Vol. XV No. 1 September 2002

From The Faculty Chair — Page 3Teach Talk — Page 5

The Changing Nature of Research at MIT — Page 21Integrating Work and Family Life — Page 22

Advanced Technologies Improve Research and Teaching — Page 24Digital Repository Goes Live This Fall — Page 26

Also: Teaching Literature at MIT; While you were away. . .; MIT WebMail;View Your Benefits Online; Graduate Student Enrollment; M.I.T. Numbers

Contents — Page 2

http://web.mit.edu/fnl

Research at MITIn Memoriam

An Interview withAlice P. Gast

EditorialLawrence M. Lidsky

T he following interview betweenthe Faculty Newsletter (FNL) andVice President for Research and

Associate Provost Alice Gast (AG) tookplace on August 5th of this year.

FNL: David Litster held your positionbefore you, but the job has beenredefined. How do you see it nowversus where it was?

AG: Yes, the position has beenredefined, and I’m pleased with theredefinition. The title changed from VicePresident and Dean of Research to VicePresident for Research and AssociateProvost. In my view, the importanceof the title is that it is to representworking, on one level, as the VicePresident for Research, on matters ofpolicy, and another level as an AssociateProvost, rather than a Dean. Being anAssociate Provost, I can continue towork between school boundaries forthe common good of the Institute.

On rare occasion a person passesthis way whose intelligenceand generosity of spirit serve

as a beacon to guide others in theirchosen task. Such a person wasProfessor Lawrence Lidsky, and thetask was the creation and continuationof the Faculty Newsletter.

With a grace uncommon in today’soften all-too-impersonal world, Larrydevoted extraordinary time and effortnot only to his teaching and research,but to the myriad issues and concernsrelated to our fledgling publication:raising funds, establishing credibility,convincing colleagues to participate.From its inception, Larry served as theNewsletter's Faculty Liaison to theadministration, and in that capacitywas the person most responsible forits eventual legitimization andstabilization. Simply put, without hisefforts the Newsletter would not havesurvived.

The passing of a colleague and friendis always difficult for those left behind.Larry Lidsky is greatly missed by allof us who had the good fortune to haveknown and worked with him.✥

(Continued on Page 16)

This issue of the Faculty Newsletter features research on campus. Beginning on Page 12, the Deans ofEngineering, Science, and the Sloan School talk about research at their Schools. From Page 21 onward areother research-oriented articles of importance to the MIT faculty. Next issue we plan to continue this theme

and include articles from the Deans of Architecture and Planning and Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences.

This editorial by Provost Bob Brownwas written at the request of theEditorial Committee for this issue.

The last few years have seensignificant changes in theprofile for graduate education

and research at MIT. In keeping withMIT tradition, faculty-led research andscholarship maintain their position atthe forefront of research, both in thetraditional disciplines and ininnovative initiatives in emergingfields. Always dynamic throughoutthe Institute’s history, MIT’s researchportfolio is currently being trans-formed at an even greater pace.

The beginning of the 2002-2003school year is a good time to reflect onour present position – what stage arewe at in this evolution? At one levelthe numbers speak for themselves.After a decade of slow or decliningresearch volume, over the last several

Evolving Researchat MIT

Robert A. Brown

(Continued on Page 14)

The MIT Faculty NewsletterThe MIT Faculty Newsletter

MIT Faculty Newsletter Vol. XV No. 1

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MIT Faculty Newsletter

Editorial Board

Nazli Choucri(Political Science)

Ernst G. Frankel(Ocean Engineering)

*Jean E. Jackson(Anthropology)

Gordon Kaufman(Management Science & Statistics)

Daniel S. Kemp(Chemistry)

Jonathan King(Biology)

*Stephen J. Lippard(Chemistry)

David H. Marks(Civil and Environmental Engineering)

*Fred Moavenzadeh(Civil and Environmental Engineering)

David Thorburn(Literature)

*Editorial Committee for this issue.

David LewisManaging Editor

Address: MIT Faculty Newsletter, Bldg. N52-419aCambridge, MA 02139; (617) 253-7303.

E-Mail: fnl@mit.edu.FAX: 617-253-0458Website: http://web.mit.edu/fnl

Subscriptions: $15/year On-Campus$20/year Off-Campus

ContentsIn Memoriam

Lawrence M. Lidsky 1

An Interview with Alice P. Gast 1

EditorialEvolving Research at MIT 1

From The Faculty ChairWhere Did the Time Go? 3

Teaching this fall? You should know . . . 4

Teach TalkEfforts to Link Research and TeachingMore Closely are Gaining Ground 5

Teaching Literature at MIT 7

School of EngineeringLeadership Through Technical Excellenceand Innovation 8

School of ScienceYounger MIT Faculty ResearchersAre Their Discipline's Future Stars 10

Sloan School of ManagementResearch@Sloan 12

The Changing Nature of Research at MIT 21

Research-in-ProgressIntegrating Work and Family Life:Research at the MIT Workplace Center 22

Advanced Technologies ImproveResearch and Teaching at MIT 24

From The LibrariesDigital Repository for MIT Research Goes Live This Fall 26

Using Journals and Databases Online:What's Legal and What's Not 27

While You Were Away . . . 28

MIT WebMail: A Way to Get Your E-Mail On the Go 29

Now You Can View Your Institute Benefitsand Update Your Personal Info Online 30

Graduate Student Enrollment and MIT's Research Agenda 31

M.I.T. Numbers 20, 31, 32

Lori Breslow is Senior Lecturer, School of Management;Director, Teaching and Learning Laboratory.Robert A. Brown is Provost.Steven C. Graves is Professor of Management; FacultyChair.Donald Lessard is Professor of Management; DeputyDean, Sloan School.Thomas Magnanti is Dean of Engineering.Richard Schmalensee is Dean, Sloan School ofManagement.Robert Silbey is Dean of Science.David Thorburn is Professor of Literature.

FacultyAuthors

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From The Faculty Chair

Where Did the Time Go?Stephen C. Graves

(Continued on next page)

As I write this, I see that thesummer is now gone and onceagain, I have accomplished

only a fraction of what I had hoped.There increasingly seems to be toomuch to do, and not enough time to doit. I wish it were not the case.

Over the past year I have come toappreciate that my dilemma is notatypical among the faculty. A recentquality-of-life survey found that MITfaculty members were working longerhours than a decade ago, and that theirlevel of stress and frustration has alsoincreased. The demands of the job ofbeing a faculty member continue togrow; at the same time, for many of us,the challenge of balancing work andfamily has become even moredifficult.

What might be done to help toalleviate the workload problem? I forsure don’t have the answer, and thereis no silver bullet. I have found that theadministration is sincerely interestedin exploring various measures thatmight help and has taken some positivesteps. But it would be useful to them tounderstand what levers would havethe most impact on faculty workloadand quality of life. In the remainder ofthis column, I suggest some possibleactions as a way of soliciting yourfeedback and inputs. My intent is tosee if we have the time (?) and energyto engage in a serious discussion aboutthis topic.

There are three main ways that onemight affect the workload. We couldsomehow increase the time you candevote to doing your job. We couldincrease the efficiency with which youdo your work. We could reduce theamount of work you feel compelled to

do. To stimulate your thoughts, I’llmention some possible actions withineach of these themes.

Increase the Time: Even MITcannot lengthen the day beyond 24hours. But there are some possiblemeasures that might allow one todevote more time to the job at MIT.

• Many faculty members spend aninordinate amount of time commutingbecause they cannot afford housingclose to campus. Through a variety ofmeans, MIT might make it easier forfaculty to live closer to campus, e.g.,MIT-owned apartments with subsi-dized rents, more generous housing-assistance programs for new faculty,etc.

• For faculty with young children,substantial time is devoted to arrangingfor and managing their care. MIT hasrecently expanded the amount of on-campus child-care services. ShouldMIT do more?

• Some faculty members increasinglywork at home for various reasons,e.g., so as to use the odd hours of theday, or to avoid the commute, or to beable to work while managing familyresponsibilities. Other faculty mightlike to do so, but would need someassistance from MIT in establishing ahome office as well as someinfrastructure on campus to supportthem while working at a distance.

• The Institute could raise facultysalaries, which would permit individualfaculty to make their own choices. Afaculty member might opt to pay ahigher rent or mortgage and live closerto campus, or use the income for ananny or other child-care services, orinvest in a home office, or reduce thenumber of days consulting.

Increase the Efficiency: We spenda lot of time at our job, but I for oneknow that I don’t always use my timevery well. Possibly MIT could helpfaculty get more accomplished byworking more efficiently oreffectively.

• We might have moreadministrative and/or secretarialsupport, which would permit facultyto leverage their time better by off-loading certain tasks and duties. Forinstance, suppose you had anadministrative assistant who wouldmanage your schedule, handle 80percent of your e-mail and othercorrespondence, set up and maintainyour Web pages, manage yourresearch accounts, and assist withcompiling research reports andproposals?

• We might have more teachingsupport, such as additional teachingassistants, which might allow us to bemore efficient and effective in ourteaching. We might use technologybetter in our teaching, for instanceto automate the standard com-ponents of our curriculum, allowingmore time for individualizedinstruction.

• MIT might help us acquire betterskills for time management and forpeople management. I am a goodexample of someone who does notalways do a good job of prioritizingtasks and planning my time, orknowing how to say “no.” And I expectwe could all get more accomplished ifwe could improve the way westructure and delegate work to ourstudents and staff.

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Where Did the Time Go?Graves, from preceding page

Reduce the Work: Instead of tryingto do more, there might be ways toeliminate or reduce some of what wecurrently do.

• MIT might increase the numberof faculty so as to spread the workloadover a larger base. This presumes thatwe do not expand our educational andresearch programs with the additionof new faculty.

• The number of graduate studentscontinues to grow, seemingly withoutmuch centralized control. There isgrowth in both research-basedgraduate programs and professionalmasters degrees, both of which resultin an increased load for faculty. Wemight collectively decide to cap thenumber of students, as is done withthe undergraduate enrollment, so as tokeep ourselves from continuing topile on more work.

• We might ask for more insti-tutional control on new initiatives thatincrease the faculty workload. As oneexample, MIT has launched twomajor international initiatives (withSingapore and with CambridgeUniversity) that require substantialfaculty commitment, often pullingfaculty from their responsibilities andteaching duties in their home

departments. It is not clear to me thatwe understood the full impact of theseinitiatives when they were undertaken.In light of this, we might insist that anyproposed initiative be accompaniedby an impact statement that documentsthe faculty load and commitment, andprescribes appropriate recourse orremedies for the departments that areaffected.

• We might take greater care in ouruse and deployment of committeesinvolving faculty. I suspect we havetoo many standing and ad hoccommittees, involving too manyfaculty members.

• We might seek to develop a betterunderstanding of what is the job of afaculty member, and how this jobchanges over the course of a career.Possibly there should be a jobdescription that elaborates on what isexpected of each of us. This might bequite helpful in individually guidingus in our decisions about what is reallyimportant and how best to devote ourtime.

• Related to the prior point, wecould develop metrics on facultyworkload. How would you measurewhat you do, or what you are supposedto do? Presumably, if we could

establish meaningful measures onresearch, on teaching, and on service,we could better manage facultyworkload and provide some basis forreducing it.

• Some will say that the workloadissues are primarily self-induced, andthat this is part of the culture of MIT.If so, then I think the time has come totake a serious look at why this is, andto start the process by which we changethe norms, values, and expectationsthat induce and reward this behavior.This will not be easy.

I started this column with theobservation that the faculty has toomuch to do, and not enough time to doit. I have tried to suggest some possibleactions that could help. I am sure thereare other ideas. Of course there arecost and resource implications ofvarying degrees associated with eachof these measures. But I believe itwould be useful to get a betterunderstanding on which, if any, ofthese measures would make adifference. I would welcome any inputyou have on these concerns, as well ason how we might develop an overallsense of what the faculty would want.✥[Stephen C. Graves can be reached atsgraves@mit.edu]

Teaching this fall? You should know …the faculty regulates examinations and assignments for all subjects.

Check the Web at http://web.mit.edu/faculty/termregs for more information on:

• Privacy and student information• Academic honesty• Prerequisite subjects for undergraduates• Grading• Class times• The first and third weeks of the term• Tests and academic exercises outside scheduled class time• End-of-term assignments• Final exams and end-of-term tests

Questions? Contact Faculty Chair Stephen Graves at x3-6602 or exam-termregs@mit.edu.

MIT Faculty Newsletter September 2002

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Efforts to Link Research and TeachingMore Closely are Gaining Ground

Lori Breslow

(Continued on next page)

In the university, research andteaching are usually thought of asarchenemies whose battlefield is

the time and energy of Every FacultyMember. Even those who haveattained the Holy Grail of tenure arenot immune from the unsettling tug ofwar the two are forever engaged in.

On the other hand, the commonwisdom is that they cannot beuncoupled in the sense that one cannotbe a good college teacher withoutbeing a strong researcher. Researchdone to test that belief, however, hasproven it not to be true. For example,in 1987, Kenneth Feldman reviewed43 studies conducted on therelationship between teaching andlearning and found “. . . for all practicalpurposes, [the two] are essentiallyunrelated.” In other words, there wasno correlation between researchproductivity and teaching effective-ness. (“Research Productivity andScholarly Accomplishment of CollegeTeachers as Related to theirInstructional Effectiveness: A Reviewand Exploration,” Research in HigherEducation, Vol. 26, 1987, p. 275, asquoted in Hattie and Marsh, below.) Asimilar meta-analysis of 58 studiesdone nine years later by John Hattieand H.W. Marsh reaffirmed Feldman’sfindings. “We must conclude,” theauthors write, “that the common beliefthat research and teaching areinextricably entwined is an enduringmyth.” (“The Relationships BetweenResearch and Teaching: A Meta-Analysis,” Review of EducationalResearch, Vol. 66, 1996, p. 529.)

(Interestingly, while Hattie andMarsh confirm that prolific researchdoes not correlate with excellent

teaching, they did find that those whodid both well shared traits in common.“Good researchers and goodteachers,” they write, “are moreenthusiastic, have greater breadth ofcoverage, are more committed toteaching, and appear moreknowledgeable.” [p. 529].)

The reality, of course, is that since atleast the turn of the century, teachingand research have been in bittercompetition, and research has won. Inhis book, How Scholars TrumpedTeachers, Stanford education historianLarry Cuban writes, “Amid repeatedpresidential and faculty claims for thesignal importance of teaching andaffirmations that harmony, notconflict, characterizes teaching andresearch, critics and scholars havenoted the research imperative asdominating academic work again andagain.” He ends the paragraph withthe cynical, “No news here.” (p. 5)

Far be it from me to assert that theplaying field between teaching andresearch is level at MIT. I know ofonly one faculty member in the Institutewho maintains he was tenured becauseof his contributions to education. Andonly twice have I been contacted tohelp young faculty members improvetheir teaching because there was a feartheir tenure cases would be negativelyaffected by poor student evaluations.So this column is not about howresearch and teaching happily co-existat this or any other research institution.

But . . . there are a number of waysthe faculty and administration at MIThave sought to combine teaching andresearch so they reinforce one another,and these efforts have born fruit. Inthis Teach Talk, I would like to describe

three ways this linking has occurredhere: by talking about research in theclassroom, through UROP (theUndergraduate Research Oppor-tunities Program), and in subjects thatask students to engage in primaryresearch. Then I would like to brieflydetail several endeavors that are goingon nationally and internationally tostrengthen the connection betweenteaching and learning.

Efforts at MITIntertwining research and teaching

can be as simple as a faculty membertalking about research (his/hers orsomeone else’s) in class. “When Iteach my freshman physics subject(8.022),” explains Professor PeterFisher, “I make sure to talk about thework that went on at MIT during WorldWar II to develop radar. I think thestudents should have a sense of howthe seemingly abstract concepts theyare learning were applied in a waythat had profound consequences.”And although I’ve never done a full-scale study on the advantages oftalking about research in class, anytime the subject has come up incasual conversation with students,they have been nothing less thanenthusiastic.

Of course, the most well-knowneffort to combine teaching andresearch at MIT is UROP. Begun in1969, UROP was the brainchild of thelate Margaret MacVicar, professor ofPhysical Science and dean forUndergraduate Education, and was“inspired by Edwin H. Land . . . whobelieved in the power of learning bydoing.” <http://web.mit.edu/urop/>

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Efforts to Link Research andTeaching Gaining Ground

Breslow, from preceding page

Almost 80% of all MIT undergraduatesnow participate in at least one UROPduring their time at MIT, and UROP hasbecome a model for many programs of itskind at universities throughout the world.

Since I assume most readers of theFaculty Newsletter know about UROP, Iwon’t belabor the point except to say thatthe founding principle behind UROP isthat by doing research alongside UROPsupervisors, those supervisors have theopportunity to teach students about theresearch process, the physical conceptsand phenomena underlying the researchthey are doing, and the knowledge gainedas a result of the research program. AsUROP Director and Dean forUndergraduate Research Kim Vandiverexplains, “UROP allows the students toprogress from reading about research andhearing about it to seeing it, doing it, andbeginning to understand it.” UROP maybe the quintessential example of howresearch and teaching can be interlinked.

UROP connects teaching and researchin the lab; other faculty members aremaking that connection in the classroom.For example, in a new freshman subjectcalled Mission 200X (with “X” standingfor the year the students graduate), studentswork together in their first semester atMIT to solve a complex problem in anovel way. This year, Mission 2006, whosefocus will be designing new ways tomonitor the status of the Amazonrainforest, will become part of theTerrascope project, which adds a second-semester class in which the students willdesign and build the computer simulationsand experimental observational toolsnecessary to implement the design theycreated in the first semester. <http://web.mit.edu/terrascope/www> From themoment they arrive at MIT, these studentswill be working as researchers, exploringnew problems and trying to solve them.But they will do it within the classroomenvironment.

Aero/Astro Professor David Miller’sthree-semester course “Space SystemsEngineering” (16.83) is another excellentexample of how research can be integratedinto the classroom. The course is thecapstone of the department’s undergraduatecurriculum, which is based on authenticengineering practice. (The curriculum isknown by the acronym CDIO for Conceive,Design, Implement, and Operate.)Professor Miller’s course allowed studentsto work together in teams to develop aconcept for a satellite formation flightlaboratory for the International Space State,build a high-fidelity prototype, and operateit for short periods of micro-gravity onNASA’s KC-135. As Professor Millerand Dr. Doris Brodeur describe the subjectin a paper they presented at the 2002American Society for EngineeringEducation Annual Conference, it was awin-win situation for everyone. Thestudents received direct experience in therange of work academic and researchengineers do, the product made wassomething of value to the aerospace researchcommunity, and “faculty time spent teachingthe course would not only meet academicrequirements, but also permit facultymembers to direct focused activities thatsupported their research.” (p. 3)

These are only a few examples of howresearch and teaching intersect at MIT;I’m sure many more exist.

Efforts Nationallyand Internationally

In 1998, the Carnegie Foundation forthe Advancement of Teaching issued theBoyer Commission Report, ReinventingUndergraduate Education: A Blueprintfor America’s Research Universities.<http://naples.cc.sunysb.edu/Pres/boyer.nsf> Charging that “the researchuniversities have too often failed, andcontinue to fail, their undergraduatepopulations,” the report condemnedresearch universities for not providingundergraduates with opportunities for

contact with senior faculty or to do realresearch. And, in fact, the firstrecommendation the Commission madefor changing undergraduate education wasto make research-based learning thestandard, with students “engaged inresearch in as many courses as possible.”

The Reinvention Center <http://ws.cc.stonybrook.edu/Reinventioncenter/>was founded at SUNY Stony Brook topromote and coordinate the changes theBoyer Commission advocated. It hasestablished regional networks of researchuniversities to collaborate with oneanother, and will sponsor a two-dayconference in November on “UndergraduateResearch and Scholarship and the Missionof the Research University,” whichrepresentatives from MIT will attend.

Then in August 2001, the HowardHughes Medical Institute announced itwould award $1 million each to 20 researchscientists “on the basis of their plans totransmit the excitement and values ofscientific research to undergraduateeducation.” Citing the fact that collegestudents are “learning science in the sameold way,” the Institute hoped to “empowerscientists at research universities to . . .‘break the mold’ in science education.”<http://www.hhmi.org/news>

Two efforts in the UK to connect teachingand research more effectively have alsobeen recently launched. The LinkingTeaching and Research in the Disciplinesproject, centered at Oxford BrookesUniversity, involves producing genericmaterials to help strengthen the teaching/research links within specific disciplines,as well as creating five Subject Centresthat will be discipline specific. <http://www.brookes.ac.uk/> In addition, theCentre for Higher Education Practices atthe Open University has undertaken aproject entitled, “Maximizing theBenefits to Teaching of Research” in2001-2002.

(Continued on next page)

MIT Faculty Newsletter September 2002

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Efforts to Link Research andTeaching Gaining Ground

Breslow, from preceding page

There is one more way that prominentscholars have attempted to strengthen theconceptual bond between teaching andresearch, and that is to undertake what isgenerally called the “scholarship ofteaching.” This perspective has beenspearheaded by the Carnegie Foundation’sCASTL (Carnegie Academy for theScholarship of Teaching and Learning)Higher Education program. <http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/CASTL/highered/index.htm> This project consistsof a fellowship program, underwritten bythe Pew National Trust, to bring university

faculty together in an advanced studycenter to explore significant issues inteaching and learning in their fields; theTeaching Academy Campus Program,which is coordinated by AAHE and seeksto create a culture of scholarship inteaching and learning on individualcampuses; and interactions withprofessional and scholarly societies. AsPat Hutchins, who directs CASTLHigher Ed, has exhorted the academiccommunity, it is time for faculty to treat“. . . their classrooms as sites forsystematic inquiry; framing their own

[The following is Professor Thorburn'sMacVicar Faculty Fellow acceptancespeech, delivered March 1, 2002.]

I feel honored by this award and proudto be part of a university thatdemonstrates its commitment to

undergraduate teaching in such a generousand public way.

My writing and scholarship count agood deal in my sense of who I am, butI’ve come to realize that my best intellectualenergies may emerge in the classroom, inthe unpredictableness, the live, existentialexcitement of the lecture and the seminar.

I’ve always been offended by those whospeak of “the real world” beyond theclassroom, as if the passion and seriousnessand joy and humility engendered by thework of thinking and learning were“unreal,” irrelevant to the practical world.No! no! I want cry out in answer: Whatcould be more real, what could be moreuseful or valuable than intellectual mastery,true understanding? One reason for this isthat truly understanding a problem inbiology or chemistry, a historical event ora poem involves a recognition of limitation

and complexity, of the partialness ofexplanations and paradigms, the limits tounderstanding itself. The humility we learnwhen we think in these ways is uncommonin our civic and political life, and itsrelative absence impoverishes us all.

Teaching literature at MIT is a specialchallenge, and for me an inspiriting one.All of us in the Humanities work in a kindof enclave; some say we work on themargins of the Institute’s mission. It istrue, of course, that few students chooseMIT because they aim to be historians oranthropologists or poets. Yet I feel thismakes us not less but more central to theexperience of undergraduates. My classesin literature – like the classes of most ofmy colleagues in the Humanities – haveclaims on all students, on physicists andengineers, on astronomers, linguists,biologists: on all manner and kind ofnerdly genius. Literature – this is a richparadox – is an amateur discipline: itbelongs to all who can read, it addressesthe whole human community.

And although it remains one of MIT’sbest-kept secrets, literature is in actualitya central, shared experience for the vast

majority of our undergraduates. 75-80percent of them take at least one Literaturesubject before they graduate – a remarkablestatistic when we remember that noLiterature subject is required. Annualenrollments in Literature have held steadyin the 1000-1200 range for the last 25years, another remarkable fact for atechnological institution with fewer than4500 undergraduates.

I’m deeply grateful for this recognition,but I’m conscious as well of how arbitraryit is for me to be singled out from a groupof teachers as gifted and committed as mycolleagues in the Literature faculty. They– we – are truly a special group. Betterthan any faculty I know of in this country,they keep alive the ideal of the teacher-scholar. I accept this award on behalf ofmy comrades in the Literature Section ofMIT: James Buzard, James Cain, PeterDonaldson, Howard Eiland, Mary Fuller,Diana Henderson, John Hildebidle, NoelJackson, Henry Jenkins, Wyn Kelley, AlvinKibel, Christina Klein, Ruth Perry, ShankarRaman, Stephen Tapscott, William Uricchio.✥[David Thorburn can be reached atthorburn@mit.edu]

teaching problems as questions ofbroader scholarly significance . . . .”(Ethics of Inquiry: Issues in theScholarship of Teaching and Learning,p. 1 at the CASTL Website)

There is no doubt in my mind thatpressures – and opportunities – from anumber of different quarters are changingthe relationship between teaching andlearning on the campuses of researchuniversities worldwide. I am glad we areparticipating in that shift.✥[Lori Breslow can be reached atlrb@mit.edu]

Teaching Literature at MITDavid Thorburn

○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○

MIT Faculty Newsletter Vol. XV No. 1

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School of Engineering

The School of Engineering hashad, and continues to have, aprofound impact on the world.

Anchored on a tradition of accomplish-ment and yet forging novel initiativesin content and style, the School aspiresto remain at the forefront ofengineering innovation and sustain itsresearch leadership.

Research in the School is broad andeclectic, ranging from engineeringscience to the creation of innovativeproducts, and encompasses a widevariety of research themes andapproaches, some pursued byindividual investigators, othersconducted through group projects orumbrella grants orchestrated by largeresearch centers and laboratories. Thisblending of theory and applicationsand an openness to differing stylesstand as hallmarks of the School’sresearch and vision.

A Tradition of AccomplishmentOver the decades, the School, and

more broadly the Institute, has:• created numerous new fields of

engineering inquiry;• created the contemporary model

of engineering science;• pioneered the model of the

modern research university withexternally sponsored researchprograms, and a matrix organizationof departments, laboratories, andcenters; and,

• led in creating models forcollaboration between academe andindustry.

Through its research, MIT hascontributed to many twentieth centuryinnovations that have profoundlychanged our everyday lives and thevery fabric of society. The followingexamples are illustrative:

Leadership Through TechnicalExcellence and Innovation

Thomas Magnanti

• In basic industries, the develop-ment of steelmaking and of equipmentand processes for the production ofgasoline and clean combustion forelectric power generation.

• In medicine, early work ondeveloping artificial skin, novelpolymers used for wafers to deliverchemotherapy in treating brain cancer,microchips for the controlled releaseof chemicals (“pharmacy on a chip”),and modern technologies for artificiallimbs.

• In aerospace, signal detection andanalysis techniques used for very long-range communications, such as spaceexploration, and the design anddevelopment of the inertial guidancesystem for moon landings.

• In electronics and computers,analog computers, prototype of theInternet, magnetic core memory, thefirst workable public-key crypto-graphic system, computer time-sharing, and internet protocols (TCP/IP).

• In design and manufacturing, thebasis for CAD/CAM.

MIT has not only been a pioneer inspecific fields of engineering research,it has also created widely adoptedresearch models. MIT arguablypioneered the modern researchuniversity as we know it today, havingbeen chosen in 1940 as the site of thefamous Radiation Laboratory(“RadLab”). Somewhat later, DeanGordon Brown advocated the“research center” to encourageinterdepartmental, interdisciplinaryresearch. His concepts have helpedreconfigure technical and engin-eering schools around the world. In1973 the MIT Polymer ProcessingProgram (PPP) became one of the

first, if not the first, industrialsponsored research consortia at auniversity.

Looking ForwardThe School continues to lead in

creating and improving numeroustechnological systems and processes.It has embarked upon severalinitiatives aimed at sustaining itsresearch leadership.Partnerships

MIT’s industrial and universitypartnerships, which foster and supportsignificant interdisciplinaryengineering research, have becomean increasingly large component ofthe School’s research portfolio. Eitheranchored in the School itself or oftenfocusing largely on engineeringcontent, these partnerships provide abroad funding base on topics that areof interest both to MIT faculty and tothe Institute’s industrial and universitycolleagues. The Dupont-MIT Alliance,for example, is creating new processesfor novel biologically-based materials.Through the HP-MIT Alliance, facultyfrom several centers collaborate withHP researchers in the area of wirelesscommunications. A major MIT-directed consortium to address globalenvironmental challenges has emergedfrom the Ford-MIT Alliance; and theMIT-Microsoft Alliance has creatednew educational technologies andpedagogies. The Singapore-MITAlliance (SMA) and Cambridge-MITInstitute (CMI) have brought togetherfaculty from several departments toconduct research on such varied topicsas advanced micro- and nano-materials, manufacturing, and highperformance computing.

(Continued on next page)

MIT Faculty Newsletter September 2002

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Recent Institutional InitiativesThe Institute for Soldier

Nanotechnology (ISN) is a multi-yearresearch partnership with the U.S.Army and several other externalorganizations (currently Raytheon,Dupont, and Massachusetts General/Brigham and Women’s Hospital) todevelop innovative, lightweightuniforms with novel functionality forthe soldier of the future. It will drawupon approximately 35 core facultyand 80-100 graduate students toaddress, like the RadLab, an importantnational need.

Creating a new model for supportingresearch and interacting with industry,the Deshpande Center forTechnological Innovation aspires tofoster research on new and emergingtechnologies and increase interactionsamong MIT, individual entrepreneurs,innovative companies, and the venturecapital community.New Content Areas

Engineering is undergoing asignificant transformation. And so isthe School as it positions itself to assumea leadership role in several excitingnew fields of investigation.Bioengineering

At MIT we are creating a newdiscipline of biological engineeringthat might eventually parallel otherfields such as chemical, electrical, andmechanical engineering. Buildingupon the molecular and genomicrevolutions in biology, we seekapplications in medicine and healthcare, pharmaceuticals, new materials,the environment, and other domains.For example, research in this areamight create nano machines thatidentify and attack disease in the body,integrative systems that greatlyaccelerate the processes of drugdiscovery and development, or themeans to grow new organs, blood

vessels, and bones from a patient’sown cells.Engineering Systems

The creation of new technologicalsystems and the social impact oftechnology have had an astoundingimpact on our lives. Today’s researchin engineering systems aims to betterunderstand and subsequently improvelarge, complex systems. Twoexamples are reconciling the inevitablegrowth in world-wide demand forenergy with potential environmentalcosts, and using modern informationtechnologies to create products thatare more timely, cheaper, and moreresponsive to consumer needs.

Information EngineeringInformation, computation and

communication in engineering – orinformation engineering – are drivingforces underlying much of contem-porary society and are becomingpervasive throughout engineering. Forexample, researchers are investigatinginstrumentation and the use ofinformation systems and technologyin biology. Other investigators areexamining imbedded software in bothsatellite and airplane systems. And yetother researchers are studying theInternet, supply chain management,computational biology, computationalmaterials, and simulation andoptimization of complex systems.Tiny Technologies

Research in tiny technologiesincludes both miniaturization – makingtechnologies increasingly smaller –and nanotechnologies, the manipulationof atoms to create technologies measuredin billionths of a meter. Over a tenth ofour engineering faculty are currentlycreating such technologies as microengines (turbines the size of shirtbuttons), quantum-dot-based compu-tation, carbon-nanotube transistors andinterconnects, microphotonic devices,and molecular electronics.

Although these innovative arenascapture only a fraction of the School’sforward-looking investigations, theyestablish significant new vectors forengineering education and research.Utilizing the tremendous talents ofsome of the world’s most creativeminds – our faculty, researchers, andstudents – we look to a future againsignificantly transformed and enrichedby engineering innovations. TheSchool of Engineering will certainlyplay a major role in shaping thisexciting future.✥[Thomas Magnanti can be reached atmagnanti@mit.edu]

Leadership Through TechnicalExcellence and Innovation

Magnanti, from preceding page

To celebrate the new millennium,the National Academy ofEngineering announced its list ofthe top 20 engineering accom-plishments of the twentiethcentury:

1) electrification 2) automobile 3) airplanes 4) water supply & distribution 5) electronics 6) radio & television 7) agriculture mechanization 8) computers 9) telephone10) air-conditioning & refrigeration11) highways12) spacecraft13) Internet14) imaging15) household appliances16) health technologies17) petroleum & petrochemical

technology18) fiber optics19) nuclear technology20) high performance materials

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School of Science

Research in the School ofScience spans the space fromstring theory to cognitive

science. The students and faculty ofthe School of Science carry out theirresearch within six departments(Biology, Brain and CognitiveSciences, Chemistry, EAPS [Earth,Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences],Mathematics, and Physics), and anumber of Laboratories and Centers(Center for Cancer Research, Centerfor Learning and Memory, Center forSpace Research, Laboratory forNuclear Science, SpectroscopyLaboratory). Much of this isinterdisciplinary, including manycollaborations with faculty in thedepartments in the School ofEngineering.

Instead of giving a general overviewof the research in the School, I wouldlike to highlight the research of ouryounger faculty, who have recentlybegun their academic careers here atMIT, and who are the future stars oftheir disciplines. Unfortunately Icannot do justice to the research of allthe young faculty, so I have chosen asmall, representative group tohighlight. I apologize to the others,any one of whom could have beenchosen.

Angelika Amon, in the BiologyDepartment, has been studyingmitosis, an essential step inchromosome duplication andsegregation. Early in mitosis, eachchromosome pairs with its replicatedsister chromosome and then becomesattached to one or other pole of themitotic spindle. As mitosis proceeds,the connections between sisterchromosomes are severed and motorproteins pull one chromosome of each

pair to opposite ends of the cell. Thefinal stage ensures that each daughtercell receives one copy of eachchromosome. If cell division occurs

before the chromosomes divide,diseased cells can result. How doesthe cell machinery prevent this fromhappening? Amon discovered that theinteraction of two proteins, one boundto the spindle-pole body and the otherlocalized in the daughter cell, wererequired to activate the last step ofmitosis. This mechanism prevents celldivision from occurring until nuclearsegregation is complete.

Using computational methods, ChrisBurge and his group in the BiologyDepartment have successfullypredicted the function of molecularsequences in messenger RNA(mRNA). Messenger RNA moleculestypically contain strings of geneticmaterial called exons, which code forproteins, and introns, which do not.Introns, like film outtakes, are removedfrom mRNA by a splicing mechanismthat joins exons together. Surprisingly,the exons make up only a small percentof the genetic material in humancells. RNA splicing determines whichsegments in the lengthy stream ofgenetic material that makes up a geneend up being expressed and which do

not. The new computational methodcan predict which sequences of geneticmaterial get spliced out and which endup as the blueprint for life. They have

found a way to predict which mutationsin a gene’s exons are likely to causethe exons to be skipped by the splicingmachinery. Skipping of exonstypically results in inactivation of thegene’s product, which can lead todisease.

David Mohrig’s research, in EAPS,focuses on elucidating the geomorphicand hydrological processes involvedin the evolution of terrestrial andsubmarine landscapes over 10,000years or more. His approach involvesintegration of information from fieldstudies of modern and ancientsedimentary systems, three-dimensional seismic surveys ofsubsurface structures, laboratoryexperiments on sediment-transportingflows, and numerical studies. Hisresearch leads to an understanding ofhow the processes governing tectonicsand mass transport have changed theearth over geologic time. It has greatsignificance to oil and gas explorationbecause some of these structuresserve as large reservoirs forhydrocarbons.

Younger MIT Faculty ResearchersAre Their Discipline's Future Stars

Robert Silbey

(Continued on next page)

His [David Mohrig's] research leads to an understandingof how the processes governing tectonics and masstransport have changed the earth over geologic time. Ithas great significance to oil and gas exploration becausesome of these structures serve as large reservoirs forhydrocarbons.

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Kate Scholberg, a young physicist,is working in two large internationalcollaborations, one (AMS) to place aparticle detector in the internationalspace station and the other (K2K)studying whether neutrinos have mass.These particles were assumed to havezero mass, but recent experiments andtheories have suggested that they mayindeed have mass. There are threekinds of neutrinos and the experimentmeasures the oscillation among thesethree by sending a beam of neutrinosa distance of 250 km through the earthfrom Tsukuba, Japan to the Super Kdetector. The discovery of non-zeroneutrino mass is perhaps the mostexciting discovery in particle physicsin the past several years.

In the Chemistry Department, PeterSeeberger and his students haveperfected a way to synthesize complexoligosaccharides, i.e., sugars, and toautomate the process. Seebergercreated an oligosaccharidesynthesizer, which cuts the timerequired to produce extremelycomplex carbohydrate molecules bya factor of 100. The device has openedthe door to a flood of potentialapplications for new research anddisease treatments. Recently, he andhis students used this approach toprepare a complex oligosaccharidethat is structurally similar to the toxiccarbohydrate found in the single-celledparasites that cause malaria. Injectionof this synthetic toxin elicited animmune response in mice, making itan excellent candidate for clinicalevaluation in humans. Application torelated problems in human health,such as West Nile virus, can beenvisioned.

Pawan Sinha, in the Department ofBrain and Cognitive Sciences, isinvestigating how the brain

accomplishes its remarkable feats ofrecognition, such as identifying distantfaces. Besides being a fundamentalchallenge in neuroscience, thisquestion is of great practicalsignificance for creating artificial

systems that can interpret theirenvironment. Pawan is addressing twobasic problems: What is the nature ofobject representations, and how arethese representations learned? Usinghighly degraded inputs, Pawan andhis students have determined some ofthe critical pieces of information thatsubserve recognition. Based on theseresults, they are formulatingcomputational models that mimichuman performance. To explore objectlearning, Pawan is studying childrenin India who have recovered sightseveral years after being born blind.This reveals how a brain that has justbeen provided access to visualinformation, begins to createrepresentations for the task ofrecognition. This unique projectpromises to provide fundamentalinsights about brain plasticity andlearning.

Dan Spielman is a youngmathematician who studies theoreticalcomputer science. Recently, heintroduced smoothed analysis, a new

Younger MIT Faculty ResearchersAre Their Discipline's Future Stars

Silbey, from preceding page

framework in which to analyzealgorithms, and demonstrated that thegood practical performance of thesimplex method, which has beeneffectively used since the 1950s tosolve optimization problems in

numerous industrial applications,could be understood in this framework.In smoothed analysis, one analyzesthe performance of an algorithmassuming there is slight imprecision inits input. This assumption is reasonablein many real-world applications inwhich data is derived fromexperimental measurements. While analgorithm with a good worst-caseanalysis will perform well on all inputs,an algorithm with a good smoothedanalysis will perform well on almostall inputs in every small neighborhoodof inputs. One surprising corollary ofthis work is that experimental error inthe data input to an algorithm canactually improve an algorithm’sperformance.

These and the other young facultywho have begun their careers at MITin the past few years, are changing theway we think about science. They arethe future and make MIT the excitingintellectual community it is.✥[Robert Silbey can be reached atsilbey@mit.edu]

Pawan Sinha, in the Department of Brain and CognitiveSciences, is investigating how the brain accomplishes itsremarkable feats of recognition, such as identifying distantfaces. Besides being a fundamental challenge inneuroscience, this question is of great practical significancefor creating artificial systems that can interpret theirenvironment.

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When the MIT Sloan Schoolof Management wasfounded in 1952 (as the School

of Industrial Management), it was withthe intention of changing the waymanagement was done.

The foundation for this bold ambitionwas the belief that important managementproblems could be solved by the rigorousand creative application of tools frombasic academic disciplines, includingapplied mathematics, economics,psychology, and sociology. This discipline-based and problem-focused approach tomanagement research and education setthe Sloan School apart. It also changed theway management was – and is – taught andpracticed. This approach remains one ofSloan’s greatest contributions to thebusiness world.

Since those formative years, Sloanresearch has been a continuing source ofinnovation that has advanced both theoryand practice.

• Doug McGregor’s famous distinctionbetween “Theory X” and “Theory Y”argued persuasively that employees shouldbe seen not as shirkers needing control, butas creative agents needing to be empowered.This was an altogether new way to thinkabout managing people. Its impact, and thatof the behavioral scientists McGregorbrought to Sloan, has been deep and broad.

• The remarkable work on optionpricing by Fischer Black, Bob Merton,and Myron Scholes has had a dramaticimpact on the structure and operation ofglobal capital markets. Work on corporatefinance by Franco Modigliani, Stew Myers,and others reshaped business thinking aboutcapital structure and investment decisions.

• Finally, work on quantitativemarketing models by John Little, Al Silk,Glen Urban, John Hauser, and others haschanged the way companies approach thedesign and launch of new products. TheASSESSOR model alone has been used in

nearly 5,000 pre-test-market studies ofnew packaged goods.

Today, Sloan research continues to shapehow the world teaches, understands, andpractices management. Increasingly, ourwork builds on MIT’s distinct intellectualexcellence and entrepreneurial culture.Sloan’s research excellence is widelyrecognized. The major ranking ofbusiness schools with an explicit focuson research, the Financial Times survey,ranked MIT Sloan first in research in2000 and second in 2001, against schoolswith faculty two and three times its size,and individual faculty regularly garnertop awards in disciplinary andprofessional arenas. Recent researchawards include:

• Steven Eppinger (and student Soo-Haeng Cho) received the 2001 ASMEInternational Design Theory andMethodology Best Paper Award for apaper entitled “Product DevelopmentProcess Modeling Using AdvancedSimulation.”

• John Hauser won the 2001 CharlesCoolidge Parlin Award of the AmericanMarketing Association, joining earlierSloan winners Glen Urban and John Little.This award recognizes his manycontributions to marketing research,including his current work on the “VirtualCustomer” initiative, discussed below.

• Stewart Myers (and co-author JamesRead) have developed new ways ofassessing the amount of capital required tosupport risk taking in various domains, akey building block in risk management.Their paper, “Capital Allocation forInsurance,” has been selected by TheAmerican Risk and Insurance Associationas a winner of the 2002 Robert C. WittResearch Award for outstanding featurearticle published in the Journal of Riskand Insurance during the previous year, aswell as for an award by the CasualtyActuarial Society.

• John Sterman and Nelson Repenningwon the 2001 California ManagementReview’s Accenture Award for the article“Nobody Ever Gets Credit for FixingProblems that Never Happened: Creatingand Sustaining Process Improvement,”continuing their work on systems dynamicsmodeling of organizations. Repenning alsohas won the Thomas P. Hustad Award forthe best paper to appear in Journal ofProduct Innovation Management in 2001for his paper “Understanding Fire Fightingin New Product Development.”

A sampling of the most recent Sloanworking papers (published by the SocialScience Research Network (SSRN) in theMIT Sloan School Research AbstractsJournal <http://www.ssrn.com/link/MIT-Sloan-School.html> shows a breadth oftopics and approaches:

• “Isotone Equilibrium in Games ofIncomplete Information” (DavidMcAdams, Applied Economics)

• “Skill or Luck? Biases of RationalAgents” (Eric Van den Steen, AppliedEconomics)

• “E-Business at Delta Air Lines:Extracting Value from a MultifacetedApproach” (Jeanne Ross, CISR)

• “The Allocation of Resources byInterest Groups: Lobbying, Litigation,and Administrative Regulation” (John deFigueiredo, Strategy and InternationalManagement)

• “Adjustment Costs, Learning-by-Doing, and Technology Adoption underUncertainty” (Anna Pavlova, Finance)

• “Dynamic Valuation: PreferenceChanges in the Context of Face-to FaceNegotiations” (Jared Curhan, Negotiations)

• “An Equilibrium Model of RareEvents” (Jun Pan, Finance)

• “Shifting Innovation to Users viaToolkits” (Eric von Hippel, Managementof Technology, Innovation, andEntrepreneurship)

Research@SloanRichard Schmalensee and Donald Lessard

Sloan School of Management

(Continued on next page)

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• “Trade Linkages and Output-Multiplier Effects: A Structural VARApproach” (Kristin Forbes, AppliedEconomics)

• “Solving Project Scheduling byMinimum Cut Computation” (AndreasSchulz, Operations Research)

• “Determinants of the Informativeness

of Analyst Research” (Richard Frankel,S. P. Kothari, and Joseph Weber,Accounting)

• “Problem Investigation in High-Hazard Industries: Creating andNegotiating Learning” (John Carroll,Organization Studies)

Given the range of disciplines and topicsinvolved, there is no simple way tocharacterize research at Sloan. A usefulfirst cut, though, is along three dimensions.These are:

1) Broad disciplinary areas around whichthe faculty is organized – behavioral andpolicy sciences, economics/finance/accounting, and management sciences,

2) Management topics addressed –including innovation and new productdevelopment, strategic organization, assetmarkets and international linkages,entrepreneurship, digital business models,the interaction of informational technologyand organization structure andperformance, impacts of accountinginformation, and the changing relationshipbetween work and family, and

3) Centers in which researcherscollaborate – many of which involvecolleagues from across the Institute,including the Operations Research Center,

the Center for Energy and EnvironmentalPolicy Research, the Joint Project onGlobal Change, the Center for eBusiness,the Center for Information SystemsResearch, the Laboratory of FinancialEngineering, the Center for CoordinationScience, and the Institute for Work andEmployment Relations, among others.

Much of Sloan’s research addressescurrent management issues while drawingon and deepening fundamental knowledge.The “Virtual Customer” initiative, forexample, has the potential to transformproduct development by engagingcustomers directly in the design processover the Internet through the use ofsophisticated algorithms that allowdesigners to elicit consumer preferencesefficiently. Similarly, research by theaccounting group on the impact of analysts’rating of underwriting and other potentialconflicts predates the current public focuson this topic and brings informed opinionto the debate. A significant portion ofSloan research, though, is motivateddirectly by fundamental puzzles in thevarious disciplines. An interesting exampleis recent work by Simon Johnson showingthat social institutions in developing nationshave importantly affected developmentsuccess and that the nature of theseinstitutions can, in turn, be explained to animportant extent by settler mortality ratesin early colonial times.

According to a recent faculty survey, thegreatest obstacle to research at Sloan is thescarcity of blocks of time that can be dedicatedto research. This reflects the intensity of

teaching in Sloan’s broad array of programs:the second-largest undergraduate major atMIT, a substantial MBA program thataccounts for about half our teaching, theLFM [Leaders for Manufacturing] and SDM[System Design and Management] programswith Engineering, two degreed executiveprograms, and a PhD program.

Sloan faculty, on average, teach manymore students than others at MIT. Effortsare currently underway to reduce thenumber of subject preparations per facultymember to permit most to concentrateteaching in a single semester, and to buildstronger links between research andeducation. Funding also remains achallenge. Sloan obtains about $10 millionper year in sponsored research, with roughly80 percent coming from corporations.While the sponsored research level perfaculty member (about $100,000) is lowby MIT standards, it is well above that atany other major business school. (Most ofour competitors can support essentially allresearch with School funds.) This level ofcorporate support requires considerablefaculty involvement in sponsor relations,but it does have the benefit of requiringthat researchers focus on practical impactas well as fundamental understanding, as“mens et manus” directs.

A major gift from an alumnus and hiswife will enable us to take a large steptoward addressing these challenges. It willprovide research funding to a group ofsenior and junior faculty working at theintersection of strategy and organizationaldesign, as well as providing these facultywith the time to collaborate, beginningwith “listening in” on each others’ courses.It will also support greater engagement bystudents in the research process and quicker,more effective incorporation of researchresults into courseware. We hope andexpect to launch similarly focused effortsin other strategic areas.✥[Richard Schmalensee can be reached atrschmal@mit.edu; Donald Lessard canbe reached at dlessard@mit.edu]

Research@SloanSchmalensee & Lessard, from preceding page

Much of Sloan’s research addresses currentmanagement issues while drawing on and deepeningfundamental knowledge. The “Virtual Customer”initiative, for example, has the potential to transformproduct development by engaging customers directlyin the design process over the Internet . . ..

MIT Faculty Newsletter Vol. XV No. 1

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years MIT has experienced realresearch growth. During Fiscal Year2002 (ending June 31, 2002) ourresearch volume grew by almost 10%from the previous year, now standingat $448M. By way of comparison,FY2001 showed a growth rate of 6.1%.

Several reasons lie behind thisgrowth, all characterized by anessential theme: the constant effort tomake MIT attractive to the very bestgraduate students and faculty, and toenable these researchers to go wheretheir curiosity leads them. Thesuccesses developing within ourresearch environment result from thecreativity of our faculty and staff andthe Institute’s support of their research.Important stimulants include, first, therenewal of our faculty resulting from80 of our colleagues taking advantageof the early retirement program in1996. Second, is the growth of newdisciplines and new interdisciplinaryresearch areas. Third, the direct subsidyof graduate research education helpsus continue to attract the best studentsinto our graduate programs and makeMIT’s cost of research competitivewith programs in our peer privateresearch universities. Finally, theincrease in graduate student housing,the upgrading of research facilities inmany research areas, and the creationof totally new facilities in others, alsohave contributed.

The MIT faculty is changing. Of theapproximately 964 faculty memberswho are leading us into the fallsemester, 318 have joined us sinceJuly 1996. The schools of Science andEngineering alone count for 172faculty colleagues belonging to thiscohort. These new colleagues havebrought with them new ideas, newresearch directions, and newcollaborations across traditionalboundaries. The Schools and the Office

of the Provost are emphasizing theneed to support these younger facultyand their new initiatives. The dividendsare apparent. As an example, the 29faculty who came together to win theU.S. government’s $50M award forthe Institute for Soldier Nano-technology reveal an average time onthe MIT faculty of 11.6 years, ascompared to 15.2 years for the rest ofthe faculty in the schools of Scienceand Engineering.

The new resources the Institute isdevoting to graduate education andresearch constitute another substantialset of ingredients. Most important isour system for subsidizing graduateresearch assistants on researchcontracts and grants, through cost-sharing 65% of the academic yeartuition and 100% of the summer tuition.At tuition rates for this fiscal year,these subsidies amount to $27,500per student or over $68.3M in subsidiesforecast for this year. In addition, thisfall the Presidential GraduateFellowship Program will support 170first-year graduate students across ourfive schools and help us remaincompetitive, especially in those areasof scholarship highly subsidized inour peer institutions’ graduateprograms. The MIT budget directlysupports this fellowship program, andplans to raise endowment to support itmore strongly are being developed.Endowment commitments have beenvery hard to find. Currently we haveendowment support for only 70fellowships for new students in the fallof 2004. The Provost’s Office seescontinuing this program as one of itshighest priorities.

Upgrading the research infra-structure is also near the top of the listof priorities. To date, most of theimprovements have come asrenovations of space for new faculty,

although other pockets of renovationare ready for inspection. For samples,take a look at the HatsopoulosLaboratories in MechanicalEngineering (on the second floor ofBuilding 3, occupying 5,600 sq. ft.),or the sixth floor of Building 37 in theCenter for Space Research. In the nextseveral years, significant new researchand teaching spaces in facilities willappear in the Ray and Maria StataCenter, the Brain and CognitiveScience Center, and the renovation ofBuilding 18 for the Department ofChemistry. These new facilitiesrepresent commitments by MIT andour supporters to the increasedimportance of information sciences inthe years ahead, and to the strategicallyimportant push by MIT intoneuroscience as led by the Departmentof Brain and Cognitive Sciences, theMcGovern Institute for Brain Research,and the Picower Center for Learningand Memory. The renovation ofBuilding 18 for the ChemistryDepartment represents the type ofdifficult, infrastructure upgrade that isneeded to keep our facilitiescompetitive for world-class research.

The campus is also witnessing anexciting, substantial increase in lifescience research. While others arebetter able to describe the opportunitiesfor societal and economic impactcaused by the explosion in ourunderstanding of living systems, it isclear that research in life sciences isquickly spreading from its traditionalbase in modern biology and impactingmuch of science and engineering. Thecreation of the Division of BiologicalEngineering has catalyzed much ofthis activity in the School ofEngineering, forging links to otherengineering and science departments.The Division of Health Sciences and

Evolving Research at MITBrown, from Page 1

(Continued on next page)

MIT Faculty Newsletter September 2002

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Technology (HST) constitutes theacademic bridge between MIT andHarvard Medical School. Thedoubling of the NIH research budgetfrom 1992 to 2002 has fueled the lifesciences research engine. The promisefor the future is bright. Growth in ourresearch volume in life sciences isvery evident in the figure, in both theincreased fraction of researchsupported by NIH and the increase inresearch volume of the life-sciencerelated units. The total research volumerepresented here is $448M. The$83.5M from Health and HumanServices (HHS) represents a 38%increase over 1997, even moreremarkable when compared to theapproximately 20% decreases inDepartment of Energy and NASAfunding, and the almost flat fundingfrom the Department of Defense overthe same time period.

The chart does not include theresearch volume of the WhiteheadInstitute for Biological Research(WIBR), which was $135M in FY2002($105M went to research carried outby the MIT-Whitehead HumanGenome Center) and led by 15 of ourfaculty colleagues, and the researchfunded by the Howard HughesMedical Institute, which was $12M inFY2001.

The shift into life sciences and otherexperimentally intensive disciplinescomes at a price. Biological laboratoryfacilities are needed where noneexisted before (sometimes I thinkevery faculty member will sooner orlater want a tissue culture facility or afume hood) and new types ofexperimental infrastructure are alsonecessary. We are working to developthese experimental facilities, much aswe did for new facilities in physicalsciences in the decades before.Examples include the MIT-HarvardMedical School Facility for High-Field

NMR, where a state-of-the-art 900 MHzsystem is underconstruction; theM I T - W h i t e h e a dBiological ImagingCenter in Building24 that will be thehome of a high-fieldcryo-TEM; and thecollaboration withthe Harvard MedicalSchool and Massa-chusetts GeneralHospital to form theMartinos Center forFunctional Imaging.All of these initiativeshave very sub-stantial externalsupport.

Industrial support has also stronglycontributed to the growth of ourresearch volume, which has grownfrom $56M in FY1997 to $86M inFY2002, an increase of 55%. Thissupport has come in the form oftraditional, single-investigator grantsand larger research partnerships. It isinteresting that out of the eight researchpartnerships that MIT has established,four heavily involve life scienceresearch.

One question that we need to debateis the extent to which growth inresearch is healthy or even sustainablefor MIT. We should recall that theincreased research activities and sizeof our graduate programs are beingadministered by an almost unchangingnumber of faculty and senior researchstaff. A growth rate at a couple ofpoints above the CPI (Consumer PriceIndex) would seem appropriate if aresearch-intensive university like MITis to absorb the higher inflation rate;the Higher Education Price indextypically runs 2 points higher than theCPI.

It is also clear that MIT still faces anenormous amount of work in the futureif we are to continue to improve ourinfrastructure for research, and tocontinue to identify the resourcesneeded to support graduate researchand education. Even simplymaintaining our competitive positionwill be difficult, because additionalinternal resources will be scarce. Equitymarkets have suffered badly and withthem MIT’s financial flexibility. Theneed for resources for new faculty willcontinue unabated, first, because wemust do the very best we can to launchtheir careers, and second, because thisis the very best investment we canmake: these colleagues’ energy willensure that MIT’s research andeducation efforts will continue todevelop new research frontiers.

The wonderful support of LydiaSnover, assistant to the Provost forInstitutional Research, in thepreparation of this note is gratefullyacknowledged.✥[Robert A. Brown can be reached atrab@mit.edu]

Evolving Research at MITBrown, from preceding page

Research ExpendituresFY2002

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An Interview with Alice P. GastContinued from Page 1

FNL: So do you focus specifically on labs and centers asopposed to departments?

AG: I try to work within research in general but I also carefor and support a number of labs and centers. I view theposition as continuing to be the champion ofinterdisciplinary research. As with previous Vice Presidentsfor Research, I can work with Deans and we can pursueinitiatives together; the centralized administration andcollegiality here makes that quite easy to do.

FNL: So what do you do, per se? Part of it seems to be thatpeople need an integrated multi-disciplinary push in theright direction, but how do you even find that out?

AG: I do a number of things in my position. I’m responsiblefor 14 interdisciplinary labs and centers, and I do take thatvery seriously, and I serve on Academic Council, and feellike I represent the research side of the Institute. I’ve beenresponsible for issues of research policy, and that can beboth interdisciplinary or at any level that it’s an institutionalmatter of policy. I also serve on the space planningcommittee [CRSP]. I serve on what I would call thestrategic level of CRSP, and my goal is to think broadly andon the research side, dealing with institutional priorities forspace utilization innovations, new buildings, and to thinkabout how we can best serve the research teams’ interests.

FNL: As part of research policy issues, do you have anyconnection to distance learning or the Web?

AG: I haven’t been integrally involved yet inOpenCourseWare, although I’m peripherally involvedwith some of the issues that they’re dealing with regardingcopyrighting and the licensing of educational materials.

FNL: What are some of the other policy issues?

AG: Environmental health and safety is a very importantone that I view as a key issue.

FNL: How much of that is internal, and how much ismandated?

AG: From my work with the Ad Hoc Committee onEnvironmental Health and Safety, I view a lot of thesynergy and activity as internal. I realize that there isexternal pressure to meet the consent decree with the EPA,

but I would say at this point there’s a very broad recognitionof the need for an Institute-wide system that works well forall the different parts of campus.

FNL: So do you work with OSP [Office of SponsoredPrograms]?

AG: I do. Research policy also involves research grantsand contracts, and so I work with Julie Norris in OSP onissues of conflict of interest.

FNL: How much of your time have you spent on that?(There’s no video camera today so the readers can’t seeyou roll your eyes.)

AG: It varies. [LAUGHTER] A big fraction of time.

FNL: And this is talking about individual cases, waivers,requests? It seems the boundaries have been pushed a lotin recent years, if not decades. There are issues here goingback to when Whitehead was established, and now thereare cases where more and more of industry wants academiato get involved in doing their work.

AG: Yes, that’s very definitely a tone and a trend I seenationally. Industry views that now universities can helpthem with their research and development.

FNL: It’s classically been done in Europe. Europeanscientists often are funded heavily by industry. Yet certaindesires of industry can fly in the face of our educationalobjectives.

AG: Yes, MIT has very high standards for openness andeducational objectives regarding research.

FNL: So you’re really the person who’s the watchdog.

AG: I’m the gatekeeper. And I was very pleased with thedocument that Sheila Widnall’s committee put together onclassified research. They have a chapter, a small chapter,with recommendations about industrial corporatesponsored research. And in general, you’ll find that MIT’spolicies are not explicitly documented in some of theseareas, and the committee’s report actually provides verynice guidelines that do lay it out in black and white. Theircharge to continue with more discussion on these issues isa very important one.

MIT Faculty Newsletter September 2002

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FNL: What are the sanctions that tend to be levied by youroffice or anybody else’s? To what extent is there actiontaken when breach of ethical procedures occurs?

AG: Well obviously, they come in case by case. And mostoften, I’ve dealt with issues regarding grants and contractsthat we cannot accept because they do not meet ourconflict of interest standards, or there are issues aroundpublication rights and things like that. Most of those issuesin the contracts were actually negotiated by OSP and ourintellectual property counsel, and so I only see them ifthere’s a problem.

FNL: And it’s up to them to alert you of potential problems?

AG: Right.

FNL: So, it’s not up to the faculty to check with you aheadof time before they try to sign something away. Since thisinterview is for the Faculty Newsletter, is there anythingyou’d like to alert the faculty to concerning theirresponsibilities in this area?

AG: I would suggest that faculty do and can continue toseek the advice of our Sponsored Projects Office, ourSenior Counsel for Intellectual Property, or my office.

FNL: So where would the faculty go? Policies andProcedures? You said those seem not to be as well spelledout as you’d like.

AG: The policies and procedures are not very explicit onsome of the details on issues that we deal with.

FNL: Whereas the Widnall report . . .

AG: It provides some guidelines, and faculty can come tomy office. They can come to the office of the intellectualproperty counsel. Traditionally faculty have gotten a lot ofguidance from [Senior IP Counsel] Karen Hersey and nowher replacement in dealing with these questions. Westrongly encourage faculty to get advice on non-disclosureand confidentiality arrangements. There are plenty ofresources here through the Office of Sponsored Programs,the Office of Intellectual Property Counsel, and my office.

FNL: What about the changing R&D on campus? Youhaven’t been here that long, but basic research now seemsto be more frequently sacrificed, or industry certainly

would like us to sacrifice it, for the end product. It'sprobably not your job to change it per se, but is that onyour radar screen?

AG: It is on my radar screen, and partly from my discussionswith various representatives of industry in various venues.But my personal view is that industry should engage incooperations with universities when they want to gain abetter fundamental understanding of something and whenthey would like to have that knowledge readily availableto the entire world. They should engage in thosecollaborations where there are areas of common interests,realizing that the product will be fundamental research,publications, and students. Traditionally, one of the greatassets that an industry/university collaboration had wasthat students would be exposed to some of the issues thatarise in applications of their research and they would learnabout industries in more detail. Industries would be exposedto a student body and have them trained in areas that theywere interested in, and there’d be a lot of common interestsin the prospective hire’s perspective.

FNL: So in terms of deliverables, is it part of your job tonegotiate these contracts?

AG: No, I don’t do that. The Office of Intellectual Propertyand the Office of Sponsored Programs would handle that.I think that in recent years intellectual property has becomea much bigger part of the equation. And so industry movesinto a relationship with a university expecting not onlyresearch results and knowledge and students, but alsointellectual property. I think perhaps that was partly drivenby a lot of young companies who had more intellectualproperty than real property – product. And when you startdealing in ideas and ideas are what are fueling yourcompany, then the intellectual property becomes veryvaluable to you. I think that’s an unfortunate trend . . .

FNL: So does the average investor.

AG: [LAUGHTER] Recent stock market results havemade that clear.

FNL: Has anything specifically changed in your area as aresult of 9/11?

AG: Oh, very much so. Among the first thing that comesto mind are issues regarding security. We add to thealready active efforts in environmental health and safety

MIT Faculty Newsletter Vol. XV No. 1

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An Interview with Alice P. GastContinued from preceding page

the aspect of security; making sure that our researchmaterials and our research results are safe and secure. Thatis the basic reason for the bioterrorism legislation thatmany people have heard about if they happen to work withwhat are termed select agents that could be considered ahazard or dangerous if they got into the wrong hands. Andwe’ve been responding to that new legislation.

FNL: Are there other post-9/11 issues?

AG: Yes. The International Scholars Office reports to meand the International Students Office reports to me via theDean for Graduate Students, and so I’ve spent a lot ofenergy and effort thinking about how we deal with postSeptember 11th issues. In particular, the INS has speededup its implementation of a database system.

FNL: There are stories of post docs who have been toldthat, if they pay a $1,000 fee, the rate at which their visarenewal application will be handled will be fast-tracked.They were told so 3-6 six months after they hadconscientiously sent in all their paper work and fees. Theywere told that $1,000 would put them at the front of theline.

AG: There are delays now in getting visas. And theInternational Scholars or International Students Office arevery good about warning people of those delays and tryingto help them prepare in advance for delays that can occurin visa applications now, and even denials. We have hadsome fraction of denials, too.

FNL: What about foreign students in general?

AG: What I get is more of a general issue – calls fromnewspapers and radio programs talking about the foreignstudent issue and how we’re dealing with it or what wethink. And you know, I’ve expressed how much we valueour foreign student population.

FNL: That’s not the spin they often have.

AG: Right. But I think it’s important that institutions likeours stand up for international student and scholars.

FNL: Any other post–9/11 issues?

AG: I also co-chair, with Associate Provost ClaudeCanizares, the Committee on the Protection of Human Life

and Infrastructure, formed by Chuck Vest to assess what,if anything, MIT would like to do or should do to respondafter September 11th. And we’re launching a new Websitethis September. We’re going to use that Website as a meansof communicating what we already do that is related toissues of terrorism and to, in some sense, raise consciousnesswith other faculty doing research who, with a little bit ofchange of focus, could contribute quite a bit to this War OnTerrorism.

FNL: Do you see this whole area as a significantopportunity for research projects for the faculty?

AG: I believe it will be. I don’t think it’s going to go away.And I think it’s appropriate for faculty to assess theirinterests and their concerns and whether they can applytheir talents to these problems.

FNL: There was no national budget for this, and theycontinue to reorganize the plan.

AG: Yes, the national organization has certainly not beenswift, and so to some extent, nobody has really knownwhat to expect or where they should be focusing theirattention. The Branscomb-Klausner Report has come out,which is a high level National Academy panel put togetherto focus on issues of counterterrorism, and so there aremany recommendations of research areas or areas needingmore attention in that report.

FNL: It’s interesting that this may actually be anopportunity, in a very idealistic sense, perhaps to unify thecampus more, not simply the different engineering orscience disciplines, but really bringing in the whole Institute– humanities, architecture, etc., in pursuing this unifiedgoal.

AG: One of the issues or recurring themes is, what I woulduse is the term the “root causes” – issues of the wholeinternational studies area and how one can start to take aglobal view as one does with other large problems. AndMIT is notoriously good at solving large-scale problems atsystems levels.

FNL: The question of centers and labs – how do you seetheir evolution? Are there some that should be closed down?

AG: I would say that there is an evolution in labs andcenters, and the Provost and I are very interested in trying

MIT Faculty Newsletter September 2002

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to foster new areas and think critically about how we’redealing with the more mature labs and centers. In particular,obviously, the Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies is anew opportunity and a new interdisciplinary activity. It isan exciting institute with a contract from the army and anew facility here on campus; it will then evolve after thecontract is over. And since it is interdisciplinary, it willreport administratively to my office. The director, NedThomas, will also sit on Engineering Council because ithas a strong link to the School of Engineering.

FNL: Any others?

AG: There’s the Martinos Center, a medical imagingcenter involving a collaboration between MGH and MIT.

FNL: Do you see them as fundamentally different? Thereare always new centers and they have new ideas orlaboratories – but are we really dealing with a fundamentalparadigm change or not?

AG: I would say, looking at national research again, thatinterdisciplinarity is important. And I would say from thecomplexity of the problems being addressed, if you thinkabout the types of work that people are doing in theforefront of biological sciences, for example, there aremany, many areas where you need cross-disciplinaryactivities.

FNL: So do you think it’s a valuable exercise for aninstitution to set up interdisciplinary programs and findpeople who can participate for a given period of time, asopposed to the general question of is interdisciplinaryresearch worthwhile?

AG: Well, I do believe interdisciplinary research isworthwhile, and I do think that you need to maintain strongdisciplines for faculty to come to collaborations with theappropriate tools and expertise. But it’s when you do bringresearchers together in a fruitful collaboration, as we’veseen over and over again, that a lot of interesting newthings can come out. And so, there’s a balance betweenmaintaining their disciplines so that you have your corecompetencies represented by the faculty, students, andresearch staff, but at the same time you nurture them, ormake feasible and possible their interactions so that theycan have productive collaborations unencumbered by anyboundaries put up by the institutions.

FNL: The model in a lot of places is to bring peopletogether from different disciplines into collaboration, andat a certain point in the creative development of the projectthe expertise that one really needs has to come fromoutside. And yet frequently funding agencies expect thatthe collaboration should take advantage of those resourcesthat are nearby, because it’s easier and cheaper. Yet oftenthis perspective forces a certain mediocrity in performancebecause it’s not the right match, but you do it because it’sconvenient. What do you think this is doing to the researchenvironment?

AG: I don’t see them as in opposition. I would never wantto prevent an inter-institutional collaboration. But I thinkwhat the Institute has to think about is what they canprovide to make these things easier and more productive.And you mentioned facilities, and that’s one of the keythings that is represented in the Soldier Nanotechnologiesinstitute – central shared facilities where you can bringtogether people working on complex problems withextensive and state-of-the-art equipment.

FNL: Let’s change the subject a bit. You came fromStanford; how about a little comparison between there andhere.

AG: Well, I see MIT as a very centralized administrationwith a lot of individual autonomy. The faculty here havetremendous autonomy and authority, but the administratorsdo work together in a very centralized fashion. And I saythat referring to Academic Council. I’m very impressedwith their structure, the way they review promotions andappointments; they review all of them with great care andspend a tremendous amount of time, in fact, together onthese issues – issues of concern to the Institute. Meetingweekly and spending so much time together, viewing thewide variety of issues and situations that come from acrossthe Institute I think is a very collegial process. It brings peopleto a very deep understanding of how the schools operate, sothat each dean has this broad view of the other schools.

FNL: It wasn’t always necessarily like that.

AG: There’s an Institute-level concern, and then there’sthe understanding of the differences that you have acrosscampus units. It also makes it very easy to do things. I feellike I know the Dean of Science and the Dean of Engineeringand the Deans of all the schools quite well. If I need to try

MIT Faculty Newsletter Vol. XV No. 1

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to get something done between two schools, I can pullthem aside on a Tuesday morning and we can talk for fiveminutes and something will happen. I don’t view Stanfordas quite so centralized. I view the schools as having muchmore independent authority. I was working very hard onthe Clark Center for Biomedical Science and Engineeringat Stanford. And it brings together in a very nice atmosphereof collaboration and communication and openness, peoplefrom Engineering, Medicine, and Science. But I feel thatthe structure of the administration there made it a bit moredifficult to get the three schools together than it would havebeen at a place like MIT.

FNL: We could ask about the weather and then Stanfordcould get a plus on their side.

AG: Actually, I should preface this by saying that I havegreat respect for Stanford and thoroughly enjoyed my 16years there. Leaving was a very difficult decision for me.

FNL: Well, we hope you’re happy here.

AG: I’m very happy here. It has a lot of similarities toStanford. Both places have very energetic and high intensityfaculty. They share an eagerness to try new things and a

boldness in experimenting. Stanford was embarking on avery exciting new experiment in bringing really disparateparts of campus together; and we could see very quicklyhow just bringing people together to get to know oneanother caused them to start a new collaboration threeyears before the building would even open! So I saw thepower of having funds and facilities to bring peopletogether to get to know one another from many differentparts of campus. And I think that’s been a long tradition atMIT. MIT has labs and centers that have brought peopletogether from different parts of campus for a long, longtime and they have a lot of different models for how to dothat and you’ve alluded to some of them. And maybethey’re all experiments, but they’re all by and largeworking well, and so it’s very gratifying to see all thedifferent ways that research happens.

FNL: Is there anything you would want to say to thefaculty that we haven’t covered?

AG: My door is always open. I like to hear anybody’sideas about new ways of pursuing research or collaborationsor any interdisciplinary activities. I look forward to morepositive interactions with faculty and I’ve really enjoyedmy work at MIT so far.✥

An Interview with Alice P. GastContinued from preceding page

M.I.T. Numbers

Research Funding(Campus Only)

Source: Office of the Provost

MIT Faculty Newsletter September 2002

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The Changing Nature of Research at MITJulie Norris

[Julie Norris, director of the Office ofSponsored Programs (OSP), discusseshow changing regulations from researchfunding sources affect MIT faculty.]

MIT’s research activities arewide ranging and everchanging. The distribution

of funds between and among the varioussponsoring organizations indicates howsome of these activities have changed.[See MIT Numbers, back page.]

The most dramatic shift has been theincrease in research volume from non-federal sources, particularly that fromindustry and other for-profit entities. InFY 2002, non-federal sources accountedfor 38% of the total research volume atMIT; the 62% from federal sources islower than that of most other largecolleges and universities. This is partiallydue to the fact that MIT does not have amedical school, but it is also partiallyresponsive to the emphasis the Institutehas placed recently on expanding itsresearch base and encouraging thedevelopment of large partnerships andcollaborations (such as DuPont, Ford,CMI, and Singapore). At the same time,MIT continues to support and encouragethe development of multi- andinterdisciplinary laboratories to addresscross-cutting research issues frommultiple perspectives.

While MIT has grown its industrialresearch enterprise, the federalgovernment has provided significantlyincreased funding to the NationalInstitutes of Health (NIH) and hasprovided selective increases to theNational Science Foundation (NSF).MIT’s strong growth in both theseagencies in FY02 testifies to the broadbase of funding for the researchenterprise at the Institute.

This increased funding has,however, also meant an increase inthe complexity of the rules and

regulations that govern federallyfunded (and some corporate funded)research. Increased oversight iscertainly a by-product of this growthin research. Changes seen just in thelast few years demonstrate the point.For example, researchers submittingproposals to the National ScienceFoundation and the National Institutesof Health now must submit formaldisclosures of certain financialrelationships; individuals utilizinghuman subjects in research mustdemonstrate via an on-line exami-nation knowledge of the federalregulations relating to humans assubjects; individuals seeking to exportcertain technology, software, orinformation abroad must be aware ofand comply with regulations relatingto export controls. These are all time-consuming activities that detract fromthe time researchers have to doresearch.

However, the good news is thatelectronic research administration hasprovided some significant reductionsin time needed to accomplish certainresearch-related tasks. For example,the search for research opportunitiesis now automated; individuals mayreceive information about researchopportunities in fields they designatevia e-mail every day of the year.Additionally, led by the NSF’sFastLane System, the major researchagencies have embarked on thedevelopment of automated proposalsubmission systems. Federal regu-lations require that agencies be able toaccept electronic proposals by the endof CY 2003, and many agencies aredeveloping systems (or have systems inplace) to do so this year. Required annualand final technical reports are nowroutinely submitted electronically byresearchers, and agencies are beginningto make awards electronically.

MIT is viewed as a national leader inthe area of electronic researchadministration. Our COEUS system(for award management and as theInstitute’s feed to the accountingsystem) has been licensed by morethan 80 other higher education institutionsacross the country. It is the model for thedata included in awards now made by theOffice of Naval Research. At the presenttime, MIT is piloting a research proposaldevelopment, routing, and submissioncomponent of COEUS that will allowMIT faculty to develop proposals, multi-year budgets, route those proposalsthrough necessary Institute offices, andhave OSP submit them to the agencyelectronically.

This system allows faculty andresearchers to create the technical andscientific part of a proposal, lettingadministrative personnel in theoriginator’s department create one ormultiple versions of the budget. Oncethe technical proposal and budget arecompleted, the researcher “submits” theproposal electronically to the Institute.At the time of submission, theinvestigator responds to certain questions(about humans, animals, conflicts ofinterest, need for space, etc.) that replacethe current routing sheet. Oncecompleted, the persons who need toreview the proposal (and this may varydepending on the specific proposal) arenotified that a proposal is ready forreview. These individuals can access theproposal electronically for review andapproval. Once the proposal has allrequired reviews completed, it reachesthe Sponsored Programs Office for finalreview and electronic submission to thesponsor (or for printing, if necessary).More information on this system, andrequests for additional pilot units, willreach departments shortly.✥[Julie Norris can be reached atjnorris@mit.edu]

MIT Faculty Newsletter Vol. XV No. 1

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Research-in-Progress

[Ann Bookman, executive director ofthe MIT Workplace Center, discussesresearch pertinent to current needs ofthe faculty.]

The MIT Workplace Center,based at the Sloan School ofManagement, was founded in

July, 2001 with a three-year grantfrom the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.It is the seventh university-basedcenter established by the SloanFoundation to study the lives of dual-career, middle class families. It is thefirst such center to focus on theworkplace, and the first to combineresearch with experimental inter-ventions for change in selectedcompanies. The Center is co-directedby Professors Lotte Bailyn andThomas Kochan. Dr. Ann Bookman,a social anthropologist, is executivedirector, and Dr. Mona Harrington,a political scientist, is programdirector.

The approach taken by the MITWorkplace Center is based on twodistinctive strands of scholarship andpolicy analysis. First, we hope tocontribute to a growing literature onwork redesign. For over 10 years,Professor Bailyn and colleagues havepioneered innovative approaches to workorganization, advancing the possibilitiesfor work-family integration and genderequity. She says, “After collaboratingwith employees and managers in manycompanies, I believe it is possible todesign new work systems that promotethe effective performance of firms andthe well-being of employees, theirfamilies and communities. We are taughtthat we have to choose between thetwo – my research suggests that ‘win-win’ solutions are within our grasp.”

Integrating Work and Family Life:Research at the MIT Workplace Center

Ann Bookman

The MIT Workplace Center willaddress the problem of the “one sizefits all” workplace. By engaginginterested parties in the redesign ofwork systems and employmentpractices, we hope to offer newapproaches to meeting the diverseneeds of diverse families.

Second, our work is informed by theframework set out in a recent report,“Integrating Work and Family Life: A

Holistic Approach,” co-authored byLotte Bailyn, Thomas Kochan, andRobert Drago. Written with theparticipation of a small, national groupof academics and practitioners calledthe Work-Family Policy Network, thereport reviews the social scienceliterature on work and family life, andassesses both private sector policyand public policy. Professor Kochanexplains the report’s conclusions. Hesays, “There is a serious institutionallag at present between private sectorpolicies and labor laws developed inthe 1930s and the problems facingworking families today. If we want tointegrate work and family life in thetwenty-first century, it will require awell-informed collaborative effort onthe part of all the key actors that shareinterests and responsibilities in theseissues.” The MIT Workplace Center isapplying this stakeholder approachto its research and its publiceducation efforts in an attempt tomove away from single-party,piecemeal solutions and towards

multi-sector involvement insystemic change.

Our research agenda is based on thestudy of work-family issues in thegreater Boston metropolitan region.This area includes a multi-state labormarket that crosses the state lines ofMassachusetts into New Hampshireand Rhode Island. Using a regionalapproach is one way of concretizingour view that work-family problems

do not fall neatly into preconceivedcategories with clear boundaries.Rather, we study how problems at workspill over into home, and even into thecommunity, and how family andcommunity issues may affect theoperation of the workplace.

We have chosen three industriesthat are critical to the functioning ofthis regional economy: health care,high tech, and legal services. In eachindustry, we begin by collectingbaseline data on the scope of productsand/or services, the size anddemographic composition of theworkforce, recent trends affecting thestructure, organization, and vitality ofcompanies in the industry, andinformation on work-family policiesand practices.

In the Center’s first year, we havedeveloped a number of projects in thehealth care industry. Health care is theleading employer in Massachusetts,with over 450,000 workers in a widevariety of professional, para-

(Continued on next page)

Our research agenda is based on the study of work-family issuesin the greater Boston metropolitan region. This area includes amulti-state labor market that crosses the state lines ofMassachusetts into New Hampshire and Rhode Island.

MIT Faculty Newsletter September 2002

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professional, and low-wage serviceoccupations. In the summer and fall of2001, we interviewed over 40 leadersin the industry to learn about pressingworkforce issues. Intervieweesreflected on their experiences with thecurrent health care system asemployers, union leaders, publicofficials, leaders of communityorganizations, professional associ-ations, and others. We convened thisgroup in a stakeholder dialoguesoliciting their views and concerns tohelp shape our key research questions.We found that although manyparticipants described problems withlong/inflexible work hours, staffingshortages, high levels of stress, anddegraded working conditions, theydid not identify these issues asconnected to work-family dilemmas.Mona Harrington explains therelevance of this disconnect to ourresearch/action agenda, “The Americanidea that work-family is a problem forindividuals to solve as best they canremains so strong that it prevails evenin an industry like health care, operating24/7 with a predominantly femaleworkforce – nurses, technicians, andincreasingly physicians – many ofwhom have family responsibilities.Challenging that idea is the startingpoint for our projects.”

The exchange and multiplicity ofperspectives in this stakeholdermeeting laid the foundation for ourcurrent research. For example, oneparticipant highlighted severeproblems produced by long hoursamong medical residents. Sloandoctoral candidate Kate Kellogg andher advisor Lotte Bailyn, have beguna study in two acute care hospitals tolook at the impact of new policies toreduce residents’ work hours on boththe quality of patient care and the

family lives of health care workers.Kellogg has begun interviews andwork observations among surgicalresidents, and Bailyn is exploring workorganization and family life amongnurses and certified nursing assistantswho also care for surgical patients.

Another project is focused oninnovative approaches to providinghealth care in long-term care facilities.Ann Bookman and Mona Harringtonare collaborating on a study ofprofessional health care employeeswho are organized in teams to provideextended and palliative care to elderlyand/or terminally ill patients. They areexamining the way the team model ofwork organization affects the qualityof patient care, relations with othernursing home workers, andopportunities for work-family inte-gration. They are also interviewingthe family members of patients, a groupwho face their own set of work-familyissues. These family members arecaught in a bind – more and morehealth care is being pushed down intothe home to save costs at the sametime that most adults are working,unable to be home to care for theirfamilies. The aim is to develop a cross-occupational picture of the extendedcare workforce, and to document theworkings of a care system that linkspaid caregivers with unpaid caregivers,blurring the work-family “boundary.”

Sloan doctoral candidate, ForrestBriscoe, guided by his advisor ThomasKochan, is studying physicians in a healthmaintenance organization (HMO).Briscoe is interested in how the dramaticrestructuring of the health care industryand the increasing number of dual-career families are affecting the patternof physicians’ careers. Combiningsurvey data and qualitative interviews,Briscoe has hypothesized that while

large medical organizations may havediminished some aspects of physicianautonomy and control, they also areproviding new career paths in healthcare management, as well as moreflexibility in work hours andaccommodation of family needs.

Several Sloan School facultymembers are conducting research inconjunction with the MIT WorkplaceCenter. Professor Diane Burton isstudying the performance of high techstart-up firms, focusing on therelationships between a company’semployment practices – such as hiring,training, promotion, and work-lifepolicies – and their business strategy.Professor Roberto Fernandez issurveying new nurses to betterunderstand the place of non-pecuniaryrewards, such as flexible hours, intheir job choices and career paths.Professor John Carroll is convening astakeholder dialogue on preventingmedical error and increasingaccountability in health care. He isalso beginning a project with operatingroom anesthesiologists to explorestrategies for improving teamcommunication in this high stressoccupation, strategies that couldenhance life on the job and at home.

Although the MIT Workplace Centeris still developing its agenda, we havelearned much in our first year. We hopethat others on the MIT faculty who areworking in related areas will share theirfindings with us, and expand the list ofquestions we can take into the field. Webelieve that researchers laboring insidethe academy are important stakeholdersin the evolving effort to create a societythat values paid work, family care,and community involvement. Pleasejoin us in any way you can.✥[Ann Bookman can be reached atabookman@mit.edu]

Integrating Work and Family Life:Research at the Workplace Center

Bookman, from preceding page

MIT Faculty Newsletter Vol. XV No. 1

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[Director of Academic Computing VijayKumar tells how innovative technologiesat the Institute can assist faculty.]

“It has been 30 years since MIT last sawsuch a groundswell of educationalinnovation and it’s beginning to transformthe classroom experience.”

This headline, from an article in theMay 2002 edition of Technology Reviewabout the unprecedented nature of MIT’sengagement with technology-enablededucational transformation, is indeedsupported by the initiatives that have beenlaunched over the past couple of years.

In recent months, more progress andnew milestones have been achieved inthese areas:

• New educational innovation projectsthat explore new modalities for teachingand learning, such as case-based learning,mechanisms for rich and immediatefeedback, Web-enabled laboratories, andcollaborative design have been selectedfor support through the i-campus and d’Arbeofffunds <http://web.mit.edu/mitcet>.

• The next phase of OpenCourseWare(OCW) is underway with the intent ofproducing approximately 50 courses bySeptember.

• Efforts with implications for majorprogrammatic and curriculum changes,such as those in the Departments ofAeronautics and Astronautics, Brain andCognitive Sciences, and MechanicalEngineering, have advanced.

The success of these educationalexperiments and projects requires anorganizational and technical infrastructurethat will support their large scale andsustainable implementation, includingtheir integration with the institutionalinfrastructure.

The recently configured AMPS(Academic Media Production Services),along with the development of the Stellarplatform for learning management withits foundational project OKI, representkey initiatives in this regard.

AMPSAcademic Media Production Services

(AMPS) <http://web.mit.edu/amps> is anorganization that delivers an array ofprofessional, high quality, cost-effectivetechnology services to support theproduction and delivery of educationalmaterials. AMPS staff support faculty andacademic programs in a variety of ways:from building course Websites and on-line educational tools to help in deliveringvideo-based instruction for local anddistance audiences. AMPS services includethe design and operation of facilities suchas the Linc in Building 9, Building 1-390,and Building 8-404, for supporting diverseneeds of broadcast instruction and small-group research interactions.

AMPS staff with competencies in videoproduction, digital media production anddelivery, education design and integrationare available to not only help faculty findthe right multimedia technology solutionsfor their courses as they explore newpedagogical models, but also execute awell-planned and sustainable educationalproject.

Besides the support to faculty initiativesbeing provided through Stellar and OCW,AMPS portfolio of projects and clients<http://web.mit.edu/amps/projects/portfolio.html> includes SMA, MUST, i-Campus, and d’Arbeloff-supportededucational innovation projects, theMuseum Loan Network, as well as someexternal projects through CAES.

The organizational capacity forsupporting educational technology beingcreated through AMPS is complementedby the robust technical substrate beingdeveloped through Stellar and the OpenKnowledge Initiative (OKI).

StellarThe Stellar development project <http:/

/stellar.mit.edu/> grew out of the needs ofMIT’s educational programs as part of thestrategic Singapore MIT Alliance (SMA),depending in part on supplemental Web-based learning materials that are securely,

conveniently, and reliably available. Asthe SMA program demands grew anddiversified, the effort to support and sustainthis critical application multiplied. Itquickly became apparent that a reliablesystem that was also easy for faculty andtechnology support staff to use, maintain,and support, was needed.

Stellar was, however, envisioned fromthe start as a foundation upon which notjust SMA, but departments, labs, andcenters across the Institute could build.This required a learning environment thatfully endorsed current software standards,ran on MIT standard hardware, andleveraged MIT enterprise systems.

Stellar has been adopted as the core ofthe SMA program’s Web-based coursedelivery system. It is also used by selecteddepartments and courses who participatedin the early stage pilot rollout.

Stellar features support for a range ofcommonly needed content managementand course administration tasks, in additionto enabling teaching and learning througha range of educational services. Stellar’sfunctionalities include:

1. Content Management Coursematerials prepared using popular authoringtools, such as Microsoft Word,PowerPoint, Dreamweaver, PDF authoringtools, etc., can be uploaded. Thesematerials are then available to studentsdirectly, in the format in which they wereprepared. Streaming video and otheradvanced multimedia materials can alsobe used.

2. Course Calendar Materials are alsoavailable in a calendar listing, so thatstudents know how the materials havebeen scheduled.

3. Announcements Faculty can authorand schedule announcements. Currentannouncements are also listed on the coursehome page.

4. Threaded Discussion Board Allowsfaculty to set up forums within a class fordifferent purposes, and for faculty and

Advanced Technologies ImproveResearch and Teaching at MIT

M. S. Vijay Kumar

(Continued on next page)

MIT Faculty Newsletter September 2002

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students to post messages andcommunicate. Documents can also beattached as a way of exchanging materialsduring the dialog.

Among the advantages of Stellar are:• The ability to make library materials

an integral part of class work, by linkingE-Reserves directly into Stellar.

• Access to the Registrar’s informationabout classes and students.

• Ability to use an existing Websiteand integrate Stellar as tools or integrateexisting pieces from any Website.

As an operational system Stellar hasprovisions in place for backups, disasterplanning, continued enhancements, andsupport. To access MIT Stellar, all youneed is a Web browser. Current versionsof Netscape and Microsoft InternetExplorer are supported.

Stellar is also being considered as anenabling infrastructure for educationaltechnology projects as part of theCambridge MIT Institute (CMI), as wellas those supported by i-Campus and thed’Arbeloff initiatives. Stellar function-ality is also available to courses beingpublished on the Web as part ofOpenCourseWare.

This fall, Stellar support will be availableto faculty through the combined efforts ofthe Academic Computing Support Team(IS) and AMPS. To request Stellar foryour course, fill in the Stellar CourseRequest and Information form at <http://stellar.mit.edu/contact/index.html>.

Stellar’s Future – OKIStellar is on a path to converge with the

design specifications under developmentby the Open Knowledge Initiative (OKI)<http://web.mit.edu/oki>.

OKI is an MIT-led collaboration ofmajor universities to develop a layered,component architecture, for educationalapplications and learning systems. Fundedby the Mellon Foundation for the first twoyears, other key partner institutions includeDartmouth College, Harvard University,North Carolina State University, theUniversity of Michigan, the University of

Pennsylvania, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the University of Washington,and the University of Cambridge.

A practical initiative driven by the needto support faculty who are trying to dosophisticated and creative work with onlineeducation, and who have becomeincreasingly frustrated with available toolsand products, OKI’s focus oninteroperability and an open layeredarchitecture is specifically designed tosupport evolving and flexible teachingand learning requirements. The designand deliverables of the project have beenprimarily influenced by pedagogicalconsiderations.

OKI is defining an architecture thatprecisely specifies how the components ofa learning technology environmentcommunicate with each other and withother campus systems. By clearly definingpoints of interoperability, the architectureallows the components of a complexlearning environment to be developed andupdated independently of each other.

This leads to a number of importantbenefits:

• Learning technologies appropriate fora range of teaching and learningrequirements can be integrated togetherinto a common environment. (The needsof the Physics Department are not those ofthe Economics Department, and tools thatwork well for new users may not beadequate for seasoned users.)

• Learning technology and content canbe more easily shared among schools anddepartments. This provides a catalyst forcooperative and commercial development.

• There is a lower long-term cost ofownership because single components canbe replaced or upgraded without requiringall other components to be modified.

• Modularity makes learningtechnology more stable, more reliable,and able to grow with increased usage.OKI is based on technologies that haveproven to be scalable and dependable inlarge-scale enterprise computingenvironments.

The interface methods defined by OKIsupport the ongoing integration of threegeneral categories of software:

• Learning applications such as coursemanagement systems

• Administrative systems such asstudent administration systems, and

• Common infrastructure services suchas authentication and authorization.

Once this architecture is fully adoptedby the education market, new componentsmay be plugged into the learninginfrastructure using OKI’s tightly definedand standardized application programminginterfaces (APIs). This will allow us tomore easily take advantage of newtechnology and new learning componentsas they become available. It will alsoallow components to be updatedindividually without destabilizing theoverall environment.

The OKI architecture enables the sharingof learning content and softwareapplications among schools anddepartments. The common architectureand common interfaces will allow schoolsto more easily implement componentsdeveloped by other organizations, as longas all parties are conforming to thearchitecture. To demonstrate this, OKIwill make the learning managementenvironments of MIT, Stanford, and theUniversity of Michigan available as opensource code.

Finally, selected Common Servicesdefined by OKI are being integratedinto Stellar, a significant first steptoward leveraging the pioneeringwork of OKI. As this integrationprogresses, future versions of Stellarwill fully implement the OKIarchitecture, making Stellar MIT’s OKIimplementation. A consistent theme inthe evaluations of Stellar has been itsrobustness as a platform to meet MIT’seducational goals, as required by OCWand other educational technologyinitiatives.✥[M. S. Vijay Kumar can be reached atvkumar@mit.edu]

Advanced TechnologiesImprove Research/Teaching

Kumar, from preceding page

MIT Faculty Newsletter Vol. XV No. 1

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From The Libraries

Digital Repository for MIT ResearchGoes Live This Fall

Margret Branschofsky and Ruth K. Seidman

(Continued on next page)

[DSpace Faculty Liaison Margret Branschofskyand MIT Libraries CommunicationCoordinator Ruth K. Seidman discuss onlineposting and retrieval of documents.]

Over the spring and summer of2002, DSpace, the digitalrepository of MIT research

developed by the MIT Libraries incollaboration with the Hewlett-PackardCompany (MIT Faculty Newsletter, April/May 2000, p. 18), underwent a testingperiod to gain an understanding of howcontributors use the system and whatfeatures they find most useful. The systemis scheduled to go live early in the fall.

Content for DSpace is provided throughMIT units such as academic departmentsor laboratories that form DSpaceCommunities. The Early Adopters, thefour participating Communities in the testphase, are the Sloan School ofManagement; the Department of OceanEngineering; the Center for Technology,Policy and Industrial Development; andthe Laboratory for Information andDecision Systems. Selected to reflectdifferent types of MIT organizational unitsrepresenting a variety of user needs, theEarly Adopters submitted digital items tocollections within their own“Communities” and provided feedback tothe DSpace team. In addition, DSpace hasloaded a collection of out-of-print booksprovided by the MIT Press.

Members of the faculty serve on theDSpace Advisory Board, providingguidance from the perspective of MIT usersof DSpace, both as contributors of contentand as end-users of the system. Several ofthe design elements in the system camedirectly from advice provided by this group.MIT Libraries are also administering asurvey of MIT faculty in order to learnabout their perceptions and anticipated useof DSpace. The survey results will furthercontribute to DSpace design plans.

Benefits of ParticipationDSpace provides long-term physical

storage and management of digital itemsin a secure, professionally managedrepository including standard operatingprocedures such as backup, mirroring,refreshing media, and disaster recovery. Ithas long been the role of academic librariesto preserve the print record of scholarlywork. With DSpace, MIT Libraries ismaking a commitment to preserve thedigital record of scholarly work over along period of time. Techniques forassuring long-term preservation of digitalfiles are still in a stage of experimentationand discovery, but MIT Libraries will bemonitoring developments in this field andwill take appropriate actions to ensure thesafety of the collections in DSpace.

Visibility for research results is anotherbenefit of DSpace. Because ultimatelythis will be a repository containing contentfrom all of MIT, it will have more visibilitythan individual Websites. Users willconsider it an online place to find MITresearch information. The Digital Libraryof MIT Theses is already receivingsignificant amounts of access from usersworldwide. In future releases end userswill be able to establish subscriptions thatwill result in e-mail notification whenitems fitting their interest profiles areadded to DSpace. Communities will alsobe able to target discussion lists and newsgroups in their field to receive e-mailnotification of new items.

Searching capabilities for DSpaceprovide targeted retrieval. DSpace haspowerful search capabilities that allowusers to retrieve deposited material in avariety of ways, making it easier to findthe information being sought.

Participation relieves labs and centersof the time-consuming work associatedwith making material available on theWeb as well as in print. The system, whileprofessionally managed and staffed, allows

some customization of look and feel forcommunities and collections. It alsoprovides flexible submission processes thatcan be adapted to workflows in a particularcommunity.

Finally, DSpace allows distribution offormats such as data sets, images, andaudio and video files, not easily handledthrough traditional publications. In thecase of images, many journals require ahigher page charge for pages containingimages. As a consequence authors tend tolimit the number of images they submitfor publication. But when an author storesan image in DSpace, a persistent URL isassigned to that file; the author can thenuse that URL as a citation in his or herpublished works, referring people to theimages on DSpace.

Seeking Solutions to ScholarlyCommunications Issues

The scholarly community is watchingwith interest DSpace and other efforts tocreate digital collections capturing theintellectual output of universities. A newlyissued report from The ScholarlyPublishing and Academic ResourcesCoalition (SPARC), “The Case forInstitutional Repositories: A SPARCPosition Paper” (available at http://www.arl.org/sparc) looks at theserepositories from two perspectives. First,they are seen as an extension of academicinstitutions’ responsibility as generatorsof primary research seeking to preserveand leverage their constituents’ intellectualassets. Second, such efforts are consideredas an important component in the evolvingstructure of scholarly communication.

The Executive Summary states:“Institutional repositories can provide animmediate and valuable complement tothe existing scholarly publishing model,while stimulating innovation in a newdisaggregated publishing structure thatwill evolve and improve over time.” Such

MIT Faculty Newsletter September 2002

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repositories provide a critical componentin reforming today’s system of scholarlycommunication by expanding access toresearch and reasserting the academy’scontrol over scholarship.

Next Steps and Future DirectionsNow that the testing phase has been

completed, additional MIT communitiesare joining DSpace as content providers.Faculty members are encouraged to contactdspace-info@mit.edu to learn more aboutparticipation. Beyond the Institute, inresponse to considerable interest frompeer institutions, the MIT Libraries are

exploring the best ways to make DSpaceavailable to other universities on a federatedmodel and also to make the system widelyavailable for other institutions to use underan Open Source license.

MacKenzie Smith, DSpace projectdirector and MIT Libraries associatedirector for technology, has commented:“The DSpace system, both in what it’strying to accomplish and in how it’s beingdeployed at MIT, is a truly groundbreakingeffort that has the potential to influencescholarly communication in ways that wecan hardly imagine right now. Having a

[MIT Libraries Digital Resources AcquisitionLibrarian Ellen Finnie Duranceau discussespotential violations of license agreements.]

What do these situations have incommon?

• A student visiting MIT for a summerprogram tries to satisfy his thirst forknowledge by downloading hundreds ofpapers from a society publisher’s Websiteusing a robot;

• A faculty member writes code thatwill search for particular terms in the fulltext of a newspaper and automaticallydownload all the content resulting fromthe search;

• A visiting scholar downloads andprints entire issues from many socialscience ejournals over a two-day period;

• A graduate student beginning hisdissertation research systematically down-loads a list of thousands of papers relating tohis broad topic in a citation database.

What these activities share is that theyfall outside the bounds of the use contractedfor when the MIT Libraries signed alicense to gain campus-wide access to thedatabases or ejournals involved. Thesedatabases and ejournals are listed in theLibraries’ access tool Vera <http://

Using Journals and Databases Online:What's Legal and What's Not

Ellen Finnie Duranceau

libraries.mit.edu/vera>, and includeproducts like Lexis-Nexis AcademicUniverse <http://libraries.mit.edu/get/lexis-nexis> and SciFinder Scholar <http://libraries.mit.edu/guides/cheatsheets/sci-finder/> as well as ejournals like thosefound at the JSTOR site <http://libraries.mit.edu/get/jstor>, or at theAmerican Institute of Physics’ site<http://www.aip.org/ojs/entry.html>.

To offer these databases and ejournalshere at MIT, we must sign a licenseagreement that specifies terms of use;although we try to negotiate licenses thatcover normal scholarly activities and thatapproximate the concept of “Fair Use”under U.S. copyright law, the licenses’terms trump copyright. The terms of thelicense, not copyright law, determine howthese products may be used. While termsof use may vary depending on ournegotiation, in general they specify thatelectronic journals and databases be onlyfor individual, noncommercial use withoutsystematically downloading, distributing,or retaining substantial portions of information.The use of software such as scripts, agents, orrobots, is implicitly prohibited.

It is important to be aware of theseterms, since misuse jeopardizes access tothe content for the entire campus, and

could result in legal action. Mostinformation providers now have controlson their servers that monitor unusual use,and some have provisions that automaticallyshut access down when such misuse occurs.

What recourse, then, do you have ifyour research project requires searchingor downloading that falls outside thebounds of what is allowed under the licenseterms? If this is the case, you can contactthe Libraries’ licensing specialist, EllenDuranceau (efinnie@mit.edu; x3-7562)who can advise you about your options.While we cannot guarantee that everyrequest will end in a positive result, wehave had success acting as a liaison withinformation providers to achieve severaldifferent solutions to such research needs.

So far, we have been able to manageevery case of misuse, including thosesummarized above, so that any suspensionof access to MIT was only temporary andwe have been able to find alternative pathsfor innovative fulltext research to takeplace. Our ability to continue to do sodepends on the responsible use of theseproducts by all faculty, students, andresearchers, and we appreciate yourcooperation.✥[Ellen Finnie Duranceau can be reachedat efinnie@mit.edu]

platform like this will allow so much tohappen: new and innovative research infederating distributed repositories anddigital preservation, new models forscholarly communication, and new waysto support educational technology initiatives,to name just a few. And most importantly,DSpace will allow libraries to continue tofulfill their mission to capture, manage,preserve, and make available the output ofscholarship in the digital era.”✥[Margret Branschofsky can be reached atmargretb@mit.edu; Ruth K. Seidman canbe reached at rks@mit.edu]

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MIT Faculty Newsletter Vol. XV No. 1

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[Special Assistant to the ExecutiveVice President Janet Snover highlightsadministrative news items that wereannounced over the summer, andwhere you can get more informationabout them.]

• Two longstanding MIT programsfor professional education, theProfessional Institute and theAdvanced Study Program, have movedto the School of Engineering. For morethan 50 years, the Professional Institutehas offered week-long summerprograms taught by MIT faculty. TheAdvanced Study Program has beenbringing professionals to campus forpart-time or full-time study for almost40 years. (Tech Talk 7/17/02)

• The Center for TransportationStudies has changed its name to theCenter for Transportation andLogistics. The name change reflectsthe Center’s efforts to focus more onlogistics and supply chainmanagement. Its mailing address, allphone numbers, and e-mail addressesremain the same, but the URL for itsWebsite has been changed to<http://web.mit.edu/ctl>.(Tech Talk 7/17/02)

• In late spring, the MIT president’sresidence was named Gray House inrecognition of Paul and Priscilla Gray’soutstanding contributions as leadersof the Institute community during morethan four decades, including their yearsin residence at the House as Presidentand First Lady of MIT from 1980 to1990.

• Residential Life and Student LifePrograms was divided into twodepartments in mid-July. They are theDepartment of Student Life Programsand the Department of Housing.Associate Dean Barbara A. Baker willcontinue to head Student Life Programsand Karen Nilsson will lead theDepartment of Housing.(Tech Talk 7/17/02)

• A new online Acronym andAbbreviation dictionary has beencompiled to assist the MIT communityin deciphering the “alphabet soup” ofshorthand terms that often are usedhere. The dictionary is at <http://web.mit.edu/acronym> and it also isaccessible from the “about MIT”category on the MIT home page.

• The MIT Travel Office hasnegotiated agreements with AlitaliaAirlines and Swiss Air for discountson MIT business travel. On Alitalia,MIT flyers can get up to 60 percent offthe published fares on some flights toEuropean destinations. On Swiss Air,there are 24 percent discounts onunrestricted business and economyclass fares and 17 percent discountson restricted economy fares, excludingsale fare types. The discounted faresare available only at NavigantInternational Boston, OT&T TravelManagement, and the TravelCollaborative. (For details, see theTravel Office Website at <http://web.mit.edu/cao/www/travel.htm>.)

• Quantum Books and the MITPress Bookstore now acceptTechCASH, a feature of the MIT IDcard that allows students andemployees to use their card to pay foritems like dining hall meals, food fromLaVerde’s, and CopyTech services.Many students may want to purchasetheir textbooks from Quantum to avoidpaying cash or using a credit card.(The Coop has elected not to participatein TechCASH but will continue to selltextbooks for cash or credit.) Questionsabout TechCASH may be e-mailed to<Techcash@mit.edu>.

• MIT has introduced two new foodservice contractors to the campus.Sodexho operates Lobdell, Walker,the Dome Café, Building 4 Café, BioCafé, and East Side Café. (In the fall,they also will run the new café inLobby 7 and the juice bar in the ZesigerSports and Fitness Center.) Bon Appetitwill operate residential locations inBaker House, Next House, andSimmons Hall, as well as theconvenience store in MacGregor. MITCampus Dining also is bringing twonew independent merchants to theStudent Center, Alpine Bagels andArrow St. Crepes.

• For this academic year, the fee fora regular commuter parking passincreased to $466 from $420 last year.Information about parking, MIT’s 50percent MBTA subsidy program,shuttles, and alternative transportationchoices are available online at<http://web.mit.edu/parking>.✥[Janet Snover can be reached atjsnover@mit.edu]

While you were away . . .Janet Snover

MIT Faculty Newsletter September 2002

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[Now faculty can access their MITe-mail account from any computerwith a Web browser and an internetconnection, explains Senior ITConsultant Jag Patel.]

In Spring 2002, InformationSystems (IS) announced supportfor WebMail, which allows MIT

users to access e-mail from a Webbrowser. Since then, close to 9,000MIT Community members have usedit, including over 200 members of theMIT faculty. WebMail is available from<http://web.mit.edu/webmail/>, or login directly at <http://webmail.mit.edu>.

WebMail is a convenient and secureway to access e-mail using almost anyWeb browser from just aboutanywhere in the world. IS introducedthe service to meet the demand forways to access MIT e-mail remotely,where remotely might be a researchlab on-campus, or another country.

The MIT WebMail home pagesummarizes browser requirements andcontains links to additionalinformation, including instructions foruse. IS continues to work on theprogram and will install updatesperiodically and post announce-ments about changes, problems andoutages on the WebMail page. Helpcan be obtained and feedbackprovided by sending e-mail towebmail@mit.edu.

How WebMail WorksUsing a recent version of a browser

such as Netscape or Internet Explorer

on a computer connected to theInternet, members of the MITcommunity should be able to get toMIT WebMail, no matter where theyare. The only requirements are abrowser that supports SSL encryption,and has JavaScript enabled. An MITCA certificate also will need to beinstalled on the computer; recentbrowsers will prompt the user for theinstallation. The MIT personalcertificate is not necessary to accessWebMail.

At this time WebMail works onlywith e-mail accounts ending with@mit.edu. It does not work with otherMIT mail domains, such as@ai.mit.edu, or with e-mailforwarding accounts such as@sloan.mit.edu.

When the user logs in, WebMaildisplays a list of messages in the Inbox.Messages can be read, replied to,forwarded, deleted, or selected andmarked in various ways. The user cansend new messages, create new foldersand search the Inbox. When the userlogs out from WebMail, messages andfolders that have not been deleted willbe available for downloading whenthe user next accesses e-mail in theusual way.

Benefits of Using WebMailWebMail does not require users to

install any software on a machine tocheck e-mail – only an internet-connected browser is needed.WebMail allows users to manipulatemessages directly on the MIT post

office servers, allowing users to leavemail there until they are deleted andpurged, or downloaded to a localmachine. WebMail also allows usersto take advantage of a 100 MB mailquota, which is considerably higherthan accounts offered by publicwebmail services, such as Yahoo orHotmail.

WebMail does have somelimitations: it is not intended for long-term, archival handling of e-mail,because of enforced quota limits fore-mail accounts on the post officeserver. Currently, WebMail does notprovide an easy way to movemessages from the post office serverto a local computer or Athena homedirectory. Other features typical ofdesktop e-mail clients – such askeeping local copies of messages sent,providing an address book, filters,and long-term archiving – areunavailable.

IS Support“Email Scenarios and

Recommended Solutions” <http://w e b . m i t . e d u / i s / h e l p / e m a i l /scenarios.html> provides informationabout e-mail clients and protocolssupported by IS that can help userstake full advantage of WebMail. ISprovides support for WebMailthrough the Computing Help Deskand online documentation, and it iscovered in Quick Start classes aboute-mail.✥[Jag Patel can be reached atjag@mit.edu]

MIT WebMail:A Way to Get Your E-Mail on the Go

Jag Patel

MIT Faculty Newsletter Vol. XV No. 1

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Over the summer, a new Web-based tool called employeeself-service (ESS) was

released to the MIT community. Itallows faculty and staff who work oncampus to view their MIT benefits andto update some of their employeeinformation online, and is available at<http://web.mit.edu/sapwebss>.

Information that can be updatedincludes primary and alternate MIToffice addresses; office telephonenumber, MIT pager and mobile phonenumbers; e-mail address; and homeinformation. Faculty and staff alsocan view and verify their name,department, and position title. Inaddition, they can view their healthand welfare benefits enrollment,including level of coverage, theirdependent information, and plan coststhroughout the year.

These new services are enhance-ments to the Web application usedsuccessfully during Benefits OpenEnrollment last November.

“Based on the recommendations ofseveral teams working on the HR-

Payroll Project, we decided to provideESS so community members will havea more direct and a faster way toreview and update information aboutthemselves,” Vice President forHuman Resources Laura Avakiansaid. “For example, if an employeemoves to a different MIT roomnumber, he or she can update thatinformation using ESS, and by thefollowing business day, the MITonline directory will reflect the roomchange,” she said.

To ensure confidentiality, an up-to-date MIT personal certificate isrequired to use ESS. Personalcertificates are set to expireperiodically, and those obtained in thepast year were valid until July 31.Renewal is not automatic. To obtain anew certificate, go to <http://web.mit.edu/is/help/cert> and click on“Get MIT Personal Certificate.” Forquestions or problems with certificates,contact the Business Liaison Team(BLT) in Information Systems,Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to6 p.m. Their e-mail address is business-

Now You Can View Your Institute Benefitsand Update Your Personal Info Online

help@mit.edu, and their phone number isx2-1177.

The availability of ESS also meansthat there is a revised process forupdating the faculty and stafftelephone Directory this year. Facultycan either update any Directoryinformation about themselves that haschanged since the last phonebook waspublished or have the telephoneDirectory coordinator in theirdepartment submit it (via paper) ontheir behalf. (Changes made in ESSafter October 11 will update theonline directory but not the printedversion.)

To use ESS (either to updateinformation for the telephoneDirectory or to view health and welfarebenefits choices), go to <http://web.mit.edu/sapwebss>.

It’s important to note that changesreported via ESS will update recordsonly in Human Resources and Payroll.At this point, employees will still needto notify offices such as the CreditUnion and MIT Medical if their contactinformation changes.✥

The Department of Athletics,Physical Education andRecreation is offering a new

program for faculty only. Lessons fornovices will be given in tennis andgolf. Please conact Lynn Couturier(couturie@mit.edu) for moreinformation.

Tennis Anyone?Would You Believe Golf?

Thanks Faculty, from the Alumni AssociationLou Alexander

[Alumni Affairs Officer Lou Alexanderacknowledges faculty contributions.]

The Association of Alumni andAlumnae of MIT would liketo publicly thank the

members of the MIT faculty andsenior administration who sogenerously gave of their time tomeet with alumni groups around theworld this past year. Because ours isa population ever thirsty for

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knowledge, ongoing contact withyou, the faculty, is the single mostimportant service we can offer them.For a complete list of faculty whomade presentations in cities acrossthe United States, Canada, Asia, theMiddle East, and Europe, see theonline version of the FacultyNewsletter at <http://web.mit.edu/fnl>.✥[Lou Alexander can be reached atlalexan@mit.edu]

MIT Faculty Newsletter September 2002

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Graduate Student Enrollmentand MIT's Research Agenda

Sanith Wijesinghe

[Graduate Student Council (GSC)President Sanith Wijesinghe offerssuggestions for maintaining U.S.preeminence in science and technology.]

In keeping with the spirit of this editionof the Faculty Newsletter, I’d like todirect your attention to two points

cited in the “Science and EngineeringIndicators 2002” report released by theNational Science Board that could havepossible long-term implications forgraduate recruitment and enrollment andsubsequently MIT’s research agenda:

1) The United States may face increasedinternational competition for highlyeducated personnel. Furthermore, itsrelative attractiveness may erode as livingstandards rise in developing countriesand as other industrialized nationsintensify their international recruitmentefforts.

2) U.S. preeminence in science andtechnology may erode as competing centersof excellence are established elsewhere.Foreign graduates may find returning

home more attractive than staying in theUnited States after their training, andindustry may locate increasinglysophisticated functions overseas.

Let alone developing remedial actionsto address issues of competitiveness, therecurrently exists no Institute-wideinfrastructure to track graduate enrollmentstatistics. Common sense business practicedictates MIT must position itself to assesslong-term trends of its most valuableresource – its students. While implicationsof global economic standings could seemrather far-fetched in planning forenrollment, MIT’s graduate researchstudent population is currently close to 40percent international. Both of the abovepoints therefore have significant couplingeffects on MIT’s ability to sustain itsresearch agenda. As a minimum, asystematic review of graduate recruitmentand retention strategies must be developedand is indeed long overdue.

Moreover, the current climate ofheightened security concerns furtherreinforces the above points for U.S.

research institutions. Blanket policies thatadversely affect visa application proceduresthrough accessibility of research funds forinternational graduate students has been atopic of considerable discussion amongststudents and faculty alike. The recentlyreleased report “In the Public Interest”authored by MIT’s ad hoc facultycommittee on access to and disclosure ofscientific information, has received wideacclaim and is a positive step towardsclearly articulating the adverse affect ofsuch policies. MIT must continue itsleadership in this regard by engaginguniversities across the nation to furtherdevelop the case for academic opennessand collaboration. The future of the nation'spreeminence in science and technologyrelies on it.

In closing, I’d like to bring to yourattention our graduate communitydiscussion forum at <http://gsn.mit.edu>and encourage your feedback andcomments on these issues here.✥[Sanith Wijesinghe can be reached atsanith@mit.edu]

M.I.T. Numbers

Graduate Student Enrollment

Source: Office of the Provost

MIT Faculty Newsletter Vol. XV No. 1

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M.I.T. Numbers

1993 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002FEDERAL

DHHS 64,882 58,938 58,246 65,905 69,539 74,806

DOE 57,325 70,281 63,138 57,000 57,780 59,658

DOD 66,769 64,776 65,718 65,686 60,971 60,117

NSF 38,008 36,264 35,352 35,669 37,520 44,878

NASA 32,324 30,227 27,301 22,734 18,592 25,119

Other 8,899 9,115 7,409 6,753 6,777 11,562

Subtotal 268,207 269,601 257,164 253,747 251,179 276,140

NON-FEDERAL

Industry 62,068 74,062 74,325 73,609 92,036 99,966

Nonprofit 25,593 36,197 42,214 50,970 55,588 63,638

Other 5,487 6,495 2,344 5,662 8,620 8,145

Subtotal 93,148 116,754 118,883 130,241 156,244 171,749

TOTAL 361,355 386,355 376,047 383,988 407,423 447,889

Research Funding(thousands of dollars)

Source: Office of Sponsored Programs