing together age-old, facilitated small-group dialogue methods with modern machine learning, data visualization, and social network design, Real Talk’s goal is to enable communities and organizations to conduct open, nuanced conversations across the full diversity of their population, identify patterns of what people share across these conversations, and channel these voices to influence decision-making to be more grounded and direct than ever before.

The Real Talk in Your Community program will be part of a growing library of community voices and will give undergraduate students the opportunity to go through the entire Real Talk process in their own community and: 

  • Learn how to organize and facilitate small group conversations.
  • Work with CCC researchers to design a Real Talk intervention in their own community.
  • Use digital and AI-supported tools to analyze patterns and themes from conversations.
  • Work with the Real Talk team to design creative outputs to share insights across conversations and communities. 

Eligibility & Funding

Eligibilty

  • Be a registered full-time undergraduate student and at least 18 years old.
  • Commit to 8 weeks of program implementation from June 12th – August 4th.

Funding will be up to $4,800 to students who meet all of the requirements and will be split up as three separate disbursements.

Program Requirements

If students are awarded funding, they’ll be responsible for:

  • Identifying a local partner in their community (e.g. community-based organization, school, local news radio, local newspaper).
  • Hosting  5-8 Real Talk conversations in their local community. 
  • Engaging in the sensemaking process for all conversations hosted.
  • Designing creative outputs to share insights from their conversations.

Time Commitments

  • Kickoff event the week of May 4th to meet the Real Talk team and other participants.
  • Weekly check-ins with the Real Talk team.
  • Up to 20 hours/week to organize, host, and analyze conversations they will facilitate as part of the program requirements.
  • Debrief session at the end of the program.

Important Program Dates

March 7th, 12:30-2:00 pmOpen House with the Office of the First Year
March 8thApplications open
April 5thApplication Deadline
April 14thDecision notifications are sent to all applicants
Week of April 17Onboarding & Orientation
Week of May 4thKickoff event
June 12th – August 4thProject implementation period

How to Apply

Apply Here >

For more information or help with your application, please contact info-ccc-elo@media.mit.edu