#ThisIsMIT

September 6, 2017

It is well known that MIT students are academically exceptional and are high scholastic achievers. What is less known is how well-rounded, creative, and artistic they are. To showcase what students do outside of the classroom, I wanted to create a campaign to encourage them to produce videos for social sharing. This effort also supports one of MIT’s communication priorities: to give our audiences a greater sense of the magic and culture of MIT.

I enlisted the help of Stephanie Tran, who manages the social accounts of MIT’s Division of Student Life. She helped me form a student focus group, and #ThisIsMIT was born.

We decided to make the campaign a contest. It launched the second week of September and will run until just before Thanksgiving.

We will choose three winners who will each receive $100 in TechCASH, and two runners-up who will receive $50 in TechCASH. Throughout the contest, videos will be selected to post on the main MIT and MIT Division of Student Life social channels.

Here are the rules:

  • Open to MIT students (undergraduate and graduate) only.
  • One entry per person.
  • The subject should be about something you do outside of the classroom that you love/are proud of/no one realizes happens at MIT. (Keep it G-rated, please.)
  • Shot in horizontal orientation.
  • About a minute in length.
  • If you happen to feature other people in your video, make sure to get at least verbal permission and explain what the video is for.
  • Share the video on at least one of your social media accounts using #ThisIsMIT. (If you post the video on YouTube, be sure to also post about it in Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram linking to the video.)

Throughout the contest, Stephanie and I will reach out to students through their chosen social platform to ask for the mp4 video file to post natively on the MIT and MIT students channels.

The panel of judges will include two students (TBD), one faculty member (TBD), a member of the MIT News Office, Stephanie, and me. The judging criteria will include overall quality, completeness, creativity, effectiveness of content, originality, and entertainment value.

I am so excited to see what the students create!