MIT Student Assembly on Sustainability
Nineteen undergraduate delegates came together for a three-day Student Assembly on Sustainability to learn, deliberate, and vote on a set of recommendations for the MIT Office of Sustainability.
Listen to a highlight from a conversation.
Check out themes, insights, and hundreds of conversation highlights through the MIT Student Assembly on Sustainability portal.
Introduction
In January 2025, nineteen MIT undergraduates gathered for a Student Assembly on Sustainability. Over three days, they learned from experts, shared lived experiences, and deliberated to produce a set of recommendations for the MIT Office of Sustainability.
Challenge: rethinking participation
How can education institutions tap into student insight in a way that’s meaningful and action-oriented? The Student Assembly worked to answer this by testing an approach that combines a deliberative process with technology to more deeply and transparently understand what’s being shared.
Solution: tech that deepens dialogue
In collaboration with DemocracyNext, the MIT Center for Constructive Communication piloted a tech-enhanced assembly process designed to support, not replace, human connection. Students used Cortico’s platform to make sense of recorded deliberation as well as MIT CCC-developed prototypes—including AI tools that surfaced missing perspectives mid-conversation, to visualizations that traced how ideas took shape.
Result: deliberation in action
Eight key themes emerged from more than 40 hours of dialogue. The result is a powerful example of participatory design in practice, being student-led, tech-supported, and built to inform real decision-making.
Explore the MIT Student Assembly on Sustainability portal to see what they discovered, discussed, and the final recommendations.
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