UPDATED: Feb. 2, 2021 at 1:50 p.m.
Harvard began allowing eligible undergraduates living on campus to access research labs Saturday, with plans to extend the eligibility to enrolled students living off campus as early as Feb. 15.
According to the policy crafted by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and the College, enrolled undergraduate students living on campus are permitted to participate in mentored lab research this semester. The new policy which applies to all FAS divisions marks a departure from the more stringent measures put in place last fall, when research was limited to on-campus seniors working on their theses, according to Director of Science Education Logan S. McCarty ’96.
When Mechanical Engineering Design lecturer Michelle H. Rosen was considering how to adapt Engineering Sciences 51: âComputer-Aided Machine Designâ to a remote format this fall, she knew her students would not be able to get the hands-on experience she typically builds her class around.
Normally, students in the course work in a machine shop to build robots, which will play a game at the end of the semester. With students scattered around the globe, Rosen had to find a new way for students to apply their skills.
âInstead of it being just to build a robot to play this game, we let the students actually pick what kind of problem they wanted to work on,â Rosen said. âWe have some students who are building a robot that will entertain your pets, we have students building a robot that will clean your phone, we have something that will open your window blinds.â