(Redirected from MIT)
The 'Massachusetts Institute of Technology' ('MIT') is a
private,
coeducational
research university located in
Cambridge,
Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing 32 academic departments,
[3] with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological research. MIT is one of two private
land-grant universities as well as a
sea-grant and
space-grant university.
MIT was founded by
William Barton Rogers in
1861 in response to the increasing
industrialization of the United States. Although based upon German and French polytechnic models of an
institute of technology, MIT's founding philosophy of "learning by doing" made it an early pioneer in the use of laboratory instruction,
[4] undergraduate research, and progressive architectural styles. As a
federally funded research and development center during
World War II, MIT scientists developed defense-related technologies that would later become integral to
computers,
radar, and
inertial guidance. After the war, MIT continued to have a high profile throughout the
Space Race and
Cold War and its reputation expanded beyond its core competencies in science and engineering into the social sciences including
economics,
linguistics,
political science, and
management. MIT's endowment and annual research expenditures are among the largest of any American university.
[5]
MIT graduates and faculty are noted for their technical (63
Nobel Laureates, 47
National Medal of Science recipients, and 29
MacArthur Fellows),
[6][7] entrepreneurial spirit (a 1997 report claimed that the aggregated revenues of companies founded by MIT affiliates would make it the twenty-fourth largest economy in the world),
[8] and irreverence (the popular practice of constructing elaborate pranks, or
hacking, often has anti-authoritarian overtones).
History
Main articles: History of MIT
Initial years and vision
MIT's Great Dome and Killian Court.
In 1861, The Commonwealth of Massachusetts approved a charter for the incorporation of the "Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Boston Society of Natural History" submitted by
William Barton Rogers. Rogers sought to establish a new form of higher education to address the challenges posed by rapid advances in science and technology during the mid-19th century with which
classic institutions were ill-prepared to deal.
[9]
The Rogers Plan, as it came to be known, was rooted in three principles: the educational value of useful knowledge, the necessity of “learning by doing,” and integrating a professional and liberal arts education at the undergraduate level.
[10][11]
Because open conflict in the
Civil War broke out only a few months later, MIT's first classes were held in rented space at the Mercantile Building in downtown Boston in 1865.
[12] Construction of the first MIT buildings was completed in Boston's
Back Bay in 1866 and MIT would be known as "Boston Tech." During the next half-century, the focus of the science and engineering curriculum drifted towards vocational concerns instead of theoretical programs.
Charles William Eliot, the president of
Harvard University, repeatedly attempted to merge MIT with Harvard's Lawrence Scientific School over his 30-year tenure: overtures were made as early as 1869
[13] with other proposals in 1900 and 1914 ultimately being defeated.
[14][15][16][17]
Expansion
A plaque of
George Eastman, founder of
Kodak, in Building 6. His nose is rubbed by students for good luck.
The attempted mergers occurred in parallel with MIT's continued expansion beyond the classroom and laboratory space permitted by its Boston campus. President
Richard Maclaurin sought to move the campus to a new location when he took office in 1909.
[18] An anonymous donor, later revealed to be
George Eastman, donated the funds to build a new campus along a mile-long tract of swamp and industrial land on the Cambridge side of the Charles River. In 1916, MIT moved into its handsome new
neoclassical campus designed by the noted architect
William W. Bosworth which it occupies to this date. The new campus triggered some changes in the stagnating undergraduate curriculum, but in the 1930s President
Karl Taylor Compton and Vice-President (effectively
Provost)
Vannevar Bush drastically reformed the curriculum by re-emphasizing the importance of "pure" sciences like physics and chemistry and reducing the work required in shops and drafting. Despite the difficulties of the
Great Depression, the reforms "renewed confidence in the ability of the Institute to develop leadership in science as well as in engineering."
[19] The expansion and reforms thus cemented MIT's academic reputation on the eve of
World War II by attracting scientists and researchers who would later make significant contributions in the
Radiation Laboratory,
Instrumentation Laboratory, and other defense-related research programs.
MIT was drastically changed by its involvement in military research during World War II. Bush was appointed head of the enormous
Office of Scientific Research and Development and directed funding to only a select group of universities, including MIT.
[20][21] During the war and in the post-war years, this
government-sponsored research contributed to a fantastic growth in the size of the Institute's research staff and physical plant as well as placing an increased emphasis on graduate education.
[19]
As the Cold War and Space Race intensified and concerns about the
technology gap between the U.S. and the Soviet Union grew more pervasive throughout the 1950s and 1960s, MIT's involvement in the
military-industrial complex was a source of pride on campus.
[23][24] However, by the late 1960s and early 1970s, intense protests by student and faculty activists (an era now known as "the troubles")
[25] against the
Vietnam War and MIT's
defense research required that the MIT administration to divest itself from what would become the
Charles Stark Draper Laboratory and move all classified research off-campus to the
Lincoln Laboratory facility.
Challenges and controversies
Ellen Swallow Richards, first female student and professor at MIT.
MIT has been nominally
coeducational since admitting
Ellen Swallow Richards in 1870. (Richards also became the first female member of MIT's faculty, specializing in
sanitary chemistry.)
[26]
Female students, however, remained a tiny minority (numbered in dozens) prior to the completion of the first wing of a women's dormitory,
McCormick Hall, in 1963.
[27][28] By 1993, 32% of MIT's undergraduates were female and in 2006, the number had increased to near-parity (47.5%).
[29]
In 1998, MIT became the first major research university to acknowledge the existence of a
systematic bias against female faculty in its School of Science and supported efforts toward corrective measures although the study's methods were controversial.
[30][31] A 2003 MIT news release cites various statistics suggesting that the status of women improved during the latter years of President Vest's tenure.
[32]
Susan Hockfield, a molecular
neurobiologist, became MIT's 16th president on
December 6,
2004 and is the first woman to hold the post. While the
student body has become more balanced in recent years, women are still a
distinct minority among faculty.
The 1984 dismissal of
David F. Noble, a historian of technology, became a
cause celebre about the extent to which academics are granted "
freedom of speech" after he published several books and papers critical of MIT's and other research universities' reliance upon financial support from corporations and the military.
[33]
In 1986, Professor
David Baltimore, a
Nobel Laureate, became embroiled in an investigation of
research misconduct that led to Congressional hearings in 1991.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, many American politicians and business leaders
accused MIT and other universities of contributing to a
declining economy by
transferring taxpayer-funded research and technology to international — especially
Japanese — firms that were competing with
struggling American businesses.
[34]
In 1991, the
Justice Department filed an
antitrust suit against MIT and the eight
Ivy League colleges for holding "Overlap Meetings" to prevent bidding wars over promising students from consuming funds for need-based scholarships. While the Ivy League institutions
settled, MIT contested the charges on the grounds that the practice was not anticompetitive because it ensured the availability of aid for the greatest number of students. MIT ultimately prevailed when the Justice Department dropped the case in 1994.
[35]
In 2000, Professor
Ted Postol accused the MIT administration of attempting to
whitewash potential research misconduct at the Lincoln Lab facility involving a
ballistic missile defense test, though a final investigation into the matter has not been completed.
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, a number of student deaths resulted in considerable media attention to MIT's culture and student life.
[36] After the alcohol-related death of Scott Krueger in September 1997 as a new member at the
Phi Gamma Delta fraternity, MIT began requiring all freshmen to live in the dormitory system.
[37] The 2000 suicide of MIT undergraduate
Elizabeth Shin drew attention to suicides at MIT and created a controversy over whether MIT had an unusually high suicide rate.
[38][39]
In late 2001 a task force's recommended improvements in student
mental health services
[40]
were implemented, including expanding staff and operating hours at the mental health center.
[41] These and later cases were significant as well because they sought to prove the negligence and liability of university administrators
in loco parentis.
[42]
In April 2007, Dean of Admissions
Marilee Jones resigned after she "misrepresented her academic degrees" when she applied to an administrative assistant position in 1979 and never corrected the record despite her subsequent promotions.
[43][44]
Organization
MIT is "a university polarized around science, engineering, and the arts."
[45] MIT has five schools (
Science,
Engineering,
Architecture and Planning,
Management, and
Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences) and one college (
Whitaker College of Health Sciences and Technology), but no schools of law or medicine.
[46]
MIT is governed by a 78-member
board of trustees known as the MIT Corporation
[47] which approve the budget, degrees, and faculty appointments as well as electing the President.
[48] MIT's
endowment and
other financial assets are managed through a subsidiary MIT Investment Management Company (MITIMCo).
[49] The chair of each of MIT's 32 academic departments reports to the dean of that department's school, who in turn reports to the Provost under the President. However, faculty committees assert substantial control over many areas of MIT's curriculum, research, student life, and administrative affairs.
[50]
MIT students refer to both their majors and classes using numbers alone. Majors are numbered in the approximate order of when the department was founded; for example, Civil and Environmental Engineering is Course I, while Nuclear Science & Engineering is Course XXII.
[51] Students majoring in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, the most popular department, collectively identify themselves as "Course VI." MIT students use a combination of the department's course number and the number assigned to the class number to identify their subjects; the course which many American universities would designate as "Physics 101" is, at MIT, simply "8.01."
[52]
Campus
MIT's 168-acre Cambridge campus spans approximately a mile of the
Charles River front. The campus is divided roughly in half by
Massachusetts Avenue, with most dormitories and student life facilities to the west and most academic buildings to the east. The bridge closest to MIT is the
Harvard Bridge, which is marked off in the fanciful unit – the
Smoot. The
Kendall MBTA Red Line station is located on the far northeastern edge of the campus in
Kendall Square. The Cambridge neighborhoods surrounding MIT are a mixture of high tech companies occupying both modern office and rehabilitated industrial buildings as well as socio-economically diverse residential neighborhoods.
MIT buildings all have a number (or a number and a letter) designation and most have a name as well.[53] Typically, academic and office buildings are referred to only by number while residence halls are referred to by name. The organization of building numbers roughly corresponds to the order in which the buildings were built and their location relative (north, west, and east) to the original, center cluster of Maclaurin buildings. Many are connected above ground as well as through an extensive network of underground tunnels, providing protection from the Cambridge weather. MIT also owns commercial real estate and research facilities throughout Cambridge and the greater Boston area.
MIT's on-campus nuclear reactor is the second largest university-based nuclear reactor in the United States. The high visibility of the reactor's containment building in a densely populated area has caused some controversy,[54] but MIT maintains that it is well-secured.[55] Other notable campus facilities include a pressurized wind tunnel, a towing tank for testing ship and ocean structure designs, and a low-emission cogeneration plant that serves most of the campus electricity and heating requirements. MIT's campus-wide wireless network was completed in the fall of 2005 and consists of nearly 3,000 access points covering 9.4 million square feet of campus.[56]
Architecture
The Stata Center houses
CSAIL,
LIDS, and the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy
Frieze on Building 2 dedicated to
Newton
As MIT's school of architecture was the first in the United States,
[57] it has a history of commissioning progressive, if stylistically inconsistent, buildings.
[58] The first buildings constructed on the Cambridge campus, completed in 1916, are known officially as the ''Maclaurin buildings'' after Institute president
Richard Maclaurin who oversaw their construction. Designed by
William Welles Bosworth, these imposing buildings were built of concrete, a first for a non-industrial — much less university — building in the U.S.
[59] The utopian
City Beautiful movement greatly influenced Bosworth's design which features the
Pantheon-esque Great Dome, housing the Barker Engineering Library, which overlooks Killian Court, where annual Commencement exercises are held. The friezes of the limestone-clad buildings around Killian Court are engraved with the names of important scientists and philosophers. The imposing Building 7 atrium along
Massachusetts Avenue is regarded as the entrance to the
Infinite Corridor and the rest of the campus.
Alvar Aalto's Baker House (1947),
Eero Saarinen's Chapel and Auditorium (1955), and
I.M. Pei's Green, Dreyfus, Landau, and Weisner buildings represent high forms of post-war
modern architecture. More recent buildings like
Frank Gehry's
Stata Center (2004),
Steven Holl's
Simmons Hall (2002), and
Charles Correa's Building 46 (2005) are distinctive amongst the Boston area's staid architecture
[60] and serve as examples of contemporary campus "starchitecture."
These buildings have not always been popularly accepted; the Princeton Review includes MIT in a list of twenty schools whose campuses are "tiny, unsightly, or both."
[61]
Academics
Student demographics
MIT enrolls more graduate students (approximately 6,000 in total) than undergraduates (approximately 4,000). In 2006, women constituted 44 percent of all undergraduates and 30 percent of graduate students. The same year, MIT students represented all 50 states, the
District of Columbia, three
U.S. Territories, and 113 foreign countries.
The admissions rate for freshmen in 2007 was 11.9% with over 69% of admitted freshmen choosing to enroll. Although graduate admissions are less centralized, they are similarly selective: 19.7% of 16,153 applications were admitted with 61.2% of admitted candidates enrolling.
[65]
Undergraduate tuition is $33,400 and graduate tuition is $33,600 per year although 64% of undergraduates receive need-based financial aid and 87% of graduate students are supported by MIT fellowships, research assistantships, or teaching assistantships.
[66][67]
Classes
MIT has an extensive core curriculum required of all undergraduates called the General Institute Requirements (GIRs). The science requirement, generally completed during freshman year as prerequisites for classes in science and engineering majors, comprises two semesters of physics classes covering
Classical Mechanics and
E&M, two semesters of math covering
single variable calculus and
multivariable calculus, one semester of chemistry, and one semester of biology. Undergraduates are required to take a laboratory class in their major, eight
Humanities,
Arts, and
Social Sciences (HASS) classes (at least three in a concentration and another four unrelated subjects), and non-varsity athletes must also take four
physical education classes. In May 2006, a faculty task force recommended that the current GIR system be simplified with changes to the science, HASS, and Institute Lab requirements.
[68]
Although the difficulty of MIT coursework has been characterized as "drinking from a fire hose,"
[69] the failure rate and freshmen retention rate at MIT are similar to other large research universities.
[70] Some of the pressure for first-year undergraduates is lessened by the existence of the "pass/no-record" grading system. In the first (fall) term, freshmen transcripts only report if a class was passed while no external record exists if a class was not passed. In the second (spring) term, passing grades (ABC) appear on the transcript while non-passing grades are again rendered "no-record."
Most classes rely upon a combination of faculty led lectures, graduate student led recitations, weekly problem sets (p-sets), and tests to teach material, though alternative curricula exist, e.g.
Experimental Study Group, Concourse, and Terrascope.
[71][72] Over time, students compile "bibles," collections of problem set and examination questions and answers used as references for later students. In 1970, the then-Dean of Institute Relations, Benson R. Snyder, published ''
The Hidden Curriculum,'' arguing that unwritten regulations, like the implicit curricula of the bibles, are often counterproductive; they fool professors into believing that their teaching is effective and students into believing they have learned the material.
Collaborations
An example of cooperation, "The Coop" is the official bookstore of Harvard and MIT
[73]
Building 7 (also 77 Massachusetts Avenue) is regarded as the entrance to campus.
MIT historically pioneered research collaborations between industry and government.
[74][75] Fruitful collaborations with industrialists like
Alfred P. Sloan and
Thomas Alva Edison led President Compton to establish an Office of Corporate Relations and an Industrial Liaison Program in the 1930s and 1940s that now allows over 600 companies to
license research and consult with MIT faculty and researchers.
[76] As
several MIT leaders served as
Presidential scientific advisers since 1940,
[77] MIT established a Washington Office in 1991 to continue to
lobby for research funding and national
science policy.
[78]
MIT's proximity
[79] to
Harvard University has created both a friendly rivalry ("the other school up the
river") as well as a substantial number of research collaborations such as the
Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology,
Broad Institute,
Center for Ultracold Atoms, and Harvard-MIT Data Center.
[80][81] In addition, students at the two schools can
cross-register without any additional fees, for credits toward their own school's degrees.
MIT has a long-standing cross-registration program with
Wellesley College as well as an undergraduate exchange program with the
University of Cambridge known as the
Cambridge-MIT Institute.
[82] MIT has limited cross-registration programs with
Boston University,
Brandeis University,
Tufts University,
Massachusetts College of Art, and the
School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
MIT maintains substantial research and faculty ties with independent research organizations in the Boston-area like the
Charles Stark Draper Laboratory,
Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, and
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution as well as international research and educational collaborations through the
Singapore-MIT Alliance, MIT-
Zaragoza International Logistics Program,
[83] MIT-Portugal program
[84] and MIT International Science and Technology Initiatives (MISTI) program.
[85]
MIT students, faculty, and staff are involved in over 50 educational outreach and public service programs through the
MIT Museum, Edgerton Center,
[86] and MIT Public Service Center.
[87][88] Summer programs like
MITES[89] and the Research Science Institute
[90] encourage minority and high school students to pursue science and engineering in college. Project Interphase accelerates incoming freshman whose educational backgrounds did not fully prepare them for MIT coursework.
[91]
The mass-market magazine ''
Technology Review'' is published by MIT through a subsidiary company, as is a special edition that also serves as the Institute's official alumni magazine. The MIT Press is a major university press, publishing over 200 books and 40 journals annually emphasizing science and technology as well as arts, architecture, new media, current events, and social issues.
[92]
Rankings
Barker Library, inside the Great Dome
In the 2008
US News and World Report (USNWR) rankings of national universities, MIT's undergraduate program was #7.
[93] The
MIT Sloan School of Management is ranked #2 in the nation at the undergraduate level and #4 among MBA programs by USNWR's 2008 rankings.
[94][95] MIT has more top-ranked graduate programs than any other university in the 2008 USNWR survey and the School of Engineering has been ranked first among graduate programs since the magazine first released the results of its survey in 1988.
[96][97][98]
Among other outlets in the world university rankings, MIT is ranked #1 in the Globe by
Webometrics,
[99] #4 (tied with
Yale) among world universities by the ''
THES - QS World University Rankings'',
[100][101] in the top tier of national research universities by TheCenter for Measuring University Performance,
[102] #5 among world universities by
Shanghai Jiao Tong University's 2006 ''Annual Rankings of World Universities'',
[103] and #1 by
The Washington Monthly's rankings of social mobility and national service in 2005 and 2006.
[104] The
National Research Council, in a 1995 study ranking research universities in the US, ranked MIT #1 in "reputation" and #4 in "citations and faculty awards."
[105]
Faculty and research
MIT has 998 faculty members, of whom 188 are women and 165 are minorities.
[106] Faculty are responsible for lecturing classes, advising both graduate and undergraduate students, and sitting on academic committees, as well as conducting original research. Many faculty members also have founded companies, serve as scientific advisers, or sit on the
Board of Directors for corporations. 25
MIT faculty members have won the
Nobel Prize.
[107] Among current and former faculty members, there are 51
National Medal of Science and
Technology recipients,
80
Guggenheim Fellows, 6
Fulbright Scholars, 29
MacArthur Fellows, and 4
Kyoto Prize winners.
[106] Faculty members who have made extraordinary contributions to their research field as well as the MIT community are granted appointments as
Institute Professors for the remainder of their tenures.
For fiscal year 2006, MIT spent $587.5 million on on-campus research.
[109] The federal government was the largest source of sponsored research, with the
Department of Health and Human Services granting $180.6 million,
Department of Defense $86 million,
Department of Energy $69.9 million,
National Science Foundation $66.7 million, and
NASA $32.1 million.
MIT employs approximately 3,500 researchers in addition to faculty. In the 2006 academic year, MIT faculty and researchers disclosed 523 inventions, filed 321 patent applications, received 121 patents, and earned $42.3 million in royalties.
[110]
Research accomplishments
Strobe photograph taken by an MIT undergraduate in Edgerton's laboratory
In electronics,
magnetic core memory,
radar,
single electron transistors, and
inertial guidance controls were invented or substantially developed by MIT researchers.
Harold Eugene Edgerton was a pioneer in
high speed photography.
Claude E. Shannon developed much of modern
information theory and discovered the application of Boolean logic to
digital circuit design theory.
In the domain of computer science, MIT faculty and researchers made fundamental contributions to
cybernetics,
artificial intelligence,
computer languages,
machine learning,
robotics, and
public-key cryptography.
Richard Stallman founded the
GNU Project while at the
AI lab (now
CSAIL). Professors
Hal Abelson and
Gerald Jay Sussman wrote the popular ''
Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs'' textbook and co-founded the
Free Software Foundation with Stallman.
Tim Berners-Lee established the
W3C at MIT in 1994.
David D. Clark made fundamental contributions in developing the
Internet. Popular technologies like
X Window System,
Kerberos,
Zephyr, and
Hesiod were created for
Project Athena in the 1980s.
MIT physicists have been instrumental in describing subatomic and quantum phenomena like
elementary particles,
electroweak force,
Bose-Einstein condensates,
superconductivity,
fractional quantum Hall effect, and
asymptotic freedom as well as
cosmological phenomena like
cosmic inflation.
MIT chemists have discovered number syntheses like
metathesis,
stereoselective oxidation reactions,
synthetic self-replicating molecules, and
CFC-ozone reactions.
Penicillin and
Vitamin A were also first synthesized at MIT.
MIT biologists have been recognized for their discoveries and advances in
RNA,
protein synthesis,
apoptosis,
gene splicing and introns,
antibody diversity,
reverse transcriptase,
oncogenes,
phage resistance, and
neurophysiology. MIT researchers discovered the genetic bases for
Lou Gehrig's disease and
Huntington's disease.
Eric Lander was one of the principal leaders of the
Human Genome Project.
MIT economists have contributed to the fields of
system dynamics,
financial engineering,
neo-classical growth models, and
welfare economics and developed fundamental financial models like the
Modigliani-Miller theorem and
Black-Scholes equation.
Professors
Noam Chomsky and
Morris Halle are both noted linguists, Professor
Henry Jenkins is prominent in the field of
media studies, and Professor
John Harbison has won a
Pulitzer Prize and
MacArthur Fellowship for his operatic scores.
UROP
In 1969, MIT began the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP) to enable undergraduates to collaborate directly with faculty members and researchers. The program, founded by
Margaret MacVicar, builds upon the MIT philosophy of "learning by doing." Students obtain research projects, colloquially called "UROPs," through postings on the UROP website or by contacting faculty members directly.
[111] Over 2,800 undergraduates, 70% of the student body, participate every year for academic credit, pay, or on a volunteer basis.
[112] Students often become
published, file
patent applications, and/or launch
start-up companies based upon their experience in UROPs.
Current Initiatives
In 2001, MIT announced that it planned to put all of its course materials online as part of its
OpenCourseWare project by 2007. Building upon MIT's leadership in the
free software movement,
Nicholas Negroponte of the
MIT Media Lab started the
One Laptop per Child initiative to expand computer education and connectivity to children worldwide. Upon taking office in 2004, President Hockfield launched an Energy Research Council to investigate how MIT can respond to the interdisciplinary challenges of increasing global
energy consumption.
[113]
Traditions and student activities
A typical "
Brass Rat." The design variation pictured is from the Class of 2007.
MIT faculty and students value highly
meritocracy and technical proficiency.
[114][115] MIT has never awarded an
honorary degree nor does it award athletic scholarships,
ad eundem degrees, or
Latin honors upon graduation.
[116] It does, on rare occasions, award honorary professorships;
Winston Churchill was so honored in 1949 and
Salman Rushdie in 1993.
[117]
MIT students' passion for their subjects is balanced by the perception that their classes are more rigorous than their "grade inflated" peer institutions
[118]— a love-hate relationship embodied by the school's informal motto/
initialism IHTFP ("I hate this fucking place," jocularly euphemized as "I have truly found paradise," "Institute has the finest professors," etc.).
[119]
Many MIT students and graduates wear a large, heavy, distinctive class ring known as the "Brass Rat." Originally created in 1929, the ring's official name is the "Standard Technology Ring." The undergraduate ring design (a separate graduate student version exists, as well) varies slightly from year to year to reflect the unique character of the MIT experience for that class, but always features a three-piece design, with the MIT seal and the class year each appearing on a separate face, flanking a large rectangular bezel bearing an image of a
beaver.
Activities
A fire truck was placed on the Great Dome by hackers on September 11, 2006.
MIT has over 380 recognized student activity groups,
[120] including a
campus radio station, ''
The Tech'' student newspaper, the "world's largest open-shelf
collection of science fiction" in English,
model railroad club, a vibrant
folk dance scene, weekly screenings of popular films by the
Lecture Series Committee, and an annual
entrepreneurship competition.
MIT's
Independent Activities Period is a four-week long "term" offering hundreds of optional classes, lectures, demonstrations, and other activities throughout the month of January between the Fall and Spring semesters. Some of the most popular recurring IAP activities are the 6.270,
6.370, and MasLab
competitions, the annual
"mystery hunt", and
Charm School.
Many MIT students also engage in "hacking," which encompasses both the
physical exploration of areas that are generally off-limits (such as rooftops and steam tunnels), as well as
elaborate practical jokes. In 2005,
Caltech infiltrators hacked MIT's admitted students weekend (called CPW, for "campus preview weekend") by distributing T-shirts reading "MIT: Because not everyone can get in to Caltech." In 2006, MIT hackers posing as "Howe & Ser Moving Co." responded by stealing Caltech's cannon and placing it prominently on campus during that year's CPW.
[121]
Athletics
MIT Sailing Dinghies on the Charles River
MIT's student athletics program offers 41 varsity-level sports, the largest program in the nation.
[122][123]
They participate in the
NCAA's
Division III, the
New England Women's and Men's Athletic Conference, the
New England Football Conference, and
NCAA's Division I and
Eastern Association of Rowing Colleges (EARC) for crew. They fielded several dominant intercollegiate
Tiddlywinks teams through 1980, winning national and world championships.
[124]
MIT teams have won or placed highly in national championships in pistol, track and field, swimming and diving, cross country, crew, fencing, and water polo. MIT has produced 128
Academic All-Americans, the third largest membership in the country for any division and the highest number of members for Division III.
[125]
The Institute's sports teams are called the Engineers, their
mascot since 1914 being a
beaver, "nature's engineer." Lester Gardner, a member of the Class of 1898, provided the following justification:
The standard joke about this is: "The beaver is the engineer of the animal world; the MIT man is the animal of the engineering world."
The
Zesiger sports and fitness center (Z-Center) which opened in 2002, significantly expanded the capacity and quality of MIT's athletics, physical education, and recreation offerings to 10 buildings and 26 acres of playing fields. The 124,000 square-foot facility features an Olympic-class swimming pool, international-scale squash and racketball courts, and a two-story fitness center.
[126]
Housing
MIT guarantees four-year,
dormitory housing for all undergraduates
[127] and provides live-in graduate student tutors and faculty housemasters who have the dual role of both helping students and monitoring them for medical or mental health problems. Students are permitted to select their dorm and floor upon arrival on campus, and as a result diverse communities arise in living groups; the dorms on and east of Massachusetts Avenue are stereotypically more involved in
countercultural activities. MIT also has six graduate student dormitories, which house about one-third of the graduate student population.
[128]
MIT has a very active Greek and co-op system. Approximately one-half of MIT male undergraduates and one-third of female undergraduates
[129] are affiliated with one of MIT's 36 fraternities, sororities, and independent living groups (FSILGs).
[130] Most FSILGs are located across the river in the
Back Bay owing to MIT's historic location there, but there are also a few fraternities in MIT's West Campus and in Cambridge. Since 2002, all freshmen are required to live in the dormitory system for the first year before moving into an FSILG.
Noted alumni
Many of MIT's over 110,000 alumni and alumnae have had considerable success in scientific research, public service, education, and business. 27 MIT alumni have
won the Nobel Prize and 37 have been selected as
Rhodes Scholars.
[131]
Alumni currently in American politics and public service include
Chairman of the Federal Reserve Ben Bernanke,
New Hampshire Senator John E. Sununu, U.S.
Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman,
MA-1 Representative
John Olver,
CA-13 Representative
Pete Stark. MIT alumni in international politics include former
U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, former
Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister
Ahmed Chalabi, and former
Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu.
MIT alumni founded or co-founded many notable companies, such as
Intel,
McDonnell Douglas,
Texas Instruments,
3Com,
Qualcomm,
Bose,
Raytheon,
Koch Industries,
Rockwell International,
Genentech, and
Campbell Soup.
MIT alumni have also led other prominent institutions of higher education, including the
University of California system,
Harvard University,
Johns Hopkins University,
Carnegie Mellon University,
Tufts University,
Northeastern University,
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute,
Tecnológico de Monterrey, and
Purdue University. Although not alumni, former Provost
Robert A. Brown is President of
Boston University, former Provost
Mark Wrighton is Chancellor of
Washington University in St. Louis, and former Professor
David Baltimore was President of
Caltech.
More than one third of the
United States' manned spaceflights have included
MIT-educated astronauts, among them
Buzz Aldrin (Sc. D XVI '63), more than any university excluding the
United States service academies.
[132]
References
1. MIT Nobelists
2. MIT endowment rises 23 percent to .4 billion, Associated Press
3. MIT Facts 2007: Academic Schools and Departments, Divisions & Sections
4. 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica, volume 4, p. 292: "[MIT] was a pioneer in introducing as a feature of its original plans laboratory instruction in physics, mechanics, and mining."
5. TheCenter Research University Data
6. Three from MIT win top U.S. science, technology honors
7. MIT MacArthur Fellows MIT Office of Provost, Institutional Research
8. MIT: The Impact of Innovation Bank of Boston Economics Department
9. MIT Facts 2007: Mission and Origins
10. Report of the Committee on Educational Survey (Lewis Report), , Warren K., Lewis, MIT Press, ,
11. Barton's philosophy for the institute was for "the teaching, not of the manipulations done only in the workshop, but the inculcation of all the scientific principles which form the basis and explanation of them;" The Founding of MIT, cites (1) Letter, William Barton Rogers to Henry Darwin Rogers, March 13, 1846, William Barton Rogers Papers (MC 1), Institute Archives & Special Collections, MIT Libraries.
12. Andrews, Elizabeth, Nora Murphy, and Tom Rosko(2004), William Barton Rogers: MIT's Visionary Founder (Charter, laboratory instruction, first classes in Mercantile building)
13. The history montage at the Kendall/MIT T-stop
14. National Selection Committee Ballot - Power of the NSC
15. Tech Alumni Holds Reunion. Record attendance, novel features. Cooperative plan with Harvard announced by Pres. Maclaurin. Gov. Walsh Brings Best Wishes of the State.
Maclaurin quoted: "in future Harvard agrees to carry out all its work in engineering and mining in the buildings of Technology under the executive control of the president of Technology, and, what is of the first importance, to commit all instruction and the laying down of all courses to the faculty of Technology, after that faculty has been enlarged and strengthened by the addition to its existing members of men of eminence from Harvard's Graduate School of Applied Science."
16. Harvard-Tech Merger. Duplication of Work to be Avoided in Future. Instructors Who WIll Hereafter be Members of Both Faculties
17. Canceled by a 1917 State Judicial Court decision.Harvard Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences.
18. The "New Tech"
19. Report of the Committee on Educational Survey, page 13
20. The Cold War and American Science: The Military-Industrial-Academic Complex at MIT and Stanford, , Stuart, Leslie, Columbia University Press, , ISBN 0-231-07959-1
21. Endless Frontier: Vannevar Bush, Engineer of the American Century, , Gregg, Zachary, Free Press, , ISBN 0-684-82821-9
22. Report of the Committee on Educational Survey, page 13
23. More Emphasis on Science Vitally Needed to Educate Man for A Confused Civilization
24. Iron Birds Caged in Building 7 Lobby: Missiles on Display Here
25. "At a critical time in the late 1960s, Johnson stood up to the forces of campus rebellion at MIT. Many university presidents were destroyed by the troubles. Only Edward Levi, University of Chicago president, had comparable success guiding his institution to a position of greater strength and unity after the turmoil." A tribute to MIT's Howard Johnson David Warsh
26. Ellen Swallow Richards Chemical Heritage Foundation
27. "In 1959, 158 women were enrolled at MIT." MIT Campus Planning 1960-2000 O. Robert Simha
28. "When Drake arrived on campus 50 years ago, she was one of only 16 women in a class of 1,000." MIT Panel "Alumnae Through the Ages" Reflects on Changes for Women Lauren Clark
29. Chapter 1: Male/Female enrollment patterns in EECS at MIT and other schools EECS Women Undergraduate Enrollment Committee
30. In 1995, faculty member Nancy Hopkins accused MIT of bias against herself and several of her female colleagues. Hopkins, rather than a third party, investigated her own charges and concluded in 1999 concluded there was "subtle yet pervasive" bias against women at MIT, although no instance of intentional discrimination was found. Despite the study's sealed evidence and its lack of peer review, Vest approved "targeted actions" like the creation of 11 committees and 20% salary increases for women faculty.
MIT Tarnishes Its Reputation with Gender Junk Science Judith Kleinfeld
31. Feminist Mythology Kathryn Jean Lopez
32. "Over the past decade, the number of women undergraduates increased from 34 percent to 42 percent. Women now outnumber men in 10 undergraduate majors at MIT. The proportion of women graduate students has increased from 20 percent to 29 percent."
"During Vest's presidency, MIT appointed its first woman department head in the School of Science, its first two minority department heads in the School of Engineering, and its first five women vice presidents."
Charles Vest to step down from MIT presidency, ''Has been staunch national advocate for education and research''
33.
Professor Sues M.I.T. Over Refusal of Tenure
34. MIT corporate ties raise concern
35. Settlement allows cooperation on awarding financial-aid
36. MIT's Inaction Blamed for Contributing to Death of a Freshman
37. Institute Will Pay Kruegers M for Role in Death
38. "Students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have been far more likely to [commit suicide] over the past decade compared to those at 11 other universities with elite science and engineering programs—38 percent more often than the next school, Harvard, and four times more than campuses with the lowest rate.
"Madelyn Gould, a professor of psychiatry at Columbia University, said these patterns showed a 'suicide contagion' at MIT - victim begetting victim in the same small community. 'It appears there's a culture at MIT that has reinforced suicide and jumping as a means of escaping,' said Gould, an authority on suicide and contagion. 'Somehow they've normalized that jumping out a window is OK.'"
11 years, 11 suicides—Critics Say Spate of MIT Jumping Deaths Show a 'Contagion' Patrick Healy
39. "There is considerable debate as to whether a school's selectivity increases the likelihood of student suicide. The latest round of the debate is being played out in Cambridge, Mass., where Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is in the midst of a million wrongful death suit over the death of a troubled sophomore in April 2000. Media reports have painted a portrait of an institution in the midst of a suicide epidemic. In fact, MIT's suicide rate is below the national average if one adjusts figures for the school's overwhelmingly male student body (American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, 2002)"
Prevention on Campus Elizabeth Fried Ellen, LICSW
40.
MIT Mental Health Task Force Fact Sheet
41.
Clay endorses Mental Health Task Force Recommendations
42. Who Was Responsible for Elizabeth Shin?
43. MIT dean of admissions resigns for falsifying resume
44. Dean of admissions resigns
45.
The Inaugural Address James R. Killian
46. The Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technonolgy (HST) offers joint MD, MD-PhD, or Medical Engineering degrees in collaboration with Harvard Medical School.
Harvard-MIT HST Academics Overview
47. MIT Corporation
48. A Brief History and Workings of the Corporation
49. MIT Investment Management Company
50. Reports to the President, Report of the Chair of the Faculty Rafael L. Bras
51. MIT Education
52. Course numbers are traditionally presented in Roman numerals, e.g. Course XVIII for mathematics. Starting in 2002, the Bulletin (MIT's course catalog) started to use Arabic numerals. Usage outside of the Bulletin varies, both Roman and Arabic numerals being used). This section follows the Bulletin's usage.
53. MIT Whereis
54. Loose Nukes: A Special Report ABC News
55. MIT Assures Community of Research Reactor Safety MIT News Office
56. MIT maps wireless users across campus
57.
58. Starchitecture on Campus
59.
60. "Boston isn’t yet fully embracing contemporary architecture... it’s far riskier to put an unapologetically modern building in the historic Back Bay, not far from the neighborhood’s Victorian town houses and Gothic Revival columns." Stained Glass? Rachel Strutt
61. 2007 361 Best College Rankings: Quality of Life: Campus Is Tiny, Unsightly, or Both It should be noted in this regard that the size of the campus is considerable.
62. MIT Facts 2007: Enrollments 2006-2007
63. MIT Facts 2007: International Students and Scholars
64. See Demographics of the United States for references.
65. MIT Facts 2007: Admission to MIT
66. MIT Facts 2007: Graduate Education
67. MIT Facts 2007: Tuition and Financial Aid
68. Proposed Revisions to GIRs Are Unveiled
69.
Leadership and Organizational Culture: New Perspectives on Administrative Theory and Practice, , , , University of Illinois Press, 1986, ISBN 0-252-01347-6 p. 59: "In the sixties... Students spoke of their undergraduate experiences as 'drinking from a fire hose.'"
70. Common Data Set, Enrollment and Persistence
71.
72. Terrascope home page
73. The Coop Membership Application (2006)
74. "MIT for a long time... stood virtually alone as a university that embraced rather than shunned industry."
A Survey of New England: A Concentration of Talent, , , , The Economist,
75. "The war made necessary the formation of new working coalitions... between these technologists and government officials. These changes were especially noteworthy at MIT."
MIT: Shaping the Future, Edward B. Roberts, , , The MIT Press, 1991,
76. MIT ILP - About the ILP
77. Nearly half of all US Presidential science advisors have had ties to the Institute
78. MIT Washington Office
79. MIT's Building 7 and Harvard's Johnston Gate, the traditional entrances to each school, are 1.72 miles apart along Massachusetts Avenue.
80. Times Higher Education Supplement World Rankings 2005
81. Harvard-MIT Data Center
82.
83. MIT-Zaragoza International Logistics Program
84. MIT-Portugal
85. MIT International Science and Technology Initiatives
86. MIT Edgerton Center
87. MIT Public Service Center
88. MIT Outreach Database
89. Minority Introduction to Engineering and Science Program
90. Research Science Institute
91. Project Interphase
92. History - The MIT Press
93. America's Best Colleges 2007: National Universities
94. America's Best Colleges 2007: Best Undergraduate Business Programs
95. America's Best Graduate Schools 2008: Top Business Schools
96. USNWR's Best Graduate Programs in the Sciences
97. USNWR's Best Graduate Programs in Engineering
98. MIT grad programs rank highly
99. Webometrics Top 3000 World Universities
100. Wikipedia's summaries: Top universities overall (worldwide); Top universities worldwide for technology; Top universities worldwide for science
101. 2006 ''The Times'' Higher Educational Supplement ranking of world’s research universities
102. The Top American Research Universities: 2006 Annual Report
103. Academic Ranking of World Universities 2006
104. The Washington Monthly College Rankings: National Universities
105. Diamond, Nancy and Hugh Davis Graham (1995), How should we rate research universities?
106. MIT Facts 2007: Faculty and Staff
107. 61 MIT-related Nobel Prize winners include faculty, researchers, alumni and staff
108. MIT Facts 2007: Faculty and Staff
109. Brown Book (Annual Report of Sponsored Research)
110. TLO Statistics for Fiscal Year 2006
111. UROP homepage
112. MIT Research and Teaching Firsts
113. Energy Research Council homepage
114. "We are a meritocracy. We judge each other by our ideas, our creativity and our accomplishments, not by who our families are." MIT freshman application & financial aid information Marilee Jones, former Dean of Admissions
115. "Mathematical approaches to economics have at times been criticized as lacking in practical value. Yet the MIT Economics Department has trained many economists who have played leading roles in government and in the private sector, including the current heads of four central banks: those of Chile, Israel, Italy, and, I might add, the United States."
2006 Commencement Speech at MIT Ben S. Bernanke
116. "MIT's founder, William Barton Rogers, regarded the practice of giving honorary degrees as 'literary almsgiving ... of spurious merit and noisy popularity....' Rogers was a geologist from the University of Virginia who believed in Thomas Jefferson's policy barring honorary degrees at the university, which was founded in 1819.... When Charles M. Vest... was offered the job of president of MIT in 1990, he met with Wiesner, who also had come to MIT from the University of Michigan. Wiesner, in ten words of concise persuasion, cited three worries of university presidents that Vest would not have at MIT—'No big time athletics. No medical school. No honorary degrees.'"
No honorary degrees is an MIT tradition going back to ... Thomas Jefferson
117. Rushdie Stuns Audience 26-100 Daniel C. Stevenson
118. While some statistics suggest that MIT pre-medical or pre-law students have lower average GPAs than graduates from peer schools with the same standardized board scores, a Princeton University study cites MIT granting as many "A"s as Ivy League-level colleges Grade Deflation
119. IHTFP
120. MIT Association of Student Activities
121. Howe & Ser Moving Co.
122.
MIT Facts 2007: Athletics and Recreation
123. Varisty Sports fact sheets
124. MIT's World Champions
125. MIT Facts 2007: Athletics and Recreations
126. MIT Facts 2007: Athletics and Recreation
127. MIT Undergraduate Housing FAQ:19 Frequently Asked Questions MIT Housing Office
128. Graduate Housing Guide - Quick Facts
129. Consultation Report to Dean Rogers
130. MIT Facts 2007: Housing
131. Awards and Honors MIT Office of Institutional Research
132. Notable Alumni
Further reading
:''See the
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