mit faculty newsletter, vol. xxv no. 4, march/april 2013web.mit.edu/fnl/volume/254/fnl254.pdfmit...

in this issue we offer a diversity of subject matter. Former MassachusettsSecretary of Transportation Fred Salvucci addresses MIT 2030 concerns (below);both our editorial and Faculty Chair Sam Allen explore MITx issues (below, page 4);John Belcher shares his experience with depression (page 6); chair of the CUP TimGrove and others make the case for additional freshman advising (page 10).

MITFacultyNewsletter

Vol. XXV No. 4March/April 2013

http://web.mit.edu/fnl

MassachusettsInstitute ofTechnology

continued on page 19

Should MIT Create aSchool of Education?

MIT 2030 and theKendall ZoningIssue

continued on page 13

3.091x: Introduction to Solid State Chemistry–MITx

Nelson Yuan-sheng Kiang and Leon Trilling Fred Salvucci

PR E S I D E NT R E I F, TH E N PROVOST

Reif, announced MITx on 19 December2011. Many are getting on board, whileothers remain skeptical, but one happyconsequence is unquestionable: we discusshow we teach more now than ever before.

Perhaps everything that needs to besaid has been said in one conversation oranother, but not everyone has said every-thing accessibly, not everyone has heardeverything, and new things will need tobe said, so we anticipate that the facultywill have a lot more to contribute to thediscussion and debate in future volumesof the Faculty Newsletter as we work ourway through a turbulent decade full of bigthoughts. Meanwhile, what is said hasbegun to exhibit nuanced tones:

Maybe the big benefit is a great chain ofteaching. Instead of faculty and TAs,

EditorialWhat’s Next With MITx

continued on page 3

M IT, TH R OU G H ITS R EAL E STATE

entity MITIMCo (MIT InvestmentManagement Company), has proposed tothe City of Cambridge a significantincrease in permitted density in KendallSquare. Major questions about that pro-posed plan were raised by many commu-nity residents and by some MIT facultymembers, particularly highlighting con-cerns about potential adverse socialimpacts of gentrification, lack of afford-able graduate student housing on andnear campus, inadequate transportationcapacity, and whether narrow real estateevaluation provides adequate recognitionof the long-range interests of MIT as aninstitution whose primary mission is edu-cation and research.

New president Rafael Reif askedProfessor Tom Kochan of the SloanSchool to chair a task force to review this

Is This the Time?WITH EVERY CHANGE IN LEADERSHIP,

opportunities arise to discuss majorchanges in policies, organization, andpurpose. MIT is now presented withjust such a moment. During the two-day celebration (September 20 and 21,2012) of President Rafael Reif ’s inaugu-ration, the theme of education washighlighted. President Reif has a recordof being actively interested in educa-tion, not only for philosophical reasons,but also as a practical means forimproving the lives of people. Thus, thiswell may be an opportune time forMIT, as a leading research universityknown for its teaching, to establish aSchool of Education that will examineevery aspect of teaching and learning,with a special emphasis on the role oftechnology yet to come.

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Vol. XXV No. 4 March/April 2013

Robert BerwickElectrical Engineering & Computer Science

Nazli ChoucriPolitical Science

Olivier de WeckAeronautics & Astronautics/Engineering Systems

Ernst G. FrankelMechanical Engineering

Jean E. JacksonAnthropology

Gordon KaufmanManagement Science/Statistics

*Jonathan King (Chair) Biology

Helen Elaine LeeWriting and Humanistic Studies

Stephen J. LippardChemistry

Seth LloydMechanical Engineering

Fred MoavenzadehCivil & Environmental Engineering/Engineering Systems

*James OrlinSloan School of Management

Ruth PerryLiterature Section

*George Verghese (Secretary)Electrical Engineering & Computer Science

*Patrick Henry WinstonElectrical Engineering & Computer Science

David LewisManaging Editor

*Editorial Subcommittee for this issue

AddressMIT Faculty NewsletterBldg. 11-268Cambridge, MA 02139

Websitehttp://web.mit.edu/fnl

Telephone 617-253-7303Fax 617-253-0458E-mail [email protected]

Subscriptions$15/year on campus$25/year off campus

01 Should MIT Create a School of Education?Nelson Yuan-sheng Kiang and Leon Trilling

01 MIT 2030 and the Kendall Zoning IssueFred Salvucci

Editorial 01 What’s Next with MITx

From The 04 Faculty Roles After MITx Subjects Faculty Chair Are Widely Deployed

Samuel M. Allen

06 In Good Company: Professional Help Can Alleviatethe Weight of Depression John Belcher

Teach Talk 08 Dialog on Right-Now TalksPatrick H. Winston

10 MIT Freshman Mentoring and Advising:The Role of the FacultyTimothy L. Grove, Samuel M. Allen, Daniel Hastings, William E. Grimson

12 Undergraduates Support Faculty Mentorship of Every MIT Freshman Naren Tallapragada, Ravi Charan, Jonté Craighead

16 Survey of Graduate Alumni: Career Trajectories, Entrepreneurship, and Professional SkillsChristine Ortiz

20 30th Anniversary of the Writing and Communication CenterSteven Strang

Beyond the 22 Why I Live With Students . . . . Classroom Anne McCants

M.I.T. Numbers 24 Underrepresented Minorities

contentsThe MIT FacultyNewsletterEditorial Board

Photo credit: Page 1: edX.

MIT Faculty NewsletterMarch/April 2013

3

everyone is a TA, helping, at the low end,to teach a subject just learned, and at thehigh end, to provide the big picture andaccess to what is new and exciting.

It is tempting to rail against crowdteaching, horrified by the idea of evalua-tion by someone not on the faculty, butmaybe we are forgetting the educationalbenefit provided to the evaluators. Manysay they learn a subject best when theyteach it, so why not have everyone solidifytheir learning by teaching.

Electronically facilitated, every MITstudent could spend time teaching mate-rial just learned to those just learning,deepening understanding on both sides.

Maybe the big benefit is the invertedclassroom. Instead of live lectures, stu-dents watch the material presented, in away that exploits the medium, in 12-minute chunks, separated by gating ques-tions that test understanding. Then, classtime becomes discussion time.

There are points of irony here. One isthat textbooks have been around for along time, and textbooks abound in estab-lished subjects, so why haven’t we invertedthe classroom using books? Part of theanswer may be that we humans prefer,and perhaps learn better, when knowledgecomes in through spoken language. It issaid that Abraham Lincoln read law booksto himself out loud, driving his lawpartner nuts. Lincoln said he thought heunderstood it better that way.

Another point of irony is that ourhumanists may be ahead of MITx, ratherthan left out. After all, they have alwayshad what looks like an inverted classroomcentered on discussion. Their MOOCs areBOOKs, authored by the likes of, say,Homer, Thucydides, Sophocles, and Plato,and a little more recently, by Dante,Voltaire, and Shakespeare, with many oftheir works augmented these days by clipsfrom theater and film.

Maybe we should focus exclusively onprojects. Projects are empoweringbecause they leave students feeling theyhave learned something.

We do have to be careful here, however.Learning bits and pieces of a subject is notthe same as mastering a subject. Bits andpieces are enough for some of what we do,but mastery of the material in our line ofwork, and understanding what masterymeans, is important too.

Maybe you can educate, as well as train,with a MOOC. It is easy to say you cannotteach people how to think with a MOOC,but you cannot defend the point convinc-ingly until you explain what it means tolearn how to think. Some say it is a matterof guided experience, typically working asa kind of apprentice, and it is hard toimagine how experience can be acquiredthrough a wire.

Hard to imagine does not mean foreverimpossible, however. Many of us remem-ber when the idea of carrying around acomputer was hard to imagine, thereforeseemingly impossible. If learning to thinkinvolves guided exposure to real and sur-rogate experience, and if that experienceproduces a repertoire of story fragmentsand the means to exploit them to solvenew problems, then it is interesting tonote that computer-based story telling,guided by student models, is a long-termresearch interest of some of our partici-pants in the Intelligence Initiative.

Maybe we are not being bold enough.Most of our discussion centers onimproving what we are doing now. Somaybe we are exploring only those partsof the space closest to where we are. Whatabout doubling the size of the undergrad-uate student body, enabled by more effi-cient, MOOC-based teaching? Whatabout outsourcing the freshman year,enabled by MOOC-based teaching?Maybe UROP is all that is of value outsidethe humanities. If so, why not offload allthe undergraduates? Let us just bring stu-

dents in every third term (treating thesummer as a third term) for intensifiedUROP experiences, thus tripling under-graduate MIT exposure.

There may be many stable points inthe larger space of possibilities. If we donot think about the whole space, we mayend up stable on a hillock instead of amountain.

Maybe we are asking the wrong question.We ask: Can we adapt everything we teachto the age of MOOCs and MOOC it outto the hundreds of thousands?

That is the kind of question that leadsto caricature: “Ok, you have just read Act 3Scene 1. Before you go on, when Hamletsays `To be or not to be, that is the ques-tion...’, he is referring to (1) the threat ofbad weather in the strait of Oresund; (2)the possibility of invasion by avengingNorwegians; (3) a potential consequenceof family stress.”

Are we missing an opportunity if wedo not turn the question over, and askinstead: “What are the 50 or 100 skills,concepts, and experiences every MITgraduate should know, understand, andhave?” We have asked before, but perhapsthis time we should ask without con-straining ourselves to what can be gottenthrough a faculty GIR vote or how long itwould take to get through it all.

With a list of 50 or 100 in hand, we canask, with current and foreseeable technol-ogy, how can we best equip our studentswith the right skills, concepts, and experi-ence in four plus forever. Then, we cansituate ourselves to seize online opportu-nity, and as President Reif said, solve theunsolvable, shape the future, and serve thenation and the world.

Editorial Subcommittee

What’s Next with MITxcontinued from page 1

MIT Faculty NewsletterVol. XXV No. 4

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Samuel M. AllenFrom The Faculty ChairFaculty Roles After MITx Subjects Are Widely Deployed

LI KE MOST PEOPLE I N higher educa-tion, I have been thinking a lot about theeffects of online learning tools on residen-tial education at MIT. A lot has beenwritten already about this topic, and it willundoubtedly come into sharper focus asthe Institute-wide Task Force on theFuture of MIT Education gets underway.

My initial focus of concern, as the ideaof MOOCs took hold, was for the viabilityof colleges and universities when low-cost, high quality, online subjects becomewidely available. With the cost of highereducation of increasing concern both oncampus and in Washington, low-costalternatives to a four-year residentialBachelors degree experience are likely tobecome very attractive. Should we be con-cerned about the long-term viability ofMIT and other residential educationalinstitutions? I’m not sure, but strengthen-ing the on-campus student experiencewill always be an important goal.

In what ways do students gain addedvalue by being campus residents duringtheir undergraduate years? The report ofthe Task Force on Student Life andLearning, commissioned by President Vestin 1996 and completed in 1998, considersthe foundation of an MIT education torest on the “educational triad” of academ-ics, research, and community (seeweb.mit.edu/committees/sll/tf.html). Thereport covers the Institute’s mission, pres-ents 11 shared principles that “defineMIT,” discusses the components of theeducational triad, and concludes with rec-ommendations. In many ways, the reportilluminates the potential “value added” by

an MIT education. Here are someexcerpts:

“If the goal of an MIT education is todevelop the elements of reason, knowledge,and wisdom that characterize the educatedindividual, MIT cannot rely on structuredlearning alone.” (p.33).

…”community” refers to students, faculty,staff, and alumni who have come togetheron campus for the common purpose ofdeveloping the qualities that define the edu-cated individual. Establishing a criticalmass of intelligent people dedicated to excel-lence in everything they do is central toMIT’s mission.” (p.33)

“… informal learning-by-doing throughpeer interaction at the community level canproperly develop in students many qualitiesof the educated individual. Communityinteraction is an excellent preparation forlife: paired with MIT’s formal curriculum,it is a means to develop communicationskills and the ability to think critically aboutsocietal issues, and it provides experience

with cultural and intellectual diversity.Second, the accelerating changes of theinformation revolution are eroding theboundaries of place and organization. Toadd value to a technical education availableelsewhere, MIT will increasingly have torely on the value it can deliver by combininginformal, community-based learning with

structured, curriculum-based learning.”(p.34)

Extrapolating from the report of theTask Force, an online-only education willalways be incomplete because it won’tengage learners in two of the three com-ponents of the educational triad.

The Task Force report contains manyother gems that we need to keep in mindas MITx grows and matures. While anumber of the report’s recommendationshave been implemented, there is much leftto inspire and inform discussion anddebate as MIT and MITx move forward.

From the earliest discussions at which I was present,MIT’s engagement with MITx was described as beingdriven primarily by the aim to improve the on-campuseducational experience for our own students. I believethat MITx offerings have the capability of doing this bymaking some types of learning more efficient, andpossibly providing both students and faculty with moretime to interact.


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From the earliest discussions at which Iwas present, MIT’s engagement withMITx was described as being driven pri-marily by the aim to improve the on-campus educational experience for ourown students. I believe that MITx offer-ings have the capability of doing this bymaking some types of learning more effi-cient, and possibly providing both stu-dents and faculty with more time tointeract. We clearly need data on wherethose efficiencies will arise, and I knowthat is one aim of analysis of the earlyMITx offerings.

Will the added value be sufficient toprovide a continuing flow of exceptionalapplicants to our campus as onlineinstruction is available for a broad array ofdisciplines? To gain insight to these ques-tions we need to examine some specificaspects of the MIT educational experiencethat are either very difficult or essentiallyimpossible to reproduce online. Many inthe MIT community are actively dis-cussing these issues. Some of the featuresof on-campus life that can’t be replacedonline include:

• Living apart from their families anddeveloping self-reliance

• Forming deep friendships with on-campus peers

• Learning from their peers

• Having access to a broad suite of studentsupport services

• Being in regular contact with facultywho can serve as mentors and advisors

• Engaging in research with graduate stu-dents and faculty

• Taking advantage of myriad extracurric-ular opportunities, including athletics,the arts, and student government

I believe that the extent to which thesesorts of activities are offered and deliveredon campus, and the quality of the stu-dents’ experience, will determine whetheror not we will continue to have a high-quality diverse applicant pool. Andsuccess at having a vibrant on-campuscommunity hinges on the commitment offaculty and student life professionals tofostering and facilitating both profes-

sional and interpersonal development ofour students.

What changes in faculty roles might beneeded to provide the value-added I dis-cussed above? Existing roles include class-room instruction, mentoring andadvising, and providing our students withresearch experiences. Are faculty alreadydoing enough? We are certainly busyenough already! But will incorporatingmore MITx subjects into the undergradu-ate curriculum lead to significant changesin the mix of faculty contributions to the“value added” activities?

In December 2011, when we firstbegan to discuss MITx, some of usthought that if lectures to groups of stu-dents were to be replaced by MITx course-ware, faculty time would be “freed up” forredeployment to working more intimatelywith small groups of students. I am lessenamored with that view than I used tobe, but I expect it will happen to somedegree. Getting an MITx subject launchedis a full-time job, not only for the facultyinstructor(s), but also for a team of peopleworking behind the scenes. No doubt weare still on the very steep part of the learn-ing curve for putting MITx subjects

together, and with additional experienceand platform development doing so willbecome more efficient. But I now doubtthat faculty will find significant blocks oftime opening up. Faculty will need to bemore engaged with students, and in somedifferent ways, as our on-campus studentsmake regular use of MITx resources.

Our faculty is very diverse and cur-rently not all of its 1,000+ members is

engaged in delivering formal lectures. InSHASS, many faculty already teach smallgroups of students as the norm for subjectdelivery and student engagement with theclass material. But in SoE and SoS it is verylikely that some of the hours our studentscurrently spend in lecture will be replacedby incorporating MITx content into thetime they spend studying outside of theclassroom. What changes should we makein how we account for the “units” assignedto each MIT subject? Does it make sensefor the total units to include the numberof hours per week of online instruction?Should the unit breakdown for eachsubject explicitly count hours of “face-time” with instructional staff?

I know I’ve raised more questions thanI’ve answered. Working out just what MITfaculty will do in the age of MITx and off-campus MOOCs will happen as suchofferings become more numerous. Butconsideration of the likely roles needs toshape our thinking and planning.

Samuel M. Allen is a Professor in theDepartment of Materials Science andEngineering and Faculty Chair([email protected]).

In December 2011, when we first began to discussMITx, some of us thought that if lectures to groups ofstudents were to be replaced by MITx courseware,faculty time would be “freed up” for redeployment toworking more intimately with small groups of students. Iam less enamored with that view than I used to be . . .


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John BelcherIn Good Company: Professional Help CanAlleviate the Weight of Depression

TH E APR I L 10 , 2012 I S S U E of TheTech carried an article by Grace Taylorthat I greatly admired [tech.mit.edu/V132/N17/depression.html]. It was abouther depression and how she dealt with it.

At the time I thought I should write asimilar article on the same topic, but froma faculty point of view, not a student pointof view. Why? Because there is a stigmaattached to having been clinicallydepressed and being on anti-depressants(as I am). That stigma is undeserved, andmany people who should embrace suchtreatment instead avoid it. The more openpeople like Grace and I are about ourexperiences in dealing with depression,the more acceptance of those treatmentsthere will be.

Near the end of the ’80s, I was doingwell. I had a stable marriage and two won-derful children, 8 and 11. I was a tenuredPhysics Professor, and PrincipalInvestigator on an instrument on theVoyager Outer Planets mission to exploreJupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune,with a Neptune encounter coming up.Then I was diagnosed with a malignantmelanoma. Its thickness was such that thechances it would metastasize were about 1in 4. At that time, metastasized melanomawas a death sentence. I became hyper-vig-ilant about my health. A bit later, my then-wife and I started a major renovationproject on our home, which did not gowell. Because of the stress of that situa-tion, and my own preoccupation with myhealth, our marriage collapsed. At thebeginning of the summer of 1989, I wastrying to figure out how to get divorced,what the custody arrangement for my

The past year has seen an increased focus on issues of student support and wellnessat MIT. One outcome of this focus has been more open discussion on campus about themental health obstacles that students may face here. Such discussion is beneficialbecause it reduces the isolation students feel when confronting mental health problems.It can seem that we are expected to overcome stress, anxiety, depression, and other suchchallenges all by ourselves. Few people are born equipped to do so, however, and for allpeople, the process is faster and more pleasant if they feel comfortable using supportnetworks, whether informal or professional.

While any and all open conversations about mental health are valuable, of particular noteare public accounts that shed light on experiences that are more common than theyappear. Last spring, Grace Taylor published a series of articles in The Tech about her expe-riences with depression and professional mental health treatments. This fall, a blog post byLydia K. on the MIT Admissions Website (mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/meltdown)confronted the common but overwhelming, and sometimes debilitating, levels of stressthat students here experience. As Chair of the Undergraduate Association StudentSupport Committee, I was inspired by these accounts. They sparked conversations abouttopics typically forbidden and resulted in a sense of camaraderie among students. Itoccurred to me that their impact could be matched, if not exceeded, by similar accountsfrom faculty, who hold positions of great revere in the MIT community.

As a result, I approached Professor Belcher about sharing his story, which we publishedin the March 19 issue of The Tech. I think that additional faculty accounts like ProfessorBelcher’s regarding the many flavors of mental health obstacles will be inspiring andhelpful for students. Because of the invisible nature of mental health afflictions, however,it is difficult to identify faculty who might be willing to share their stories unless they arealready open about them. My hope is that by publishing a solicitation in the FacultyNewsletter I might reach a broader audience of faculty with wellness-related accounts toshare with students. If you are interested in adding your story to a more open discussionabout mental health at MIT, please contact me at [email protected] or [email protected] — anything you can offer is much appreciated. Note that for at least thissemester, there are also opportunities to publish through one of our partner organiza-tions, ActiveMinds (see web.mit.edu/activeminds/speakyourmind.html).

Thank you.

Betsy Riley ’14UA Student Support Committee, Chair


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children would be, how to prepare for theupcoming Neptune encounter in August,and because of the melanoma, still pan-icked about my mortality.

It was the perfect storm. My physicalcoordination went. My thought processesbecame disordered. I had a hard time, forexample, simply reciting the Pledge ofAllegiance. I became lethargic, and had ahard time getting out of bed in themorning. Sleeping all the time seemed likea good option. I retained a certain detach-ment as I was sinking into depression. “Sothis is what it feels like to become clinicallydepressed” I would say to myself. Youcannot imagine what it is like unless youhave been there. I have always had hyper-active thought processes – juggling amillion things at once in my head. For thefirst time in my life I could no longer dothat. I soon realized what “living in theday” meant. The best I could do eachmorning was make a sort of ranked list ofthe things I had to do to get out of the sit-uation I was in, and then just forget every-thing except the one on the top of the list.Considering the full list for even a secondwas just overwhelming.

I started seeing a psychiatrist, whoimmediately diagnosed depression andrecommended an anti-depressant. I wasreluctant. I was raised in Texas and had amacho attitude. Real Texans don’t takeProzac. But I sank further into depres-sion and became less and less functional,and I realized that I had no choice. I hadto do something. The well-being of mychildren depended in part on my being a

reasonably functioning adult, and I wasfar from that state. So I started takingProzac.

I know that there is a lot of popularpress these days about anti-depressantsnot always being effective. Maybe that istrue for some people, but nothing couldbe further from the truth for me. I could

immediately see the difference in mymental processes two days after I startedtaking Prozac. I would describe it as likebeing in a room full of a huge amount ofstatic background noise that makes itimpossible to think, and then someonewalks into the room and turns the volumeway down. I could think logically again. Icould recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Myphysical coordination returned. Lifebecame tolerable. Not great, but tolerable.That made it possible to slowly startdealing with the situation I was in.

These events took place more than 20years ago. I am now happily remarried.My children are now 34 and 37. I am per-manently on Prozac, as a prophylactic.Since I am a Texan and by definitionshould be able to whip depression all bymyself, I have on two different occasionsin the last 20 years gone off of Prozac. Inboth cases after about six months I lapsedback into clinical depression. I think oncehaving been depressed, your body chem-

istry is such that you are more susceptibleto a recurrence. Watching my descent intodepression again those two times wasreally enlightening. I would do fine with acertain level of stress, but if one addi-tional, not so big, stressor was added, Iwent from flying high above the waves tobeing right at sea level, and then even theslightest additional thing could cause meto go down. And it could be really fast, likestepping off a cliff. My body chemistrycould change in a few days from more orless normal to clinical depression, with allthe symptoms I mentioned above. So Ijust stay on Prozac. Luckily for me, it hasalways remained as efficacious as the firsttime I used it.

This term I am teaching in and co-administering 8.02 along with PeterDourmashkin, with 830 students. Weboth know from long experience that it isstatistically inevitable that a handful ofour 8.02 students will get into trouble thisterm, with their own perfect storm, andthat clinical depression is one of the possi-ble outcomes. I am no doctor, but I dorecognize the symptoms of depression. Ifa student comes to me with troubles ofany kind, I always tell them to go to S^3 orMental Health. In case depression is thecause of the trouble, I also share withthem that I have been clinically depressedand am on Prozac, and that there is noshame in that.

We should all be thankful that we live inthis day and age, when these medicationsand treatments are available. We shouldnot avoid them. In the words of GraceTaylor, “It’s not you, it’s a disease.”

It was the perfect storm. My physical coordination went.My thought processes became disordered. I had a hardtime, for example, simply reciting the Pledge ofAllegiance. I became lethargic, and had a hard timegetting out of bed in the morning.

These events took place more than 20 years ago. I amnow happily remarried. My children are now 34 and 37. Iam permanently on Prozac, as a prophylactic.

John Belcher is a Professor in the Departmentof Physics ([email protected]).


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Patrick H. WinstonTeach TalkDialog on Right-Now Talks

THROUGH AN ACCIDENT OF NATURE,

no recitation instructors were availablethis past term for 6.034, Introduction toArtificial Intelligence. My TAs and I won-dered how we could make up for theenrichment function normally providedin weekly recitations. We decided to add“right-now” talks. On eight Fridays, wehad inspirational MIT faculty and stafftalk about what they were doing in theirresearch right now. We aimed to schedulethe right-now talks so that they demon-strated that the skills and concepts I wasteaching are relevant to current researchand practice.

To get feedback, we asked a few ques-tions on the cover page of our final. Theresults seemed to invite discussion at theGalileo Society. Segredo represented thestaff.

Simplicio: I’ve heard about Winston’sexperiment. Wasn’t this just making asubject out of a set of guest lectures?

Segredo: Winston still gave his usual lec-tures on Mondays and Wednesdays, sothere were still distinct syllabus-groundedlectures. The right-now talks were condi-ments.

Simplicio: How did the students react tothe right-now talks?

Segredo: Well, we ran a survey, asking thestudents to choose among (1) Good ideaas is, (2) Would be a good idea if..., and (3)Bad idea. We think 95% fell on the spec-trum from not completely against theconcept to wildly enthusiastic.

Salviati: What? It looks like 90% to me.

Segredo: You have to squint. Of 288 regis-tered students, 223 chose to try toimprove their grades by taking the final.Of the 223, 96% answered the question.Of these, 31% indicated they like theright-now idea as is. Another 59% sug-gested improvements. That brings us to90%.

Salviati: OK, so how did you get beyondthat?

Segredo: We looked carefully at the volun-teered comments of the students whochecked Bad idea. Nine wrote that theyvigorously disliked the execution, but saidnothing about disliking the concept.Three others didn’t like the concept: onewrote that he didn’t get anything out ofthe talks; another wrote that he didn’thave the right background; and a third

wrote he had trouble with the English. Soof those 12 who checked Bad idea and saidwhy, three-fourths complained about exe-cution rather than concept, with com-ments much like those who checkedWould be a good idea if.... Taking the nineas not completely against the concept getsus to 95%.

Salviati: You can’t say 95%!

Segredo: Right, we only think it. But 90%is still an impressive number.

Simplicio: What were the suggestions?

Segredo: There were 132; 42% wantedchanges in the way we asked questionsabout the right-now content in ourexams.

We just wanted to encourage students toattend and pay attention, so we askedmultiple choice questions that we thoughtwould be exceedingly easy for those whoattended and paid attention. Here is anexample:

Sussman’s propagator architecture is moti-vated, in part, by his interest in problemssuch as:

• Harnessing the power of cloud computing.• Harnessing the power of crowd sourcing.• Calculating the distances to galaxies. • Modeling the propagation of rumors

spreading through social media. • All of the above. • None of the above.

Sussman talked for 20 minutes about

Good idea if . . .59%

Good idea as is31%

Bad idea,execution

5%

Bad idea,no comment

4%

Bad idea,concept

1%


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galaxies and said nothing at all aboutcloud computing, crowd sourcing, orrumors.

Salviati: So everyone got those kinds ofquestions right?

Segredo: No, many found them difficultand complained. We soon got rid of theAll of the above and None of the aboveoptions, which everyone hated, but still,some said they attended faithfully andtried hard, but still bombed. The fact is,there is a lot of fogging out in lectures ofany kind. Next time, we will teach sometechniques for increasing absorption andretention.

Salviati: Like what?

Segredo: Taking structured notes and tellingsomeone about the talk right afterward.

Simplicio: Why bother? MIT is moving tolecture-free MITx, after all.

Segredo: We don’t think research talksand business pitches will move toward 12-minute chunks with gating questions inbetween.

Simplicio: Why didn’t you ask open-ended questions?

Segredo: It would have taken forever tograde them. Besides, our quizzes arechocked full with our regular material, so wehad to have rapidly-answerable questions.

Salviati: What other suggestions were there?

Segredo: 22% wanted fewer points allo-cated to the material. We allocated 2/7 ofeach student’s total score to questions cov-ering the eight right-now lectures andanother eight given by me that had anenrichment flavor. We might go a littlelower, but we think we would soon get lowenough that no one would show up. Weare competing with other subjects for ourstudents’ time, after all.

Simplicio: So how many showed up?

Segredo: Have a look at how the studentsresponded to an attendance question inour survey. About 50% of the studentsclaimed they went to at least 80% of theregular lectures and the right-now talks;more than 70% went to most of them.

Simplicio: Why didn’t you just take attendance?

Segredo: The look and feel of attendancetaking seems wrong. Besides, you canattend and not pay attention.

Simplicio: Why are you so sure attendancewould have dropped without testing?

Segredo: Well, we offered a totallyoptional Friday afternoon one-hoursession focused on discussing the materialcovered by that day’s right-now speaker.Typically, about 10 students came.

Salviati: What else did the students saythey wanted?

Segredo: 12% wanted notes. Another 4%wanted the talks to be available online.But notes and recordings would discour-age showing up.

Simplicio: So what?

Segredo: No inspiration. No practice ingetting something out of a research talk.Speaker recruiting would become impossible.

Simplicio: What about the rest of the suggestions?

Segredo: In the miscellaneous category,perhaps the most interesting suggestionwas that we threaten to ask questionsabout the right-now talks, but not actuallydo it.

Others suggested that we provide pre-views before the right-now talks, discuss

them in tutorials afterward, and supplyfood during.

Salviati: Any big surprises?

Segredo: Not a big surprise, but althoughthere were lots of complaints about ourtesting, no one volunteered that ourtesting uncovered a personal absorptionand retention problem.

Salviati: Will you do it again, with adjust-ments?

Segredo: Definitely. The idea emergedfrom an accident, but the right-now ideaplays on the question of where the value-added will be when much of skill teachingmoves to MITx and its analogs. At leastpart of the value-added will be inspirationfrom inspiring live speakers and a sense ofbeing at a place where interesting andimportant things are happening. We haveto find all sorts of ways to amplify thatpart of the experience.

60%

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Right-NowLecture

Patrick H. Winston is a Professor in theDepartment of Electrical Engineering andComputer Science ([email protected]).


10

Timothy L. GroveSamuel M. AllenDaniel HastingsWilliam E. Grimson

MIT Freshman Mentoring and Advising:The Role of the Faculty

AS A MENTOR, A FACULTY MEMBER

becomes an essential part of the networkthat supports freshmen during their tran-sition from high school to university life.Faculty mentors provide excellent supportfor the development of individuals whowill become lifelong learners and leaders.Faculty mentors also provide counsel onthe intellectual and disciplinary paths tofollow while enrolled at MIT and ondirections to pursue after graduation.Faculty mentors facilitate future opportu-nities by providing letters of recommen-dation for summer jobs, internships orgraduate school applications. Facultyinvolvement and interaction with fresh-men leads to better teaching and learningand is a natural mechanism for improvingthe quality of residence-based undergrad-uate education.

Freshman advising at MIT has been atopic of concern over the past decadebecause of the decline in the number offaculty members serving as freshmanadvisors. The number has decreased froma high of ~120 faculty in 1996 to only 83in the current academic year.Consideration of how MIT might reversethis decline in faculty involvement led theCommittee on the UndergraduateProgram (CUP) to evaluate the key prin-ciples underlying the current freshmanadvising model. In the course of this exer-cise the CUP developed a set of desiredcharacteristics for MIT’s freshman advis-ing program. An important finding ofCUP’s study was that faculty are only onepart of an advising and mentoringnetwork, but they are an essential part.The CUP believes that this knowledge andrecent developments in support for fresh-men at MIT, described below, providenew opportunities for more facultymembers to become involved in freshmanmentoring.

Reassessing Residence-BasedEducation

This is a critical time for MIT’s faculty toreassess its vision of residence-based edu-cation. Part of that re-evaluation mustconsider the role of faculty/student men-toring. The CUP believes that intellectualinteractions between faculty and studentsshould be a core value and defining char-acteristic of an MIT undergraduate edu-cation. The 2011 Enrolled Student Surveyfound that MIT undergraduates were sig-nificantly less satisfied with the amount offaculty interaction than students at theinstitutions represented in two cohorts ofpeers: Peer 1, a small group of private,highly-selective research universities withwhom we most closely identify; and Peer2, a larger group of other private, highly-selective research universities. (See chart,below.)

Furthermore, the same survey alsorevealed that MIT seniors are much lesslikely than students at those peer institu-tions to know three or more facultymembers who would write letters of rec-ommendation. This finding has seriousimplications for our students’ post-bac-calaureate planning. (See chart, nextpage.)

MIT students want more interactionwith faculty members and one importantway to meet this desire is to providefaculty mentoring during the freshmanyear, and to continue it through astudent’s time at MIT. The CUP believesthat the current model for faculty engage-ment in freshman advising can beimproved upon. It should be possible tostructure the program so that the facultyadvisor’s efforts are focused on mentoringmore than on subject selection and otheradministrative activities.

In the past, freshman advising hasrequired faculty advisors to know “every-thing” about MIT’s freshman year – or atleast that is what many faculty membershave assumed. In reality, there has been asignificant shift from that time-consum-ing and sometimes emotionally demand-ing role to one in which the faculty

member is part of a freshman’s network ofsupport. This network includes knowl-edgeable staff with expertise in degreerequirements, professional development,and support of the physical and mentalwell-being of our students. Manymembers of the academic community, inaddition to faculty members, already con-tribute to this suite of resources.

Source: 2011 Enrolled Student Survey

-100% -80% -60% -40% -20% 0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%

Less than I would have liked

About the right amount

More than I would have liked

MIT

Peer 1

Peer 2

Current academic year: Interact with faculty


11

Academic Resources• Advisor• Student Associate Advisor• Office of Undergraduate Advising and

Academic Programming (UAAP)• Academic program offices (e.g.,

Communication and HASS Requirements)• ROTC officers• Learning communities – Concourse,

Experimental Studies Group (ESG),Media Arts and Sciences (MAS), andTerrascope

• Office of Minority Education (OME)• UROP supervisors

Residential Resources• Housemasters• Graduate Resident Tutors (GRT)• Residential Life staff

Other Professional Resources• Coaches• Office of Global Education and Career

Development• Student Support Services

The specific roles and responsibilitiesfor each group within the advising andmentoring network have been discussedby the CUP, DUE, and staff in the UAAP,the office that coordinates freshmanadvising. These groups worked togetherto define a matrix of the interconnected

and interrelated roles for the members ofthe network. For some types of advice, thefaculty mentor plays a key role; while forother types of advice the student associateadvisor or a housemaster plays theprimary role.

Although existing resources availableto freshmen are diverse, this network ofsupport would benefit greatly fromincreased faculty involvement. TheCUP’s goal is to turn the existing advis-ing/mentoring network into a systemthat encourages faculty commitment tofreshman advising while shifting thefaculty advisor’s primary role from onethat is often largely administrative to onethat is primarily focused on mentoring.The key to this is structuring a systemthat takes advantage of the complemen-tary skills and knowledge available fromother teaching staff and administrators.Our proposal would initially build on thetwo existing avenues available now forfaculty participation in freshman advis-ing: offering a Freshman AdvisingSeminar (FAS) or participating in a tra-ditional advising relationship. Everyadvisor will be matched with an upperclass student, the Associate Advisor, whois well informed in the GIRs and isknowledgeable about MIT supportresources.

Accomplishing Our ObjectivesTo accomplish our objective of ensuringthat every first-year MIT undergraduate isadvised or mentored by a faculty member,we need about 145 faculty mentors. Thatis about 12.5% of the number of full-timeMIT faculty. Mentoring could be pro-vided through Freshman AdvisingSeminars, traditional advising, and byfaculty pairing up with staff advisingexperts in UAAP, ESG, Concourse andOME. And we should think about newways of mentoring students. Meeting reg-ularly with a small group of students forlunch or dinner could be a very effectiveand enjoyable way of interacting. YaleUniversity does this in their system of res-idential colleges. Faculty members have anopen invitation to dine with undergradu-ates. If you have visited Yale and experi-enced the intense and vibrant exchangesthat go on at almost every dining table,you probably thought “Why don’t we dothis at MIT?”

Why haven’t we met this goal of fresh-man mentoring before now? In the pasttwo decades, a number of faculty-ledcommittees have looked at freshmanadvising and made suggestions on how wecould enhance faculty participation. TheCUP spent the past year developing a setof Freshman Advising Principles. A reviewof the “Report of the Task Force on theUndergraduate Educational Commons”also provided some sound and thoughtfuladvice on this subject.

One reason that things have notchanged relates to the fact that some facultyin departments with large undergraduateenrollments are already advising sizeablegroups of upper-class undergraduates,which can consume a great deal of facultytime and energy. There is a feeling thatthere is not enough time for faculty to dofreshman advising as well. However, notevery department has a large number ofmajors, and we could distribute mentoringactivities in a way that shares the loadamong us all. Also, we don’t need to haveevery faculty member in the Institute par-ticipating in freshman advising. As out-lined above, this problem could be solved if

0

1

2

3

4 or more

Source: 2011 Enrolled Student Survey

continued on next page

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%

MIT

Peer 1

Peer 2

01234 or more

Number of faculty who know me well enoughto provide letter of recommendation


12

we increase the number serving as fresh-man advisors from 70 to 145. An additional75 faculty advisors should be sufficient.

Can we not find a way to do this?Perhaps it is time to provide some incen-tives or look at the advising load of depart-ments and balance these loads bydistributing responsibilities for freshmento faculty in departments with smallerundergraduate enrollments. Perhaps wecan identify and provide meaningfulincentives. In any case, it will require thatall of us at MIT – faculty members, depart-

ment heads, deans and the MIT adminis-tration – work together to create a newsystem to mentor first-year students. Wewill need to identify resources and developmechanisms that support faculty mentor-ing and advising. To begin this process ofreinventing freshman advising at MIT, theCUP offers the following resolution:

Proposed Faculty ResolutionIt is the sense of the MIT faculty that everyfreshman should have a faculty memberserving as a mentor or advisor. We ask thatthe leaders in MIT’s administration partnerwith the CUP, the Deans of the five Schools,and DUE and DSL to develop and imple-

ment an advising program that moves ustowards this end.

We would value your input, advice,and feedback on this proposed facultyresolution.

MIT Freshman MentoringGrove et al., from preceding page

Timothy L. Grove is Chair of the Committeeon the Undergraduate Program and a Professorof Geology ([email protected]);Samuel M. Allen is Chair of the MIT Facultyand a Professor of Metallurgy([email protected]);Daniel Hastings is Dean for UndergraduateEducation and a Professor of EngineeringSystems and Aeronautics and Astronautics([email protected]);William E. Grimson is Chancellor and aProfessor of Medical Engineering([email protected]);

Naren TallapragadaRavi CharanJonté Craighead

Undergraduates Support FacultyMentorship of Every MIT Freshman

I NTE LLE CTUAL LI FE AT M IT thriveson vibrant exchanges between students andfaculty. We have all seen the results of success-ful student-faculty relationships, from spir-ited class discussions to productive researchcollaborations. Moreover, the relationshipbetween a faculty advisor and an undergrad-uate advisee can teach students the value ofseeking out good mentors throughout theirlives. We are writing on behalf of the MITUndergraduate Association to endorse CUP’scall in this Faculty Newsletter (Vol. XXV, No.4) for every freshman to be mentored by amember of the faculty. We believe that theseefforts will catalyze more meaningful engage-ment between undergraduates and the MITfaculty.

Currently, the freshman advising systemcaters to the immediate needs of freshmenwhen they arrive on campus, with, forexample, appropriate focus on choosingclasses in which to enroll. Here, MIT staffand students play an invaluable role inhelping freshmen adjust to college life. Theirguidance on “how to get around MIT” isimportant – but so is the unique perspectiveof faculty members on how to get involvedwith academic life at the Institute. This per-spective can broaden a freshman’s intellec-tual horizons in ways that the perspective ofother advisors – staff and students – cannot.

To be clear, the current system servessome students well. Some faculty alreadyadvise freshmen and do a wonderful job ofit. Many students are capable of seeking outmentorship proactively, and others arehighly independent and do fine without it.Yet some students remain underserved bythe current system. These students – manyof whom spend their freshman year inlecture classes with hundreds of students –often find the faculty and their position ofauthority to be intimidating.

You know these students – or, rather, youdon’t. They’re the ones who don’t come toyour office hours and don’t raise their handsin class. As students ourselves, we can tellyou that they’re not uninterested in classesor in forming relationships with faculty.Rather, they lack confidence – these samestudents have no difficulty approachingtheir peers with insightful questions. Pairingfreshmen with faculty mentors will showthese students the value and process ofengaging with their professors and can helpto humanize the faculty as well.

Faculty mentorship can transcend thepurely administrative relationship that toomany undergraduates associate with theword “advising.” Advising should be morethan signing forms, ensuring progressthrough a degree checklist, or occasionally

helping with class selection.Indeed, students’ attitudes towards fresh-

man and upperclassman advising are decid-edly intertwined: many undergraduateshave been conditioned by their freshmanadvising experience to think of subsequentadvisors as functionaries rather than asmentors. Some of our fellow students seetheir departmental advisors no more thanonce per semester, and, even then, merely toobtain a (now digital) signature.

Faculty mentorship of all freshmen willteach students to value and cultivate rela-tionships both with major advisors and withfaculty in general. Such a mentorship systemwould also send a strong signal – to stu-dents, parents, and the world – that, even inthe era of MOOCs, MIT cares deeply aboutthe quality of the residential educationalexperience that it offers to undergraduates.

On behalf of the MIT UndergraduateAssociation, we endorse the proposed reso-lution on freshman advising and urge you todo the same. After all, we were all collegefreshmen once.Naren Tallapragada is a Senior and Chair of theUndergraduate Association (UA) Committee onEducation ([email protected]);Ravi Charan is a Junior and the UA Chief of Staff([email protected]);Jonté Craighead is a Senior and the UA President([email protected]).


13

issue and make a recommendation.Professor Kochan made a Solomonic rec-ommendation – that the increase inzoning density, which provides a signifi-cant increase in opportunity for MIT,should be supported, but that the ques-tion of what to do with this expandedopportunity needs much deeper consid-eration by the MIT community. Given thesignificance of these strategic decisions atthis important moment in the history ofthe Institute, what principles shouldinform this discussion? What moral obli-gation does MIT have to the Cambridgecommunity? To the State and region? Tothe MIT community? These are questionsthat the MIT faculty, staff, and studentbody should be discussing, and engagingthe administration and MIT Corporation.

A Little HistoryOver 40 years ago physical issues of evenlarger magnitude faced Cambridge andMIT when the state was proposing to build8-lane highways (the “Inner Belt” and theextension of Route 2) through Cambridgeneighborhoods of Cambridgeport, CentralSquare, and Porter Square, as well asUnion Square in Somerville, with thedestruction of thousands of homes andbusinesses and inflicting substantial dis-ruption on neighborhood fabric and trans-portation systems. The debate over theInner Belt was polarizing, with significantdivisions of opinion about the relative roleof public transportation and the automo-bile, the sustainability of suburban sprawl,the environmental impacts of increasingpetroleum consumption and air pollution,and especially the socioeconomic injusticeof disrupting inner-city, largely poor andworking-class multiracial neighborhoods,for the convenience of higher income,largely white and suburban automobilecommuters. The divisions and debateoccurred at the national, state, and locallevels, with the conventional wisdom of“business as usual” planning elites arguingthat the continuation of the 1950s para-digm was essential for economic growth,

and environmental justice advocatesarguing that this definition of economicprogress is unsustainable, and that a transitoriented strategy could lead to more eco-nomic growth, improved environmentaloutcomes, and improved socioeconomicjustice. This debate split the MIT commu-nity, with the MIT administration pursu-ing strategies to benefit from the disruptionof Cambridgeport and Central Square toexpand MIT ownership of neighborhoodreal estate, while many faculty voices chal-lenged the injustice inherent in that strat-egy, and demanded that MIT behave as acooperative member of the Cambridgecommunity.

Kevin Lynch of the MIT Urban Designand Planning faculty actually proposedrelocating the highway route to a highviaduct along the Grand Junction railroad,which would have substantially avoided thelow- and moderate-income neighborhoods.When President Killian of MIT publiclyopposed any roadway construction nearMIT, junior faculty such as RobertGoodman, Chester Hartman, and LisaPeattie organized a signature drive attract-ing over 500 members of the MIT andHarvard academic community who coura-geously demanded that MIT behave as agood neighbor within the Cambridge com-munity, and either welcome the road in itsneighborhood, or oppose the construction ofthe highways anywhere in Cambridge.Neighborhood opposition skillfully organ-ized by Father Paul McManus of St. Maryof the Annunciation Parish secured thesupport of Cambridge Mayor Dan Hayes,Congressman Tip O’Neill, Senators EdBrooke and Ted Kennedy, Boston mayorKevin White, and state representative (latergovernor) Mike Dukakis, and built aregional coalition stretching fromCambridge and Somerville to East Boston,and Roxbury to Milton and Needham,demanding a halt to the destruction of theneighborhoods for highways.

In 1970, Governor Sargent askedProfessor Alan Altshuler of MIT’s PoliticalScience Department to chair a task force toreview the Commonwealth transportationplans, and accepted the task force recom-mendation of a highway construction

moratorium and fundamental transporta-tion policy review. Altshuler designed andimplemented the first transportation studyto embrace the principles of the newly-enacted (1970) National EnvironmentalPolicy Act. Based on that review, GovernorSargent canceled the Inner Belt Highwayand Route 2 Extension, secured changes infederal legislation to allow an equal amountof federal funding to be available for publictransportation, set in motion the expansionof the Red Line to Porter Square, DavisSquare, Alewife, and Braintree, reformedthe MBTA, imposed parking limits inCambridge and downtown Boston, andmade gasoline tax money available fortransit. The following governor, Dukakis,consolidated and extended the transit-ori-ented policies, expanding the capacity of theRed and Orange Lines by 50%, andacquired and recapitalized the bankruptcommuter rail networks. These changes intransportation strategy made possible thedramatic growth and economic develop-ment in the Kendall Square area, with prac-tically no increase in traffic, and theredeployment of Cambridge street space tomore pedestrian- and bicycle-friendly uses.The proposed doubling of density in theKendall Square area could not be contem-plated today except for the changes in trans-portation strategy unleashed by theanti-highway fight. But what about envi-ronmental justice? How are the lower-income residents organized by FatherMcManus faring?

Back to TodayThe good news is that the Cambridgeneighborhoods were spared the physicaldestruction that had been plannedthrough Central Square, Porter Square,and Union Square. But Cambridge hasincreasingly become unaffordable forlow- and moderate-income people. TheCambridge Residents Alliance and otherresidents have challenged the idea that theincreased density now proposed can bepursued without worsening the housingaffordability problem. Adding high-density, high-income housing to CentralSquare with only token amounts of

MIT 2030 and the Kendall Zoning IssueSalvucci, from page 1



14

affordable housing is likely to spur moregentrification. Many academics and plan-ners say that the continuing increase inrents, especially of transit-accessiblehousing, is stunting economic growth (seeKaufman “heat” map below). Some MITfaculty and graduate students have arguedpersuasively that the shortage of afford-able graduate housing on or near campusis also undermining the viability of theMIT graduate student research programthat is fundamental to the success of MIT.

But doing nothing will only ensure thecontinuation of gentrification and lack of

adequate graduate housing. Densificationof Kendall Square can help to change thedynamic. There is a targeted and poten-tially effective response that MIT can initi-ate. The number of graduate students and

postdocs for whom MIT does not provideon- or near-campus housing has grown toapproximately 4,000 graduate students

and 1,000 postdocs, who are displacinglow- and moderate-income residentsfrom more affordable housing than the

cancelled highways would have destroyed.It is clear that lack of MIT graduatestudent housing is having a severe adverseimpact on housing affordability, probablymuch more significant than the successful

economy. With reasonable public trans-portation access, employees of Novartisare much less likely than MIT graduate

students to be competing with long-termresidents for housing near Central Square,or in Somerville. By committing to a

policy of building 100%affordable housing for gradu-ate students either on campusor nearby, and implementingit quickly, MIT could simulta-neously ease gentrificationpressure on the neighbor-hoods and deal definitivelywith the need for affordablegraduate student housing. If,in addition, MIT were toprovide affordable on- ornear-campus housing tojunior faculty and staff, MITcould further reduce gentrifi-cation pressures, and improveits competitiveness in recruit-ing junior faculty.

If MIT or Kendall Squaredevelopers were allowed to“buy” additional developmentrights from Central Square,and transfer them to KendallSquare, moderate height, low-and moderate-incomehousing could be added nearCentral Square, financed bythe purchase of developmentrights, helping the City to sta-bilize the density and afford-ability of Central Square. In

Kendall Square, increased high-rise devel-opment would be further from traditionalneighborhoods.

In terms of transportation access, dou-bling the density of economic activity in

It is clear that lack of MIT graduate student housing ishaving a severe adverse impact on housing affordability,probably much more significant than the successfuleconomy. With reasonable public transportation access,employees of Novartis are much less likely than MITgraduate students to be competing with long-termresidents for housing near Central Square, or inSomerville.

MIT 2030 and the Kendall Zoning IssueSalvucci, from preceding page

Kaufman Heat Map. Prices per bedroom as of January 2013.

$1800+

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Kendall Square risks attracting moretraffic to a street network that is alreadycongested. MIT can take three significantactions to offset this risk. First, MIT couldsubstantially expand its transit benefitprogram to provide (at least) as muchsubsidy to transit commuting as it pro-vides in below-market parking prices forauto commuters. Nearby Novartis pro-vides free transit passes to all its employ-ees. Imagine the “green” message if MITwere to provide all of its students, staff,and faculty free transit passes! Second,MIT could go on a “parking diet,” reduc-ing the amount of on–campus parking aswell as that proposed to meet theexpanded density envisioned at KendallSquare, thereby reducing the traffic gener-ation that would otherwise occur. Third,by supporting changing signalization atthe intersections of Ames Street andWadsworth Street with Memorial Drive,MIT can help to provide better automo-bile access to Kendall Square fromMemorial Drive, reducing pressure onMassachusetts Avenue, Broadway, andThird Street, and strengthening the sym-bolic connection of Kendall Square to themagnificent amenity that is the CharlesRiver Reservation with high-qualitypedestrian connections.

The challenge of providing adequatelevels of new public transportation capac-ity to supplement the crowded Red Linerequires MIT to join a coalition arguingthat the State quickly implement “UrbanRing” bus service, Green Line or DMU railservice in the Grand Junction Corridor,modernize the Red Line signal system,and purchase more Red Line railcars. Ifthe higher building density proposed nearKendall Square is accompanied by aparking cap at current levels, new devel-opment will require transit improve-ments, and the developers and MIT willhave to lobby the State to deliver more andbetter transit service. The State will haveto make significant improvements inpublic transportation to convince thepublic, as well as developers, that it is rea-

sonable to pursue higher density.It is true that MIT is better than most

local universities both in its provision ofon-campus housing for graduate stu-dents, and its transit subsidies. However,

being better than others is not enough. IfMIT wants to be a world leader in sustain-ability, it needs to do more. MIT is askingfor permission to double the developmentdensity of its land. If MIT argues (cor-rectly, in my view) that higher density atKendall is good for economic, environ-mental, and equitable sustainability, thenMIT needs to take the lead by building atleast 5,000 units of affordable graduatestudent housing, and reducing the auto-mobile dependency of its existingcampus, as well as in its Kendall Squareproposals.

If the City of Cambridge permits thedoubling of density in the Kendall Squarearea, they are providing a very large finan-cial benefit to MIT and other landownersin the area, a benefit that creates a hugemoral obligation for MIT and others toreciprocate. I agree with the recommen-dation of Professor Kochan’s committeethat the MIT community should supportthe increase in zoning density, but recon-sider in a much more open discussionwith faculty, staff, students, and thebroader community how MIT should usethis opportunity. Provost Chris Kaiser hasnow designated Professor Phil Clay aschair of a graduate student housing

working group, which can serve as aforum for this discussion. To be meaning-ful, the task force should not waste timedeciding if there is a shortage of affordablegraduate student housing. It is clear that

MIT has an urgent responsibility to con-struct 5,000 to 6,000 housing units forgraduate students and postdocs, marriedstudents, and junior faculty. The task forceshould focus on where and how to addthis housing in timely fashion to beincluded in the Kendall Square redevelop-ment prior to final City approval.

The rest is up to us. Over 40 years agoMIT faculty such as Professors KevinLynch, Robert Goodman, Lisa Peattie,Tunney Lee, and Alan Altshuler “thoughtglobally, and acted locally,” courageouslychallenged the business-as-usual attitudesof the MIT administration, and substan-tially improved the trajectory of urbandevelopment in the Boston metropolitanarea, and the nation. The discussion ofhow best to use the opportunity ofKendall densification is this generation’sopportunity for leadership by the MITcommunity.

It is true that MIT is better than most local universitiesboth in its provision of on-campus housing for graduatestudents, and its transit subsidies. However, being betterthan others is not enough. If MIT wants to be a worldleader in sustainability, it needs to do more. . . . If the Cityof Cambridge permits the doubling of density in theKendall Square area, they are providing a very largefinancial benefit to MIT and other landowners in thearea, a benefit that creates a huge moral obligation forMIT and others to reciprocate.

Fred Salvucci is a Senior Lecturer andResearch Associate in the Department of Civiland Environmental Engineering([email protected]). He was an MIT graduate intransportation who went on to work as a volun-teer in the anti-highway, pro-transit citizen coali-tion of the 1960s and ’70s. He later served asSecretary of Transportation for Governor MichaelDukakis.


16

Christine OrtizSurvey of Graduate Alumni: CareerTrajectories, Entrepreneurship, andProfessional Skills

M I T A L U M N I W I T H G R A D UAT E

degrees currently total 79,885 and nowconstitute over 50% of all MIT alumni.Their accomplishments are diverse,numerous, and bring great prestige toMIT. Examples include 20 Nobel Prizewinners (among them George SmootPhD ’71, Physics; Kofi Annan SM ’72,Peace; and Paul Krugman PhD ’77,Economics) and 23 astronauts (includingCol. Edwin E. “Buzz” Aldrin, Jr., ScD ’63,and Ronald E. McNair, PhD ’76). MIT hasgraduated leaders in fields as diverse asgovernment (such as BenjaminNetanyahu SM ’76, Prime Minister ofIsrael, and Sheila Widnall SM’61, ScD ’64,former Secretary of the Air Force 1993-1997, MIT Institute Professor ofAeronautics and Astronautics andEngineering Systems Division), onlineeducation (Salman Khan, MEng ’98,founder of the Khan Academy), musictechnology (Amar Bose SM ’52, ScD ’56,founder of Bose), computers (RadiaPerlman SM ’76, PhD ’88, “Mother of theInternet”, and Steve Kirsch SM ’80, inven-tor of the optical mouse), business (RobinChase SM ’86, founder of Zipcar, andCecil H. Green SM ’24, founder, TexasInstruments), invention (Bernard GordonSM ’49, inventor of Doppler Radar andholder of over 200 patents), and academia(Shirley A. Jackson, PhD ’73, President ofRensselaer Polytechnic Institute andnuclear physicist). Graduate alumni rep-resent a rich source of information aboutthe knowledge and skills gained duringtheir education at MIT and its persistencethroughout their career.

During the fall semester of 2012, theOffice of the Dean for Graduate

Education (ODGE) sponsored a survey ofgraduate alumni whose degrees wereawarded approximately 5, 10, 15, 20, and25 years prior. The purpose of the surveywas to elucidate post-graduate trends inemployment and career trajectories,entrepreneurship activities, professionalactivities and accomplishments, and thenecessary knowledge and skillsets forvarious career paths. We expect this infor-mation will be useful in the developmentof graduate curricula, co-curricular pro-fessional development activities, andstrengthening engagement with graduatealumni. The graduate alumni surveyyielded 3,692 valid responses, correspon-ding to an overall response rate of 23%.The distribution of respondents, both bycohort and by general field of study, issimilar to that of the invited population.Doctoral students responded at a higherrate than other degree categories, but themajority of the conclusions we draw arewithin degree type. The proportion offemale graduate alumni respondentsincreases by cohort year, from 18% ofthose 25 years out to 37% of those fiveyears out. Similarly, the proportion ofnon-U.S. citizens increases by cohort year,with 16% of those 25 years out saying theyare not a U.S. citizen to 40% of those fiveyears out. The full survey results may beaccessed at web.mit.edu/ir/surveys/grad_alum.html.

The dataset provides a wealth of infor-mation and is currently being analyzed.Of note, 94% of graduate alumni respon-dents were “generally satisfied” or “verysatisfied” with their time being a graduatestudent at MIT. In what follows, wedescribe some salient Institute-level

trends in the areas of career trajectories,entrepreneurship, and professional skills.

Career Trajectories93% of our graduate alumni areemployed, with just 2% currently seekingemployment (others are engaged in suchactivities as travel and caring for family).The average annual salary of graduatealumni was reported to be $156,793; themedian was $137,500. Graduate alumni,overall, were most likely to report workingin a private for-profit organization (54%),in a U.S. four-year college or university(13%), or to be self-employed (9%).Figure 1 disaggregates these data bydegree type and shows significant andinteresting differences. Though the doc-toral degree has traditionally been consid-ered as a main pathway to academia, 54%of doctoral alumni reported that theiremployer was a governmental, industry,not-for-profit, or other organization, orwere self-employed. This is somewhathigher than the 45% of PhD recipientswho report a non-academic employer atgraduation. Alumni were also asked todescribe the course of their career so farwith regard to their field; over half of doc-toral alumni reported that they remainedin the same field while two-thirds of MBAalumni and 58% of other Masters alumnihave changed fields at least once. A TaskForce on Graduate Student ProfessionalDevelopment (“TFPRO”) that I haveassembled is currently consideringvarious necessary skillsets (discussed lateron in this article), both discipline-specificand transferable, and will provide recom-mendations for formulating a coherentset of graduate co-curricular professional


17

development offerings that will betterprepare our graduate students for theemployment trends observed in thesedata.

Entrepreneurship With MIT situated in a dense externalecosystem of start-ups, entrepreneurshipamong our faculty and students has flour-ished on MIT’s campus, rising sharplyover the last 10 to 15 years. Institute-wide,28% of graduate alumni have started acompany, 25% have invested in a start-up,and 15% indicate they are working on astart-up currently (see Figure 2 for datadisaggregated by degree type). In Figure 2,we can see that even 21% of Doctoralalumni, and 29% of other Mastersalumni, have also started a company; ofthose respondents, 24% of Doctoratesand 19% of Masters say the company wasbased on their research at MIT. 28% of theDoctorates and 33% of the Masters (bothMBA and other) had started their firstcompany within five years of their MITdegree. Moreover, 41% of Doctoralalumni have at least one patent or inven-tion, as do 12% of MBA alumni and 27%of other Masters alumni.

Professional SkillsAll graduate alumni survey respondentswere asked to rate the importance of avariety of professional skills to theircurrent work on a scale from Not

Important to Essential. The most highlyranked skill for all three groups (Doctoral,MBA, and other Masters alumni) wascommunicating effectively one-on-one.All three groups also ranked prioritizationvery highly, but the other three skills in thetop five varied somewhat by group:Doctoral alumni valued critical thinking,

time management, and taking initiative;MBA alumni highly ranked being flexibleand adaptable/responsive to change,taking initiative, and resourcefulness; andother Masters alumni emphasized beingflexible and adaptable/responsive tochange, resourcefulness, and critical

Academia, 45.6%

Gov't., 5.6%

Non-profit, 3.7%

Industry, 38.8%

Self-Employed,

4.7% Other, 1.6%

Doctoral Alumni Academia, 3.6%

Gov't., 3.5%

Non-profit, 1.8%

Industry, 76.5%

Self-Employed,

11.6%

Other, 3.0%

MBA Alumni

Academia, 13.1%

Gov't., 9.6%

Non-profit, 5.1%

Industry, 57.5%

Self-Employed, 12.0%

Other, 2.5%

Other Masters* Alumni

Figure 1: Employment sector distributions by graduate degree type (recipients of degrees in 1987, 1988, 1992, 1993,1997, 1998, 2002, 2003, 2007, and 2008).

*“Other Masters” includes: Master of Architecture (MArch), Master in City Planning (MCP), Master of Engineering (MEng), Master of Finance (MFin),Master of Science (SM), Engineer (each degree designates the field in which it is awarded).

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90%

Are you on a Scientific Advisory Board?

Are you a founding member of your current company?

Are you currently working on a start-up in addition to your current position?

Is your current employer a ''start-up'' company?

Are you on a Board of Directors?

Are you on other advisory boards?

Have you ever invested in a start-up?

Have you ever started a company?

Have you been involved in innovation within your current company?

% Answering 'Yes'

Other Masters Degree MBA Doctoral

Figure 2: Entrepreneurial activity by graduate degree type (recipients ofdegrees in 1987, 1988, 1992, 1993, 1997, 1998, 2002, 2003, 2007, and 2008).

*“Other Masters” includes: Master of Architecture (MArch), Master in City Planning (MCP), Masterof Engineering (MEng), Master of Finance (MFin), Master of Science (SM), Engineer (eachdegree designates the field in which it is awarded).



18

thinking. As mentioned above, theTFPRO will draw on these data from thesurvey to further inform its recommenda-tions for formulating a coherent set ofideal professional development offeringsfor MIT graduate students.

The key results elucidated by the grad-uate alumni survey are important as weconsider the future of residential graduateeducation. Our graduates are pursuing adiverse set of career paths and experienc-ing dynamic career trajectories. They areextensively engaged in innovation andentrepreneurship. And they have identi-fied transferable skills, including one-on-one communication, prioritization,critical thinking, flexibility, and resource-

fulness, as critical to their success. MITmust think carefully about how to evolvegraduate education in response to thepicture that emerges from these findings,and in response to the external forces ofglobalization, the rapid development ofonline education, financial strain, and thegenerational changes of our students. Ibelieve the most effective path forward inaddressing these changes is a graduateeducation experience that integrates resi-dential, virtual, and global experiences.Linking discipline-specific academic rigorwith innovative and enriching non-tradi-tional learning activities that developtransferable skills, context, and characterwill enable our students to generate and

apply new knowledge to effect positiveand transformative change in the nationand world in the twenty-first century.

AcknowledgementsHeather Konar, Office of the Dean forGraduate Education, CommunicationsOfficer; Office of The Provost/InstitutionalResearch; the ODGE Advisory Board;ODGE Management Team; Task Force onGraduate Student ProfessionalDevelopment; Graduate Officers andAdministrators; Chancellor W. EricGrimson.

Survey of Graduate AlumniOrtiz, from preceding page

75% 80% 85% 90% 95% 100%

Big picture and systems thinking

Being creative, coming up with new ideas

Solving open-ended problems

Taking initiative

Time management

Resourcefulness

Prioritization

Being flexible and adaptable, responsive to change

Critical thinking

Communicating effectively one-on-one

% Rating Skill as 'Very Important' or 'Essential'

Other Masters Degree MBA Doctoral

Figure 3: Ten skills rated most important by graduate degree type (data includes graduate alumni years) (recipientsof degrees in 1987, 1988, 1992, 1993, 1997, 1998, 2002, 2003, 2007, and 2008).

*“Other Masters” includes: Master of Architecture (MArch), Master in City Planning (MCP), Master of Engineering (MEng), Master of Finance (MFin),Master of Science (SM), Engineer (each degree designates the field in which it is awarded).

Christine Ortiz is Dean for GraduateEducation and Professor of Materials Science([email protected]).


19

In recent years charter schools havedeveloped at an unprecedented pacelargely because many parents have lostconfidence in the K-12 public schools. The“No Child Left Behind” initiative, with itsemphasis on standardized testing, has beencontroversial, to say the least. Its effects arestill unclear and the role of government ineducation needs a thorough debate involv-ing all segments of the population.

An MIT School of Education with aunique point of view would bring addedenergy and expertise to the national educa-tional scene. It might help to invigorateprivate and governmental support for edu-cational reform, which by all accounts is atop priority for parents worldwide. A trulyeffective “National Institute for EducationResearch” modeled after the NationalInstitutes of Health could provide sus-tained federal funding for improving ourpublic and private educational systems. AnMIT School of Education could be thespark that ignites such new initiatives.

What Might a New School Be Like?One of the problems with almost allpublic educational systems is that they arebased on a faulty premise: that all peopleare alike in their potential. This idea leadsto an industrial model for education inwhich students (as raw materials) are fedinto an educational machine, emerging asproducts usable by society for its variousneeds. Such an approach leads to a pushtoward “standardization” when we allknow from personal experience thatpeople differ in capabilities, talents,energy levels, interests, and developmentalpace. Perhaps it is time to consider indi-vidualized education as an alternativeunderlying philosophy. In health care, thehottest idea today is personalized medi-cine that takes account of variations ingenomic, epigenetic, and cultural factors.A similar vision in which opportunitiesfor learning can be adjusted to the procliv-ities of individuals through technologicalchanges already here is now thinkable.

Social media, online learning, edX, “GreatCourses,” etc. are all emerging signs of arevolution in how and what we learn. MITcan take a leading role in shaping thecoming changes. Entities such as the

Broad Institute, the Brain and CognitiveSciences Department, and the Media Labare only a few of the possible participantsthat would naturally help to set agendasfor a School of Education.

What Steps Can Be Taken Now?There are many steps that can be takenright now for MIT to start scrutinizingfuture paths for educational institutions.For example, each department couldidentify at least two people (preferablyone senior and one junior facultymember) who are especially committedto improving teaching. Such volunteerscould meet to discuss how they teachtheir respective subjects now and howthey could teach them if the “drill” and“problem set” aspects were done online.Accordingly, we would then almost havethe beginnings of a “virtual” School ofEducation already. Being entirely volun-tary, such an initiative would at leastidentify passionate participants willing toinvest time and energy to thinking abouthow to proceed. We could then propose astep-by-step plan to create a real Schoolof Education with many departmentsthat would investigate better ways toteach all levels of students so as to achievetrue diversity in education. Such a begin-ning would require few resources (such assalaries, space or staff) at the outset thatare not already available. The idea wouldbe to cross-link a faculty of educatorsbrought up with traditional methods ofteaching but willing to explore differentways with new tools.

There are pockets of underused“people assets” at MIT that might also beable to help. One obvious such group isthe MIT retirees who might like to have afocus for applying their wisdom, knowl-

edge, and connections. Another groupmight be the alumni, some of whom arewell aware of the need for change. Yetanother would be staff who do not nowteach, but would like to participate. Infact, suggestions on how to drasticallyimprove education at MIT have been pro-posed at various times in the past byfaculty, students, and alumni, but theInstitute was not ready.

Possible Space and Funding in theFutureThere have been many discussions abouthow to develop the space that is available toMIT in Kendall Square. One dauntingproblem is that any significant developmentwould require considerable funding. Amajor new initiative that could attract theinterest of large donors might resolve thecurrent uncertainty. Starting a specialSchool of Education may well stir the imag-ination of wealthy philanthropists. (Namingpossibilities can be very attractive.)

We believe that the time is ripe for MITto examine the need for real changes ineducational practice and to act to improvethe ways that knowledge can be distrib-uted more effectively for the benefit of allof society.

Should MIT Create a School ofEducation?Kiang and Trilling, from page 1

Nelson Yuan-sheng Kiang is a ProfessorEmeritus in the Harvard-MIT Division of HealthSciences & Technology and in the Departmentof Brain and Cognitive Sciences([email protected]);Leon Trilling is a Professor Emeritus in theDepartment of Aeronautics and Astronautics([email protected]).

One of the problems with almost all public educationalsystems is that they are based on a faulty premise: thatall people are alike in their potential. . . Perhaps it is timeto consider individualized education as an alternativeunderlying philosophy.


20

Steven Strang30th Anniversary of Writing andCommunication Center

T H I S Y E A R M A R K S T H E 3 0 T H

anniversary of MIT’s Writing andCommunication Center (WCC) as a pro-fessional teaching institution. Started bythe Program in Writing and HumanisticStudies, which is now ComparativeMedia Studies/Writing (CMS/W), theWCC is firmly based on research in com-position studies, rhetorical theory, andwriting center pedagogy.

Our name says it all – we provideadvice on all aspects of writing, oral pres-entation, and communication in general.

Those teaching in the WCC are all lec-turers in CMS/W. They all have advanceddegrees (e.g., three have degrees inTeaching English as a Second Language),all are published writers, all have years ofexperience as college classroom teachers,and all have many years’ experienceworking with MIT students and faculty.For example, our newest hire joined us in2006, our longest serving lecturer has beenwith us since the fall of 1983, and I beganthe Center back in 1982. Several of our lec-turers split their time between the WCCand the Writing Across the Curriculum(WAC) program, thus gaining even moreup-close-and-personal insight into thegenres and needs of every department.

Who uses the WCC?Throughout the WCC’s 30 years, we haveworked with people from literally everyMIT department and School.

Unlike many writing centers whichwork only with undergraduate students,MIT’s WCC also works with graduate stu-dents and postdocs. We work with writersat all skill levels. In fact, some facultymembers send us their best writers andspeakers in order to make them evenbetter communicators. On average, eachyear we see about 1300 unique clients whomake between 3000-3300 visits. Thefigures from fall 2012 are typical, with 633unique clients consulting us (see Table 1).

How much is the WCC used?Nationally, a 50% usage rate in writingcenters is considered good (usage rate isthe number of clients seen divided by thenumber of available appointments). Theusage rate for MIT’s WCC has rangedfrom 83-90% over the last two-and-a-halfdecades. When we receive funding forsummer hours, the summer usage rate isbetween 95-100%. In fall 2012, forexample, there were 1604 visits made, andour usage rate was 90.1% (see Table 2).

As Tables 1 and 2 clearly show, MIT’sWCC is much more than just an under-graduate resource; it is a major resource

for graduate students and postdocs aswell.

Why do people consult the WCC?Reasons for consulting the WCC are asvaried as the types of communication thatoccur both on campus and in the profes-sional world (see Table 3).

During fall 2012, we dealt with 249papers for Communication Intensive (CI)courses (171 for CI-Humanities coursesand 78 for CI-Major courses).

As Table 3 suggests, we work not onlywith course papers and theses, but alsowith professional tasks (conference

School 1st Year Sophomore Junior Senior GraduateStudents Postdocs Others* Totals

Engineering 7 23 31 40 106 56 32 295

Science 3 12 18 19 21 14 26 113

Arch/Urban 1 1 3 5 55 3 16 84

Management 0 1 5 3 28 2 19 58

SHASS 1 3 9 0 6 0 19 38

UndeclaredMajors

45 0 0 0 0 0 0 45

Totals 57 40 66 67 216 75 112 633

School 1st Year Sophomore Junior Senior GraduateStudents Postdocs Others* Totals

Engineering 15 34 78 59 270 187 89 732

Science 11 32 46 46 37 45 76 293

Arch/Urban 3 2 9 11 206 28 33 292

Management 0 4 20 12 74 7 39 156

SHASS 1 6 16 0 15 0 10 48

UndeclaredMajors

74 0 0 0 0 0 9 83

Totals 104 78 169 128 602 267 256 1604

Table 1. Unique clients organized by status and School, Fall 2012

*Others refer to lecturers, faculty, staff members, spouses, special students, affiliates, fellows, and alums.

Work with “others” has been sporadically funded.

Table 2. Number of visits made by status of client and School, Fall 2012

*Others refer to lecturers, faculty, staff members, spouses, special students, affiliates, fellows, and alums.

Work with “others” has been sporadically funded.


21

papers, book and grant proposals, articlesand books for publication), with applica-tions, letters, CVs and resumes, researchand teaching statements.

Over the years, literally hundreds oftheses and books have containedacknowledgements thanking the Centerand its individual lecturers for help inmaking their projects successful.

In addition to documents, we helpwith oral presentations – developing boththe content of the presentations and theaccompanying slides. We offer practice fororal presentations, pronunciation, andinterviews. We help clients overcomewriter’s block and anxiety about speakingin class (or in front of an audience).

Although the WCC’s major mission isone-on-one consultations, we do otherthings as well.

During IAP, we sponsor events such as“How to Write a Great Abstract,” “WritingEffective Proposals,” and the “DissertationSupport Group.”

We work with the Graduate StudentCouncil’s Dissertation Boot Camp.

In 2002, I started and have sponsoredever since the MIT Writers’ Group. Itsmembers have included undergraduateand graduate students, faculty, and staffmembers – anyone interested in writingfiction, personal essays and memoirs, othertypes of non-fiction, poetry, and drama.Several of our members have publishedpieces they worked on in Writers’ Group,

and two of our undergraduate membershave won Ilona Karmel Writing Prizes.

What is the WCC’s role?The WCC is a teaching institution. We donot edit, proofread, or re-write docu-ments. Instead, we teach our clients howto be better writers and better speakers.When clients visit the WCC, they agree tothe following statement: “I understandthat the Writing and CommunicationCenter’s goal is to teach me how to be abetter writer and that the Center does notedit or proofread documents. I alsounderstand that the goal of any session isto teach something rather than to get allthe way through any document.”

Of course, the documents improve as aby-product of the teaching, but, moreimportantly, so do the writers.

How do clients feel about sessions inthe WCC?After each session, a client fills out asurvey and deposits it in a locked “ballotbox,” thus guaranteeing anonymity. Thispractice gives us good insight into how weare doing. We ask questions using a 7-point Likert scale (where a 7 means “agreestrongly” and a 1 means “disagreestrongly” – i.e., the same approach usedfor classroom evaluations).

For the statement “I learned somethingnew about writing or oral presentationduring this session,” 80% of clients circled

7, strongly agreeing, and another 13%circled 6. Given the fact that many of ourclients make repeat visits to the WCC, that93% is a strong testimony to the amountand quality of teaching that occurs.

For the survey statement “I found thissession very helpful,” 88% of clientsagreed strongly by circling 7, and another8% circled 6. In other words, 96% of ses-sions were deemed helpful or very helpful.

In short, the WCC’s lecturers are veryeffective teachers.

What is taught in a typical session?Over 95% of our teaching deals withhigher order issues such as analyzing andaddressing particular audiences, develop-ing and refining ideas, exploring theimplications of ideas, organizing largeamounts of material effectively, translat-ing a visual concept into written form,shaping material into effective communi-cation, adjusting tone, polishing style, andturning turgid language into concise,reader-friendly prose. The rest of ourteaching involves grammar, word choice,shades of meaning, and the like.

What lies ahead?As we begin our next decade, the WCCstands firmly planted in the Program ofComparative Media Studies/Writing,drawing upon and adding to CMS/W’sexpertise in all aspects of communication.We will continue to work with clientsfrom across the Institute, helping witheverything from applications to audienceanalysis, from evidence to exposition,from grammar to graphs, from papers toproposals, from resumes to research state-ments, from style to speeches and slides.

You may recommend or require visits tothe Center for individual students or foryour whole class, for advisees, and for thosewriting dissertations under your direction.On our homepage (writing.mit.edu/wcc),simply click “Recommended/RequiredConsultation at the Writing Center” in theleft navigation bar, or go directly towriting.mit.edu/node/214 and fill out theform. We will notify you when yourstudent(s) have consulted with us.

School Paper Thesis Professional Applications CVs ResearchStatement

OralPresent

OtherTasks* Totals

Engineering 49 57 170 272 43 82 24 25 722

Science 28 20 94 176 40 16 8 14 396

Arch/Urban 85 61 89 48 3 10 7 2 305

Management 88 38 52 20 26 2 0 1 227

SHASS 208 9 24 21 7 2 2 2 275

UndeclaredMajors

1 0 16 17 1 0 0 1 36

Totals** 459 185 445 554 120 112 41 45 1961

Table 3. Reasons for consulting the WCC, Fall 2012

*Other Tasks include interview practice, pronunciation practice, overcoming writer’s block, creative writing,

writing practice and process, etc.

**The discrepancy between the number of visits (1604) and the reason for visits (1961) occurs because many

clients use one visit to deal with two or more separate reasons (e.g., a CV and a class paper).



22

One way that you can help us to helpyour students is by alerting or remindingyour students about the WCC. If possible,please post the following on your syllabiand Websites:

The Writing and Communication Center(12-132) offers free one-on-one professionaladvice from lecturers (who are publishedwriters) about all types of academic, cre-ative, and professional writing and aboutall aspects of oral presentations. Go towriting.mit.edu/wcc/ appointments andregister to make appointments online. TheCenter’s core hours are Monday-Friday,

9:00 a.m.-6:00 p.m.; evening hours vary bysemester. Please check the online schedulerfor up-to-date hours.

If you have any questions, suggestions,or requests, please contact me directly:[email protected] or call 617-253-4459.

30th Anniversary of WCCStrang, continued from preceding page

Steven Strang is Director of the Writing andCommunications Center ([email protected]).

Anne McCantsBeyond the ClassroomWhy I Live With Students . . . .

M I T, L I K E A L L I N S T I T U T I O N S ofhigher education, has a basic mandate toteach our students how to engage in criti-cal thinking, to communicate clearly, toconduct research, to master differentmodes of analysis, and to incorporate themost accurate information known to usabout the workings of both the physicaluniverse and the social world we inhabitwithin it. This program of study takesplace in classrooms large and small, in lab-oratories, between the pages of books, andincreasingly, in the digital environmentand on a global scale. If every student whopassed over our threshold were to masterthese skills we would be very pleasedindeed.

Nonetheless, as a residential institutionwe have an opportunity to cultivate yetanother quality that may well be of equal

or even greater importance for the lives ofour students than just the skills promotedby an education as conventionally under-stood: the ability to make good decisionsin matters of everyday life, especially incases where information is incomplete, orcompeting goods are clearly at stake. Thisquality is sometimes dignified as discern-ment, at other times trivialized as

common sense, as if it were easy to comeby. But in all cases it represents the abilityto take what we know and/or know howto do, and to apply that information to thehundreds of decisions, big and small, thatwe must make every day; and to do so in away that promotes the values to which wecollectively subscribe, whether fairness,loyalty, honor, kindness, empathy, effi-

Nonetheless, as a residential institution we have anopportunity to cultivate yet another quality that may wellbe of equal or even greater importance for the lives ofour students than just the skills promoted by aneducation as conventionally understood: the ability tomake good decisions in matters of everyday life . . .


23

ciency, honesty, or courage, among others,and in varying degrees of importance fordifferent people, of course.

Yet wisdom – for that is the essence ofwhat I have in mind here – is not easy to

teach. The claims of countless self-helpgurus notwithstanding, there are not “fiveeasy steps to a new and wiser you” that canbe codified for dissemination on the pageor in a lecture. Moreover, we know fromour experience working with the incredi-bly smart students it is our privilege toteach at MIT, that being smart is not byitself enough to make one wise. Moreover,to be smart but not wise can actually be adangerous thing, as our capacity to harmis so often inextricably linked with thecapaciousness of our intellect.

Wisdom, then, is much in demand andnot easily come by. Most fruitfully it isborn of experience, either our own (theso-called “school of hard knocks”) or thatof others made accessible to us. We onlyget better at making difficult decisions ifwe watch other people make them(preferably well) and then practicemaking our own. The study of history orliterature can offer us entrée into thisquest, since our most enduring storiesalmost always feature the struggle to makewise decisions in the face of ambiguity,uncertainty, and miscommunication. Butit can be even more powerful when we canconsult directly with those more experi-enced than ourselves, especially if thechoice we face will have real consequencesand be responded to by people with dis-

cordant interests and alternative points ofview to our own.

All this is to suggest then that if wewant to cultivate wisdom in our students– and surely we do – we have to employ a

broader teaching model than our usualone centered on the classroom. We have tosituate ourselves into those places wherestudents enjoy the agency prerequisite todecision-making. While this does some-times happen in the classroom or perhapsthe project laboratory, my experience as ahousemaster suggests to me that it occursmost frequently for students in their co-curricular groups, their living environ-ments, and in the context of their personalpursuits. These are the places where theirmost challenging “case studies” are likelyto arise. If the faculty is not ever present inthese places, we will not be the ones whoare turned to for advice, or whoseexample will be consulted for emulation.If they do not see us struggle (and some-times fail) to make difficult judgments ofour own, they may not even appreciatehow daunting the task they face might be.If they only meet us in the classroom,usually a highly orchestrated and certainlya time-limited context for social interac-tion, they are unlikely to ever see usengaged in the fraught work of value-laden decision-making.

If, on the other hand, we live amongstour students, and participate in theiractivities and projects, we will inevitablyfind ourselves together at moments thatreally matter to students on an interper-

sonal and sometimes profoundly privatelevel, when the right thing to do is notnecessarily obvious, and the facts do notspeak for themselves. We will be con-fronted together by ethical conundrums,by values in conflict with each other, bypersons that require an empathy that isnot easily forthcoming. We will struggletogether to know when it is best to hangtough in a difficult situation, and when tomove on for what look like greener pas-tures, but of course might not be. Side-by-side we will have to discern when tocomplain (self-righteously or not) andwhen to forebear; when it is appropriatelycompassionate to help clean up someoneelse’s mess, and when we ought to let themfeel the full brunt of their behavior; whento promote the needs of the communityover those of the individual and vice versa;when to celebrate difference and when tocultivate social norms; how to distinguishlove that is exuberant and uplifting froman obsession that is smothering or evenfrightening; and how to make rules thatprotect the vulnerable without stiflingthose with strength, talent, and passion.Already in the fall semester of this aca-demic year, every one of those questionshas pressed itself upon a student withenough urgency to send them to mydoorstep, and most more than once. It isin the conversations triggered by thosemoments that I can most significantlycontribute to the store of experience thatthey will need to draw upon as they takethe many skills they acquire in their MITeducation out into a complex world, aworld that needs them to be as smart asthey can be, but also desperately needsthem to be wise.

All this is to suggest then that if we want to cultivatewisdom in our students – and surely we do – we have toemploy a broader teaching model than our usual onecentered on the classroom. We have to situate ourselvesinto those places where students enjoy the agencyprerequisite to decision-making.

Anne McCants is a Professor of History andDirector of the Concourse Freshman LearningCommunity ([email protected]). She andher husband Bill served as the Housemasters ofGreen Hall between 1992 and 2002, and arecurrently serving in that capacity in BurtonConner.

M.I.T. NumbersUnderrepresented Minorities (URMs)


Source: Office of the Provost/Institutional Research

0 0.02 0.04 0.06 0.08 0.1 0.12 0.14

Wisconsin

U of W

Yale

UCSB

CU Boulder

Princeton

Brown

UCSD

Illinois

UC Davis

Chicago

Duke

CalTech

CMU

Penn

Cornell

Stanford

MIT

Columbia

NYU

UT Austin

Michigan

Berkeley

UCLA

Harvard

Johns Hopkins

GeorgiaTech

Maryland

Graduate Degrees, % URM, 2002-2011 MIT Disciplines only

Hispanic Black Amer. Indian Hawaiian

Graduate Degrees, Fraction URM, 2002-2011MIT Disciplines Only

0

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