History of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Encyclopedia
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...
can be traced back to the 1861 incorporation of the "Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Boston Society of Natural History
Boston Society of Natural History
The Boston Society of Natural History in Boston, Massachusetts, was an organization dedicated to the study and promotion of natural history. It published a scholarly journal and established a museum. In its first few decades, the society occupied several successive locations in Boston's Financial...
" led primarily by William Barton Rogers
William Barton Rogers
William Barton Rogers was a geologist, physicist and educator. He is best known for setting down the founding principles for, advocating for, and finally obtaining the incorporation of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1861...
.
Vision and mission
Back Bay, Boston, Massachusetts
Back Bay is an officially recognized neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts famous for its rows of Victorian brownstone homes, which are considered one of the best-preserved examples of 19th-century urban design in the United States, as well as numerous architecturally significant individual...
in Boston for a museum and Conservatory of Art and Science.
On April 10, 1861, the governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts signed a charter for the incorporation of the "Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Boston Society of Natural History" which had been submitted by William Barton Rogers
William Barton Rogers
William Barton Rogers was a geologist, physicist and educator. He is best known for setting down the founding principles for, advocating for, and finally obtaining the incorporation of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1861...
, a natural scientist. Rogers sought to establish a new form of higher education to address the challenges posed by rapid advances in science and technology in the mid-19th century, that he believed classic institutions were ill-prepared to deal with.
With the charter approved, Rogers began raising funds, developing a curriculum and looking for a suitable location. 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.
MIT was a pioneer in the use of laboratory instruction. Its founding philosophy is "the teaching, not of the manipulations and minute details of the arts, which can be done only in the workshop, but the inculcation of all the scientific principles which form the basis and explanation of them;"
Because open conflict in the Civil War
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
broke out only two days later on April 12, 1861, Rogers faced enormous difficulties raising funds to match conditional financial commitments from the state. Thus, his recruitment of faculty and students was delayed, bur eventually MIT's first classes were held in rented space at the Mercantile Building in downtown Boston in 1865.
Boston Tech (1865–1916)
- Includes the administrations of William Barton RogersWilliam Barton RogersWilliam Barton Rogers was a geologist, physicist and educator. He is best known for setting down the founding principles for, advocating for, and finally obtaining the incorporation of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1861...
(1862–1870, 1879–1881), John Daniel RunkleJohn Daniel RunkleJohn Daniel Runkle was a U.S. educator and mathematician. He served as acting president of MIT from 1868–70 and president between 1870 and 1878.-Biography:Professor Runkle was born at Root, New York State...
(1870–1879), Francis Amasa WalkerFrancis Amasa WalkerFrancis Amasa Walker was an American economist, statistician, journalist, educator, academic administrator, and military officer in the Union Army. Walker was born into a prominent Boston family, the son of the economist and politician Amasa Walker, and he graduated from Amherst College at the age...
(1871–1896), and Henry Pritchett (1900–1907)
Construction of the first MIT building was completed in Boston's Back Bay in 1866 and would be known as "Boston Tech" until the campus moved across the Charles River
Charles River
The Charles River is an long river that flows in an overall northeasterly direction in eastern Massachusetts, USA. From its source in Hopkinton, the river travels through 22 cities and towns until reaching the Atlantic Ocean at Boston...
to Cambridge in 1916. MIT's financial position was severely undermined following the Panic of 1873
Panic of 1873
The Panic of 1873 triggered a severe international economic depression in both Europe and the United States that lasted until 1879, and even longer in some countries. The depression was known as the Great Depression until the 1930s, but is now known as the Long Depression...
and subsequent Long Depression
Long Depression
The Long Depression was a worldwide economic crisis, felt most heavily in Europe and the United States, which had been experiencing strong economic growth fueled by the Second Industrial Revolution in the decade following the American Civil War. At the time, the episode was labeled the Great...
. Enrollments decreased sharply after 1875 and by 1878, the university had abolished three professorships, reduced faculty salaries, and there was talk among members of the Corporation of closing the Institute. In 1879, Runkle retired from a nine-year tenure as the MIT's second president trying to weather these challenges, but the board of trustees (the "MIT Corporation") was unable to secure a new successor and elected the seventy-five year-old founder William Barton Rogers
William Barton Rogers
William Barton Rogers was a geologist, physicist and educator. He is best known for setting down the founding principles for, advocating for, and finally obtaining the incorporation of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1861...
back to the post in the interim under his stipulated conditions that he be allowed to resign upon the discovery of a successor and $100,000 ($ in 2009) be raised to fund the Institute's obligations.
Francis Amasa Walker
Francis Amasa Walker was an American economist, statistician, journalist, educator, academic administrator, and military officer in the Union Army. Walker was born into a prominent Boston family, the son of the economist and politician Amasa Walker, and he graduated from Amherst College at the age...
in June 1880 to offer him the Presidency. Walker ultimately accepted in early May and was formally elected President by the MIT Corporation on May 25, 1881, however, the assassination attempt on President Garfield in July 1881 and the ensuing illness before his death in September upset Walker's transition and delayed his formal introduction to the faculty of MIT until November 5, 1881. On May 30, 1882, during Walker's first Commencement exercises, Rogers died mid-speech where his last words were famously "bituminous coal
Bituminous coal
Bituminous coal or black coal is a relatively soft coal containing a tarlike substance called bitumen. It is of higher quality than lignite coal but of poorer quality than Anthracite...
".
MIT's inability to secure a more stable financial footing during this era can largely be attributed to the existence of the Lawrence Scientific School at Harvard
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
. Given the choice between funding technological research at the oldest university in the nation or an independent and adolescent institution, potential benefactors were indifferent or even hostile to funding MIT's competing mission. Earlier overtures from Harvard President Charles William Eliot
Charles William Eliot
Charles William Eliot was an American academic who was selected as Harvard's president in 1869. He transformed the provincial college into the preeminent American research university...
towards consolidation of the two schools were rejected or disrupted by Rogers in 1870 and 1878 and despite his tenure at the analogous Sheffield School, Walker also remained committed to MIT's independence from the larger institution.
In light of the difficulties in raising capital for these expansions and despite its privately endowed status, Walker and other members of the Corporation lobbied the Massachusetts legislature for a $200,000 grant to aid in the industrial development of the Commonwealth. After intensive negotiations that called upon his extensive connections and civic experience, in 1887 the legislature made a grant of $300,000 over two years to the Institute, and would lead to a total of $1.6 million in grants from the Commonwealth to the Institute before the practice was abolished in 1921.
Walker sought to erect a new building on to address the increasingly cramped conditions of the original Boylston Street
Boylston Street
Boylston Street is the name of a major east-west thoroughfare in the city of Boston, Massachusetts. Another Boylston Street runs through Boston's western suburbs....
campus located near Copley Square
Copley Square
Copley Square is a public square located in the Back Bay neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts, named for the donor of the land on which it was developed. The square is named for John Singleton Copley, a famous portrait painter of the late 18th century and native of Boston. A bronze statue of...
. Because the stipulations of the original land grant prevented MIT from covering more than two-ninths of its current lot, Walker announced his intention to build the industrial expansion on a lot directly across from the Trinity Church
Trinity Church, Boston
Trinity Church in the City of Boston, located in the Back Bay of Boston, Massachusetts, is a parish of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts. The congregation, currently standing at approximately 3,000 households, was founded in 1733. The current rector is The Reverend Anne Bonnyman...
fully intending that their opposition would lead to favorable terms for selling the proposed land and funding construction elsewhere. With the financial health of the Institute only beginning to recover, Walker began construction on the partially funded expansion fully expecting the immediacy of the project to be a persuasive tool for raising its funds. The strategy was only partially successful as the 1883 building had laboratory facilities that were second-to-none but also lacked the outward architectural grandeur of its sister building and was generally considered an eyesore on its surroundings. Mechanical shops were moved out of the Rogers Building in the mid 1880s to accommodate other programs and in 1892 the Institute began construction on another Copley Square building. New programs were also launched under Walker's tenure: Electrical Engineering in 1882, Chemical Engineering in 1888, Sanitary Engineering in 1889, Geology in 1890, Naval Architecture in 1893.
In the following years, the science and engineering curriculum drifted away from Rogers' ideal of combining general and professional studies and became focused on more vocational or practical and less theoretical concerns. To the extent that MIT had overspecialized to the detriment of other programs, "the school up the river
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
" courted MIT’s administration with hopes of merging the schools. An initial proposal in 1900 was cancelled after protests from MIT's alumni. In 1914, a merger of MIT and Harvard's Applied Science departments was formally announced
and was to begin "when the Institute will occupy its splendid new buildings in Cambridge." However, in 1917, the arrangement with Harvard was cancelled due to a decision by the State Judicial Court.
MIT was the first university in the nation to have a curriculum in: architecture (1865), electrical engineering (1882), sanitary engineering (1889), naval architecture and marine engineering (1895), aeronautical engineering (1914), meteorology (1928), nuclear physics (1935), and artificial intelligence (1960s).
Cambridge campus and interwar years (1916–1940)
- Includes the administrations of Richard C. Maclaurin (1909–1920), Samuel W. Stratton (1923–1930), and Karl Taylor ComptonKarl Taylor ComptonKarl Taylor Compton was a prominent American physicist and president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1930 to 1948.- The early years :...
(1930–1948)
George Eastman
George Eastman was an American innovator and entrepreneur who founded the Eastman Kodak Company and invented roll film, helping to bring photography to the mainstream...
, donated the funds to buy a mile-long tract of swamp and industrial land along the Cambridge side of the Charles River.
A distinct new era in MIT's history began when it moved into its new Cambridge campus in 1916.
Designed by William Welles Bosworth, who had made a name for himself in designing the AT&T headquarters in New York City, the new campus fomented some changes in the stagnating undergraduate curriculum. In the 1930s, President Karl Taylor Compton
Karl Taylor Compton
Karl Taylor Compton was a prominent American physicist and president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1930 to 1948.- The early years :...
and Vice-President Vannevar Bush
Vannevar Bush
Vannevar Bush was an American engineer and science administrator known for his work on analog computing, his political role in the development of the atomic bomb as a primary organizer of the Manhattan Project, the founding of Raytheon, and the idea of the memex, an adjustable microfilm viewer...
drastically reformed the curricula by reemphasizing 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
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
, the reforms "renewed confidence in the ability of the Institute to develop leadership in science as well as in engineering."
More fortuitously, they also cemented MIT's academic reputation on the eve of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
by attracting scientists and researchers who would later make significant contributions in the Radiation Laboratory
Radiation Laboratory
The Radiation Laboratory, commonly called the Rad Lab, was located at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts and functioned from October 1940 until December 31, 1945...
, Instrumentation Laboratory
Charles Stark Draper Laboratory
Draper Laboratory is an American not-for-profit research and development organization in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Draper focuses on the design, development, and deployment of advanced technology solutions to problems in national security, space exploration, health care and energy.Originally...
, and other defense-related research programs.
World War Two and Cold War (1940–1966)
- Includes the administrations of James R. Killian (1948-1959) and Julius A. Stratton (1959-1966)
MIT was drastically changed by its involvement in military research during World War Two. Bush, who had been MIT's Vice President (effectively Provost) was appointed head of the Office of Scientific Research and Development
Office of Scientific Research and Development
The Office of Scientific Research and Development was an agency of the United States federal government created to coordinate scientific research for military purposes during World War II. Arrangements were made for its creation during May 1941, and it was created formally by on June 28, 1941...
which was responsible for the Manhattan Project
Manhattan Project
The Manhattan Project was a research and development program, led by the United States with participation from the United Kingdom and Canada, that produced the first atomic bomb during World War II. From 1942 to 1946, the project was under the direction of Major General Leslie Groves of the US Army...
. Government-sponsored research had contributed to a fantastic growth in the size of the Institute's research staff and physical plant as well as a shifting the educational focus away from undergraduates to graduate studies.
During World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, MIT was one of 131 colleges and universities nationally that took part in the V-12 Navy College Training Program
V-12 Navy College Training Program
The V-12 Navy College Training Program was designed to supplement the force of commissioned officers in the United States Navy during World War II...
which offered students a path to a Navy commission.
Cold War and Space Race
As the Cold War and Space Race intensified and concerns about the technology gapSputnik crisis
The Sputnik crisis is the name for the American reaction to the success of the Sputnik program. It was a key event during the Cold War that began on October 4, 1957 when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, the first artificial Earth satellite....
between the U.S. and the Soviet Union grew more pervasive throughout the 1950s and 1960s, MIT's involvement in the military-industrial complex
Military-industrial complex
Military–industrial complex , or Military–industrial-congressional complex is a concept commonly used to refer to policy and monetary relationships between legislators, national armed forces, and the industrial sector that supports them...
was a source of pride on campus. MIT's Department of Nuclear Engineering as well as the Center for International Studies were established in 1957.
Lewis Report
Walker's Course IX on General Studies was dissolved shortly after his death and a seventy year debate followed over what was the appropriate role and scope of humanistic and social studies at MIT. A new Department of Economics, Statistics, and Political Science was established in 1903 to replace Course IX, which was later split into a Department of Economics and Statistics and a Department of History of Political Science in 1907. Karl Taylor ComptonKarl Taylor Compton
Karl Taylor Compton was a prominent American physicist and president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1930 to 1948.- The early years :...
reorganized the Institute to incorporate a Division of Humanities under which these departments were placed in 1932, but could offer no degrees. Between 1918 and 1956, political science classes and faculty were subsumed or merged into any of History and English or Economics and Social Science until a separate Ph.D. program was approved in 1958. A PhD program in Economics was launched in 1941.
The 1949 report of the Committee on Educational Survey recommended the establishment of a School of Humanities granting degrees which led to the establishment of the same in 1950 and separate departments in Economics and Political Science were formally established in 1965. Since 1975, all MIT undergraduate students have been required to take eight classes distributed across the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences before receiving their degrees.
Social movements and activism (1966–1980)
- Includes the administrations of Howard W. Johnson (1966–1971) and Jerome WiesnerJerome WiesnerJerome Bert Wiesner was an educator, a Science Advisor to U.S. Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy and Johnson, an advocate for arms control, and a critic of anti-ballistic-missile defense systems...
(1971–1980)
Co-education
Coeducation
Mixed-sex education, also known as coeducation or co-education, is the integrated education of male and female persons in the same institution. It is the opposite of single-sex education...
al since admitting Ellen Swallow Richards
Ellen Swallow Richards
Ellen Henrietta Swallow Richards was the foremost female industrial and environmental chemist in the United States in the 19th century, pioneering the field of home economics. Richards graduated from Westford Academy...
in 1870. Female students, however, remained a tiny minority (numbered in dozens) prior to the completion of the first women's dormitory, McCormick Hall, in 1964. Women constituted 43% of the undergraduates and 29% of the graduate students enrolled in 2005.
Richards also became the first female member of MIT's faculty, specializing in environmental health
Environmental health
Environmental health is the branch of public health that is concerned with all aspects of the natural and built environment that may affect human health...
.
Anti-war protests
However, by the late 1960s and early 1970s, intense protests by student and faculty activists against military-related research required that the MIT administration spin these laboratories off into what would become the Charles Stark Draper LaboratoryCharles Stark Draper Laboratory
Draper Laboratory is an American not-for-profit research and development organization in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Draper focuses on the design, development, and deployment of advanced technology solutions to problems in national security, space exploration, health care and energy.Originally...
and Lincoln Laboratory
Lincoln Laboratory
MIT Lincoln Laboratory, located in Lexington, Massachusetts, is a United States Department of Defense research and development center chartered to apply advanced technology to problems of national security. Research and development activities focus on long-term technology development as well as...
. The extent of these protests is reflected by the fact that MIT had more names on "President Nixon's enemies list
Nixon's Enemies List
Nixon’s Enemies List is the informal name of what started as a list of President of the United States Richard Nixon’s major political opponents compiled by Charles Colson, written by George T. Bell , and sent in memorandum form to John Dean on September 9, 1971...
" than any other single organization, among them its president Jerome Wiesner
Jerome Wiesner
Jerome Bert Wiesner was an educator, a Science Advisor to U.S. Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy and Johnson, an advocate for arms control, and a critic of anti-ballistic-missile defense systems...
and professor Noam Chomsky
Noam Chomsky
Avram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, and activist. He is an Institute Professor and Professor in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for over 50 years. Chomsky has been described as the "father of modern linguistics" and...
. Memos revealed during Watergate indicated that Nixon had ordered MIT's federal subsidy cut "in view of Wiesner's anti-defense bias."
Social movements
MIT's particular strain of anti-authoritarianism has manifested itself in other forms. In 1977, two female students, juniors Susan Gilbert and Roxanne Ritchie, were disciplined for publishing an article on April 28 of that year in the "alternative" MIT campus weekly Thursday. Entitled "Consumer Guide to MIT Men," the article was a sex survey of 36 men the two claimed to have had sex with, and the men were rated according to their performance. Gilbert and Ritchie had intended to turn the tables on the rating systems and facebooks men use for women, but their article led not only to disciplinary action against them but also to a protest petition signed by 200 students, as well as condemnation by President Jerome B. Wiesner, who published a fierce criticism of the article.Another minor campus uproar occurred when the traditional pornographic registration-day movie was replaced by Star Wars
Star Wars
Star Wars is an American epic space opera film series created by George Lucas. The first film in the series was originally released on May 25, 1977, under the title Star Wars, by 20th Century Fox, and became a worldwide pop culture phenomenon, followed by two sequels, released at three-year...
in 1984.
Course "Bibles"
In 1970, the then-Dean of Institute Relations, Benson R. Snyder, published The Hidden CurriculumThe Hidden Curriculum
The Hidden Curriculum is a book by Benson R. Snyder, the then-Dean of Institute Relations at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Snyder advocates the thesis that much of campus conflict and students' personal anxiety is caused by a mass of unstated academic and social norms, which thwart...
, in which he argued that a mass of unstated assumptions and requirements dominated MIT students' lives and inhibited their ability to function creatively. Snyder contended that these unwritten regulations, like the implicit curricula of informally compiled "course bibles" (problem sets and solutions from previous years' classes), often outweighed the effect of the "formal curriculum," and that the situation was not unique to MIT. After studying the behavior of MIT and Wellesley students, Snyder observed that "bibles" were often in fact counterproductive; they fooled professors into believing that their classes were imparting broad knowledge as intended, but instead locked professors and students into a feedback cycle to the detriment of actual education.
The differential availability of "bibles" to some groups (e.g. certain fraternities and organized student groups) compared to the student body at large gave the former groups considerable grading advantages over the latter group. This unfairness was compounded by some professors' re-use of the same exam questions on a 4-year (or even shorter) cycle, apparently oblivious to the existence of "bibles", even when disadvantaged students would occasionally point this out.
However, with the spread of the Internet and especially MIT's Open Courseware initiative, much course material from previous years is available to all students (even far beyond MIT), lessening the unfair advantage of exclusive access to "course bibles". Spurred by the inability to re-use old exams verbatim, professors must exercise more creativity, always remaking new problem sets and exam questions. Therefore, even with the widespread availability of "bibles" online, students still need to think critically and understand concepts in depth to solve each year's newly created questions. Indeed, some professors now harness the ingenuity of students by asking for new exam questions (and solutions), awarding extra grading credit for unusually creative new problems as well as solutions.
New programs
- MIT and Wellesley begin cross-registration program in 1968
- UROP program established by Margaret MacVicarMargaret MacVicarMargaret L.A. MacVicar was an American physicist and educator. In addition to serving as MIT's Dean of Undergraduate Education , MacVicar is credited with founding the now widely emulated Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program in 1969...
in 1969 - Department of Mechanical Engineering offers 2.007 Introduction to Design, a robotics competition
- MIT-Harvard Program in Health Sciences and Technology established in 1970. Becomes Whitaker College of Health Sciences, Technology, and Management in 1977.
- Independent Activities Period (IAP) first offered in 1971
- Council for the Arts founded in 1972.
- Program in Science, Technology, and Society established in 1977.
Changing roles and priorities (1980–2004)
- Includes the administrations of Paul E. Gray (1980–1990) and Charles M. Vest (1990–2004)
Ethical disputes
In 1986, David BaltimoreDavid Baltimore
David Baltimore is an American biologist, university administrator, and Nobel laureate in Physiology or Medicine. He served as president of the California Institute of Technology from 1997 to 2006, and is currently the Robert A. Millikan Professor of Biology at Caltech...
, a Nobel Laureate, and his colleague, Thereza Imanishi-Kari
Thereza Imanishi-Kari
Thereza Imanishi-Kari is an Associate Professor of Pathology at Tufts University.-Biography:Imanishi-Kari is best known for her role in an affair of alleged scientific misconduct. In 1986, Imanishi-Kari had co-authored a scientific paper on immunology with David Baltimore...
, were accused of research misconduct. The ensuing controversy involved a Congressional investigation and required him to resign from his new appointment as president of Rockefeller University
Rockefeller University
The Rockefeller University is a private university offering postgraduate and postdoctoral education. It has a strong concentration in the biological sciences. It is also known for producing numerous Nobel laureates...
although the allegations against Imanishi-Kari were dropped and Baltimore eventually became an endowed professor at and president of Caltech.
Given the scale and reputation of MIT's research accomplishments, allegations of research misconduct or improprieties have received substantial press coverage. Professor David Baltimore
David Baltimore
David Baltimore is an American biologist, university administrator, and Nobel laureate in Physiology or Medicine. He served as president of the California Institute of Technology from 1997 to 2006, and is currently the Robert A. Millikan Professor of Biology at Caltech...
, a Nobel Laureate, became embroiled in a misconduct investigation starting in 1986 that led to Congressional hearings in 1991. Professor Ted Postol has accused the MIT administration since 2000 of attempting to whitewash
Whitewash (censorship)
To whitewash is a metaphor meaning to gloss over or cover up vices, crimes or scandals or to exonerate by means of a perfunctory investigation or through biased presentation of data. It is especially used in the context of corporations, governments or other organizations.- Etymology :Its first...
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. Dean of Admissions Marilee Jones
Marilee Jones
Marilee Jones is a former dean of admissions at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the co-author of the popular guide to the college admission process Less Stress, More Success: A New Approach to Guiding Your Teen Through College Admissions and Beyond...
resigned in April 2007 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.
Civic relations
The Cambridge City Council imposed a city-wide moratorium on research into recombinant DNARecombinant DNA
Recombinant DNA molecules are DNA sequences that result from the use of laboratory methods to bring together genetic material from multiple sources, creating sequences that would not otherwise be found in biological organisms...
in 1976 in response to community concerns that Harvard and MIT researchers may inadvertently release mutant organisms into the ecosystem but the ban was lifted in 1977 after an extensive dialogue between scientists, politicians, and community leaders. Throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s, American politicians and business leaders accused
Scapegoat
Scapegoating is the practice of singling out any party for unmerited negative treatment or blame. Scapegoating may be conducted by individuals against individuals , individuals against groups , groups against individuals , and groups against groups Scapegoating is the practice of singling out any...
MIT and other universities of contributing to a declining economy
Late 1980s recession
The recession of the early 1990s describes the period of economic downturn affecting much of the world in the late 1980s and early 1990s.-Causes:...
by transferring
Technology transfer
Technology Transfer, also called Transfer of Technology and Technology Commercialisation, is the process of skill transferring, knowledge, technologies, methods of manufacturing, samples of manufacturing and facilities among governments or universities and other institutions to ensure that...
taxpayer-funded research and technology to international — especially Japanese
Economy of Japan
The economy of Japan, a free market economy, is the third largest in the world after the United States and the People's Republic of China, and ahead of Germany at 4th...
— firms that were competing with struggling
Business cycle
The term business cycle refers to economy-wide fluctuations in production or economic activity over several months or years...
American businesses.
The Justice Department
United States Department of Justice
The United States Department of Justice , is the United States federal executive department responsible for the enforcement of the law and administration of justice, equivalent to the justice or interior ministries of other countries.The Department is led by the Attorney General, who is nominated...
filed an antitrust suit
Sherman Antitrust Act
The Sherman Antitrust Act requires the United States federal government to investigate and pursue trusts, companies, and organizations suspected of violating the Act. It was the first Federal statute to limit cartels and monopolies, and today still forms the basis for most antitrust litigation by...
against MIT and the eight Ivy League
Ivy League
The Ivy League is an athletic conference comprising eight private institutions of higher education in the Northeastern United States. The conference name is also commonly used to refer to those eight schools as a group...
colleges in 1991 for holding "Overlap Meetings" to prevent bidding wars over promising students from consuming funds for need-based scholarships. While the Ivy League institutions settled
Consent decree
A consent decree is a final, binding judicial decree or judgment memorializing a voluntary agreement between parties to a suit in return for withdrawal of a criminal charge or an end to a civil litigation...
, 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. In 2001, the Environmental Protection Agency
United States Environmental Protection Agency
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is an agency of the federal government of the United States charged with protecting human health and the environment, by writing and enforcing regulations based on laws passed by Congress...
sued MIT for violating Clean Water Act
Clean Water Act
The Clean Water Act is the primary federal law in the United States governing water pollution. Commonly abbreviated as the CWA, the act established the goals of eliminating releases of high amounts of toxic substances into water, eliminating additional water pollution by 1985, and ensuring that...
and Clean Air Act
Clean Air Act
A Clean Air Act is one of a number of pieces of legislation relating to the reduction of airborne contaminants, smog and air pollution in general. The use by governments to enforce clean air standards has contributed to an improvement in human health and longer life spans...
with regard to its hazardous waste
Hazardous waste
A hazardous waste is waste that poses substantial or potential threats to public health or the environment. According to the U.S. environmental laws hazardous wastes fall into two major categories: characteristic wastes and listed wastes.Characteristic hazardous wastes are materials that are known...
storage and disposal procedures. MIT settled the suit by paying a $155,000 fine and launching three environmental projects.
Suicide and mental health
A number of student deaths in the late 1990s and early 2000s resulted in considerable media attention to MIT's culture and student life. After the alcohol-related death of Scott Krueger in September 1997 as a new member at the Phi Gamma DeltaPhi Gamma Delta
The international fraternity of Phi Gamma Delta is a collegiate social fraternity with 120 chapters and 18 colonies across the United States and Canada. It was founded at Jefferson College, Pennsylvania, in 1848, and its headquarters are located in Lexington, Kentucky, USA...
fraternity, MIT began requiring all freshmen to live in the dormitory system. The 2000 suicide of MIT undergraduate Elizabeth Shin
Elizabeth Shin
Elizabeth Shin was a Massachusetts Institute of Technology student who died from burns inflicted by a fire in her dormitory room. Her death led to a lawsuit against MIT and controversy as to whether MIT paid adequate attention to its students' mental and emotional health, and whether MIT's...
drew attention to suicides at MIT and created a controversy over whether MIT had an unusually high suicide rate. In late 2001 a task force's recommended improvements in student mental health
Mental health
Mental health describes either a level of cognitive or emotional well-being or an absence of a mental disorder. From perspectives of the discipline of positive psychology or holism mental health may include an individual's ability to enjoy life and procure a balance between life activities and...
services were implemented, including expanding staff and operating hours at the mental health center. These and later cases were significant as well because they sought to prove the negligence and liability of university administrators in loco parentis
In loco parentis
The term in loco parentis, Latin for "in the place of a parent"" refers to the legal responsibility of a person or organization to take on some of the functions and responsibilities of a parent...
.
Faculty diversity
MIT has been nominally coeducationCoeducation
Mixed-sex education, also known as coeducation or co-education, is the integrated education of male and female persons in the same institution. It is the opposite of single-sex education...
al since admitting Ellen Swallow Richards
Ellen Swallow Richards
Ellen Henrietta Swallow Richards was the foremost female industrial and environmental chemist in the United States in the 19th century, pioneering the field of home economics. Richards graduated from Westford Academy...
in 1870. (Richards also became the first female member of MIT's faculty, specializing in sanitary chemistry
Environmental health
Environmental health is the branch of public health that is concerned with all aspects of the natural and built environment that may affect human health...
.) Female students, however, remained a very small minority (numbered in dozens) prior to the completion of the first wing of a women's dormitory, McCormick Hall, in 1963. By 1993, 32% of MIT's undergraduates were female and in 2006, the number had increased to near-parity (47.5%). A 1998 MIT study concluded that a systemic bias
Systemic bias
Systemic bias is the inherent tendency of a process to favor particular outcomes. The term is a neologism that generally refers to human systems; the analogous problem in non-human systems is often called systematic bias, and leads to systematic error in measurements or estimates.-Bias in...
against female faculty existed in its college of science, although the study's methods were controversial. Since the study, the number of women undergraduates increased from 34 percent to 42 percent, women graduate students has increased from 20 percent to 29 percent, and women outnumber men in 10 undergraduate majors. Additionally, women have headed departments within the school of science, engineering, and MIT has appointed no fewer than five female vice presidents. Susan Hockfield
Susan Hockfield
Susan Hockfield is the sixteenth and current president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Hockfield's appointment was publicly announced on August 26, 2004, and she formally took office December 6, 2004, succeeding Charles M. Vest. Hockfield's official inauguration celebrations took...
, a molecular neurobiologist
Neuroscience
Neuroscience is the scientific study of the nervous system. Traditionally, neuroscience has been seen as a branch of biology. However, it is currently an interdisciplinary science that collaborates with other fields such as chemistry, computer science, engineering, linguistics, mathematics,...
, 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.
Tenure outcomes have vaulted MIT into the national spotlight on several occasions. The 1984 dismissal of David F. Noble
David F. Noble
David Franklin Noble was a critical historian of technology, science and education, best known for his seminal work on the social history of automation. In his final years he taught in the Division of Social Science, and the department of Social and Political Thought. at York University in...
, a historian of technology, became a cause celebre
Cause célèbre
A is an issue or incident arousing widespread controversy, outside campaigning and heated public debate. The term is particularly used in connection with celebrated legal cases. It is a French phrase in common English use...
about the extent to which academics are granted "freedom of speech
Freedom of speech
Freedom of speech is the freedom to speak freely without censorship. The term freedom of expression is sometimes used synonymously, but includes any act of seeking, receiving and imparting information or ideas, regardless of the medium used...
" after he published several books and papers critical of MIT's and other research universities' reliance upon financial support from corporations and the military. Former materials science professor Gretchen Kalonji sued MIT in 1994 alleging that she was denied tenure because of sexual discrimination. In 1997, the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination
Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination
The Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination is the primary agency for civil rights law enforcement, outreach, and training in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts...
issued a probable cause finding supporting James Jennings' allegations that he was not offered reciprocal tenure in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning for a post in MIT's Community Fellow Program after the senior faculty search committee believed that he was not a top black scholar in the country. In 2006-2007, MIT's denial of tenure to African-American biological engineering professor James Sherley
James Sherley
James Sherley is a biological engineer at Boston Biomedical Research Institute.Sherley's education includes a B.S. from Harvard University and an M.D and a Ph.D from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland. He was a Postdoctoral Fellow with Arnold J...
prompted accusations of racism in MIT's tenure process, eventually leading to a protracted public dispute with the administration, a brief hunger strike
Hunger strike
A hunger strike is a method of non-violent resistance or pressure in which participants fast as an act of political protest, or to provoke feelings of guilt in others, usually with the objective to achieve a specific goal, such as a policy change. Most hunger strikers will take liquids but not...
, and the resignation of Professor Frank L. Douglas
Frank L. Douglas
Frank L. Douglas M.D., Ph.D. is a Guyanese American medical doctor and researcher. Douglas resigned from his appointment as a professor of practice at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in July 2007 after the university's administration refused to consider granting Assistant Professor James...
in protest.
Globalization and new initiatives (2000—present)
- Includes the administration of Susan HockfieldSusan HockfieldSusan Hockfield is the sixteenth and current president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Hockfield's appointment was publicly announced on August 26, 2004, and she formally took office December 6, 2004, succeeding Charles M. Vest. Hockfield's official inauguration celebrations took...
(2004–)- In 2000, MIT extended the existing Writing Requirement to a new Communication Requirement, encompassing spoken as well as written expression, as an undergraduate degree requirement.
- In 2001, MIT announced that it planned to put many of its course materials online as part of its OpenCourseWareMIT OpenCourseWareMIT OpenCourseWare is an initiative of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to put all of the educational materials from its undergraduate- and graduate-level courses online, partly free and openly available to anyone, anywhere. MIT OpenCourseWare is a large-scale, web-based publication of...
project. This was largely accomplished by 2010, with material from over 2,000 courses available to all. - Nicholas NegroponteNicholas NegroponteNicholas Negroponte is an American architect best known as the founder and Chairman Emeritus of Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab, and also known as the founder of the One Laptop per Child Association ....
of the MIT Media LabMIT Media LabThe MIT Media Lab is a laboratory of MIT School of Architecture and Planning. Devoted to research projects at the convergence of design, multimedia and technology, the Media Lab has been widely popularized since the 1990s by business and technology publications such as Wired and Red Herring for a...
co-founded and became head of the One Laptop per Child initiative. - Susan HockfieldSusan HockfieldSusan Hockfield is the sixteenth and current president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Hockfield's appointment was publicly announced on August 26, 2004, and she formally took office December 6, 2004, succeeding Charles M. Vest. Hockfield's official inauguration celebrations took...
launched the MIT Energy Research council to explore how MIT can respond to the interdisciplinary challenges of global energy consumption. - Consolidation of old programs like Ocean Engineering into Mechanical Engineering and emergence of interdisciplinary departments like Biological Engineering and Computational Biology.
- International collaborations and educational initiatives with University of CambridgeUniversity of CambridgeThe University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...
in England and National University of SingaporeNational University of SingaporeThe National University of Singapore is Singapore's oldest university. It is the largest university in the country in terms of student enrollment and curriculum offered....
and Nanyang Technological UniversityNanyang Technological UniversityNanyang Technological University is one of the two largest public universities in Singapore with the biggest campus in Singapore and the world's largest engineering college. Its lush 200-hectare Yunnan Garden campus was the Youth Olympic Village of the world's first 2010 Summer Youth Olympics in...
in Singapore.
Further reading
- "Names on Institute Buildings Lend Inspiration to Future Scientists", The Tech, Friday, December 22, 1922