About Us

Terrascope is a student-driven freshmen learning community at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Every year, freshmen join together as an interdisciplinary team to develop solutions for complex global issues surrounding a central theme – the Mission.

At the beginning of fall semester, our Terrascope team worked in small groups and developed small solutions for different aspects of our local transportation. With these solutions, each group gave a small presentation to the class and prepared for the next group project. Later on, we expanded our scope by researching pressing issues related to cities around the world and examining how different countries approach or are affected by them.

Throughout both of the small projects, we cultivated our research and teamwork skills that are crucial for addressing our Mission 2020.

For this mission, our team defined the scope of Mission 2020 and focused on 5 categories of consumption: Air, Energy, Food, Housing, and Water.

We were divided into groups for each of the categories. The groups researched different aspects of their category through online databases and articles. Each group was responsible for defining the consumption goal in 2050 for its category, writing articles on this website to give an overview of the associated problems, and proposing solutions to those problems in its articles. Each group’s strategy was different; some chose to develop their original solutions while others examined how successful cities approached the issue.

No matter what path we took, undergraduate teaching fellows (UTFs – who are also Terrascope alumni) and mentors supported us completely. With experiences from being Terrascope freshmen, the UTFs facilitated the group discussion process and edited the student articles. Mentors, as experts in relevant fields, offered invaluable feedback on our research and helped us expand our ideas to the fullest.

After a thorough review process, approved articles were organized into this comprehensive website. This website was evaluated by our instructors before it was made available to the world as our insights to global consumption issues.

At the end of the project, we had the opportunity to present and defend our findings in front of a panel of experts. With the constructive feedback, we will be ready to tackle our spring semester projects, in which we will apply our findings toward deliverable solutions.

To learn more about the Terrascope program, please visit our program website at terrascope.mit.edu.