http://mitworld.mit.edu/ MIT World media in category 'MIT'. en-us Tue, 14 Feb 2012 18:05:28 GMT Tue, 19 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/898 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/898 It’s difficult to imagine that at one point in her career, National Academy of Science member Nancy Hopkins thought to quit. In her talk, she relates the historical challenges facing women in science and engineering at MIT, the university’s responses to these problems, and how in the end Hopkins avoided becoming a poster child of the ‘leaky pipeline’ -- a term of art for the high rate of attrition among talented women in engineering and science academia.

Hopkins weaves together a personal tale with the larger story of gender discrimination in U.S. academia. She first captures a century of women at MIT, from the handful of female admissions starting in the late 19th century, to the current numbers: 45% of all undergraduates, 29% of graduate students and 17% of the faculty. However, there were no women science or engineering faculty in the first 100 years. During this period, the exclusion of top-notch women researchers from major academic posts was common, says Hopkins, a reflection of the fact that “societal beliefs can overpower merit.” A major turning point arrived in the 1960s and 1970s, when the civil rights and women’s movements flung open workplace doors to women.

But Hopkins notes that even after passage of laws against overt job discrimination, obstacles emerged to the advancement of women scientists and engineers, “unanticipated and largely invisible…almost as effective at excluding women as the fact they couldn’t get a job at all.” There was sexual harassment, which “made it impossible for women to be equal in the workplace.” Hopkins recalls in her undergraduate days grossly inappropriate behavior toward her by a Nobel Prize-winning biologist in a Harvard lab, but “didn’t grasp until years later that a man who treats a student that way may not be genuinely interested in her lab notes.” Mentors who could smooth the way to the next career step were few and far between for women students and young faculty. And unlike men, women have to choose between children or career. Hopkins says “women in my generation instinctively never talked about pregnancy or children at work…You wanted to make sure people knew you wanted to be a nun of science, and in fact personally, I was.” Hopkins cites as well “unconscious gender bias,” where women’s research appeared to colleagues of both genders less valuable than identical research by a man, and accompanying marginalization in university departments. Up against these problems, who could blame women for departing their professions, asks Hopkins.

At MIT, serious relief arrived in 1994, after Hopkins, demoralized after trying in vain to obtain more lab space for her zebrafish experiments, found similarly unhappy women colleagues who banded together to press for institutional solutions. Hopkins literally went about measuring lab space and provided hard data about gender bias to then MIT President Charles Vest, as evidence that women had less space available to conduct their research. (This “tape measure” turning point has earned Hopkins an unintended place in MIT history, while the tape measure itself is on display at the MIT Museum.)

In stages, over the subsequent years, MIT began intensively recruiting women scientists and engineers for its faculty; creating new family leave policies; and placing women in top administrative roles, among a number of remedies. 19% of science faculty are now women, and surveys show a much higher level of satisfaction among this group. But Hopkins says the job is not yet finished: Women at MIT, from students to faculty, report “the perception that when women advance, it is due to the lowering of standards.” The leaky pipeline won’t be fixed until “this insidious belief that women are less good than men” vanishes within MIT and society at large. ]]> Tue, 05 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/893 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/893 The drive to make American universities more diverse shows some success, but consistent and meaningful inclusion of under-represented minorities seems elusive, according to four academics whose own experiences help illuminate the problem.

“The civil rights agenda is challenged today in many ways,” says Evelyn Higginbotham, although the U.S. is a far more multiracial country than it was in the early 1960s, when civil rights laws emerged. High unemployment and foreclosure rates, and lower levels of state funding have made it especially hard for minority or poor white students to start and complete an education. Retention problems also threaten faculty diversity in higher education, says Higginbotham. Professors of color may find themselves spread too thin; asked to participate on committees and as advisors, they may not be able to pursue the research required for tenure. “Diversity is not successful when it appears as a revolving door for junior faculty,” she says, and retaining these faculty is essential for recruiting and training the next generation of scholars.

Physicist Sylvester James Gates takes stock of diversity from a variety of vantage points. He notes that “nature uses diversity as a survival mechanism.” As an American traveling the world, he has “found American music almost every place,” and credits diversity for creating rock and roll. In physics, and other sciences, “diversity is a force multiplier for innovation…You want the most diverse group of people present asking questions.” Gates also has a personal take on diversity and MIT. In 1969, he was one of 50 African American undergraduate students in a class of 1000. “Wow, talk about lack of diversity. We were it.” Those were trying times, and Gates relates episodes of racism on campus, including the routine questioning of black students by campus police, “who wondered who we were.” Gates ultimately decided “MIT was not a place where diversity could be lived out and was genuine,” and left. Although he finds the university markedly more multiracial these days, Gates concludes, “You folks got a ways to go.”

Paula Hammond was hired by MIT in the same department she matriculated in back in 1980, and says she has “huge faith in MIT and what we can do here.” But she also admits to a “huge sense of reality about where we are now and how far we have to go,” especially in terms of recruitment and retention of faculty of color. Hammond walks through the results of a three-year investigation into MIT’s efforts around race and diversity. Some of the key findings: From 1999-2009, MIT hires saw a meaningful increase in the number of women, (10-20%), but only 3-6% increases in numbers of underrepresented minorities. Certain departments showed no minority hires at all. Worse, a significant number of minority hires left before or at the time of first promotion; tenured minority faculty felt more dissatisfaction with their jobs than their white peers.

The study recommends assigning formal mentors to all junior faculty hires, and developing a consistent policy for mentoring across MIT. More efforts must also be made to extend recruitment networks beyond MIT’s own graduates and peer universities, and to train faculty against “hidden bias.” Hammond notes, “We’re all proud we’re at a university that promotes meritocracy, “but a tension exists among MIT faculty “around the concept of inclusion versus excellence…There’s an implication you can’t have both.”

At MIT for 50 years, Wesley Harris comes at the question of diversity with long memories of university life and of larger historical shifts. “The challenge of my generation,” says Harris, was the “production of scholarship by black people.” It is a challenge not fully realized. He describes two black women from Richmond, VA who in the 1940s sought higher education in the north, and then returned south, where as public school teachers they gave Harris an educational grounding in math and physics, as well as the confidence to succeed as a scholar. But he is disappointed by the slope of change since he entered academics. He does not believe MIT has invested itself in the kind of consistent effort that would lead to greater scholarship by faculty of color. Indeed, barriers still prevent acknowledgment and encouragement of the work of these faculty, and this “hurts me,” says Harris, and “the place in which I have citizenship --my home.” ]]> Mon, 28 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/891 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/891 In 2009, MIT launched an unusual academic venture, an interdisciplinary minor devoted to energy studies. A panel of MIT professors discuss their aspirations and work to date shepherding this new program into existence.

Vladimir Bulovic gives full credit to students for jumpstarting the energy minor. They wanted school-based opportunities to tackle urgent, real-world problems involving energy and the environment, says Bulovic, and pressed for “a coherent blueprint for education in energy.” A faculty taskforce helped develop the ambitious brief of the program, an integrated set of courses within and connecting science, technology, and the social sciences, all fortified with a steady dose of hands-on research and field experience. The classroom is but one way to propagate knowledge of energy, says Bulovic. “What we tell them is just part of a bigger picture and it’s up to them to discover the next steps.”

Other faculty describe both accomplishments and challenges in shaping new courses with an energy focus. Robert Jaffe, who teaches a class in the physics of energy, believes MIT is not merely training scientists and engineers but “policymakers and industry leaders who will make important decisions about our energy future, and a basic understanding of physics principles, what’s possible and what’s not, can make a world of difference.” He and colleague Washington Taylor learn as they teach, becoming “newly formed experts” in such areas as air conditioning and car engines. He’s had “some wonderful ‘aha’ moments,” such as learning that wind turbines work “like sailboats sailing into the wind,” not because wind pushes their blades.

Donald Lessard team teaches a course in energy decisions, markets and policies, an enormously complex stew combining energy issues and politics, economics and social organization. “Our energy system is a series of beliefs, political structures, markets, regulatory contexts, set of prices, set of views, activities by firms and households, a physical management of energy and working off of the underlying stock,” says Lessard. The team is still working out the framework for the course, and Lessard says, “None of us have ever taught anything like this before.” By semester’s end, students will be able to play the “climate game,” attempting to manipulate the variables they have been exploring to “solve the world’s energy problem.”

Students of Leon Glicksman investigate how to use engineering to reduce energy loss in buildings. The course touches areas of economics, behavior and the environment, but culminates in “creatively applying principles to a particular problem area.” Glicksman reports on recent student projects, which focused on taking the measure of MIT’s own buildings, and finding ways to improve energy efficiency. One team figured out a way of diffusing the glare from skylights, and utilizing them as a cost effective alternative to expensive indoor lighting. Another group wrapped plastic over older windows in the 30-year-old student center, reducing heat loss. Students like “the idea of having real problems that are small but exciting. They came up with innovative solutions, which made more obvious the difficulty of doing these things. It’s easy to draw boxes on the blackboard. The real world is more challenging.” ]]> Thu, 03 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0500 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/883 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/883 Exploring the past opens up new perspectives on the present and offers ways of navigating a challenging future, these speakers suggest, in a call to action on the occasion of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday.

Susan Hockfield has been “digging into MIT’s history,” where she finds seeds for the institute’s distinct culture. One core aspect of this culture, sustained over MIT’s 150 years, is the idea of “rewarding talent and initiative regardless of social position or pedigree,” says Hockfield. However, as she describes, meritocracy has sometimes been more of an aspiration than reality. Hockfield cites examples of the grudging acceptance of women students in the 19th and early 20th century. In the 1961 centennial, there were only 155 women enrolled in a student body of more than 6,000, she says. “Today, through a conscious and sustained outreach, 45% of undergraduates are now women.”

Although MIT now boasts far more students and faculty of underrepresented minorities, Hockfield says that “opening doors turns out to be the easy part.” It is more difficult ensuring that “those who come from outside the circle of affluence or white privilege can count on a sense of full citizenship.” MIT’s central challenge must be “full inclusion,” states Hockfield, and the Institute should lead the nation in attaining this goal.

Don’t show up at a King celebration, says
Roland Martin, if you do not intend to recommit to “his cause, his ideals and vision.” Martin frets that today’s young people are waiting for the right moment “to take charge and get involved.” It was not always so. In 1955, a handful of pastors in Montgomery, Alabama chose a very young Martin Luther King to lead the city’s improvement association. It was high school and college students who frequently led the charge with lunch counter sit-ins, boycotts, and other protests that launched the Civil Rights movement.

Martin notes the sense of lowered expectations around President Obama’s administration, as if “folks voted, and then said, I’m done, did my part, when in fact, the election was the beginning of a process, not the end.” Young people must “give a damn about something” other than themselves, and understand that the work involved often lasts for years. Martin invokes the Bible’s Nehemiah, who rallied people to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. “What’s your wall?” he asks: “Literacy? Economic development? HIV/AIDS? The point is, start where you are, then move on to the street, block, neighborhood, nation…”

Martin notes that his audience totals more than the number of those who met half a century ago in the Montgomery church basement, setting in motion a nationwide movement. There is enough “brain power, energy, passion in this room to literally change the world,” he says, and “it’s been done before, we have empirical data to prove it.” Concludes Martin, “It’s time to stop talking, meeting and start leading, whether young or old, to rebuild the crumbling walls in this country.” ]]> Wed, 02 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0500 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/882 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/882 In their brief remarks honoring the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., two students strike the theme of collaboration. They touch on the importance of humility and listening to one’s inner voice while pursuing a shared vision of justice and equality.

When she first came to MIT, Khalea Robinson was set to become a builder of bridges and skyscrapers. “Their visibility and permanence appealed to me.” But a talk she attended on some of the world’s pressing problems shook her commitment to this path. Access to clean water, and other issues, should surely count more than her own private engineering goals, she imagined.

But after taking introductory courses in environmental and civil engineering, she realized that she “couldn’t simply fall in line wherever there was a call, because there are so many calls, all of them worthy.” Robinson felt that she should instead look for a field that would “bring forth my initiative, passion, drive, insight and courage,” while also promoting justice and fairness. In a world “full of complex problems that need to be solved by many people,” Robinson believes each of us “has a distinct voice that can and must be raised.”

Pierre Fuller finds a model in Biblical scripture’s Nehemiah, who called on his people to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem one brick at a time, “each man contributing according to his ability.” Fuller recounts that when acquaintances call him a “genius” because he studies at MIT, he points to the help he received during his childhood in Flint, Michigan: his grandmother, a hospital cleaner; a barber friend with a drug record; and his mother -- “who guided me with equal doses of love and tender encouragement, and a wooden paddle and a backhand that would rival Serena Williams.”

Just as Fuller attributes his success to a collective that made unique contributions to his upbringing, he sees the project of building a better world as a function of individuals working together in humility, suppressing personal ambitions, and “replacing a savior mentality with a serving mentality.” The technological innovations MIT sees as the foundation of the future are “only a brick, a small portion of the wall that is to sustain our community.” The academic elite, says Fuller, must seek solutions for communities they serve. All of us “must humble our hearts” to work for “those who come after us, as we have been served by those who come before.” ]]> Mon, 24 Jan 2011 00:00:00 -0500 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/870 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/870 Don’t expect to glean any market tips or trading secrets from James Simons, who steadfastly refuses to disclose the method behind his remarkable record in investing. Instead, listen to this mathematician, hedge fund manager and philanthropist sum up a remarkably varied and rich career, and offer some “guiding principles” distilled along the way.

Simons drew a bead on studying math at MIT from an early age, which some acquaintances found surprising. As a 14-year-old, he was demoted in a temporary job from stockroom worker to floor-sweeper, because he “couldn’t remember where in hell everything went.” This switch suited him fine, since he had “lots of time to think.” When he told his employers he hoped to attend MIT, “they thought it was the funniest thing.” Ultimately, Simons had no choice about it: After Wesleyan recruited, then rejected him, there was only MIT. “I was destined for this place,” he says.

The idea of a math career was “clinched” for Simons after a typical late night of poker and sandwiches with MIT classmates. At 1 a.m. in a Brookline restaurant, Simons saw MIT math legends Isadore Singer and Warren Ambrose “doing math over coffee and cigarettes,” which he “thought was the coolest thing.” After a motor scooter trip to Bogota with Colombian friends -- in whose business he fatefully invested -- Simons leapt into the math phase of his career, writing a famous Ph.D. thesis, teaching at MIT, solving prickly geometry problems and helping build bridges between math and physics. During this phase, he managed to get fired as a cryptanalyst at a Defense Department think tank, after criticizing the pro-Vietnam War stance of his boss, General Maxwell Taylor.

While at Stony Brook’s math department, Simons “got really stuck, very frustrated,” trying “to prove a certain number was irrational.” Meanwhile, he had begun investing dividends generated by his South American business venture and “found out I was not bad at it.” In 1978 at age 38, with 20 years behind him as a mathematician, he concluded it was time for a change. He began an investment business, Renaissance Technologies, that deployed sophisticated, proprietary models to generate astonishing returns (and business envy) over many years. “We have a lot of smart guys,” he comments.

After his retirement in 2009, Simons got “busy as hell” with his third career. The Simons Foundation supports basic math and physics as well as autism research. Simons also wants to improve math at the high school level, by pumping money into teaching jobs so talented people don’t drift to “Google or Goldman Sachs.”

Simons says he is “always doing something new,” and doesn’t like to run with the pack. This approach, which he recommends, “gives you a chance.” Some other parting tips: collaborate with the best people you possibly can; try at problems “for a hell of a long time;” be guided by beauty; and “hope for some good luck.” ]]> Mon, 12 Jul 2010 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/799 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/799 Note: This video has some audio problems, which get resolved early on with some help from an audience member, presumed to be a Course VI alum.

MIT President Susan Hockfield delivers a general update on the Institute to MIT Alumni gathered in Kresge for the annual Technology Day event.

Focusing first on everyone’s most pressing concern, Hockfield provides an overview of the Institute’s finances, and reports on a campus-wide response to the economic downturn that has resulted in a leaner and stronger MIT. Going forward with a balanced budget, MIT is benefitting from The Idea Bank, a community-wide on-line discussion that produced hundreds of ideas on how to reduce expenses. Many of these changes required an examination of business practices aimed at more efficient, streamlined operations. One highly visible change involved the reorganization of the MIT News Office, and the MIT Home Page with Technology Review which created a more unified approach to external communication, and an overall leaner operation. One result? MIT’s website is now the most visited university website in the world.

Hockfield also updates on major building projects, including the celebrated opening of the new Media Lab (Bldg. E14), and the much-anticipated new Sloan building (Bldg. E62) in 2011. Additionally, as the Koch Institute for Integrated Cancer Research (Bldg. 76) nears completion, she provides details on the plan to bring 12 biologists and 12 engineers together as they take on the cancer research in new ways that speak to the MIT interdisciplinary approach to solving very big problems.

Initiatives begun the past year include new programs in leadership, energy, sustainability, entrepreneurship and finance.

Questions from the audience include MIT’s role in trying to solve the oil leak in the gulf (MIT faculty are on the case), MIT’s help in providing insight and analysis on the causes of the global economic crisis challenges in the banking industry, more on solar energy and the challenges of energy storage, the upcoming MIT 150 celebration, the job climate for MIT grads (considerably better than most), and work at the Sloan School in sustainability and fostering entrepreneurship. ]]> Mon, 28 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/792 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/792 Ed Roberts reviews the effects of entrepreneurship within MIT and the relation of MIT entrepreneurship to larger communities.

Much of the research under discussion comes from a 2006 study of MIT alumni conducted by Roberts and Charles Eesley of the Sloan School. The study polled MIT alumni about companies they had started or co-founded and which were still in business. 20% reported founding a total of 25,800 companies that met this standard. These companies had a total employment of 3.3 million and generated revenues of almost one trillion dollars. Put in other terms, living MIT alumni constitute the equivalent of the eleventh largest economy in the world. "MIT is the most productive institution anywhere in the world in creating new companies," Roberts says.

The study found many intriguing trends. For one, the rate at which alumni have been starting companies has accelerated over the decades. The number of alumni starting their first firm (as opposed to their second or third company) has grown from about 1000 in the 50's to 9000 during the 90's. Entrepreneurship is spread throughout the alumni, regardless of where or what they studied. When alumni found multiple companies, the second tends to do better than the first, and the third, better than the second. Non-native students found companies, usually in the US, at twice the rate of native students. Women alums are less likely to found companies than men. The effects are highly concentrated geographically: 31% of the firms and payroll are in Massachusetts.

Two questions often provoked by these results are: why has this happened and how can my region or country create an MIT? While Roberts disavows any firm conclusions, he points out that MIT has a long history of deliberate, focused efforts at nurturing entrepreneurship, particularly over the last forty years. His talk reviews the many chapters of this relationship, which ranges from promoting business plan competitions among students, to organizing the licensing office around a focus on startups, to sponsoring educational and networking events among alumni, to integrating the campus around the entrepreneurial mission. As to the second question, Roberts says one of the key ingredients is patience. Building the MIT entrepreneurial ecosystem took a long time.

Download the report: Entrepreneurial Impact: The Role of MIT ]]> Tue, 22 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/790 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/790 In conversation with William Uricchio, Henry Jenkins returns to reflect on his time at MIT and offers insights into MIT’s culture, his new life at USC, and the state of digital cultures, new media and collective intelligence.

Jenkins shares that complex feeling of loving and hating MIT, at the same time and often within the course of one day. Providing his own insights into MIT’s culture and the legacy of IHTFP, he looks back on a long career and the evolution of film and media studies into the Comparative Media Studies program we know today. He attributes his longevity at MIT to the inspiration provided by the students, and makes a strong case for the value of humanities education, while questions remain for some on how the humanities fit into an MIT education.

The reflection ends with Jenkins reading The Cat in the Hat—his annual salute to Dr. Seuss. This tradition, began 18 years ago, became a staple of IAP. Jenkins says he is reminded “how much it characterizes to me that creativity and imagination, which is so vital at MIT, and that we turn our back on at our own peril.” ]]> Thu, 03 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/784 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/784 Some of the lessons Bill Porter picked up as a 13-year-old ranch hand in Colorado seem to have lasted a lifetime. When his boss told him to drive over a treacherous mountain pass into town for some chicken feed, Porter said he could not yet drive. He was told, “Just do it.” And when he faced taking a team of horses out to pasture for the first time, he got the same advice. Porter says he learned from those experiences: “There are risks involved, but so what? What’s the worst that could happen? You might have to get another job.”

This formative time helped shape a career that began with Navy service, then many years devising products for different industries. After a stint at Sloan, Porter decided he “didn’t like his job.” He was eager to “go commercial” with several promising new inventions, including an exhaust gas sensor, and a remote access back pack camera, and so started his own company. He struggled to raise capital, and had to “bet the farm.” Finally “things were going swell,” says Porter. Then came the crash of 1974, and his one big contract fell through. It wasn’t fun telling his 250 employees he couldn’t pay them, recalls Porter.

Undaunted, he pulled his company through the downturn, and finally sold it to Warner Communications. Then came Porter’s ‘lightbulb’ moment. He became fascinated by the possibility of analyzing and predicting trends in the stock market. At around the same time, he bought an Apple II computer, and discovered he could pull down stock quotes at night online, freeing him of newspapers and the monthly brokerage statement. Porter thought, “Why isn’t somebody doing this right?” In the early 80s, with his “legally blind programmer” and $15 thousand, he started a company called Trade*Plus – ushering in the era of online stock trading. By Porter’s account, the company expanded so fast that it couldn’t keep up hiring and training employees. In the 1990s, this company was renamed the E-Trade Group, and Porter in his own words, “became pretty wealthy.”

Porter has given generously to MIT, funding a new building at Sloan with the long-term goal of helping the business school become more effective in marketing the “neat new widgets” coming from the Institute’s scientists and engineers. He has a few words of counsel for students and entrepreneurs: the “very best field to get into” is life sciences, and the best source of funding is “your own money,” followed by that of your friends and family. Venture capital financing, says Porter, should be your very last resort. ]]> Thu, 13 May 2010 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/778 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/778 The world’s most intractable problems might be cracked if more of our “brightest minds” could be tempted to work on them, asserts Bill Gates. Too many graduates of top universities like MIT find it infinitely more satisfying to deal in derivatives, he says, or lucrative areas of medical science like “baldness drugs.” Gates, in his full-time job as foundation head, is pondering what might happen if “all that IQ and talent could be shifted to some degree” into the areas he’s deeply engaged in, such as global health and education.

Gates describes some key issues his foundation is pursuing, where there is both “a great need and opportunity.” One critical area in what Gates calls the “world’s report card” is childhood deaths. Mortality of children under five has fallen dramatically, from 20 million in 1960 to nine million last year. This reduction, says Gates, has been driven primarily by vaccinations for measles, smallpox and other scourges. While “vaccines get less than 1% of the focus on medical spending, they are responsible for a really incredible amount of health benefits,” says Gates. They are not only very cost-effective over time, but have added features: “What’s mind-blowing is the effect that improved health has on population growth.” Improving family health, by such measures as vaccines, paradoxically ends up limiting family size. Today, we’re “down to the bottom billion in the poverty trap,” says Gates, and by improving vaccine distribution and developing vaccines for other diseases, we can further reduce early childhood deaths and extend associated benefits to other parts of the world.

Gates is also engaged in the problem of education, particularly in this country, where “the system is working very poorly.” With 30% of high school kids dropping out, and those who complete high school inadequately educated for college, some kind of breakthrough is required, says Gates. He wants to examine the quality of K-12 teaching and identify and disseminate best practices. Some of his test sites deploy classroom webcams to help identify constructive methods. Gates is also investigating the application of online, interactive technology to motivate kids, and to help teachers teach better. He views MIT’s OpenCourseWare initiative as a step in the right direction, part of what he hopes will prove a much larger transformation of instruction throughout America’s schools.

Whether eliminating childhood deaths, improving the nation’s education system, or tackling sustainable energy or sanitation systems worldwide, there are reasons to believe we can make progress, says Gates. But the rate of progress depends on “the rate we can bring people in…get the brightest people onto the big problems.” ]]> Mon, 26 Apr 2010 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/769 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/769 Even in the confines of a panel discussion,
Gustavo Dudamel radiates so much passion and ebullience that it requires little imagination to see him at the podium with a baton in hand. MIT’s 2010 McDermott Award in the Arts winner is, at the tender age of 29, one of the world’s top conductors and music disseminators. In conversation with two MIT music luminaries, and moderator Maria Hinojosa, Dudamel describes the remarkable music education system in Venezuela that set him on his path, and that continues to inspire his work in the U.S. and around the world.

“When El Sistema gave me an instrument, it was the best moment in my life,” says Dudamel, who attributes his success and world view in large part to Venezuela’s 35-year-old innovative music education system -- or as Dudamel characterizes it, a transformative social movement. The brainchild of economist and politician Jose Antonio Abreu, El Sistema invites children from all of Venezuela’s communities to play music and join orchestras through their school years. The result is an extraordinary national experiment that “changes the life of families and towns,” says Dudamel. “The problem with society is exclusion, and when you give an instrument to a child” you are changing the life of the family and the entire community, he says. Today, 300,000 Venezuelan children are growing up playing classical music, and learning along the way how to instruct even younger students in performance and conducting. This collaborative learning and teaching organization, says Dudamel, led him to his vocation.

MIT Media Lab professor Tod Machover watched Dudamel conduct the MIT Orchestra the night before. Machover comments that Dudamel, unlike more autocratic conductors, “found a way to combine leadership, and being part of a group.” Machover, whose own interests in technology and music encourage ways of building connections among people, views Dudamel and El Sistema as an inspiration for creating community through music-making. Dudamel responds that he doesn’t “feel like a boss as a conductor,” but more like a chef in a kitchen with his team. He comes up with an idea, and someone says “maybe this can be more salty, and you have to be open to that.”

Pulitzer Prize-winning composer John Harbison notes that his only experience with state-sponsored musical “nurturing” was in Canada at a young composer program, which felt like “some form of heaven.” He doesn’t hold out much hope for a “parallel experience in concert music in the U.S.,” regretting that “we have a more affluent society which has established certain kinds of cultural values…Now we have generations of kids who haven’t heard a note of concert music or jazz, or high quality exploratory music. We have a real lacuna, a hole we need to address.” Harbison sees Dudamel as “a tremendous asset,” perhaps a crucial element in a campaign to touch a new generation in America and beyond.

Dudamel is more than willing to be a global ambassador for music-making and for breaking down barriers of all kinds. He is starting youth programs at his new home base in Los Angeles, in Korea, Germany and Italy, and also in Boston at the New England Conservatory. “We have a phrase in Venezuela -- tocar y luchar -- to play and to fight, which is also the symbol for El Systema.” The borders that exist in the world between peoples are “all in our head,” says Dudamel, “and our message through music is everyone has a chance to have a future, together.” ]]> Mon, 08 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0500 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/751 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/751 In urging the MIT community to use its gifts to help others in need, particularly, the victims of the earthquake in Haiti, Dylon Rockwell recalls his mother's quest to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina. With vivid memories of hundreds of New Orleans residents arriving in his hometown of Dallas, his family was there to help at the Dallas Reunion Arena. He recalls heartbreaking moments, seeing young children separated from their families, and his mother's message of help and hope, "we don't have a lot of money, but we've got time and so that's what we are going to give."

Evoking the spirit of Dr. Martin Luther King, Rockwell considers what King might make of those efforts, as well as the need to respond to Haiti. Inspired by King, he says what we need is a "heart full of grace and a soul generated by love", and hopes this message will be a call to action for support of Haiti.

Zenzile Brooks recalls her days playing piano in her local church and the praise and hugs from a highly influential Ms. Bryant. Through this story she reflects on the responsibility of having a gift and what it means to truly use it. It is our responsibility to recognize our gifts, to say "thank you" and use the gift for good in the world. She considers the gifts of Martin Luther King, Jr.–– his ability to galvanize others and to make people care–– and the ways in which he used them to change the world, noting this gift was something of a burden to him in the early part of his life.

Today, for Brooks, being at MIT is "a big and famous gift", that comes with a great deal of pressure and expectation. She encourages all who are part of the fabric of MIT to recognize this gift and to use it and tangible ways, to be a mentor, to provide real leadership, and to give voice to the voiceless. ]]> Mon, 08 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0500 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/752 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/752 Woven into the fabric of MIT life, says MIT President Susan Hockfield, is the “perpetual striving to be ever better.” To this end, Hockfield has been laboring to create a “true culture of inclusion.” Hockfield now has a tool to aid her efforts: a report on MIT faculty race and diversity -- the result of 2 ½ years of study. It documents the sometimes painful experience of MIT faculty members of underrepresented groups, but also provides practical steps for ameliorating the situation. Strong mentoring of junior faculty is a starting place, so new hires don’t immediately begin struggling in “a sink or swim environment,” which is “terribly wasteful and harmful to morale.” Hockfield hopes the report will spur a more open discussion of race at MIT. Ultimately, she’d like to reinforce the idea that strengthening MIT’s diversity is “pivotal to helping us magnify and deploy our shared gifts for mankind.”

Gerry Hudson has long dedicated himself to the cause of organized labor, such as nursing home employees like his own mother. His vision was shaped in large part by what he calls “the real King message,” exemplified in a speech given to the AFL-CIO in 1961. In this address, entitled “When the Negro Wins, Labor Wins,” King made clear his battle was not merely against white supremacy and racism in America, but against poverty as well. “The achievement of civil rights,” says Hudson, “was merely a means to building the right kind of movement,” aimed at securing a “just society free of war and poverty.”

While King implored the AFL-CIO to join with him “in creating a coalition of conscience,” labor leaders of the day turned a cold shoulder. So “the Negro was asked to go off and fight Jim Crow” without labor’s support, says Hudson. This marked a momentous failure for progressive politics, he believes -- an abortive attempt to ally the civil rights movement to the cause of labor and economic justice. This failure was soon followed by the rise of the Dixiecrats and George Wallace, the loss of Democrats in northern states, and ultimately “the long nightmare of American politics … that has swept the country for more than 40 years.”

The labor movement has also gone into decline, and “if trends continue, there will be no labor unions in 20 years in this country.” Not coincidentally, wealth has become increasingly concentrated, and there is an “outrageous inequality” in society now. Hudson found solace in Barack Obama’s election, and his embrace of King’s message of a broad politics of hope. It was “a remarkable passing of the baton.” Yet, a year after that election, Hudson still looks for the promised changes in health care, labor reform, and green jobs. He finally believes that the creation of a more just America, “in which wealth is more equitably distributed, in which every child, no matter who or where they are in this country, can flourish,” will not happen unless all his listeners put their “gifts on the table.” ]]> Wed, 02 Dec 2009 00:00:00 -0500 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/727 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/727 In this first of three AeroAstro symposium events to mark the 40th anniversary of the moon landing, an extraordinary cast of luminaries recount the parts they played in the Apollo program, and celebrate MIT’s unique role in getting humans to the moon.

Theodore Sorensen believes President Kennedy chose him to oversee the U.S. response to the Soviet’s first space flight because he was “a skeptic … a Unitarian raised asking questions.” The U.S. space program had been lagging, “a joke with late night TV comics,” so the Kennedy administration figured only the “the drama of a moon landing” would spur an improved space effort. When Kennedy announced the plan to Congress, the reaction was “stunned disbelief,” so he deviated from the official text, reminding congressmen that “all of us will be on that trip to the moon.” Today, Kennedy would be disturbed by the militarization of space, Sorensen believes. The next great scientific breakthrough Sorensen would like to see involves “the abolition of weapons of mass destruction.”

Richard Battin describes the work of MIT’s Instrumentation Laboratory, headed by Charles “Doc” Draper, to develop a Mars probe in 1957 following the Sputnik launch. The device had solar panels, a thruster, an attitude control system with gyros, and an onboard digital computer designed to survive a three-year roundtrip to Mars. NASA declined to support the entire project, but liked the computer. In 1961, NASA chief Jim Webb asked his good friend “Doc” Draper to develop guidance navigation and control for Apollo. Battin believes this relationship, and the need for a functioning onboard navigation system (in case the Soviets jammed communication links from Earth) landed MIT the contract.

Aaron Cohen remembers how rocket scientist Wernher Von Braun was puzzled by Cohen’s Apollo assignment, which was “to define and resolve interfaces between all elements of the Apollo program.” He also describes the tragic fire on the launch pad in January 1967, which killed three crew members. This episode triggered months of self-examination, leading to a safer command service module, and a series of reliable flights leading to the moon landing. “When I look back on Apollo 11, I go through each subsystem and marvel at how we managed to form the mission.”

Joseph Gavin, Jr. started as a graduate student in “Doc” Draper’s lab, but ended up leading the development of the lunar module, which “worked every time. I’ll say that again. It worked every time.” His long association with the program left him with some insights: there’s no such thing as random failure; one should take absolutely nothing for granted; and do not change anything that works. He recalls NASA bugging him about overtime, but the young men working for him were under great pressure, so Gavin pushed back, allowing “group leaders to take care of their people.”

Harrison “Jack” Schmitt takes the audience through the history of the Apollo program, including his own historic trip to the moon. “That’s not bad, leaving footprints in the sands of time for a million, might be two million years.” He believes the keys to the mission’s success included having a sufficient base of technology and a reservoir of young engineers and skilled workers; the “pervasive environment of national unease” due to the Cold War, Sputnik and the missile gap; a persuasive president who unleashed adequate funding; and “tough, competent and disciplined management to let people do their jobs.”

In flight control, says Christopher Kraft, Jr., “you have to fly what you’ve got. There’s not time to stop and fix something.” This legend of the early days of space flight recalls chimpanzee testing and concerns about human adaptation to zero gravity. When Kennedy announced the moon mission, “I thought he’d lost his mind.” As flight director, Kraft suddenly “had to come up with the orbital mechanics of going back and forth to the moon. That to me was a hell of a challenge.” Kraft witnessed the entire nation get behind the Apollo effort, which convinced him “we could do anything we set our mind to in this country, if we know what we want to do, where we want to go and have the commitment to get it done.” ]]> Mon, 17 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/699 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/699 The field of systems engineering has only recently emerged, and as this symposium demonstrates, defies precise definition. But MIT has taken this evolving area to heart, nurturing a new division and encouraging a raft of ventures that in their execution, may help shape the field for the next century.

An MIT freshman in 1900 had some very specific requirements to fulfill for graduation, and to prepare for a responsible role in society, says Subra Suresh. Courses included mechanical drawing, military science and rhetoric. These choices became richer over time, with the addition of hundreds of engineering faculty, dealing increasingly with the sciences. Suresh traces how over many decades an engineering concentration on metallurgy shifted from studying mining (iron), to aviation (aluminum), plastics, electronic materials and then biological materials. But at each step, he notes, MIT “always lagged behind about 10 years” in what it taught students.”

The Engineering Systems Division (ESD) is an attempt to “train people the right way.” The curriculum brings the basic rules of nature into engineering practice, and applies discoveries to products and processes that impact people. Students must take into account the “long term societal impact.” ESD is needed to link complex issues along technological and social dimensions. The modern engineer must create new ideas and technologies, and reinvent tools and technologies from earlier times -- as Suresh puts it, “Fix problems associated with the greatest achievements of the 20th century.”

Yossi Sheffi fine tunes the picture, enumerating the key domains under the ESD umbrella, as well as the approaches faculty have adopted, in research, teaching and real-world projects. The primary distinction between other engineers and ESD engineers, Sheffi notes, is that “we try to look at the big picture.” So ESD focuses on critical infrastructure (water, transportation), such extended enterprise as supply chain management and global factories; energy sustainability and health care delivery. To get a handle on such unwieldy subjects, professors examine the human-technological interface, and delve into uncertainty, dynamics, design and implementation, networks and flows, and policy and standards.

MIT’s “engineers without labs” are seeking to “develop insights, principles and tools across all systems,” forging partnerships in industry, around the world. ESD students and faculty must get out in the field, says Sheffi, not just to fulfill course requirements but in order to tackle significant global problems, and to find solutions that are sustainable in terms of social equity, economic development and environmental impact. ESD values and accepts “intellectual risk,” meaning issues that may appear unquantifiable or vague, even without solution, and understands that problem solving means respecting and bringing together all disciplines, including the social sciences and management. ]]> Tue, 28 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/693 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/693 In trying financial times, Susan Hockfield remains optimistic and committed to pursuing MIT’s massive, multi-year initiatives in energy and life sciences. She prefaces her “whirlwind” tour of MIT for an alumni audience by referencing the campus-wide relief at the change in presidential administrations, which promises to make science and engineering more central, and to make “MIT values more mainstream.” If it indeed becomes “cool to be smart,” Hockfield believes MIT can count on taking a prominent national role in research, policy and education.

One key area in which MIT hopes to make a major contribution is sustainable energy. The MIT Energy Initiative, two years old, brings together faculty and students across all disciplines to develop a portfolio of new technologies (although the focus seems increasingly to fall on solar). Campus interest is so intense that the Institute has committed to a minor in energy, and it’s seeking five new professorships in the area. The other major enterprise involves fusing biological sciences with engineering, especially in the study of cancer. At the new Koch Institute, cancer biologists and engineers have already made “fundamental discoveries underlying new targeted cancer drugs,” and they are hard at work decoding the disease, and devising new methods for diagnosis and treatment.

Hockfield also candidly describes the impact of the economic downturn on the Institute, acknowledging that “most revenue streams have been compromised,” except for research. With the endowment down by 20-25%, departments across the board are making significant but strategic cuts for the next two to three years. MIT will not compromise on providing financial aid to needy students, a cost that understandably has risen in the past year, nor on hiring faculty. Hockfield hopes that private philanthropy will help MIT “preserve core strengths and values.” At the end of the recession, she says, “We want to come out with a leaner, stronger Institute.”

Fellow neuroscientist Rebecca Saxe outlines her research investigating the neural basis for a Theory of Mind -- how the human mind seems geared to “glean what others are thinking and feeling.” From her work with children and adults, Saxe has determined that there’s a very specific region of the brain -- the right temporal-parietal junction -- dedicated to thinking about how others think. This area lights up in the fMRI scanner when people read stories involving another person’s beliefs and moral judgments, but not when they digest other kinds of written material. The RTPJ develops this special function slowly (young children don’t have it), and Saxe has discovered that she can interfere with this region’s activities, altering her subjects’ sense of what constitutes morally permissible behavior. She’s exploring whether these distinct neural networks develop differently in children with autism, with the hope of finding therapies that might someday help treat the disorder. ]]> Mon, 13 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/688 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/688 At the end of the three-day Media in Transition conference, panelists swap impressions and reactions, offering some notional themes for future symposia.

Mary Bryson frames her comments as “a mash-up aggregation.” The conference’s “massive disagreements and sometimes awkward silences and gaps” were beneficial, “as we make our way in the present imperfect of media studies.” For Bryson, a key question arose: “What time is it here?” The past, present and future are now intertwined in media studies, and often in “incommensurable tension.” The next conference might wish to “mobilize and re-territorialize” itself across borders, making itself available in multiple host locations.

The traditional discourse around libraries and archives no longer serves us well, observes librarian Marlene Manoff, who calls for a “new terminology to describe or think about collections of digital objects, especially when they involve new services and functionalities.” She was “happy to hear a universal acknowledgment of the volatility and mutability of the digital record,” yet finds herself “still at a loss when it comes to questions about what should or should not be saved.” Colleagues in the profession have been “discussing the social and political implications of selection decisions for a long time,” and today, with so many people creating and collecting digital objects and files,” she perceives “a much broader conversation,” although there is yet “no cultural consensus” about these issues.

John Durham Peters offers three observations: He first addresses the difficulty of organizing knowledge in a field as diverse as media studies (or for that matter, in other modern scholarship). Peters likens media studies to “a 17th-century cabinet of curiosities.” He also gives “two cheers for breakdown,” for the ways that archives fail to conserve “all kinds of stuff.” He asks if we would regard Sappho as such a good poet “if we possessed all 12 of the books.” He’s not trying “to praise barbarians who want to burn libraries,” but to point out that “what counts as historical record is exceedingly malleable.” His last comment involves the “interesting reversibility” of transmission and storage. To “transcend time, we must use up space, just as to transcend space, we must use up time.”

Thomas Pettitt admits to an identity crisis of sorts -- that “those of us who do literature but who have lost faith in literature as a rounded concept are not quite certain what it is that we do.” Possibly as a result of the welcoming nature of the conference, he wonders if “over time, literature studies people will find our true identity within media studies.” Literature is a form of culture production whose scholars focus on aesthetics, particularly those in a verbal form. The conference was absorbed with questions of quantity (“megas and teras”), but asks Pettitt, “Have we neglected (aesthetic) quality as a factor?” And finally, he found confirmation in the notion that “advances in media technology are taking us back to conditions as they were before some of the mechanical inventions.” Is this “business of the future looking rather like the past?” ]]> Tue, 09 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/677 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/677 In their symposium introduction, Susan Hockfield and Mriganka Sur place MIT at the forefront of a revolution in neuroscience. Hockfield, a neuroscientist by training, recaps the evolution of the discipline at MIT, from its 1964 start in the Department of Psychology to the more recent establishment of the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences. These changes mirror the transformation of a field in which, says Hockfield, “at first you could do little more than make qualitative observations about behavior and only speculate about causes, to one that can examine brain function at the level of molecules and cell circuits; that can conduct quantitative experiments with genetically targeted model systems and can directly observe the living human brain in action.”

We are now poised “for the first time in human history to deliver scientifically designed, rational therapies for some crippling disorders of the brain.” Hockfield credits MIT’s progress to “meta-experiments,” specifically collaborations among scientists and engineers, and the generosity of patrons.

Mriganka Sur and his colleagues believe “the vast majority of brain disorders have their roots in brain wiring gone awry,” so a solution to such disorders lies in understanding the wiring, and its associated functions. MIT gets at these questions from many angles of research, including the genetic underpinnings of brain development, the architecture of synaptic pathways and networks, and the brain’s response to environmental stimuli. MIT addresses research problems through a “unique interdisciplinary effort” comprising molecular biology, neuron and cognitive science, and computation. What’s more, researchers have united behind a singular mission -- a “wish to make a difference in the world” -- which involves a specific focus on addressing such brain disorders and diseases as dyslexia, Alzheimer’s, schizophrenia, and autism. “There is not one other entity like this anywhere else,” says Sur, who believes MIT’s potential for future impact is “virtually limitless.” ]]> Tue, 17 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/653 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/653 There are times when it’s necessary to judge a book by its cover, or a single page, because that’s all that remains. Michael Scott Cuthbert and Nancy Schrock reveal some treasures from MIT’s early music collection which, while often incomplete or damaged, sing volumes about their origins and use.

Cuthbert demonstrates that when it comes to medieval and renaissance music manuscripts, there’s really no substitute for the real thing. His discussion concerns several recent additions to MIT’s Lewis Music Library. Online perusal alone cannot reveal which of his manuscripts was designed to be read by a large group of singers in a cathedral, and which served as a valued part of a priest’s collection for personal study. Holding the two artifacts up, Cuthbert makes it clear: He first displays a giant, two-sided leaf, and then an aged volume containing the much smaller page.

To examine these specimens, says Shrock, she must use special tools of the trade: a fiber optic light sheet for studying paper; microscopes, digital cameras. In examining and preserving music manuscripts and other rare MIT books, Schrock needs to know the process by which the object came into being. She shows the large leaf from the choir book: it’s parchment, made from the lined skins of young animals, with the hair scraped off, shaved and rubbed with pumice to achieve a smooth surface perfect for text and binding. Schrock shows a 15th century book of hours, an illuminated manuscript that was rebound by a collector in the 18th century. While she admires the redo (red morocco tooled in gold), the object “no longer reflects the way this manuscript was originally made, and we’ve lost knowledge about it.” Flaws are more informative than beauty.

Says Cuthbert, “For many of us, modern musicology is less about spending time in dusty archives and more about recreating what we see in CSI.” New technology may hold the key to answering longstanding mysteries, such as the abrupt abandonment or evolution of certain kinds of religious music. Some manuscripts may hide their beginnings, or travel widely: “Maybe the choir book left the cathedral in a sack in the middle of the night,” he says. With computer software, researchers can now compare music manuscripts that originated in widely separated regions of the world. New machines can peer into manuscripts where the music has been scraped off to make room for other information (such as land ownership records, or an illustrated bestiary), to see what originally existed; and advances in digital imaging can discern the flow of notes on a page where they had once been obliterated or obscured. DNA tracing, he hopes, will ultimately permit musicologists to determine the provenance of animals used in parchment down to the cathedral green where they grazed. ]]> Sat, 28 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0500 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/648 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/648 Two students deliver heartfelt appeals for courage and integrity at the annual Martin Luther King Day breakfast.

In the 1940s, Matt Gethers recounts, his grandfather was forced to flee South Carolina after defending his brother against white racists in a store. Gethers wonders if he’d have put his life on the line in the same way. He acknowledges the “bittersweet reality” that he won’t likely be facing the trials of his ancestors, while also wishing to “share in the work and sacrifice that secured my inalienable rights as a citizen of this country and the world.”

While U.S. institutions seem to reflect “what we know to be right with respect to race, gender and disability,” Gethers notes that there’s a more corrosive racism eating away at “hearts and minds.” The absence of diversity in leadership throughout U.S. society encourages stereotyping. In his work in the Cambridge Public Schools, Gethers meets students who believe they couldn’t possibly grow up to be “an astronaut, physicist, mathematician or president.” Why? “Because little black girls don’t grow up to become CEOs.” Gethers concludes that only when these students see themselves “in people who are breaking the mold …will we restore their sacred right to dream.”

Joy Johnson was almost cheated of a college scholarship by a high school counselor who “forgot” to send her transcript in. Entrenched racism has helped create the “impostor syndrome,” says Johnson, whose “sufferers can’t internalize their own accomplishments and thus feel they don’t deserve them.” She wonders how many fellow MIT students are asking themselves, “Do we even belong here, and what do we need to do to become as smart as the others?” But “many times the impostor is not us at all,” says Johnson. She sees a long, sorry tale of the usurpation of black achievements, inventions and discoveries: “Impostors have been doing it so long, they’ve perfected the very art of fraud.”

But what must be done to ensure that the contributions of black people are recognized? Johnson nods toward MIT’s mission -- inclusive of all students -- of advancing knowledge to serve the nation and world. True innovation and intellectual advancement, she says, require respectful interactions not just in labs and classrooms, but in everyday life. “This must begin with acknowledgments, speaking to … janitors and lab techs and bus drivers as eagerly as we speak to professors.” Johnson ultimately hopes to “show the world that at this institution, decisions are made on merit, not on nepotism, cronyism or racism.” ]]> Sat, 28 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0500 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/649 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/649 Two “sisters” -- both university chiefs -- celebrate the victory of the first African-American U.S. President, but remind listeners that American institutions have not yet achieved the full measure of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s dream.

MIT, which prides itself on inventing the future, says Susan Hockfield, must stop looking backwards and “make diversity and inclusion a daily reality.” To fulfill these goals, says Hockfield, MIT is pursuing policy and practical change in such areas as retention, recruitment, climate, communication and accountability. For instance, candidate searches must move beyond sorting through known options, Hockfield states. She also notes that the steps required “in a very long journey” to build a culture of inclusion will not be threatened by budget pressures. Many actions cost nothing at all, she says: pairing up a new hire with a long-term employee “as a welcoming guide,” and reaching out to student cultural and affinity groups, for instance. Department heads can check in with women and professors of color for the “cost of no more than an occasional cup of coffee.” Concludes Hockfield, “Distributed leadership is the only path to success in building a culture of inclusion, because real progress in mentoring, reaching out, locating new talent, must happen step by step, unit by unit, in labs, offices and residence halls across all MIT.”

“We are still such a mighty, might long way from being able to declare victory over bigotry and discrimination,” says Johnetta B. Cole. Behind these twin evils stand people with power and privilege. Quoting Frederick Douglass, Cole cautions that such people ‘concede nothing without a struggle.’ So those in power must perceive a rewarding alternative: “We need to imagine and work toward making a world where difference doesn’t make any more difference.”

Even the most marginalized of us, says Cole, must locate in ourselves the power and privilege we do, have, and expunge the temptation to victimize others. “Some white women who have been the victims of sexism can systematically practice racism,” Cole points out, and “some black folk who have known the bitter sting of racism can be intensely homophobic…” She asks her audience to “learn how you learned your prejudices and interrogate yourself around your particular journey around questions of diversity and inclusion.” Own all parts of your identity, and “never again let anyone interact with you on the basis of one alone.”

While she acknowledges MIT’s work toward diversity, Cole says “that is not enough,” and that each person must take personal responsibility “for helping to change this mighty institution.” Her advice: make sure the curriculum moves away from “WWW:” western, white and womanless. No faculty or staff searches should move forward without a diverse pool of candidates. Real inclusion means not just recruiting a diverse class of students each and every year, but “creating an inclusive culture so students of color, or the LGBT community, students who are differently abled -- all the underrepresented groups -- can say this is my university.” ]]> Mon, 01 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0500 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/617 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/617 There’s “just exactly enough time, with no time to lose” to address the massive challenge of climate change and renewable energy, says moderator John Sterman. With this sense of urgency, MIT faculty, administration and students have taken to heart the mission of rendering their campus and the larger world more sustainable.

Sterman describes a triumph of green construction rising on campus, Building E62, the product of a decade of design and negotiation, which many hope will set the standard for future MIT development. The building features lighting that will use half as much power as existing campus buildings, and heating and cooling that will reduce energy use by one-third. But this is a success story with lessons: green construction requires higher up front costs, and MIT executives were not immediately sold on the benefits of lower operating costs.

Theresa Stone lays out the fundamentals of MIT’s environmental stewardship: be comprehensive and involve the entire community; consider behavioral as well as engineered solutions; and think about return on investment. These principles have guided a thorough ongoing review of energy use, leading to improving radiators in half the Institute’s academic buildings; and getting researchers to close the sash on the 1000 chemical fume hoods on campus, which Stone characterizes as a major MIT “energy hog.” In some cases, MIT examined whether its safety standards were excessive, and consuming excessive energy.

The Sloan School’s Jason Jay outlines the complex network of MIT student-based sustainability initiatives, some of which have coalesced under the rubric MIT Generator. As an analyst of organizational change, Jay noted that in MIT’s unique culture, petitions and rallies were less likely to galvanize people than collaboration across disciplines, and the “engineering-hacking aesthetic of hands-on projects.” There are dozens of unique projects underway after just two years, including an experiment in using waste heat from MIT’s cogeneration facility for electric power.

One student club, Sustainability@MIT, has built a membership of 780, and hosts conferences, high profile speakers, and symposia. Representative Adam Siegel sees his group working with community organizations, and revving up voter interest in clean energy during political campaigns. His group recruits faculty mentors, and solicits corporate support to bring practitioners on campus, and to discuss jobs in sustainability. One sign of this movement’s success: There’s a wait list for Sloan’s Sustainability Lab.

Since her return from the World Solar Challenge, Anna Jaffe has been very busy creating the Vehicle Design Summit Project, an attempt to produce a car that’s 20 times more sustainable in its life cycle than the Prius. She’s developed an international consortium of students, worked with master auto makers in Turin, Italy, and has finished prototyping the first car. Beyond this vision lies a grander goal: acting as a catalyst for others with big ideas, and serving as a flashpoint for fellow MIT students. “We’re surrounded by so much genius, so we sometimes look to peers for answers,” she says. ]]> Tue, 04 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0500 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/613 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/613 MIT produces students who are “deep, entrepreneurial, passionate, diverse and active,” says Phillip Clay, the kind of talented individuals who should play major parts on the world stage. MIT has begun a drive to ensure that its students fulfill their promise. Central to this mission, Richard Samuels says, is the kind of education that steeps students in the realities of globalization. In a world that’s not so much flat as converging and increasingly complex and diverse, students must “step boldly and intelligently into the global market of ideas and commerce,” says Samuels, lest they “become cogs in a global machine.” MIT hopes “to create the people who design and operate those machines.”

This means making international studies a core part of the MIT experience, and establishing MIT in an international context. At a time when MIT faces increased global competition, Subra Suresh worries that flat and reduced federal research funding will cut into MIT’s research preeminence. So the School of Engineering is seeking out partnerships around the world for faculty, and looking to provide its undergraduates with exchange and practicum opportunities abroad.

All over the world, “countries want to reproduce MIT,” says Marc Kastner. But MIT’s unique culture is difficult to replicate: the Institute pours resources into the youngest students and faculty; promotes an egalitarian atmosphere; draws instructors from an international talent pool; and is “great in everything” -- science, engineering, liberal arts and business. As MIT seeks out international alliances, “We must think about how to communicate to our partners what’s important about our culture,” he says.

The “crown jewel” of MIT’s international programs is the MIT International Science and Technology Initiative (MISTI), says Deborah Fitzgerald. More than 300 MIT students each year get to spend time working in a company in another country, at no expense to them. A program that often requires two years of language, history and culture study, MISTI boosts confidence, says Fitzgerald, allowing students to see themselves “as people who can solve any kind of problem, anywhere, in a foreign language” -- a “great vindication of all they’ve worked so hard for.” Fitzgerald’s wish is to make MISTI possible for every student.

MIT Sloan is committed to developing principled and innovative leaders who can improve the world, says Dave Schmittlein. The school has developed a Center for Leadership that emphasizes “values, transparency, consistency in decision making,” and provides its budding leaders with international experience through a global entrepreneurship lab that operates in 17 different countries.

Adele Naudé Santos declares herself “passionately opposed to outposts” in foreign lands, because it would be impossible to clone MIT’s collaborative, multidisciplinary, nonhierarchical ethos. Instead, “we partner,” she says. Students and faculty work and study with colleagues abroad in projects like the Urbanization Laboratory, which develops sustainable designs for new cities in such nations as India, China and Japan. Graduates in architecture and planning migrate to all corners of the globe, carrying their unique experience and MIT’s culture with them. ]]> Mon, 07 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/573 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/573 Who better than Gary Hack to recount the colorful 75-year tale of the Department of Urban Studies and Planning? Associated with the department for more than half its life, and saturated with its lore, Hack reaches backward to describe the story’s “five acts,” and then forward to imagine the department’s future.

The department emerged in the midst of the Depression, with faculty engaged primarily in city planning. Graduates “went out with the equipment to plan the massive growth in this country that occurred after World War II,” says Hack, with the know-how for laying out roads and neighborhoods. Act 2, “the urban studies years,” came after the war, with the department swelling to accommodate returning GIs, and a growing interest in studying “the implications … of renewal and slum clearance.” The last half of the ‘50s proved fertile, with the launch of Harvard and MIT’s Joint Center for Urban Studies. Then came the 60s, and “forces at work that tore the department apart.”

The Vietnam War, city riots, and questions about the direction of urban growth, “raised enormous doubts about … what planning was up to.” MIT faculty and students became advocates for neighborhood groups. In Act 3, “the urban action era,” a new department head added such fields as criminal justice and environmental planning, and committed to diversity of both faculty and students.

By 1980, academic life had evolved into an “era of parallel solitudes,” clusters of people intensely involved with each other “with a minimum amount of glue.” This Act 4 saw the start of an international planning focus, as well as a turn toward giving students the skills to be directly involved in building and real estate.

The most recent period, Act 5, has witnessed DUSP leaders working “hard to lift out of the rich bouillabaisse constructed over all those years some themes with crosscutting energy, things that could bring people together,” such as projects in New Orleans.

Hack imagines that MIT’s DUSP, along with other U.S. planning departments, will need to function in an increasingly global and interconnected world. Confronted by climate change, and massive growth of cities, planners will need to transcend their traditional ways of thinking and working. Hack concludes with a thought experiment: If we built high-speed rail in the Northeast corridor, cutting travel time from Boston to New York to one hour, what kind of development should occur, and what are the likely impacts? “We’re ill equipped even to answer these questions, and we need to do better,” Hack says. ]]> Mon, 06 Aug 2007 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/470 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/470 After viewing William Mitchell’s presentation, viewers may wish to apply to MIT, or at the very least, take a campus tour, to experience up close the architecture he describes. Mitchell’s talk -- drawn from his recent book, Imagining MIT-- first skims the history of MIT’s classical, industry-minded buildings, then focuses on a recent billion-dollar construction boom that has resulted in pathbreaking examples of urban design for academic purposes.

Mitchell provides five case studies, replete with slides, of architectural design and development. It is “an architecture story we don’t often read in newspapers or in glossy books—the inside story about how large and complex buildings get put together.” When this process takes place within the context of big money, and many competing organizational, physical and political needs, “dialog, interaction and intense argument” result.

As MIT’s architectural advisor, Mitchell had to address the pragmatic requirements of laboratory research, and office, dormitory and social spaces, as well as try to encourage bold, adventurous and playful design. The Ray and Maria Stata Center, by Frank Gehry, for example, began as sketches, with “roots in abstract expressionist painting.” Mitchell describes a struggle to keep the freshness of these early sketches while developing the structure. “A building can easily go dead and boring while going through the process,” he says. Modeling the Center consisted of crumpling up pieces of paper and dropping them onto rough outlines of buildings. 3D computer modeling was used to execute the tricky design, and this helped liberate the building from the traditional repeated grids and modules. The digital model also provided precise coordinates for the building’s construction. Traditional methods of architectural layout, “with tape measures and plum bobs, were not going to work with a building like this,” says Mitchell. Ultimately, “it became a landscape of highly varied spaces that …enabled construction at a reasonable price of forms of great complexity.”

In final form, the Stata Center illustrates a principle close to Mitchell’s heart, that of nonassigned space. In traditional lab buildings, corridors and other ‘nonproductive’ spaces are reduced as much as possible. But in the Stata Center, and other works Mitchell showcases, circulation space plays multiple and important functions: “serendipitous meetings happen,” and the unassigned nooks and crannies become places for unexpected conversations, quiet reflection or even the convergences of disciplines. Also, the unorthodox design “cut canyons through buildings,” so even people housed deep in the heart of the structure connected to the exterior, with light, air and a view.

Mitchell conveys how MIT’s latest architecture has fundamentally shifted to accommodate the fluidity of intellectual life there. “The most important resource at MIT is people, and they thrive if they have a vibrant social environment…where they can bump into each other in ways that lead to productive intellectual exchange.” Great universities “should aim high,” say Mitchell, and while “architecture is intensely practical, at the same time it should always be an affair of the imagination and spirit.”

]]> Fri, 19 May 2006 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/356 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/356 With a mix of bitterness and hope, these two young men address the legacy of Martin Luther King. David Lowry, a Lumbee Indian, grew up in southeastern North Carolina where the great majority of the Lumbee people reside. He speaks compellingly of his Lumbee Indian ancestry, and his need to be recognized at MIT and beyond as part of a group that goes unrecognized by the government and even by other Native Americans as an authentic and distinct people. “The spirit of segregation is alive and well today,” he says. While political correctness encourages students of color not to feel obligated to reveal their ethnicity, Lowry embraces his own defiantly. How else to challenge a dominant society that not only manipulates people of color in the media, but neglects them in national disasters, and sends them in disproportionate numbers to war.

For the middle and upper classes, says John Pope, the poor are pretty much invisible—decades after Dr. King began his War on Poverty. As a nation, we experienced a moment of illumination when Hurricane Katrina struck, and revealed the brutal inequities between the well-to-do and the poor. Half a year later, says Pope, the “poor are fading back out of sight.” One out of eight Americans lives below the poverty line. He exhorts his fellow students and colleagues “to offer something to those less fortunate,” whether resources or time. Stop and reach into your pockets and give to charities, he says, or write to a Congressman about keeping the nation’s poor in mind when drafting legislation. Whether at an urban school, soup kitchen or shelter, he pleads, “Get off campus and give something of yourself.”
]]> Sun, 11 Dec 2005 00:00:00 -0500 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/309 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/309 Even if the typical MIT hacker doesn’t qualify as a secret agent, he or she is to be admired for pulling off the collegiate world’s most surreptitious, elegant pranks, believes Jay Keyser. While Harvard students get a chuckle out of “putting panties over statues,” MIT students have placed a telephone booth and a police cruiser on top of the massive MIT dome, and then safely exploded a weather balloon on the field of a Harvard-Yale game. Keyser is a fan of these generally anonymous and extremely clever technical pranks. And he’s burrowed into the psychology behind them. The students “are thumbing their nose at the Institute. ‘You want us to be engineers. You’re so damn hard on us. We’ll show you what we think of you.’ So they take us down a peg or two.” In fact, “hack culture is an important component of the mental health of the MIT student body,” Keyser claims. The difference between MIT and every other university, he says, is that MIT students “have bought into the value system of the university.” They’re under the constant burden of judgment and struggle every day with the knowledge that they’re among the best and the brightest. So hacks are “a coping mechanism, a way of putting on sunglasses on a very bright summer day.”]]> Sat, 19 Nov 2005 00:00:00 -0500 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/305 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/305
If Woodie Flowers gets his way, students with the vision and initiative to change the world will be commonplace at MIT – rather than the extraordinary exemplars who speak on his panel: Elizabeth Basha, who’s developing an early storm warning system for rural villages in a Honduras river basin prone to flooding; Timothy Heidel, who’s documenting and field testing technological solutions for schools and healthcare centers in Ghanaian villages;
Anat Binar, who brings together young Israeli and Palestinian students for a combined computer science and business program, to promote a common language and joint goals; and Harel Williams who broadcasts news of events to computer screens around the MIT campus.

Woodie Flowers believes MIT must be in the business of producing students with far-reaching goals and the skills to attain them: The 21st century demands the “technologically literate and philosophically grounded,” he says. Engineering students who typically ask, “Why don’t you just give us something to analyze?” should instead demand, “Show us someone who needs help.” Though Flowers boasts of having “nerd pride,” he believes MIT must help students acquire the means to solve problems in the real world. But can MIT accomplish this major “cultural shift”? We’re not here “to celebrate the MIT Center for Avoiding Change,” he says. The very successful FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) competitions provide a great model, according to Flowers, of engaging young minds in teamwork and “gracious professionalism,” offering “high tech stretch goals” and “the hardest fun you’ve ever had.” And FIRST alumni are more likely to get involved in public service while at college, says Flowers. Ultimately, he says, “Leadership can be in the water at MIT, but it has to start early and work all the way through.” ]]> Sun, 05 Jun 2005 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/267 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/267 James Champy finds much to admire at MIT. But as a seasoned insider, and as a successful entrepreneur, business writer and consultant, he thinks the Institute could use some serious shaking up. As rationale for an MIT redesign, Champy points to increased competition from other universities, here and abroad; new fields opening up in science; the need to accomplish more and innovate with fewer resources; and the pressures of globalization. To maintain its strength, says Champy, MIT must pursue a number of “principles.” In terms of education, he suggests MIT balance teaching the practical with the unusual; regularly rethink course content with an eye to evolving science and technology; and most dramatically, consider creation of an undergraduate core engineering program, one that is five years or longer, “to produce engineers who can be fundamentally different in some way.” He envisions that MIT’s will become “the standard for the profession.” Research should “identify problems that are big and important,” which move ideas and people across schools, enabling collaboration. Says Champy, “MIT must always remain a meritocracy,” in order to promote substantive change. He also wants MIT to aim students at key decision-making jobs, teach them how to analyze flaws in smart organizations, and to give entrepreneurial students “a sense of higher purpose,” like modern-day Andrew Carnegies. ]]>