Itâs not a typical sentence youâd find on a class schedule, but on April 2, the first action item for one MIT course read: âCheck in on each otherâs health and well-being.â The revised schedule was for Susan Murcott and Julie Simpsonâs spring D-Lab class EC.719 / EC.789 (Water, Climate Change, and Health), just one of hundreds of classes at MIT that had to change course after the novel coronavirus sparked a campus-wide shutdown.
D-Lab at home
The dust had only begun to settle two weeks later, after a week of canceled classes followed by the established spring break, when students and professors reconvened in their new virtual classrooms. In Murcott and Simpsonâs three-hour, once-a-week D-Lab class, the 20 students had completed only half of the subjectâs 12 classes before the campus shut down. Those who could attend the six remaining classes would do so remotely for the first time in the five-year history of the class.
Typically, students would have gathered at D-Lab, an international design and development center next to the MIT Museum on Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Within the center, D-Lab provides project-based and hands-on learning for undergraduate and graduate students in collaboration with international non-governmental organizations, governments, and industry. Many of the projects involve design solutions in low-income countries around the world. Murcott, an MIT lecturer who has worked with low-income populations for over 30 years in 25 countries, including Nepal and Ghana, was a natural fit to teach the class....
