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Contents
America SCORES Boston .............................................................................................................. 1
Bird Street Community Center ....................................................................................................... 2
Boston Housing Authority .............................................................................................................. 3
Boston Public Health Commission Peer Leadership Institute ........................................................ 4
Boston Public Schools .................................................................................................................... 5
College of Computer and Information Science .............................................................................. 6
Community Advisory Board at Northeastern Center of Community Service/City & Community
Affairs ............................................................................................................................................. 7
CiviLink .......................................................................................................................................... 8
Dept of Pyschology (Datacadabra) ................................................................................................. 9
Dept of Pyschology (Happy Being Us) ........................................................................................ 10
Dept of Pyschology (Memory Improvement) ............................................................................... 11
Generation Citizen (1)................................................................................................................... 12
Generation Citizen (2)................................................................................................................... 13
Generation Citizen (3)................................................................................................................... 14
Enrollment Services ...................................................................................................................... 15
Literacy Volunteers of Massachusetts .......................................................................................... 16
Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics Boston ....................................................................... 18
Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority (1) ..................................................................................... 19
Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority (2) ..................................................................................... 20
Mass Promise Fellowship ............................................................................................................. 21
Music Licensing Laboratory ......................................................................................................... 22
Northeastern Communication Development Laboratory .............................................................. 23
NU Office of the Registrar-Semester Course Offerings ............................................................... 24
Service-Learning at Northeastern (RFP Portal) ............................................................................ 25
1
America SCORES Boston
29 Germania Street
Jamaica Plain, MA 02130
http://www.AmericaSCORESBoston.org
Mission and Organization Overview
America SCORES Boston was incorporated in Massachusetts in 1999 as the first affiliate of the
national organization America SCORES. SCORES has grown to become one of the largest after-
school programs operating in the Boston Public School District – growing from 4 elementary
schools serving 100 kids during our first year to delivering more than 40 programs to over 1,400
students in grades 1-12. We offer an innovative blend of soccer, academic support, and
enrichment programs to at-risk youth in Boston. Our programs foster the development of the
whole child as an athlete, a student, and a caring, confident, & engaged member of the
community. We provide a safe, positive, nurturing environment that gives every child a chance
to become who they truly are.
Service Details
In the fall, America SCORES Boston partnered with Professor Michael Weintraub and his
Software Development course. The students began a project to build an App to support our
program evaluation. Our coaches on the field will be able to record data as it happens, easily
instead of multiple steps involving pen and paper transferred to a computer database. The
students will have built or, at the very least, laid the groundwork for an app that's function can
continue to grow with our evaluation and attendance needs. With a successful app for recording
biometric and aerobic capacity, we will seek to add attendance and attitudinal functions.
Travel Means: Students will attend regular progress meetings at the SCORES office. In this
instance, the Orange Line's Stony Brook station is a short walk from out office.
Student requirements
1. CORI
2. SORI
CORI/SORI Processing Time: CORI/SORIs often take a few days. The background checks
will be requested for all students. The project does not regularly require direct service with
youth, however as the app advances, students will test it through our program. If CORI/SORIs
are not complete, we are allowed to have service-learning students at the program because they
will be supervised by our staff.
Contacts
Mark Moniz [email protected]
Alicia Wun [email protected]
2
Bird Street Community Center
500 Columbia Road
Dorchester, MA 02125
https://www.birdstreet.org
Mission and Organization Overview
Bird Street Community Center (legally incorporated as "Upham's Corner Community Center,
Inc.") is a private, nonprofit organization (501.3(c), providing high quality after school programs
for children ages 5-13 and youth ages 10-22. We serve more than 1300 youth who primarily
reside in Dorchester, Roxbury, Mattapan, Hyde Park and Jamaica Plain. Our Center provides all
of the wrap around services that develop well-rounded, healthy children, youth and young adults,
including: academic support, leadership training and experience, workforce development and
employment, arts & humanities, life skills, community service, violence prevention, case
management, recreation and organized sports. We encourage and promote intellectual, physical,
personal, and social/emotional development. The mission of Bird Street is to instill in our youth
and young adults the intellectual, social, and leadership competencies to deal effectively with
daily challenges, strive for academic success, and pursue employment opportunities. Bird Street
Community Center meets the day-to-day needs for building strong minds, healthy bodies and
outlets for creative expression and social interaction for families and children. Bird Street
enables individuals across generations to engage in educational activities and life-long learning.
Bird Street is a "second home" for our members, providing space for local events, community
gatherings, and celebrations. Bird Street remains vibrant, flexible, and responsive to the changing
needs of the children and families of the North Dorchester / Roxbury neighborhoods.
Project Description
I have been working at Bird Street for any years and we have yet to truly understand the value
that our programs have on the youth in the community. The current system we have is nothing
more than a data entry form, it does not help us gage the data that we collect on our applications,
such as demographic, income level, family size, household information, primary language,
School information, grades, healthcare providers, income verification - which families receive
support from housing, section 8, AFDC, EBT cards, Masshealth, Subsidized housing,
unemployed working, Veterans Compensation, or retired. We truly need a database that we can
track all this information so that we can ise it for funders and grants. We also have our youth fill
out surveys for our programs but we are tracking them correctly and effectively. This would be a
tremendous help to our organization.
Contacts:
Donna Woodson [email protected]
617-282-6110 EXT. 25
Jamel Langston [email protected]
617-282- 6110 EXT. 25
3
Boston Housing Authority
Mission & Overview
Boston Housing Authority (BHA) provides affordable housing programs to low income families.
The BHA community is very diverse and is comprised of many racial, ethnic, and linguistic
minorities, many of whom are newcomers to the Boston area with limited English speaking and
reading abilities. In response to the language needs of the families BHA assists, BHA’s
Language Access Division, which is part of the Center for Community Engagement and Civil
Rights, launched the Volunteer Interpreters Program (VIP) in 2010. VIP is a capacity building
initiative in which bilingual or multilingual individuals from local colleges, universities, other
educational institutions and community organizations are recruited and trained to serve as
housing interpreters and translators to help families access housing services. VIP currently
maintains a pool of more than 200 volunteers, capable of covering 30 languages. The current
VIP database requires much time and effort when inputting and managing VIP data and
scheduling volunteers’ assignments. The Language Access Division is therefore seeking to
develop a more robust online volunteer management system.
Service Details
Over the last two semesters, groups of Software Development students began the development of
an online volunteer management system that improves the capabilities of our existing volunteer
management database created on Microsoft Access (sample copy of the database would be
provided to the NEU student team). Our current system tracks: # of volunteers and their contact
and service information; # of times assisted and hours volunteered; types of assignments and
languages spoken. This new online system would 1) be mobile friendly, 2) have functions that
allow potential volunteers to sign up to volunteer with VIP and register to attend a mandatory
training; and 3) enable current volunteers to update their availability, accept or decline
assignments, and receive assignment reminders from BHA. This semester, we would like to
continue the development of this online volunteer database and improve the functionality of its
features.
This new online data system will be critical in expanding BHA’s capacity to serve limited
English speaking families and represent a significant community service by the NEU student
team, and mutual learning and partnership between the students and the Language Access staff.
The new system will result in more efficient volunteer management, enabling the Language
Access staff to deploy their time and volunteers more effectively, and to continue to scale up
their volunteer services.
Contacts for Winter 2017:
Vivian Lee Director of Community Engagement and Civil Rights
Shawn Yang Language Access Team Interpreter
Elizabeth Fansler AmeriCorps VISTA Wellness Connect Recruiter
4
Boston Public Health Commission Peer Leadership Institute
727 Massachusetts Avenue
Boston, MA, United States
http://www.bphc.org/whatwedo/Teens/peer-leadership-institute/Pages/Peer-Leadership-
Institute.aspx
Mission and Organization Overview
The Peer Leadership Institute (PLI) seeks to train local high school students (15-18) in a variety
of health related topics to combat racial health inequities amongst Boston’s youth population. It
is our intention to promote positive attitudinal and behavioral changes within their personal
health decision making process through education and awareness.
Project Description
Our students deliver peer to peer workshops weekly. We have recently seeking ways to engage
students virtually. For example, make our curriculum available via an app. We are looking for
ways to use technology for peer education. Our students deliver workshops on health to their
peers. The idea is to create a system that gives students who participated in the workshop a
highly interactive opportunity – games, videos, tests, etc. – to access the content of the session.
Contact
Danielle Smith [email protected]
617-534-2735
5
Boston Public Schools
2300 Washington Street, Roxbury, MA 02119
Mission & Overview
As the birthplace of public education in this nation, the Boston Public Schools is committed to
transforming the lives of all children through exemplary teaching in a world-class system of
innovative, welcoming schools. We partner with the community, families, and students to
develop in every learner the knowledge, skill, and character to excel in college, career, and life.
Our responsibility is to ensure every child has great teachers and great school leaders. In the
Boston Public Schools, we tailor instruction to meet the individual needs of every student.
Together, we are:
Strengthening teaching and school leadership
Replicating success and turning around low- performing schools
Deepening partnerships with parents, students, and the community
Redesigning district services for effectiveness, efficiency, and equity
Service Details
Boston Public Schools spends 10% of their budget moving ~25K BPS students and ~30K overall
students across the city of Boston - more than any other school district in the country. Reducing
spending on transportation - without (dramatically) reducing the quality of services offered to
students and families - has been a major priority for the CFO, COO, and the Superintendent.
We have been working on improving our routing efficiencies as we gear up for our summer
routing period. Over a two month period, the BPS Transportation team receives a list of which
students are assigned to which school and is tasked with assigning each student to a bus stop and
creating efficient routes between these stops that gets students to school as quickly and
efficiently as possible. There are a number of specific rules to this puzzle - for example, some
students need to be picked up at their home in a wheelchair bus, while others can walk to the
corner and ride a 70 student bus - that make this a far from simple problem. Please note: there
are several other transportation computer science projects that could be potentially interesting
as well
Contacts
William Eger Strategic Projects Manager
6
College of Computer and Information Science
WVH 230
Mission & Overview
In the early 1980s, Northeastern University created the nation’s first college dedicated to the
field of computer science. More than 30 years of inspiration and innovation later, the College of
Computer and Information Science remains a national leader in education and research.
Service Details
The College has a need for a system to track student progress against degree program
requirements and milestones. The first objective is to create a system for tracking the progress of
PhD students. While there is no system in place right now, there is a strong preference to build
the system using Django (a python framework).
Contacts
Dean Rajaraman [email protected]
Dean Mislove [email protected]
Brian Lackey [email protected]
7
Community Advisory Board at Northeastern Center of Community Service/City & Community Affairs
320 Huntington Avenue, Suite 232
Boston, MA 02115
www.northeastern.edu/communityservice
Mission & Overview:
The Northeastern University Center of Community Service (which falls in the division of City &
Community Affairs at Northeastern) facilitates diverse service opportunities for students, staff
and faculty to collaborate with local and global communities to learn from and address societal
needs.
The Center supports Northeastern University’s long-standing commitment to civic and
community engagement. By engaging with the communities of Greater Boston and beyond, we
draw strength from our neighbors and surroundings and we contribute to them as a partner and a
resource.
The Community Advisory Board (CAB), which began this summer consists of three subgroups,
one that represents our community partner organizations specifically. Members of this CAB are
expected to:
Attend the CAB meetings and be a member of at least one group;
Strengthen and grow the network of community engagement programs & initiatives as fostered
by the division of City & Community Affairs;
Serve as advocates for our work in their various community roles as appropriate (e.g. if a
member hears about an initiative that is pertinent to his/her connections in the community, he/she
will relay that information to the appropriate party); and
Provide ongoing feedback to City & Community Affairs staff on the work and initiatives of the
division.
Service Details:
Recently, our CAB community partner group expressed interest in having a database developed
within which students could share information with other students about their service sites-
including, but not limited to, information such as site experiences and expectations, working with
the supervisors and/or clients on site, and helpful record-keeping for project-based service-
learning that may help transitions for long-term projects. We would like to work with a group
from the software development course to develop this system.
Contact
Becca Berkey Director of Service-Learning
8
CiviLink
http://www.civilink.org
Mission & Overview:
CiviLink is a social platform that connects community members and mission-driven
organizations together to empower people to become more engaged in their community and
helps organizations “crowdsource” their volunteer and community outreach efforts.
We are a student-driven organization that believes in grassroots community activism and is
passionate about creating and using technology for the benefit of individuals, communities, and
society as a whole.
Service Details:
We have created a basic MVP of the core functionality we want our platform to have. We will be
beta testing the existing platform during the spring semester and will need to modify and add
new features to fine tune the web app to be ready to launch, in response to the questions,
concerns, and suggestions raised by our beta testers. Technologies used are NodeJS, Express,
and React on the front end.
Contact
Caesar Nuzzolo [email protected]
9
Dept of Pyschology (Datacadabra)
Department of Applied Psychology
Northeastern University
Mission & Overview:
Dr. Rachel Rodgers is an associate professor with the Department of Applied Psychology at
Northeastern University. Her research aims to examine socio-cultural determinants of health-
related behaviors such as influences on body image and eating concerns in adolescent/young
adult psychology.
Service Details:
Our project aims to facilitate Dr. Rogers’ research, which uses Qualtrics, Northeastern
University’s official web-based survey software available to all current Northeastern faculty,
staff and students. Qualtrics supports research, teaching and administration by allowing users to
create survey instruments, administer surveys, store data and conduct analysis on it. However,
the tool loses approximately 70% of the survey data due to the existing data authentication and
storage mechanism. The project aims to solve this problem.
Contact
Rachel Rogers Associate Professor
10
Dept of Pyschology (Happy Being Us)
Department of Applied Psychology
Northeastern University
Mission & Overview
Dr. Rachel Rodgers is an associate professor with the Department of Applied Psychology at
Northeastern University. Her research aims to examine socio-cultural determinants of health-
related behaviors such as influences on body image and eating concerns in adolescent/young
adult psychology.
Service Details
This project is a part of an on-going research between our client and her colleagues in Australia.
It intends to enhance confidence levels and influence young girls to think and act towards
building a positive mindset about their body image. It reveals the façade that is portrayed by
media of ideal body types or appearances and aims to break these stereotypes. The project
aspires to do this by focusing on four domains – Media, Peers, Appearance Comparisons and
Appearance Ideals which are largely misconstrued at such tender age. Mothers share a selfless
concern for their children and daughters, in turn, look up to their mothers as the first female
figures in their lives. The project aims to leverage this bond to allow mothers to positively
influence their daughters’ view of ideal appearances or body types. In addition to activities and
exercises, there is a quiz at the end of each module which assesses the daughters’ understanding
of the module and serves as a refresher of the topics covered in the module.
Contact
Rachel Rogers Associate Professor
11
Dept of Pyschology (Memory Improvement)
Department of Applied Psychology
Northeastern University
Mission & Overview
People with memory impairment tend to remember the information emotionally related to them.
Hence, this problem statement is the basis for development of our application. Two types of
memories need to be targeted with this solution:
1. Retrospective Memory: The memory of the past.
2. Prospective Memory: The schedule and ambitions for the future.
The patient to be exposed to the information in an interesting way of quizzes. This Android
application will help patients of Dementia, Alzheimer’s and other severe memory impairments
by the aid of presenting him/her with the information related to positive memories.
Service Details
The goal is to expand the system that was begun by prior Software Development students and get
it to a point where it can be used in the field.
Contact
Changiz Mohiyeddini Associate Professor
12
Generation Citizen (1)
745 Atlantic Ave, 3rd Floor
Boston, MA 02111
Mission & Overview
Generation Citizen (GC) works to ensure that every student in the United States receives an
effective action civics education, which provides them with the knowledge and skills necessary
to participate in our democracy as active citizens.
Democracy depends on political participation but young people are turning away from politics.
Generation Citizen believes every student has the right to learn how to effectively participate as
citizens. We inspire civic participation through a proven state standards-aligned action civics
class that gives students the opportunity to experience real-world democracy
Service Details:
Generation Citizen maintains a weebly website for managing volunteers. The project is to create
an app – android or ios – that provides reminders to volunteers, tracks actions and activities, and
provides program updates/notifications directly. Ideally, this app would also allow volunteers to
frequently input information directly into documents and spreadsheets (which are currently
stored in Google Drive).
Contact
Amy Stahl AmeriCorps VISTA
13
Generation Citizen (2)
745 Atlantic Ave, 3rd Floor
Boston, MA 02111
Mission & Overview
Generation Citizen (GC) works to ensure that every student in the United States receives an
effective action civics education, which provides them with the knowledge and skills necessary
to participate in our democracy as active citizens.
Democracy depends on political participation but young people are turning away from politics.
Generation Citizen believes every student has the right to learn how to effectively participate as
citizens. We inspire civic participation through a proven state standards-aligned action civics
class that gives students the opportunity to experience real-world democracy
Service Details
Generation Citizen involves matching college student volunteers to placements throughout the
area. It would be helpful to have a system that matched volunteers to placements so all the needs
are filled by volunteers with the right skills but in a way that minimizes travel and in a way that
works for everyone’s schedule.
Contact
Amy Stahl AmeriCorps VISTA
14
Generation Citizen (3)
745 Atlantic Ave, 3rd Floor
Boston, MA 02111
Mission & Overview
Generation Citizen (GC) works to ensure that every student in the United States receives an
effective action civics education, which provides them with the knowledge and skills necessary
to participate in our democracy as active citizens.
Democracy depends on political participation but young people are turning away from politics.
Generation Citizen believes every student has the right to learn how to effectively participate as
citizens. We inspire civic participation through a proven state standards-aligned action civics
class that gives students the opportunity to experience real-world democracy
Service Details
GC would like to have some kind of creative, easy-to-use digital storytelling platform for its
middle- and high-school students to use. A phone app, android or iOS, would be ideal. Looking
for prototypes of a few different ideas that would allow multiple students in each class to
collectively publish updates on their semester-long projects. See Tiki-toki.com and the Voice
Thread app for inspiration.
Contact
Amy Stahl AmeriCorps VISTA
15
Enrollment Services
Northeastern University
Mission & Overview
[text goes here]
Service Details
The objective is to create an android application that helps students connect to what’s happening
on campus. Users will receive notifications about events based on proximity to events around the
campus using a combination of GPS or Bluetooth beacons along with their preferences
(academic or non-academic). This work will extend the work of prior Software Development
students.
Contact
Makeda Keegan Senior Assistant Director [email protected]
16
Literacy Volunteers of Massachusetts
8 Faneuil Hall Marketplace - 3rd floor (North Market)
Boston, MA 02109
www.lvm.org
Mission and Organization Overview
Established in 1972, the mission of Literacy Volunteers of Massachusetts (LVM) is to promote
literacy skills that empower adults to achieve their goals, meet their everyday responsibilities,
become more self-sufficient and be more self-confident. LVM fulfills its mission by training
community volunteers to provide free, confidential, flexibly scheduled, and individualized
tutoring in basic literacy and English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) to adults. LVM
specializes in working with adults who have the lowest literacy and conversational English skills
and are the most in need. Adults who enroll in LVM routinely describe LVM as their "best
chance" and the only program that could help them. LVM staff provides professional, state-of-
the-art training and support to ensure that both students and tutors are successful, enjoy the
tutoring experience, and engage with the LVM community to stay motivated especially when
tutoring is challenging. Throughout the training, volunteers not only learn teaching strategies,
they learn how to create a collaborative and respectful learning environment that brings people
together to make a real, life-changing difference. With improved literacy skills and the
confidence that comes with them, adults are able to pursue a better life and a better future for
themselves, their families and their communities.
Service Details
In 2006, Literacy Volunteers of Massachusetts (LVM) was one of eight programs nationally
recognized by ProLiteracy and Dollar General for its data management and accountability
system. However, due to a lack of resources to dedicate to data management since that time,
individual LVM affiliates have developed their own systems that are incompatible with each
other and incompatible with the central data entry functions that LVM must do on behalf of all of
the affiliates to comply with LVM’s grant from the Massachusetts Department of Elementary
and Secondary Education (ESE). As a result, we are spending far too much time and financial
resources on redundant paperwork and entering the same data multiple times when those
resources would be far better used on direct services to our students and volunteer tutors.
Overall, our goal is to streamline, automate and coordinate our statewide data systems for
increased accessibility to make the best use of our available resources and allow us to comply
with our grant requirements. In the spring 2016 semester, a service learner Software
Development Team laid the technical foundation for the new web-based system that will reduce
data silos and increase data availability. They selected a host environment, stack/languages and a
database and began creating the online forms for adding student and tutor background data and
attendance. This semester, a new Software Development Team is continuing the work on the
web-based system. They are testing the functionality of the system, repairing any technical
difficulties they encounter, establishing a proper test protocol and writing system documentation.
Once those tasks are completed, they will be working on revisions to the student data form in the
areas of content, function and form; and build queries to generate some standard reports as
requested. Because there is much more to be done in order to make this system fully functional,
we are requesting a continuation of this Service-Learning project. In Spring 2017, the Software
17
Development Team will complete the ability to add information for new tutors, students and
tutor/student matches; update all tutor and student data, including student assessments; and add
the required report, data validation, security, search, import of historical data and export
functions all of which need to be tested by the LVM program affiliates. This important project
has tremendous potential to create a much more efficient and automated process that will save
our entire network valuable time and money, and allow us to re-direct our energies toward
essential services to our students and tutors.
Days and Times of Service: The team members worked independently off-site and as a team
during lab sessions and at meetings that they arrange. They meet with LVM staff at the LVM
office whenever needed. LVM office hours are Monday through Friday from 9 am to 6 p.m.
Evening hours can be arranged if necessary.
Travel Time: LVM is easily accessible by public transportation and is located on the Freedom
Trail in the historic Faneuil Hall Marketplace adjacent to Boston City Hall. The office is a 10
minute walk from Haymarket Station (Orange/Green Lines), approximately a 10 minute walk
from Park Street (Red and Green Lines), approximately a 7 minute walk from Government
Center (Green/Blue Lines) and approximately a 5 minute walk from State (Orange/Blue Lines).
Student Requirements:
Students must complete a volunteer application.
Contact
Roberta Soolman [email protected]
617-367-1313
18
Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics Boston
City Hall,
Government Center, Boston
Mission & Overview
Boston Public Schools spends 10% of their budget moving ~25K BPS students and ~30K overall
students across the city of Boston - more than any other school district in the country. Reducing
spending on transportation - without (dramatically) reducing the quality of services offered to
students and families - has been a major priority for the CFO, COO, and the Superintendent. Service Details
The City of Boston is trying to identify better ways to communicate and share information with
researchers and experts. The first step to doing this is to articulate our internal needs and
simultaneously create a pathway for researchers and experts to volunteer their expertise to
helping advance innovation on civic issues. The next step is to be able to easily source projects
that we have in real time and communicate these projects beyond City Hall.
Right now, our solution to include and involve researcher and expert participation is a simple
Google Form. Our website (which is presently being rebuilt) will include this form as well as the
live Excel output because we want to be both transparent in the way we source partners--and we
want to be sure that folks who have the potential to collaborate with one another see that
potential as well.
Our question: How can this system be better in terms of (1) making it easy and pleasant for
researchers and experts to volunteer their expertise, (2) making it easy for researchers and
experts to see one another’s volunteered expertise and communicate with one another to create
more robust partnerships, and (3) making it easy for us (as the City) to review volunteered
expertise and get in contact with those who have offered to help?
The next step: How can we create a similar system for internally sourcing projects and sharing
those projects with interested researchers and experts?
Contact:
Kimberly D. Lucas Director of Civic Research at Mayor's Office of New Urban Mechanics,
City of Boston
19
Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority (1)
Transportation Building
Boston, MA
Mission & Overview
The MBTA is the nation's 5th largest mass transit system. It serves a population of 4,817,014
(2010 census) in 176 cities and towns with an area of 3,249 square miles. To carry out its
mission it maintains 183 bus routes, 2 of which are Bus Rapid Transit lines, 3 rapid transit lines,
5 light rail (Central Subway/Green Line) routes, 4 trackless trolley lines and 13 commuter rail
routes. Its roster of equipment consists of 1005 diesel and CNG buses, 32 dual mode buses, 28
ETB′s (electric trolley buses), 410 heavy rail vehicles, 200 light rail vehicles, 10 PCC's
streetcars, 90 commuter rail locomotives, 410 commuter rail coaches and 464 MBTA-owned
specially equipped vans and sedans, and an additional 182 contractor-supplied specially
equipped vans and sedans. The average weekday ridership for the entire system is approximately
1.3 million passenger trips.
Service Details
Evaluating MBTA Commuter Rail Alert notifications:
The MBTA Commuter Rail is the sixth largest commuter rail system in the country, serving
120,000 daily trips across Eastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island. It is owned by the MBTA
and operated by Keolis, a private company. When there are delays on the Commuter Rail, Keolis
sends out notifications called T-Alerts via email, SMS, Twitter, and through multiple third-party
applications such as Transit via the MBTA’s real-time API. The goal of this project is to produce
a regular (e.g. daily/weekly) report which the T can present to Keolis about the accuracy and
timeliness of Commuter Rail T-Alerts. The report should list all delayed trains and associated
alerts, judging them on delivery (did alerts go for each delayed/cancelled train), timeliness (how
soon after a delay/cancellation did the alert go out), and accuracy (did the reported delay in the
alert correspond to an actual delay). In addition, the report should include summary statistics on
overall performance of T-Alerts, broken down by station and line. Data for the report will come
from the MBTA Performance database (for train locations and times) and the T-Alerts API.
The project will involve creating a database of alerts and train status data using data from the
MBTA’s public APIs, programmatically evaluating the quality of commuter rail alerts with this
data, and developing reports from it. At a minimum, this requires work with JSON APIs, a
common database language (MS SQL or postgres preferred but open to others), and some data
visualization or reporting language/tools.
Contact
Dominic Tribone Special Assistant for Strategic Initiatives
Ryan Caro [email protected]
David Block-Schachter CTO
20
Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority (2)
Transportation Building
Boston, MA
Mission & Overview
The MBTA is the nation's 5th largest mass transit system. It serves a population of 4,817,014
(2010 census) in 176 cities and towns with an area of 3,249 square miles. To carry out its
mission it maintains 183 bus routes, 2 of which are Bus Rapid Transit lines, 3 rapid transit lines,
5 light rail (Central Subway/Green Line) routes, 4 trackless trolley lines and 13 commuter rail
routes. Its roster of equipment consists of 1005 diesel and CNG buses, 32 dual mode buses, 28
ETB′s (electric trolley buses), 410 heavy rail vehicles, 200 light rail vehicles, 10 PCC's
streetcars, 90 commuter rail locomotives, 410 commuter rail coaches and 464 MBTA-owned
specially equipped vans and sedans, and an additional 182 contractor-supplied specially
equipped vans and sedans. The average weekday ridership for the entire system is approximately
1.3 million passenger trips.
Service Details
The MBTA is currently using a web-based dashboard to prioritize fare vending machine pickups outside
of our normal schedule. This tool receives information based on daily uploads of excel files that are
manually generated reports from the S&B CCS. The next generation of this tool could eliminate this
manual process, connect directly to the CCS, and automatically generate pickup prioritization reports
based on real-time data. Furthermore, this information could be combined with AFC maintenance
information from Service Now (new tool is scheduled to launch in February) or combined with the bi-
daily SMPTO report (a summary of visual inspection). The final stage in this project would be when we
are able to combine the data from these dis-aggregated sources in some form in order to perform analysis
to suggest prioritized maintenance, or predictive analytics based on patterns or events.
Contact
Nick Easley
21
Mass Promise Fellowship
360 Huntington Avenue, 212 Columbus Place
Boston, MA 02115-5000
http://www.masspromisefellows.org/
Mission & Overview
AmeriCorps Massachusetts Promise Fellows deliver the resources young people need to be
successful in life by creating, managing, and leading meaningful out-of-school time programs for
youth in grades 6-12. Fellow projects focus on mentoring, social and emotional learning, college
and career readiness, academic enrichment, and community service-learning.
Service Details
Create an online system for our request for proposals process. We are looking for something
similar for what was done for the service-learning team in the past. Each year we put out a call
for proposals from organizations and we usually receive ~60 12 page proposals via email in PDF
form. It would be great if we had a system linked to our website where folks could log-in and
submit through a form that was easy to then print or email out to a panel of reviewers.
Contacts
Colleen Holloran Director, Massachusetts Promise Fellowship
22
Music Licensing Laboratory
Mission & Overview
The Media Licensing Lab (ML-Lab) is a prototype platform to support the first fully-functioning
student-run music licensing program in the United States. This system will be a modular and
scalable web application whose primary functionality is to act as a submission portal for
intellectual property owners to upload their music into the platform’s library. This is a legacy
project and we will extend from what has already been implemented by CS5500 Spring 2016
students. They already implemented song upload functionality and the ability to fill a form that
contains all associated metadata information about the songs along with T&C.
This platform will include terms of use, practices and procedures, developed by the ML-Lab in
conjunction with Northeastern University’s General Counsel’s office. Through this feature,
media representatives will be able to browse through the music selected by Northeastern
University students and license that music for inclusion in the entertainment industry. The Media
Representatives/Music Licensees will use the site for two additional purposes -
1. Browse music based on a different criteria, thus enabling quick and affordable licensing
2. Access to the ML-Lab’s statistical and demographic data to gauge the effect of music on
a target audience.
Service Details
The goal is to expand the system that was begun by prior Software Development students and get
it to a point where it can be used in the classroom.
Contact
David Herlihy Professor, Music Industry
23
Northeastern Communication Development Laboratory
Department of Communication Sciences & Disorders
Northeastern University
Mission & Overview
Attention is critical to our everyday functioning. It allows us to identify those aspects of our
everyday world that are critical to our adaptive functioning and to ignore those that are not. This
is essentially the problem of multitasking where we are forced to select a particular object or
event and maintain our attention on it despite the presence of other distracting objects or events
(e.g., a video game). The Communication Development Lab investigates the development of
attention in young children with the goal of discovering how they deploy their selective attention
to critical aspects of their environment and how this ability improves with age. This will help us
devise maximal learning strategies for young children and, thus, enhance their success in school
and beyond.
Service Details
To study selective attention in children, we wish to build an app that allows us to present various
objects flashing on and off or several different videos on the screen of a tablet. In the case of the
objects, one of those objects is designated the target while the remainder are designated
distractors. Across multiple discrete trials, the target and distractors are either presented in
silence or they are presented together with a sound that occurs in synchrony with the flashing
target but out of synchrony with the flashing distractors. The trial continues until the participant
finds the target and touches it. The time it takes to find the target is the measure of interest and is
saved across multiple trials of the experiment into a database. Across different trials, we vary the
number of objects and their spatial location but always present the target either in silence or
together with the sound. Adults usually find the target faster when it is presented together with
the sound but it is not known whether children can take advantage of the sound to find it. If they
can then this will show that children’s attention can be enhanced by synchronized audiovisual
cues. In the case of videos, we want to present up to 4 different videos of 4 different faces that
can be seen talking silently in each of 4 different quadrants of the tablet. Across trials, we present
the soundtrack that is synchronized (or not) with one of the 4 faces and, again, ask the
participants to touch the face that is talking as soon as it is identified. Here, we expect that
children will find the target face faster if the sound is synchronized with it than when it is not
synchronized with it. Success in this experiment will demonstrate that children can rely on the
correspondence of audiovisual speech cues to correctly select a key aspect of a complex social
environment that often consists of multiple talking people (a classic multitasking circumstance).
Contact
David J. Lewkowicz, Ph.D. Professor,
Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders
24
NU Office of the Registrar-Semester Course Offerings
Department of Classroom Management & Scheduling, Office of the Registrar
271 Huntington Ave
Boston, MA 02115
http://www.northeastern.edu/registrar
Mission & Overview The department of Classroom Management and Scheduling is responsible
for developing and publishing the Semester Course Schedule for the University. Students know
this as Banner Student Schedule. The department creates the schedule each term using what we
call the Course Roll-Over. Briefly detailed below:
• Copy class data from same like term
• Distribute excel worksheets for department Review
• Process changes in Banner (SIS) based on department updates
• Proof is distributed to departments
• Schedule is posted to Banner 3 weeks prior to undergraduate registration
Service Details
The goal is to streamline and automate the current process used to create the semester course
schedule for the university. The hope is to allow academic departments to process their own
course schedules and changes and to load directly to the Banner Student Information System.
The goal is to also eliminate submission of incomplete and inaccurate information, eliminate the
distribution of documents, and eliminate the need to clarify what is actually being requested.
Contacts
Nicole M. Rakitin Director, Classroom Management & Scheduling
Nina Lillie LeDoyt Sr. Associate Registrar
25
Service-Learning at Northeastern (RFP Portal)
320 Huntington Avenue, Suite 232
Boston, MA 02115
www.northeastern.edu/communityservice
Mission & Overview
The mission of Service-Learning at Northeastern University is to integrate classroom and
community goals through transformative service partnerships that enrich the academic
experience, inspire lifelong community engagement, and strengthen our local and global
communities. Service-Learning (S-L) is a form of experiential learning for students and a
teaching tool for faculty that purposefully integrates academics and service to meet classroom
and community goals throughout the semester. As part of their coursework, students serve with
community partners as a way to learn the course material.
Service Details
Last spring a group of Software Development students created an online portal for community-
based organizations to apply to partner with the S-L Program. We piloted its use over the
summer and have used it again this fall. Now we’d like another group of student to not only
make some functional upgrades to the system, but more importantly take us into phase 2 of the
project where faculty members will be able to access pieces of the portal on their own account to
manage their partnerships.
Contacts
Lisa Roe Assistant Director of Service-Learning
Becca Berkey Director of Service-Learning
