Mussie Demisse
Student | United States
"How aspirations become actions"
From Ethiopia to community college to MIT, Mussie Demisse ’21 is on a mission to use his love of learning to solve big problems.
Duyen Nguyen | MIT Open Learning
Minutes before finding out he’d been accepted to MIT, Mussie Demisse ’21 was shaking Governor Charlie Baker’s hand. Demisse was at an awards ceremony at the Massachusetts State House, being honored as one of the 2018 “29 Who Shine,” a select group of graduates from the Commonwealth’s higher education system who’d made an impact at their institution and in the community. For Demisse, Bunker Hill Community College, where he’d spent the previous two years studying computer science, represented both. “I really matured there,” he says, explaining that, at one point, he’d held three jobs at the college while also serving on student government and participating in various academic clubs.
Bunker Hill was also where Demisse got his first peek at the rigorous yet vibrant nature of an MIT classroom and began picturing himself in such an environment. In a linear algebra course, Demisse’s professor, Jie Frye, would regularly give out challenging quizzes that piqued his curiosity. “As kind of a motivator she would tell us this is the same quiz that MIT students take,” he recalls. “They’re learning the same material, so don’t beat yourself up, be proud of what you’re able to accomplish.” Demisse asked where his professor had gotten the MIT quizzes.
The answer wasn’t a secret connection, it turned out, but something called MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW). “She was one of my favorite professors at Bunker Hill,” Demisse says. “She emphasized that it’s possible for us to pursue our dreams — which isn’t as much of a thing, I think, in community college. There’s a lot of stigma, and I feel like that sometimes keeps people from applying to things. She was very intentional about making sure that we knew we could, and we should try.”
Demisse says OCW wasn’t the first time his interests had led him to MIT. But it was the final push he needed to apply to the school that he’d long set his heart on. Demisse grew up in Ethiopia, where he’d been involved in the Ethiopian Space Science Society, and when he arrived in Boston after high school, that childhood passion brought him to the MIT Astrophysics Colloquia. Learning that the colloquia welcomed members of the public to their weekly events, Demisse attended for a few months. Though he admits that he could understand only the first 10 minutes or so of every talk, he says, “I saw a part of MIT that was very much about advancing knowledge — done in such a supportive and cooperative way that I thought to myself, ‘Wow, it would be really cool if I could be a part of this community.’”
After the materials on OCW showed him he had not only the drive but the aptitude to turn this dream into a reality, Demisse began researching initiatives like MIT D-Lab, the lab dedicated to designing solutions for tackling poverty, and the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP). “That’s when I said, it must be MIT,” he recalls.
Demisse graduated from MIT this spring with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and computer science. But before coming to Bunker Hill and embarking on the path that would lead him to MIT, Demisse longed for opportunities to apply himself in the ways that his linear algebra professor described — to turn his aspirations into actions.
Growing up, Demisse had witnessed the devastating effects of global inequalities like poverty. But Ethiopia was also, he explains, where he’d learned that, when you recognize a problem, it falls upon you to do something about it. When it came time to choose his major at Bunker Hill, Demisse had no shortage of motivation. He knew it’d have to be something that would allow him to serve not only the Ethiopian community but underprivileged communities around the world that share similar challenges. Computer science struck Demisse as the perfect intersection of his goals, interests, and abilities. “It’s kind of a claim of responsibility for the issues that I’ve lived through or seen people that I care about go through,” he says.
Through OCW, Demisse found another outlet to channel this desire to help others. “I became somewhat of an evangelist for OCW,” he says, remembering reaching out to friends in Ethiopia who were also looking for resources to make a difference in their communities.
“I especially targeted the ones that felt like they wanted more, but couldn’t get it,” Demisse says. “And it really made me happy to do that because this is the same complaint I had when I was back home — you acknowledge the problems you know you want to invest yourself in, and you know you can build the discipline, but sometimes you feel like there’s nowhere to exert that discipline, that motivation. And I think OCW and similar platforms really allow you to build your capabilities to do what you can to solve the problem that you think is most important.”
Demisse also credits OCW with preparing him for life as an MIT student. “I think professors at MIT have this way of highlighting how hundreds of years of knowledge was built out — this focus on intuition — in order for students to project into the future, for students to be the next discoverers,” he observes. “And in OCW I saw this. I began to grasp the importance of knowing more than just the facts. Coming to MIT, this was fostered so much more.”
At MIT, Demisse joined the African Students Association, where he found another community to inspire him. He participated in UROP, completing a project with MIT D-Lab, the lab that Demisse had dreamed of joining years before. He’s taken an entrepreneurship class that has given him the tools to think about building social ventures in Ethiopia. Demisse also joined the MIT OpenCourseWare Faculty Advisory Committee as an undergraduate representative.
Bringing insights from his own experiences to the committee, Demisse advocates for more student involvement in the future of OCW. If the goal of OCW is to capture and share with the world as much of MIT as possible, he explains, then engaging the student community is paramount. Demisse also emphasizes the need for OCW, and MIT more broadly, to continue pioneering the open education resources movement. Now that he’s graduated he plans to continue working with OCW, focusing on increasing collaboration with community colleges and increasing access to universities in Africa.
Ultimately, Demisse sees open education resources as a way to bring people hope — the same hope he felt when he opened the email from MIT Admissions offstage at the State House and saw the word “congratulations.”
Originally published on https://news.mit.edu on July 14, 2021.
We hope you’ve been inspired by this story and by OCW’s effort to meet the needs of learners eager to enhance their knowledge, lift up their communities, and change the world for the benefit of everyone. Please consider supporting our work with a donation or if giving isn’t possible right now, we’d love to hear how OCW has made a difference in your life or classroom. We’d appreciate it!
More Stories
Andrea Henshall
Independent Learner
United States
Veteran and PhD student Andrea Henshall has used MIT Open Learning to soar from the Air Force to multiple aeronautics degrees. Katherine Ouellette | MIT Open Learning Andrea Henshall, a retired major in the U.S. Air Force and current MIT PhD student, has completed seven tours of combat, two years of aerial circus performance, and three higher education degrees (so far). But throughout each step of her journey, all roads seemed to point to MIT. Currently working on her doctoral degree with an MIT master’s already in her toolkit, she is quick to attribute her academic success to MIT’s open educational resources. “I kept coming back to MIT-produced open source learning,” she says. “MIT dominates in educational philanthropy when it comes to free high-quality learning sources.” To this day, Henshall recommends MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW) and MITx courses to students and her fellow veterans who are transitioning out of the service. A love of flight and a drive to excel Henshall first discovered OCW as she was pursuing her master’s degree in aeronautics and astronautics at MIT. Transitioning from an applied engineering program at the United States Air Force Academy to a more theoretical program proved a challenge for Henshall, and her first semester grades got her put on academic probation. During Independent Activities Period, she took Professor Gilbert Strang’s linear algebra courses on OCW, which included both videos and homework. Henshall found Strang very engaging and easy to learn from and found it helpful to work through the homework when they had the solutions available. She was able to lift her grades the following semester, and by the end of her program, she was getting all A’s. Henshall says, “OpenCourseWare really saved me. I was worried I wouldn’t be able to complete my master’s.” Ever since Henshall learned the term “astronautical engineer” in the fourth grade, she knew what she wanted to be when she grew up. That early love of outer space and building things led her to a bachelor’s degree in astronautical engineering and the Air Force. There she served as a research and development officer, instructor pilot, and chief financial officer of her squadron. But a non-combat-related injury forced her to medically retire from being a pilot. “I was not doing well physically, and it was impossible for me to get hired to be a pilot outside of the Air Force.” After a brief detour as a part-time aerial circus performer, she decided to go back to school. Watch Andrea Henshall’s story about How MIT OpenCourseWare and MITx helped her soar. Learning how to learn Working outside of academia for eight years proved to be a tough transition. Henshall says, “I had to translate the work I had done in the military into something relevant for an academic application, and the language they were looking for was very different from what I was used to.” She thought acquiring more recent academic work might help improve her application. She attended Auburn University for her second master’s degree (this time in computer science and software engineering) and started a PhD. Again she turned to MIT OCW to supplement her studies. Henshall says, “I remembered vividly how much it had helped me in 2005, so of course that’s where I was going to start. Then I noticed that OCW linked to MITx, which had more interactive quizzes.” The OCW platform had also become more robust since she had first used it. “Back then, it was new, there wasn’t necessarily a standard,” she says. Over 10 years later, she found that most courses had more material, videos, and notes that more closely approximated an MIT course experience. Those additional open education resources gave Henshall an extra edge to complete a 21-month program in 12 months with a 4.0 GPA. Her advisor told her that she had the best thesis defense he had seen in 25 years. In 2019, Henshall’s success helped her get accepted to MIT’s PhD program in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, in the Autonomy and Embedded Robotics Accelerated (AERA) lab under the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems (LIDS), with a Lester Durand Gardner Fellowship. Her focus is controls systems with a minor in quantum information. She says, “I’m literally living my dream. I’m at my dream school with my dream advisor.” Working with Professor Sertac Karaman in LIDS, Henshall plans to write her thesis on multi-agent reinforcement learning. But her relationship with online learning is far from over; again she has turned to OCW and MITx resources for the foundation to succeed in subjects such as controls, machine learning, quantum mechanics, and quantum computation. When the pandemic struck the East Coast, Henshall was only nine months into her PhD program at MIT. The pivot to online learning made it difficult to continue building relationships with classmates. But what was a new course experience for many learners during the pandemic felt very familiar to Henshall. “I had a leg up because I already knew how to learn through prerecorded videos on a computer instead of three-dimensional human standing in front of a chalkboard. I had already learned how to learn.” A lifelong commitment to service Henshall plans to return to the Department of Defense or related industries. Currently, she works collaboratively on two major projects related to her PhD thesis and her career path after she completes the program. The first project is an AI accelerator program through the Air Force. Her work with unmanned aerial vehicles (a.k.a. drones) uses a small quadrotor to autonomously and quickly search a building using reinforcement learning. The primary intended use is search and rescue. The second project involves research into multi-agent reinforcement learning and pathfinding. While also intended for search and rescue, they could be used for a variety of non-emergency inspection purposes as well. Henshall is eager to share open education resources. At Auburn she shared OCW materials with her classmates, and now she uses them with the students she tutors. She’s also committed to sharing knowledge and resources with her fellow service members, and is an active member of a number of veterans’ organizations. With the Warrior-Scholar Project, she answers questions from enlisted people going into undergraduate programs, ranging from “What’s parking like?” to “How did you prepare for school?” As a Service to School ambassador, she is assigned to mentor veterans who are transitioning out of the military and looking to apply to graduate school, usually MIT hopefuls or other competitive schools. She’s able to draw from her own application experience to help others identify the core message their application should communicate and finesse the language to sound less like a military brief and more like the “academic speak” they will encounter moving forward. Henshall says, “My trajectory would be so different if MITx and OCW didn’t exist, and I feel that’s true for so many thousands of other students. So many other institutions have copied the model, but MIT was the first and it’s still the best.” Originally published on https://news.mit.edu on March 16, 2022 and reposted from Medium. We hope you’ve been inspired by this story and by OCW’s effort to meet the needs of learners eager to enhance their knowledge, lift up their communities, and change the world for the benefit of everyone. Please consider supporting our work with a donation or if giving isn’t possible right now, we’d love to hear how OCW has made a difference in your life or classroom. We’d appreciate it!
Read Full Story
Andrea Henshall
Independent Learner
United States
Veteran and PhD student Andrea Henshall has used MIT Open Learning to soar from the Air Force to multiple aeronautics degrees. Katherine Ouellette | MIT Open Learning Andrea Henshall, a retired major in the U.S. Air Force and current MIT PhD student, has completed seven tours of combat, two years of aerial circus performance, and three higher education degrees (so far). But throughout each step of her journey, all roads seemed to point to MIT. Currently working on her doctoral degree with an MIT master’s already in her toolkit, she is quick to attribute her academic success to MIT’s open educational resources. “I kept coming back to MIT-produced open source learning,” she says. “MIT dominates in educational philanthropy when it comes to free high-quality learning sources.” To this day, Henshall recommends MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW) and MITx courses to students and her fellow veterans who are transitioning out of the service. A love of flight and a drive to excel Henshall first discovered OCW as she was pursuing her master’s degree in aeronautics and astronautics at MIT. Transitioning from an applied engineering program at the United States Air Force Academy to a more theoretical program proved a challenge for Henshall, and her first semester grades got her put on academic probation. During Independent Activities Period, she took Professor Gilbert Strang’s linear algebra courses on OCW, which included both videos and homework. Henshall found Strang very engaging and easy to learn from and found it helpful to work through the homework when they had the solutions available. She was able to lift her grades the following semester, and by the end of her program, she was getting all A’s. Henshall says, “OpenCourseWare really saved me. I was worried I wouldn’t be able to complete my master’s.” Ever since Henshall learned the term “astronautical engineer” in the fourth grade, she knew what she wanted to be when she grew up. That early love of outer space and building things led her to a bachelor’s degree in astronautical engineering and the Air Force. There she served as a research and development officer, instructor pilot, and chief financial officer of her squadron. But a non-combat-related injury forced her to medically retire from being a pilot. “I was not doing well physically, and it was impossible for me to get hired to be a pilot outside of the Air Force.” After a brief detour as a part-time aerial circus performer, she decided to go back to school. Watch Andrea Henshall’s story about How MIT OpenCourseWare and MITx helped her soar. Learning how to learn Working outside of academia for eight years proved to be a tough transition. Henshall says, “I had to translate the work I had done in the military into something relevant for an academic application, and the language they were looking for was very different from what I was used to.” She thought acquiring more recent academic work might help improve her application. She attended Auburn University for her second master’s degree (this time in computer science and software engineering) and started a PhD. Again she turned to MIT OCW to supplement her studies. Henshall says, “I remembered vividly how much it had helped me in 2005, so of course that’s where I was going to start. Then I noticed that OCW linked to MITx, which had more interactive quizzes.” The OCW platform had also become more robust since she had first used it. “Back then, it was new, there wasn’t necessarily a standard,” she says. Over 10 years later, she found that most courses had more material, videos, and notes that more closely approximated an MIT course experience. Those additional open education resources gave Henshall an extra edge to complete a 21-month program in 12 months with a 4.0 GPA. Her advisor told her that she had the best thesis defense he had seen in 25 years. In 2019, Henshall’s success helped her get accepted to MIT’s PhD program in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, in the Autonomy and Embedded Robotics Accelerated (AERA) lab under the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems (LIDS), with a Lester Durand Gardner Fellowship. Her focus is controls systems with a minor in quantum information. She says, “I’m literally living my dream. I’m at my dream school with my dream advisor.” Working with Professor Sertac Karaman in LIDS, Henshall plans to write her thesis on multi-agent reinforcement learning. But her relationship with online learning is far from over; again she has turned to OCW and MITx resources for the foundation to succeed in subjects such as controls, machine learning, quantum mechanics, and quantum computation. When the pandemic struck the East Coast, Henshall was only nine months into her PhD program at MIT. The pivot to online learning made it difficult to continue building relationships with classmates. But what was a new course experience for many learners during the pandemic felt very familiar to Henshall. “I had a leg up because I already knew how to learn through prerecorded videos on a computer instead of three-dimensional human standing in front of a chalkboard. I had already learned how to learn.” A lifelong commitment to service Henshall plans to return to the Department of Defense or related industries. Currently, she works collaboratively on two major projects related to her PhD thesis and her career path after she completes the program. The first project is an AI accelerator program through the Air Force. Her work with unmanned aerial vehicles (a.k.a. drones) uses a small quadrotor to autonomously and quickly search a building using reinforcement learning. The primary intended use is search and rescue. The second project involves research into multi-agent reinforcement learning and pathfinding. While also intended for search and rescue, they could be used for a variety of non-emergency inspection purposes as well. Henshall is eager to share open education resources. At Auburn she shared OCW materials with her classmates, and now she uses them with the students she tutors. She’s also committed to sharing knowledge and resources with her fellow service members, and is an active member of a number of veterans’ organizations. With the Warrior-Scholar Project, she answers questions from enlisted people going into undergraduate programs, ranging from “What’s parking like?” to “How did you prepare for school?” As a Service to School ambassador, she is assigned to mentor veterans who are transitioning out of the military and looking to apply to graduate school, usually MIT hopefuls or other competitive schools. She’s able to draw from her own application experience to help others identify the core message their application should communicate and finesse the language to sound less like a military brief and more like the “academic speak” they will encounter moving forward. Henshall says, “My trajectory would be so different if MITx and OCW didn’t exist, and I feel that’s true for so many thousands of other students. So many other institutions have copied the model, but MIT was the first and it’s still the best.” Originally published on https://news.mit.edu on March 16, 2022 and reposted from Medium. We hope you’ve been inspired by this story and by OCW’s effort to meet the needs of learners eager to enhance their knowledge, lift up their communities, and change the world for the benefit of everyone. Please consider supporting our work with a donation or if giving isn’t possible right now, we’d love to hear how OCW has made a difference in your life or classroom. We’d appreciate it!
Read Full Story
Bernardo Picão
Graduate Student
Portugal
MIT OpenCourseWare “changed how I think about teaching and what a university is” Bernardo Picão, a graduate student in physics, has turned to MIT Open Learning’s resources throughout his educational journey. Lauren Rebecca Thacker | MIT Open Learning Bernardo Picão has been interested in online learning since the early days of YouTube, when his father showed him a TED Talk. But it was with MIT Open Learning that he realized just how transformational digital resources can be. “YouTube was my first introduction to the idea that you can actually learn stuff via the internet,” Picão says. “So, when I became interested in mathematics and physics when I was 15 or 16, I turned to the internet and stumbled upon some playlists from MIT OpenCourseWare and went from there.” OpenCourseWare, part of MIT Open Learning, offers free online educational resources from over 2,500 MIT undergraduate and graduate courses. Since discovering it, Picão has explored linear algebra with Gilbert Strang, professor emeritus of mathematics — whom Picão calls “a legend” — and courses on metaphysics, functional analysis, quantum field theory, and English. He has returned to OpenCourseWare throughout his educational journey, which includes undergraduate studies in France and Portugal. Some courses provided different perspectives on material he was learning in his classes, while others filled gaps in his knowledge or satisfied his curiosity. Overall, Picão says that MIT resources made him a more robust scientist. He is currently completing a master’s degree in physics at the Instituto Superior Técnico in Lisbon, Portugal, where he researches prominent lattice quantum chromodynamics, an approach to the study of quarks that uses precise computer simulations. After completing his master’s degree, Picão says he will continue to a doctoral program in the field. At a recent symposium in Lisbon, Picão attended a lecture given by someone he had first seen in an OpenCourseWare video — Krishna Rajagopal, the William A. M. Burden Professor of Physics and former dean for digital learning at MIT Open Learning. There, he took the opportunity to thank Rajagopal for his support of OpenCourseWare, which Picão says is an important part of MIT’s mission as a leader in education. In addition to the range of subjects covered by OpenCourseWare, Picão praises the variety of instructors. All the courses are well-constructed, he says, but sometimes learners will connect with certain instructors or benefit from a particular presentation style. Since OpenCourseWare and other Open Learning programs offer such a wide range of free educational resources from MIT, learners can explore similar courses from different instructors to get new perspectives and round out their knowledge. While he enjoys his research, Picão’s passion is teaching. OpenCourseWare has helped him with that too, by providing models for how to teach math and science and how to connect with learners of different abilities and backgrounds. “I’m a very philosophical person,” he says. “I used to think that knowledge was intrinsically secluded in the large bindings of books, beyond the classroom walls, or inside the idiosyncratic minds of professors. OpenCourseWare changed how I think about teaching and what a university is — the point is not to keep knowledge inside of it, but to spread it.” Picão, now a teaching assistant at his institution, has been teaching since his days as a high school student tutoring his classmates or talking with members of his family. “I spent my youth sharing my knowledge with my grandmother and my extended family, including people who weren’t able to attend school past the fourth grade,” he says. “Seeing them get excited about knowledge is the coolest thing. Open Learning scales that up to the rest of the world and that can have an incredible impact.” The ability to learn from MIT experts has benefited Picão, deepening his understanding of the complex subjects that interest him. But, he acknowledges, he is a person who has access to high-quality instruction even without Open Learning. For learners who do not have that access, Open Learning is invaluable. “It’s hard to overstate the importance of such a project. MIT’s OpenCourseware and Open Learning profoundly shift how students all over the world can perceive their relationship with education: Besides an internet connection, the only requirement is the curiosity to explore the hundreds of expertly crafted courses and worksheets, perfect for self-studying,” says Picão. He continues, “People may find OpenCourseWare and think it is too good to be true. Why would such a prestigious institution break down the barriers to scientific education and commit to open-access, free resources? I want people to know: There is no catch. Sharing is the point.” “MIT OpenCourseWare ‘changed how I think about teaching and what a university is’” was originally published in MIT News on July 15, 2024.
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Bernardo Picão
Graduate Student
Portugal
MIT OpenCourseWare “changed how I think about teaching and what a university is” Bernardo Picão, a graduate student in physics, has turned to MIT Open Learning’s resources throughout his educational journey. Lauren Rebecca Thacker | MIT Open Learning Bernardo Picão has been interested in online learning since the early days of YouTube, when his father showed him a TED Talk. But it was with MIT Open Learning that he realized just how transformational digital resources can be. “YouTube was my first introduction to the idea that you can actually learn stuff via the internet,” Picão says. “So, when I became interested in mathematics and physics when I was 15 or 16, I turned to the internet and stumbled upon some playlists from MIT OpenCourseWare and went from there.” OpenCourseWare, part of MIT Open Learning, offers free online educational resources from over 2,500 MIT undergraduate and graduate courses. Since discovering it, Picão has explored linear algebra with Gilbert Strang, professor emeritus of mathematics — whom Picão calls “a legend” — and courses on metaphysics, functional analysis, quantum field theory, and English. He has returned to OpenCourseWare throughout his educational journey, which includes undergraduate studies in France and Portugal. Some courses provided different perspectives on material he was learning in his classes, while others filled gaps in his knowledge or satisfied his curiosity. Overall, Picão says that MIT resources made him a more robust scientist. He is currently completing a master’s degree in physics at the Instituto Superior Técnico in Lisbon, Portugal, where he researches prominent lattice quantum chromodynamics, an approach to the study of quarks that uses precise computer simulations. After completing his master’s degree, Picão says he will continue to a doctoral program in the field. At a recent symposium in Lisbon, Picão attended a lecture given by someone he had first seen in an OpenCourseWare video — Krishna Rajagopal, the William A. M. Burden Professor of Physics and former dean for digital learning at MIT Open Learning. There, he took the opportunity to thank Rajagopal for his support of OpenCourseWare, which Picão says is an important part of MIT’s mission as a leader in education. In addition to the range of subjects covered by OpenCourseWare, Picão praises the variety of instructors. All the courses are well-constructed, he says, but sometimes learners will connect with certain instructors or benefit from a particular presentation style. Since OpenCourseWare and other Open Learning programs offer such a wide range of free educational resources from MIT, learners can explore similar courses from different instructors to get new perspectives and round out their knowledge. While he enjoys his research, Picão’s passion is teaching. OpenCourseWare has helped him with that too, by providing models for how to teach math and science and how to connect with learners of different abilities and backgrounds. “I’m a very philosophical person,” he says. “I used to think that knowledge was intrinsically secluded in the large bindings of books, beyond the classroom walls, or inside the idiosyncratic minds of professors. OpenCourseWare changed how I think about teaching and what a university is — the point is not to keep knowledge inside of it, but to spread it.” Picão, now a teaching assistant at his institution, has been teaching since his days as a high school student tutoring his classmates or talking with members of his family. “I spent my youth sharing my knowledge with my grandmother and my extended family, including people who weren’t able to attend school past the fourth grade,” he says. “Seeing them get excited about knowledge is the coolest thing. Open Learning scales that up to the rest of the world and that can have an incredible impact.” The ability to learn from MIT experts has benefited Picão, deepening his understanding of the complex subjects that interest him. But, he acknowledges, he is a person who has access to high-quality instruction even without Open Learning. For learners who do not have that access, Open Learning is invaluable. “It’s hard to overstate the importance of such a project. MIT’s OpenCourseware and Open Learning profoundly shift how students all over the world can perceive their relationship with education: Besides an internet connection, the only requirement is the curiosity to explore the hundreds of expertly crafted courses and worksheets, perfect for self-studying,” says Picão. He continues, “People may find OpenCourseWare and think it is too good to be true. Why would such a prestigious institution break down the barriers to scientific education and commit to open-access, free resources? I want people to know: There is no catch. Sharing is the point.” “MIT OpenCourseWare ‘changed how I think about teaching and what a university is’” was originally published in MIT News on July 15, 2024.
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Chansa Kabwe
Independent Learner
Zambia
Learner Chansa Kabwe pursued a rigorous course of study in electrical engineering and computer science to broaden his horizons Angela Pignatiello | MIT Open Learning Chansa Kabwe, a machine learning engineer and MIT OpenCourseWare learner from Zambia, is a shining example of how to forge — or perhaps code — one’s own future. A go-getter from the start, Kabwe cites his father as a driving force behind his early love of math and science. “My education has always been an important part of my life,” he recounts. When he discovered Honda’s ASIMO robot on National Television in the early 2000s, his interest was further piqued. “It was my first time seeing a real-life robot, like in the movies,” says Kabwe, who was between 11 and 12 years old at the time. Amazed, he wanted to learn how to work and play with the robots. Kabwe continued to pursue science through his time at a national technical high school, where he was involved in STEM activities and competitions. Upon graduation he knew he wanted to study robotics, but there were no such programs to speak of in the country at that time. He resolved to major in electronics engineering at the University of Zambia, but that pull towards robotics never left him. During his freshman year of college, Kabwe had free and unrestricted access to the internet for the first time. He searched the rankings of top colleges and engineering programs. Up until then, he had never heard of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “I saw that for engineering, ever since they had started ranking, MIT had always been number one,” he recalls. “And I was like, okay — they are doing something. Let me check them out.” MIT’s Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) program intrigued him, and when he came upon MIT OpenCourseWare, he found a series of archived EECS classes as taught in a given term, with all available resources put online. Using outlines from the EECS undergraduate degree track as laid out on the department’s website, Kabwe discovered math, programming, foundations, and elective classes to create his own EECS experience. He decided to dedicate any time reserved for individual studies to learning through these resources. He essentially took on two courseloads — one in his studies at the University of Zambia, and another of his own design through OpenCourseWare. He began with 6.00 Introduction to Computer Science and Programming with Prof. Eric Grimson. “This course taught me how to think like a computer scientist — that was the essence of the course,” he says, crediting the course, as well as 6.002 Circuits and Electronics with Prof. Anant Agarwal, with giving him a solid foundation to bring to his university coursework. “I learned from zero; I had never done any programming before. It was very revealing for me,” says Kabwe, who has since become a donor to OpenCourseWare. As his college career progressed, these resources became more and more helpful in his studies. “I didn’t really need to learn any completely new things, especially on the electronics side. Everything in the foundations was covered — I didn’t feel the need to catch up. I was revising.” By senior year, Kabwe found a niche of robotics that spoke to him: artificial intelligence. 6.01 Introduction to Electrical Engineering and Computer Science I had introduced him to search algorithms, an important area of AI, and in September 2011, Kabwe started his first course on artificial intelligence, 6.034. “There’s evolution happening in industry and in the world at large,” he says. Now, Kabwe is a machine learning engineer for startup Digest AI, where he builds language models for digital learning assistants. “OpenCourseWare continues to be a big part of my career. My foundation is linked to it — I don’t know if I would be the same engineer today if not for OpenCourseWare,” says Kabwe. We hope you’ve been inspired by this story and by OCW’s effort to meet the needs of learners eager to enhance their knowledge, lift up their communities, and change the world for the benefit of everyone. Please consider supporting our work with a donation or if giving isn’t possible right now, we’d love to hear how OCW has made a difference in your life or classroom. We’d appreciate it!
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Chansa Kabwe
Independent Learner
Zambia
Learner Chansa Kabwe pursued a rigorous course of study in electrical engineering and computer science to broaden his horizons Angela Pignatiello | MIT Open Learning Chansa Kabwe, a machine learning engineer and MIT OpenCourseWare learner from Zambia, is a shining example of how to forge — or perhaps code — one’s own future. A go-getter from the start, Kabwe cites his father as a driving force behind his early love of math and science. “My education has always been an important part of my life,” he recounts. When he discovered Honda’s ASIMO robot on National Television in the early 2000s, his interest was further piqued. “It was my first time seeing a real-life robot, like in the movies,” says Kabwe, who was between 11 and 12 years old at the time. Amazed, he wanted to learn how to work and play with the robots. Kabwe continued to pursue science through his time at a national technical high school, where he was involved in STEM activities and competitions. Upon graduation he knew he wanted to study robotics, but there were no such programs to speak of in the country at that time. He resolved to major in electronics engineering at the University of Zambia, but that pull towards robotics never left him. During his freshman year of college, Kabwe had free and unrestricted access to the internet for the first time. He searched the rankings of top colleges and engineering programs. Up until then, he had never heard of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “I saw that for engineering, ever since they had started ranking, MIT had always been number one,” he recalls. “And I was like, okay — they are doing something. Let me check them out.” MIT’s Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) program intrigued him, and when he came upon MIT OpenCourseWare, he found a series of archived EECS classes as taught in a given term, with all available resources put online. Using outlines from the EECS undergraduate degree track as laid out on the department’s website, Kabwe discovered math, programming, foundations, and elective classes to create his own EECS experience. He decided to dedicate any time reserved for individual studies to learning through these resources. He essentially took on two courseloads — one in his studies at the University of Zambia, and another of his own design through OpenCourseWare. He began with 6.00 Introduction to Computer Science and Programming with Prof. Eric Grimson. “This course taught me how to think like a computer scientist — that was the essence of the course,” he says, crediting the course, as well as 6.002 Circuits and Electronics with Prof. Anant Agarwal, with giving him a solid foundation to bring to his university coursework. “I learned from zero; I had never done any programming before. It was very revealing for me,” says Kabwe, who has since become a donor to OpenCourseWare. As his college career progressed, these resources became more and more helpful in his studies. “I didn’t really need to learn any completely new things, especially on the electronics side. Everything in the foundations was covered — I didn’t feel the need to catch up. I was revising.” By senior year, Kabwe found a niche of robotics that spoke to him: artificial intelligence. 6.01 Introduction to Electrical Engineering and Computer Science I had introduced him to search algorithms, an important area of AI, and in September 2011, Kabwe started his first course on artificial intelligence, 6.034. “There’s evolution happening in industry and in the world at large,” he says. Now, Kabwe is a machine learning engineer for startup Digest AI, where he builds language models for digital learning assistants. “OpenCourseWare continues to be a big part of my career. My foundation is linked to it — I don’t know if I would be the same engineer today if not for OpenCourseWare,” says Kabwe. We hope you’ve been inspired by this story and by OCW’s effort to meet the needs of learners eager to enhance their knowledge, lift up their communities, and change the world for the benefit of everyone. Please consider supporting our work with a donation or if giving isn’t possible right now, we’d love to hear how OCW has made a difference in your life or classroom. We’d appreciate it!
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David G.
Student
United States
Teenager inspired by MIT OpenCourseWare and MITx to learn computer programming — and teach others Sixteen-year-old David teaches himself how to code and pays it forward to his community Stefanie Koperniak | MIT Open Learning For David G., a sixteen-year-old from Southern California, career inspiration appeared in an unexpected way. He was scrolling through YouTube Shorts during his winter break when he saw a video about MIT OpenCourseWare. The person in the short explained how he learned to code from real MIT classes on this online platform. And the best part? These resources were all free. David was instantly intrigued. Although he was already an avid consumer of technology, he hadn’t previously thought of computer programming as something he could learn. But since the video linked to 6.0001 Introduction to Programming in Python — taught by Professors Ana Bell, Eric Grimson, and John Guttag — he went to the course website and did just that. “It was really pure chance,” says David. He was only browsing YouTube to occupy his time. He didn’t expect to jumpstart an online learning journey. “I learned how to code from MIT without having stepped on campus.” The impact of accessible educational resources David lives in a vibrant Latinx community that “blends the best of both sides of the border,” he says. “I love the murals that are all over, and the amazing taco stands that you can find if you know where to look.” He says the community tends to be lower income families, which means less funding for educational opportunities. “I know not a lot of people in my immediate area really know about coding, and the people who know about it might be too afraid to start because it sounds scary or complicated,” David says. “I think it’s definitely a skill that will serve someone well in the current economy.” Thanks to the 6.0001 introductory course, the concepts of coding seemed much simpler than David had anticipated. “The basic types of variables made sense to me: a string is basically words, an ‘int’ is a number, and a floating point number is just a number with a decimal,” he says. “At the time, I felt as though I had made a breakthrough in life when, realistically, I had learned the computer science equivalent of the ABCs.” But that was the catalyst propelling David towards a new possible future: a career where he develops programs that solve problems and help people. David will be matriculating at a local community college this fall, and ultimately plans to study AI and machine learning. Although he had originally planned to pursue an education and career in law, his fascination with technology has only grown since discovering MIT’s online learning content. He explored more of the MIT Open Learning Library, which provides free online courses from MIT, including OpenCourseWare and MITx. He completed both 6.00.1x Introduction to Computer Science and Programming Using Python and 6.00.2x Circuits and Electronics. As someone who likes to work through material quickly, David says he appreciated how the MITx courses were structured and the in-depth coverage of each topic. “First, I watched the video. Immediately afterwards, there was an exercise to help me cement the idea,” says David. “This was paced in a way that helped me to learn, then test and review my learning as I went along.” Paying it forward David saw the transformative power of free open-access education firsthand. Now he plans to pay forward what he’s gained from MIT’s open learning courses by trying to help make coding education more accessible in his own community. His local library is soon opening a small STEM center, and he plans to volunteer to teach coding to young students there. Not only does he want to share what he learned in 6.00.1x and 6.00.2x, he hopes to open their minds to the amazing world of computers and programming. “I really believe in the idea that knowledge not put to use is useless knowledge, and to me the most useful way to use my coding knowledge is to share it with other people,” he says. “My hope is that I can use my knowledge to make coding understandable to kids in my community.” He is turning again to MIT OpenCourseWare as he prepares for college in the fall, studying 18.01 Single Variable Calculus and 8.01SC Classical Mechanics. “It’s so amazing to be able to access these lectures and courses, to think that I can be ‘sitting’ in an MIT lecture from wherever I am,” says David. “It’s such an incredible opportunity.” Teenager inspired by MIT OpenCourseWare and MITx to learn computer programming — and teach others was originally published in MIT Open Learning on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
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David G.
Student
United States
Teenager inspired by MIT OpenCourseWare and MITx to learn computer programming — and teach others Sixteen-year-old David teaches himself how to code and pays it forward to his community Stefanie Koperniak | MIT Open Learning For David G., a sixteen-year-old from Southern California, career inspiration appeared in an unexpected way. He was scrolling through YouTube Shorts during his winter break when he saw a video about MIT OpenCourseWare. The person in the short explained how he learned to code from real MIT classes on this online platform. And the best part? These resources were all free. David was instantly intrigued. Although he was already an avid consumer of technology, he hadn’t previously thought of computer programming as something he could learn. But since the video linked to 6.0001 Introduction to Programming in Python — taught by Professors Ana Bell, Eric Grimson, and John Guttag — he went to the course website and did just that. “It was really pure chance,” says David. He was only browsing YouTube to occupy his time. He didn’t expect to jumpstart an online learning journey. “I learned how to code from MIT without having stepped on campus.” The impact of accessible educational resources David lives in a vibrant Latinx community that “blends the best of both sides of the border,” he says. “I love the murals that are all over, and the amazing taco stands that you can find if you know where to look.” He says the community tends to be lower income families, which means less funding for educational opportunities. “I know not a lot of people in my immediate area really know about coding, and the people who know about it might be too afraid to start because it sounds scary or complicated,” David says. “I think it’s definitely a skill that will serve someone well in the current economy.” Thanks to the 6.0001 introductory course, the concepts of coding seemed much simpler than David had anticipated. “The basic types of variables made sense to me: a string is basically words, an ‘int’ is a number, and a floating point number is just a number with a decimal,” he says. “At the time, I felt as though I had made a breakthrough in life when, realistically, I had learned the computer science equivalent of the ABCs.” But that was the catalyst propelling David towards a new possible future: a career where he develops programs that solve problems and help people. David will be matriculating at a local community college this fall, and ultimately plans to study AI and machine learning. Although he had originally planned to pursue an education and career in law, his fascination with technology has only grown since discovering MIT’s online learning content. He explored more of the MIT Open Learning Library, which provides free online courses from MIT, including OpenCourseWare and MITx. He completed both 6.00.1x Introduction to Computer Science and Programming Using Python and 6.00.2x Circuits and Electronics. As someone who likes to work through material quickly, David says he appreciated how the MITx courses were structured and the in-depth coverage of each topic. “First, I watched the video. Immediately afterwards, there was an exercise to help me cement the idea,” says David. “This was paced in a way that helped me to learn, then test and review my learning as I went along.” Paying it forward David saw the transformative power of free open-access education firsthand. Now he plans to pay forward what he’s gained from MIT’s open learning courses by trying to help make coding education more accessible in his own community. His local library is soon opening a small STEM center, and he plans to volunteer to teach coding to young students there. Not only does he want to share what he learned in 6.00.1x and 6.00.2x, he hopes to open their minds to the amazing world of computers and programming. “I really believe in the idea that knowledge not put to use is useless knowledge, and to me the most useful way to use my coding knowledge is to share it with other people,” he says. “My hope is that I can use my knowledge to make coding understandable to kids in my community.” He is turning again to MIT OpenCourseWare as he prepares for college in the fall, studying 18.01 Single Variable Calculus and 8.01SC Classical Mechanics. “It’s so amazing to be able to access these lectures and courses, to think that I can be ‘sitting’ in an MIT lecture from wherever I am,” says David. “It’s such an incredible opportunity.” Teenager inspired by MIT OpenCourseWare and MITx to learn computer programming — and teach others was originally published in MIT Open Learning on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
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