MIT January Practicum

Each year, 12 – 15 MIT graduate students travel to Malaysia during MIT’s January Independent Activities Period. Prior to leaving, they spend part of the preceding semester learning about the culture, politics, environment and history of Malaysia. Working with Malaysian graduate students they spend time in several of the five cities on which we continue to focus. They meet with agency staff and community representatives, taking note of interesting and important sustainable city development efforts that the Visiting Scholars might spend the following year documenting. When they return to MIT, they produce an annual Research Agenda that new Visiting Scholars use as a basis for focusing their own field research in Malaysia the following year.