Provost

The tragic events of September 11, 2001 caused academic year 2002 to be especially difficult for all at MIT. The sense of loss and uncertainty caused by the terrorist attacks and the changes in all of our lives that began unfolding throughout the year made progress towards our goals more challenging. Even so there were significant advances in the academic and educational programs and initiatives of MIT. Some of these advances are highlighted in this summary. Others are described in the reports of programs, departments and schools, which follow.

People

There were significant changes in the academic council in 2002. Chancellor Larry Bacow left MIT to become president of Tufts University. President Charles Vest appointed Professor Phillip Clay, who had served MIT as associate provost since 1994, to the chancellor position. Chancellor Clay brings a wealth of experience working with our faculty and students to his new position. Chancellor Clay has responsibility for the offices of the deans of undergraduate education, student life, of graduate students, and for coordination of MIT's corporate and academic institutional partnerships.

With Professor Clay's change in responsibilities, the Provost's Office was reorganized to include two faculty serving in the role of associate provost. Professor Claude Canizares, Bruno B. Rossi professor of physics and previously director of the Center for Space Research, became associate provost in fall of 2001. In this role Professor Canizares will work with faculty issues and will serve as chair of the Committee on the Review of Space Planning (CRSP). In this role he will oversee the reallocation of space and space renovation. Professor Canizares will also assist President Vest in advising federal departments and agencies on issues that face American research universities.

Professor Alice P. Gast, Robert T. Haslam professor of chemical engineering, joined MIT in November 2001 as the vice president for research and associate provost. Professor Gast will have responsibility for fostering and oversight of large inter-disciplinary research initiatives, including centers and laboratories, in addition to the traditional role of the vice president for research in setting policies in research and graduate education.

Stephen C. Graves, Abraham Siegal professor of management of the Sloan School of Management, completed his first year of the two-year term as chair of the MIT Faculty. Rafael Bras, Stockholm-Bacardi professor of civil and environmental engineering, was named chair-elect of the faculty.

There were changes in the rank of Institute Professor during the academic year. Noam Chomsky, Institute Professor of linguistics, retired at the beginning of the calendar year. Emilio Bizzi, Eugene McDermott professor of brain and cognitive sciences and member of the McGovern Institute, was named an Institute Professor in the spring of 2002. We must also note the sad passing of Institute Professor emeritus Walter Rosenblith in May 2002.

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Reports to the Faculty

In the fall of 2001 the provost and the chair of the faculty established the Ad Hoc Committee on Access and Disclosure of Scientific Information to examine the relationship between the openness of research on our campus and the values of the faculty and the Institute. The committee was chaired by Institute Professor Sheila Widnall and included Professors Vincent Chan, Harvey Sapolsky, Jerome Friedman and Stephen Graves. The committee was asked to determine if our current policies provide adequate guidance to consider MIT's role in classified research in the context of the 21st century. Specifically, the committee was asked to address the following issues:

The committee's report, In the Public Interest, was published in May 2002 and is available from the provost's office and at http://web.mit.edu/faculty/reports/publicinterest.pdf.

The report reaffirms the commitment of the faculty to an open research community in which scholarly inquiry and education are not blocked by obstacles created by constraints of disclosure and publication created either by the government or industry sponsors. The report reaffirms our belief in the need for a rigorous federal definition of classified research and that this type of research should be carried out at secure research laboratories, not on our campus. The report supports MIT's important role in operating Lincoln Laboratory for the federal government as a secure research facility staffed by researchers, but not by faculty and research students. The ad hoc committee recommended the formation of a standing committee of the faculty to monitor research policy changes within MIT. The provost and the vice president for research will establish such a committee in academic year 2003.

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Academic Programmatic Initiatives

Facilities

The Institute is continuing an aggressive campaign of new construction and renovation aimed at renewal of our campus environment. New space is being added for student housing and activities. New academic program space is being constructed for information sciences, neurosciences, and inter-disciplinary research and educational initiatives.

Construction continued on the Ray and Maria Stata Center, which, will be the home of the Laboratory of Computer Science, the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems, and the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy. The Stata Center will also house a major childcare facility, teaching facilities, and significant social space for students, staff, and faculty. The architect Fumihiko Maki completed design on the expansion of the Media Laboratory. The building will be located adjacent to the Wiesner Building at the corner of Ames and Amherst Streets. The demolition of Building E10 also was completed to clear this site. Construction will begin once external sources for funding are identified to complete the project.

By the end of FY2002 the construction moved to the final stages on two new major student residences. Simmons Hall, an undergraduate residence, designed by Steven Holl, will open in September 2002 on Vassar Street. Construction also is almost complete of the new graduate residence at Sydney and Pacific, which will house over 700 students. This facility also is scheduled for completion in fall 2002.

Construction also was finishing on the Albert and Barrie Zesiger Sports and Fitness Center as part of the athletic complex. The Zesiger Center will house an Olympic-sized swimming pool, diving facilities, and a fitness center. It is scheduled for completion in August 2002.

Program developments, site planning, and preliminary design work also have begun on the Brain and Cognitive Science Center, which will house the McGovern Institute for Brain Research, the Picower Center for Learning and Memory, and the Department of Brain and Cognitive Science. It is anticipated that this center will have approximately 200,000 net assignable square feet and will be an integrated facility for neuroscience research on campus. Construction is scheduled to begin in spring of 2002 with completion in 2005.

The process for site selection and for establishing the program for a new facility for the Sloan School of Management also was continued in 2001, working with the architectural firm of Moore, Ruble and Yudell. The report of their findings is expected in late summer of 2002 and will be the basis for defining the site program and funding goals for the project.

The Institute remained committed to an aggressive plan for renovation of physical facilities. The process for prioritizing and planning space renovations was led by Associate Provost Claude Canizares as chair of the Committee for Review of Space Planning (CRSP). Other members of CRSP include the provost, the executive vice president, the chancellor, the vice president for research and associate provost, the chief facilities officer, assistant to the provost for space planning, the director of capital project development, the director of design and construction, and the staff liaison in the Department of Facilities. In FY2002 MIT allocated over $24 million in funds for this purpose, including department and philanthropic contributions; $68.6 million was spent on renovations in FY2002. Several major renovations were carried out in AY2001. These include the continued, staged renovation of the Dreyfus Chemistry Building, Building 18. The many other renovation projects that were completed included the undergraduate teaching laboratories for the Department of Chemical Engineering, the George and Daphne Hatsopoulos Laboratories in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, and ten classrooms in Buildings 1, 4, 5, and 36.

New initiatives driven by inter-disciplinary research and education programs also increased the need for research space. The new Institute for Soldier Nanotechnology (ISN) awarded to MIT by the United States Army Research Office requires shared space for interdisciplinary efforts. This 30,000 sf facility is being planned to be leased in 500 Technology Square, as two floors of this building. In addition, the growth of the Division of Biological Engineering (BED) also was accommodated by leasing an additional two floors of this building.

The growth of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research (MIBR) and the Picower Center for Learning and Memory (PCLM) in advance of the completion of the new neuroscience center in 2005 is being made possible by relocating administrative units from E19 to lease space in 600 Technology Square and renovating approximately 16,000 nasf of E19 for laboratory use. These changes will occur in FY2003.

Planning for these projects has been greatly aided by the work of the Olin Partnership on the creation of a framework for the development of the MIT campus. This process began in 1999 and was completed in fall 2001.

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Faculty and Academic Programs

At the end of academic year 2002, 13 faculty members retired from MIT.

Faculty recruitment continued at a vigorous level. In academic year 2002, 50 faculty were hired at untenured ranks and 10 tenured faculty were recruited. Of these (tenured and untenured) 20 are women and five are minorities. During 2002, 20 MIT faculty members were awarded tenure within MIT. Of these, four were women and four were under-represented minorities.

Renewed emphasis on the importance of improving the gender and racial diversity of the faculty began with the formation of the Council on Faculty Diversity in the fall of 2001. The council is co-chaired by Professor Nancy Hopkins, of the Department of Biology, Professor Wesley Harris and Provost Robert Brown and includes faculty and administrative leaders from the five schools of MIT. The council's mission is to work with the faculty, departments, schools and the senior administration to help the Institute aggressively promote faculty diversity. These efforts will work to establish a sustained institutional environment that will attract a diverse faculty that reflects the students we educate. The council will work to enhance both racial and gender diversity of the faculty by considering all aspects of faculty development:

Two important initiatives of the Council on Faculty Diversity were implemented in 2002. First, the provost issued new guidelines for faculty searches. These guidelines include procedures for each school to establish oversight of search processes for aggressive recruitment of women and under-represented minorities for open positions and for review of applications from these groups. Each school established a slightly different process for achieving these objectives; the deans of the five schools play a crucial roe in leading these processes and driving faculty recruiting. Remarkable success resulted in the faculty recruitments in AY2002 in the School of Engineering; five of 21 hires were women. The Council on Faculty Diversity will analyze the practices of individual departments and schools and help guide the optimization of future faculty recruitment.

The Council on Faculty Diversity also spearheaded changes in faculty leave and tenure policies for child-bearing and child raising. These policies give an extension of the probationary period for a woman faculty member who bears a child and for part-time faculty appointments for faculty members who wish to devote significant time to raising children. These policy changes are summarized in my February 21, 2002 memo to deans and department heads and they have been incorporated into Policies and Procedures.

MIT continued its commitment to enhancing the diversity of the teaching staff of the Institute through the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Visiting Professor Program. There were six visiting faculty sponsored by this program during the academic year. The visitors and their departments were Edna Ambundo, Chemistry; Otis Jennings, Sloan School of Management; Raul Lejano, Department of Urban Studies and Planning; Sekazi Mtingwa, Physics; Eni Njoku, Civil and Environmental Engineering; and Phillip Thompson, Department of Urban Studies and Planning.

Five new Margaret MacVicar Faculty Fellows were named this year in recognition of their important contributions to the quality of undergraduate education at MIT. These awardees are Alan Guth, Physics; Steven Hall, Aeronautics and Astronautics; Kip Hodges, Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences; Nancy Kanwisher, Brain and Cognitive Sciences; and David Thorburn, Literature.

In AY2002 the Presidential Graduate Fellowship program awarded 167.5 fellowships across all MIT academic departments. These fellowships are distributed as follows, and include fellowships named for several individual and corporate donors—Robert T. Haslam (Chemistry and Chemical Engineering), William M. Layson (Physics), Akamai (Mathematics and EECS), and Praecis (Biology):

In addition, five students hold Provost's Women and Minority Fellowships (one in each school) and five minority graduate students hold Norman B. Leventhal Presidential Graduate Fellowships (three in Engineering and two in Science). The Society of Presidential Fellows hosted several events during the academic year including beginning and end-of-year receptions, and well-attended public lectures by Professor Eric Lander, director of the Whitehead-MIT Human Genome Center and Professor Robert Langer of the Department of Chemical Engineering.

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Finances

Fiscal year 2002 represented the completion of the budgetary cycle begun with planning in fall of 2000, and marked the third year of implementation of the new process of budget approval by the Executive Committee of the Corporation. The fiscal year financial performance was on budget, closing with a small (approximately $7.4M) surplus excluding funds used to established reserve accounts in several areas. This budget included funds for the renovation program, less income from graduate tuition charged to research associates, and funding of the Presidential Graduate Fellowship Program.

The performance of the FY2002 budget continued to benefit from the robust growth of the sponsored research base on campus. The research base bearing indirect costs (the MTDC base) grew 7.7 percent in FY2002, marking the third year of significant growth in on-campus research volume. Tuition revenue, net of financial aid rose two percent or $3.1M in FY2002, influenced most greatly by the increase in financial aid. Net tuition revenue showed an increase of 3.2 percent or $4.5M over budget, influenced most greatly by the increase in the number of graduate students at MIT to 5,984 in fall of 2001.

The financing of operations continued to rely heavily on income generated by the Institute's endowment. The endowment began FY2002 at $6.1 billion down from approximately $6.5 billion in 2001. The final returns for fiscal year 2001 reflect an almost 10 percent decrease in market value to $5.4 billion. The decrease of the endowment and the forecasts for lack of growth in FY2003 will have significant long-term impacts on the MIT budget. The downturn in the market value of the endowment, coupled with the 36-month trailing average of the value of the endowment for the purpose of computing the distribution of income, will likely lead to decreased income from the endowment in future years. The ramification on general institute budgets will be felt in fiscal year 2004 and beyond.

Planning and budgeting will continue to rely more heavily on the uses of the income from both restricted and unrestricted endowment in the operations of the Institute. All funds accounting was implemented during the FY2002 budget cycle in recognition of this increasing role. We anticipate that decisions in the annual budget cycle will be based more on this information in FY2003 and in the future.

The MIT capital campaign, which was launched in FY2000 to raise $1.5 billion in endowment and expendable gifts progressed well in FY2002. The campaign, which is scheduled to run through 2004, closed this year with approximately $1.46 billion toward the $1.5 billion goal. Approximately $263M was added toward this total in FY2002.

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Education

MIT continued with its momentum in new educational initiatives supported by several sources, including the fund established by Brit and Alex d'Arbeloff and the Microsoft I-campus project. Both of these initiatives have been organized through the MIT Council on Educational Technology (MITCET), which was established to advise the senior administration on strategic issues involving information technology and to help select major initiatives and monitor progress. The council is co-chaired by Hal Abelson, professor of the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department, Robert Redwine, professor of physics and dean of undergraduate education, and Provost Robert Brown.

A major initiative of MITCET was the establishment of OpenCourseWare@MIT (OCW) as a web site for MIT subjects. It will include the course content (syllabus, lecture and recitation notes, assignments and solutions) for essentially all MIT subjects and be opened to everyone outside MIT. The OCW concept was supported by the faculty and endorsed by the administration. Initial support for OCW has been found from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. The OCW organization was launched in academic year 2002 under the direction of an Interim Management Group chaired by Professor Steve Lerman of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Ann Margulies joined MIT in May 2002 to lead OCW. The first launch of the web site is planned for September 2002.

MIT continued to develop distance education initiatives as institution-to-institution partnerships. In the fall of 2001 the Singapore-MIT Alliance (SMA), the partnership between MIT and the two major universities in Singapore, National University of Singapore and Nanyang Technological University, expanded to include five master's and doctoral level programs. These programs are in advanced materials for micro and nano systems, high-performance computation for engineered systems, innovation in manufacturing systems and technology, molecular engineering of biological and chemical systems, and computer science. The programs are co-taught by MIT and Singapore faculty, with most of the MIT teaching being delivered by a combination of synchronous and asynchronous communications technology.

The programs for the collaboration between MIT and Cambridge University of England called the Cambridge-MIT Institute (CMI) continued to develop. The number of exchange students between MIT and Cambridge University grew in AY2002; 27 MIT undergraduates attended Cambridge University and 32 Cambridge University undergraduates attended MIT.

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Research

MIT remains the preeminent research university combining world-leading research across a spectrum of disciplines with intense undergraduate and graduate education. Efforts in FY2002 have continued to focus on securing increased federal support of research and increasing research support from corporations, foundations and international sources to diversify the support of our programs. These efforts began to impact the research volume of MIT in FY2002.

There was a healthy increase in all sponsored research on campus, which was up 10 percent to $448M in FY2002 from $407M in 2001. More importantly, the portion of this research volume bearing financial and administrative (F&A) costs rose 7.7 percent in FY2002 to $227M. The federal government continued to dominate this budget, accounting for approximately $333M or 74 percent. However, non-government support rose to $115M or 26 percent. The Lincoln Laboratory research volume in FY2002 was $392M, up from FY2001 at $355M.

The growth of the research volume was wide-spread across most of science and engineering and was net of significant decrease in research support in the Media Laboratory in the School of Architecture and Planning where research decreased from $25M in FY2001 to $18M in FY2002.

This report marks the completion of my fourth year as provost.

Robert A. Brown
Provost
Warren K. Lewis Professor of Chemical Engineering

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Academic Media Production Services

In July 2001, the Academic Media Production Services (AMPS) department was formed by merging three groups—Educational Media Creation Center (EMCC), MIT Video Productions (MVP), and Streaming Media and Compression Services (SMCS)—with the intention of creating a single production and service department to support academic educational initiatives at MIT.

Amitava (Babi) Mitra became the first executive director of AMPS in March 2002. Babi Mitra is a senior executive with experience in e-learning, multimedia-based education, and training and distance education.

"MIT is undertaking impressive, large-scale educational transformations through technology-enabled initiatives," said assistant provost Vijay Kumar at the group's formation. "An organization such as AMPS that aims to provide professional and financially efficient services to support faculty and academic programs is critical to the sustainable success of these initiatives."

The vision of AMPS is to deliver exemplary educational technology services to mission-critical MIT initiatives and to the MIT community through the following means:

The goal of AMPS is to become MIT's preferred vendor for delivery of the following educational technology services:

To meet its goal, AMPS employs a staff of web and graphic designers, instructional designers, educators, pedagogical consultants, videographers, video editors, streaming media specialists, project managers, programmers, teleconferencing specialists, and writers.

Advisory Board

The provost appointed the following Advisory Board to provide strategic guidance to AMPS and assess its value in supporting MIT's educational technology initiatives:

Organizational Units

Under the leadership of Lawrence Gallagher, MVP continued to provide award-winning analog and digital video production services to the MIT community. MVP also provided leadership and expertise in the installation of modern facilities for distance education delivery.

Under the direction of David Mycue, SMCS continued to address its mission to support efficient, high-quality production of cutting-edge, rich media for MIT faculty and academic programs. SMCS also provided support for MIT clients using video and audio digitization; compression and hosting in a variety of formats such as MPEG-2, MPEG-1, RealMedia, Windows Media, and QuickTime; as well as production and distribution of digital video content over the Internet.

Under the direction of Michael Barker, EMCC continued to address its mission to support the development and production of scalable, sustainable multimedia and web-based educational materials for MIT faculty and academic programs. The center provided pedagogical and design consultation, along with creating and maintaining web based educational environments.

The AMPS Finance and Administration team, led by William Fitzgerald, provided financial modeling and accounting support, and worked with CAES administration to transition roles and responsibilities from CAES to AMPS. The focus was on laying the groundwork for a service-based accounting structure, budgeting and forecasting, and developing billing systems.

Projects and Work Delivered in FY2001–2002

AMPS delivered services to the following clients:

AMPS delivered services for many innovative projects, which are summarized in the following sections.

Video Production

MVP's production group videotaped classes, colloquia, and special sessions, and recorded other events for the Institute. In the 2001–2002 academic year, production and postproduction teams worked in tandem on video news releases highlighting research breakthroughs on campus and bringing them to the world outside MIT. The introduction of the broadcast-quality Telos audio codec made it possible for members of the media to interview MIT professors and researchers on campus. The production department provided instant response to the events of September 11, enabling the Institute to address community concern through memorial services and teach-ins.

Commencement guests were the beneficiaries of MVP's services when, despite inclement weather conditions, they were able to comfortably view the proceedings from dozens of locations around campus. Working with Audio Visual and MIT Cable, MVP implemented a messaging system for the graduates queued in the Johnson Athletic Center, as well as a live two-way link between Killian Court and the Athletic Center. Both innovations facilitated the smooth operation of the program and provided entertainment to the audience while waiting for the ceremonies to begin. The webcast reached viewers as far away as Tokyo, Japan.

MVP units worked closely to create programs for Endicott House and other campus groups. In the spring of 2002, MVP used the portable studio to record 8.02 Physics with Walter Lewin for the second half of the PIVoT initiative. MVP's other projects included Pfizer, College Coach, and work on a Norton eBook.

The production unit videotaped many special events and lecturers for MIT World, enabling MIT alumni and strategic partners to see highlights of MIT campus events. In all, MVP produced 70 of the 71 lectures posted to the MIT World web site. Several of these programs have been posted to the WGBH Forum web site, reaching a broad audience outside the MIT community

Postproduction enjoyed some technology enhancements, including the purchase of a new Media 100 nonlinear editing system and equipment to create DVDs for clients. The new technology makes possible the digital archiving of some of MIT's most memorable people and innovations.

Facilities Enhancements

Renovation to the Edgerton Center (Room 34-101) improved the technology needed for classroom tapings and transmissions to Lincoln Lab. MVP worked with Audio Visual, the Registrar's Office, and Facilities to build two new distance education classrooms: Rooms 3-370 and 8-404. Both classrooms link to the central control facility in Room 9-427 via fiber optic cable. The new rooms accommodate the increased class schedule of the Singapore-MIT Alliance by providing for four simultaneous class transmissions to Nanyang Technological University and the National University of Singapore in Singapore.

To improve quality of service for System Design and Management (SDM) classes originating in the distance education classrooms, MVP purchased a videobridge. The videobridge gives MVP more control in linking the distance students and facilitates personal interaction to create a more effective program for SDM.

Distance education and videoconferencing were expanded to provide a wider range of services for programs in the MIT community. Both the Cambridge-MIT Institute and Malaysia University of Science and Technology (MUST) initiated projects slated to expand during the upcoming year.

Streaming Media Compression Services

SMCS developed and implemented the sophisticated, new multimedia features of metadata-tagging, segmentation, and automated media linking and synchronization in parallel with increasing the efficiency and scalability of existing operations.

The Singapore-MIT Alliance remains the most resource-intensive project, requiring coordination with staff in Singapore to ensure smooth operation. SMA provides support for Internet2-based videoconferencing, physical infrastructure renovations, and development of new systems for asynchronous access to course materials.

Mid-sized projects that require 10–100 hours of content represent the fastest growing component or our work. MIT World is notable among these in scale, internal and external visibility, and ongoing service requirements, which are expected to grow. Other SMCS projects include the 8.02 lectures by Professor Walter Lewin; the Good Clinical Practices and Fungal Infections projects with Pfizer Pharmaceuticals; 6.345 for LCS; and the ongoing work for the Advanced Study Program distance education courses. The number of smaller projects with OCW, the Sloan School, and other departments also continues to increase.

Webcasting has grown to an average of nearly one event per week, with a number of ongoing series in the schedule. The webcast of MIT's commencement exercises remains the largest and most complex event of the year, requiring complex preparations and coordination with outside service providers (e.g. Akamai) for distribution.

Learning Management Systems

EMCC, working in conjunction with Academic Computing of IS, launched the first version of Stellar, the MIT learning management system, and served over 100 class web sites during the fiscal year. Stellar continues to evolve, and will provide services to a growing number of classes during the coming year.

Web Site Development

The Pfizer Good Clinical Practices and Fungal Infections web sites became operational, offering both English and Spanish versions. Other projects included the TEAL web site design; Collaboration Toolbox web site development; continued support for Museum Loan Network; and ongoing support of the New Media Center.

Other Support for Distance Learning

EMCC provided coordination for the significant expansion of the Singapore-MIT Alliance, while continuing to identify and implement new technologies for the delivery of educational content. SMA launched two new graduate programs in computer science and molecular engineering of biological and chemical systems. In the process, the number of MIT faculty and students participating in SMA nearly doubled, and the number of students enrolled in SMA also doubled.

In addition to providing training and support for participating faculty, EMCC provided help-desk functions for all, including faculty in Singapore. In the same period, EMCC coordinated the successful integration of Stellar, indexed video functionality for streaming video playback and dual stream video to increase legibility of data presentation. EMCC also assessed and improved the web information architecture.

AMPS continues to improve the quality of the distance learning experience for both professors and students in MIT and Singapore through focused attention on the various elements of synchronous and asynchronous delivery of material, as well as faculty support.

Facilities Planning and Space Management

AMPS initiated several space and facility projects to gain more staff space and improve space utilization:

Sample Metrics for 2002

Stellar

110 class web sites

Client web sites

15 sites

Client web pages

7,165 pages

   

Distance education classrooms

2,570 hours

Videobridge

330 hours

Editing suite

855 hours

Video conferencing

260 hours

   

Video encoding

1,000 content hours

Webcasts

25 events

Organizing for Service

AMPS undertook a restructuring effort during the final months of the fiscal year in order to align its organization with its service mission. The restructuring was based on feedback from existing and potential customers, on imperatives from its cost-recovery mandate, on the need to build cutting-edge technologies, and on aspirations and development objectives of its nearly 40 staff members.

As a result, AMPS now comprises the following six operational units:

Web Tools and Operations

This group provides technical and operational assistance for the development and deployment of a range of web-based tools that provide learning management functionality, such as Stellar; collaboration; as well as capabilities for version control and web site administration. Headed by Michael Barker, the WTO group provides technical integration with MIT infrastructure services, quality assurance and testing, as well as technical support.

Digital Technologies and Streaming Operations

DTSO provides support for the multimedia projects undertaken by SMCS. Headed by David Mycue, DTSO will also explore digital multimedia technology options to find innovative service choices.

MIT Video Productions & Distance Education Facilities

MVP & DE Facilities, headed by Lawrence Gallagher, enhances the learning process through video production and distance education. In the fall of 2002, MVP & DE adds MUST and CMI to its list of clients. The increased client base requires additional equipment to accommodate requests for simultaneous productions by multiple clients across campus. MVP also provides assistance in the renovation of Room 66-319 for SMA and the Department of Chemical Engineering, as well as assistance in the design and engineering of distance classrooms and video conferencing facilities for the Department of Ocean Engineering and the Stata Center.

Educational Design and Development Group

The EDDG develops and customizes software solutions to suit particular models of learning and instruction, including integration with enterprise-wide solutions. Its approach is to assist faculty in determining the most appropriate technology to serve instructional goals, without trying to fit teaching around a particular product. Services include the following:

EDDG works with other educational technology support at MIT to align and leverage services wherever possible, and also assists faculty in evaluating existing instructional multimedia models used by other faculty, as well as those provided by AMPS or other organizations. This group is principally guided by Katie Livingston-Vale and Nishikant Sonwalkar.

Project Management

The Project Management group builds client relationships, allocates resources, and acts as the single point of client contact. The group also works on building and deploying a project management database and process, and is principally guided by Mark Brown.

Financial Operations and Administrative Liaison Unit

The Financial Operations and Administrative Liaison Unit, headed by William Fitzgerald, focuses on new projects, including implementation of the new Human Resources vacation tracking database, a streamlined hiring process, and further refinement of a facilities support model. The group plans to make substantial improvements to the system administration work of AMPS, including a new machine inventory database, a new server room utilization model, and new work processes. Several renovation projects will be undertaken to make room for new staff members, as well as a space utilization study to find space solutions to the growth of the various educational technology programs in Building 9.

The Focus for 2002–2003 and Beyond

In FY2002–2003, AMPS will continue to strengthen its position at MIT as the vendor of choice for web-based, multimedia educational applications. Our prime connection to the Institute's strategic plan is to intelligently demonstrate to our customers how their engagement with us is a solid investment in getting their work done more efficiently through the use of IT and educational technology.

Key initiatives for FY2002–2003 and beyond are as follows:

Three types of AMPS clients

Amitava (Babi) Mitra, Executive Director
M. S. Vijay Kumar, Assistant Provost and Director, Academic Computing, IS

For more information about Academic Media Production Services, see the web site at http://web.mit.edu/amps/.

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Center for Advanced Educational Services

The Center for Advanced Educational Services (CAES) is an organization that focuses on research, development, and delivery of technology-facilitated education. CAES designs and conducts experiments in technology-enabled learning, often resulting in educational products for the wider community. During fiscal year 2002, the center created and distributed MIT educational offerings through academic programs available on campus, designed to help professionals keep pace with developments in their field. The center staff also worked collaboratively with MIT schools and departments to provide distance-learning credit courses for professionals and lifelong learners.

CAES develops asynchronous teaching and learning through online web tutors, videotapes, videostreaming, and CDs, and encourages collaborative learning through interactivity and feedback. Outreach beyond the MIT campus is one of the core objectives of CAES. Working closely with MIT's Academic Media Production Services and Web Communications Services, CAES is engaged in external initiatives in the development and application of educational technology.

CAES has increasingly focused on disseminating its knowledge globally, particularly to developing countries through distance learning and a new partnership with the African Virtual University. Two interactive web sites and a new videostreaming web site, MIT World, are designed for the world to have free access and show the intellectual content of MIT disseminated through educational technology. Further information can be found at http://www-caes.mit.edu/.

Accomplishments

MIT World

September 2001 saw the official launch of MIT World (http://web.mit.edu/mitworld/), MIT's free, open video streaming web site that provides videos of significant public events at MIT. One of the most successful projects of CAES, MIT World follows a model similar to OpenCourseWare in bringing content to global audiences. Intellectual content from MIT can now be seen from anywhere in the world—or indeed by anyone with a computer, Internet access, and RealVideo player.

MIT World worked closely with its two internal partners, the MIT Alumni Association and the Industrial Liaison Program in matters of policy, content selection, and methods for measurement. Systems were put in place with MIT Video Productions for acquiring video taping services, and with MIT's Streaming Media and Compression Services to streamline the processes for digitizing the videos, and to purchase a video server. MIT World worked with Educational Media Creation Center staff to redesign the site and create a new logo.

MIT World also partnered with Web Communications Services to find efficiencies in the web production model to facilitate frequent updating of the site. This collaboration has resulted in an efficient operating model and significant cost savings over original plans. Once the operational issues were resolved, WCS provided access to extremely affordable and meaningful measurement tools that enabled MIT World to show that this site was indeed becoming increasingly valuable to the audience. These tools were in place as MIT World was spotlighted on the MIT home page. Traffic on the site increased ten-fold during the three-day period of the spotlight in May 2002.

In year one, MIT World presented 60 videos representing a wide range of content from 18 separate schools/departments/centers at MIT and 75 public events. They include The Resilient City series; authors@MIT, Ford/MIT Nobel Laureate Lecture Series, Technology and Culture Forum, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Colloquia series, Center for International Studies, School of Engineering, Alumni Association Tech Day, and Industrial Liaison Program.

Early results from the measurement tools show significant use of the site 24/7. Web traffic is growing at a rate of 20 percent per month; on average 90–100 videos are being watched per day; and 72 percent of the traffic comes from the US. The top ten counties (after the US) are Canada, Great Britain, China, Germany, Republic of Korea, Japan, India, Singapore, Australia and Taiwan. To date more than 300 users have asked to be on the mailing list for updates. Approximately 30 percent of the feedback is from MIT Alumni.

The three most popular videos are Lester Thurow, "Globalization and the Economic Downturn"; Wolfgang Ketterle, "The Coldest Matter in the Universe"; and Robert Langer, "Biomaterials and How They Will Change Our Lives".

Information about MIT World is well integrated into many communication vehicles at MIT, including Fast Facts from Resource Development, News Office Digests, Alumni Association newsletters and ILP marketing materials. MIT World has also become an inaugural partner with WGBH for its Network Forum, a free streaming video web site that gathers material from educational and cultural institutions in the greater Boston/Cambridge area. This partnership will provide exposure from the WGBH site, as well as promotional opportunities on WGBH's three television and two radio stations, as well as print communication to its local members.

MIT World has met its first-year goals and is fast becoming an essential intellectual offering of MIT. It has quickly become woven into the broader fabric of MIT, working in close collaboration with multiple departments at MIT. It is a service that has succeeded in bringing the best of MIT to alumni, business leaders and the general public.

African Virtual University

More than 190 students from eight sub-Saharan African countries (Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zimbabwe) participated in an MIT course without leaving their continent, through a partnership between CAES and the African Virtual University (AVU). Using asynchronous and synchronous methods, CAES offered a six-week curriculum loosely based on MIT's 1.00 Introduction to Computers and Engineering Problem Solving, which teaches the Java programming language. The resulting course, Java Revolution, was uniformly distributed regardless of equipment and bandwidth. Thirteen learning centers participated, and we expect to enroll more African students in MIT courses in the future. Java Revolution featured videotaped lectures via satellite, a web site for course materials, email moderated by teaching assistants, and two live videoconferences.

A two-day visit was organized for the CEO of AVU, Dr. Cheick Modibo Diarra, who attended MIT's Commencement as the guest of CAES when he met the senior administrators and faculty.

Two Interactive Web-Based Courses

CAES and the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, through a generous grant from Pfizer Inc., are creating a series of free, interactive web-based courses for healthcare professionals. Two are now completed; two more are in the beginning stages of development. The two completed sites include Good Practices in Clinical Research, a bi-lingual site in Spanish and English, primarily for physicians in Latin America and Fungal Infections: Virtual Grand Rounds, a complete teaching site in the diagnosis and treatment of fungal infections.

Fungal Infections: Virtual Grand Rounds (http://figrandrounds.org/) presents an overview of the most common types of fungal infections and provides the tools to diagnose and treat the disease. It offers lectures from world experts using the latest in streaming media technology, as well as a collection of interactive case studies that ask the physician to make critical decisions in each case. The site also offers an extensive searchable library of relevant journal articles and texts with abstracts provided by PubMed, a service of the National Library of Medicine. The site may be used as either a reference or a full course where users can identify different types of fungal infections and methods for diagnosis, select appropriate medications, and practice new skills to formulate a decision in case diagnosis and management.

The creation of this course is in response to the recent increase of patients with immunosuppressed diseases such as AIDS and also the increase in transplantation successes. Both groups are more susceptible to contracting a fungal infection. Another determining factor in creating this course is the increased availability of new antifungal drugs for treatment and the development of new diagnostic methods and strategies for controlling the disease.

With a full launch targeted for fall 2002, the goals of the Good Practices in Clinical Research site are to provide the tools needed by clinical investigators, create a network of investigators linked to each other and the pharmaceutical industry, and make a contribution to medical education. The course consists of approximately 20 lectures and two interactive exercises. In addition to the bilingual lectures, the site also includes a medical glossary and library of relevant reports and texts.

The library material not only includes current clinical research issues but gives a historical context—from the horrors of the Nazi experiments performed in the name of science to the Nuremberg Code, Declaration of Helsinki, Belmont Report, and recent international guidelines for global research development. Topics covered include a historical overview of clinical research, ethical considerations, pre and post trial considerations, conducting clinical trials, and the future of clinical research. The web site is also designed to address major obstacles in conducting clinical research in developing countries, such as the lack of well-trained clinical investigators and a defined regulatory framework. The site is completed and is now in the beta test phase with a small group of physicians prior to its fall 2002 launch.

The two new courses under development continue the series of training for global clinical investigators. They are Applied Statistics and Study Design. Both subjects are essential tools for the clinical investigator, whatever the discipline of the investigator. Both courses, currently taught each summer as part of a clinical investigators training program, are highly acclaimed by their students as being critical to their work as clinical investigators. Seeing the need to share this important curriculum beyond the fellows who participate in the program each year, we will convert these two live courses into interactive web courses that will reach a global community of individuals embarking on a clinical research initiative.

College Coach Virtual Learning Center

CAES provided project management for the development of this online, customized web site to guide families through the most important steps towards completing the college admissions process.

Academic Programs

NTUC/PBS the Business Technology Network

CAES continued the production and delivery of non-credit asynchronous professional development programs for PBS the Business Technology Network in 2001–2002. The single new program, Wireless Futures, was co-taught by Stuart Madnick, Richard Larson, Steven Lerman, and Jeffrey Schiller. A third and unprecedented fourth re-broadcast of Integrated Supply Chain Management, taught by Jeremy Shapiro, occurred during the 2001–2002 academic year. Certificates of completion for courses offered through NTUC/ PBS were issued to nearly 170 learners during this reporting period.

As in 2000, the relationship between CAES and NTUC/PBS the Business and Technology Network experienced another transition this past year when the publicly held company Sylvan Ventures acquired National Technological University. Sylvan, with NTU as one of its divisions, is making strategic investments in online higher education and discussions with CAES regarding future distribution and delivery are ongoing.

Professional Institute

For the 36 programs advertised for the 2001 summer session, a total of 818 registrations were made. The average session had 22.7 registrations, compared to 24.1 in 2000 (41 programs) and 22.1 in 1999 (40 programs). Of the 818 registrants enrolled in the 2001 Summer Session, 80 percent were from industry, 11 percent from government, and nine percent from education.

Advanced Study Program

During fiscal year 2002 our objective was to expand the delivery of MIT-quality education to a broader market consisting of MIT alumni/ae worldwide. Due to the unfavorable economic environment in many countries, we expanded our distance-learning program to enable people in remote locations to access knowledge available at MIT without incurring travel expenses. ASP also introduced new distance learning courses in system dynamics and in web system architecture.

Our exploration of various marketing channels led us to professional societies and, by the close of the fiscal year, we concluded agreements with four of them. We expanded our advertising campaign to include a number of new media such as Technology Review, Boston Metro, Mass High Tech, and The Educator. In addition we listed our DL courses on a number of online listings and developed a marketing plan.

The successful Tokyo reception of 2000, held to promote the Advanced Study Program in Japan, was repeated in February 2002 with even more corporate participants attending.

We successfully negotiated agreements with the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, American Society for Mechanical Engineers, and American Society for Civil Engineering to promote our distance learning courses to their members. Negotiations are well along with the American Institute of Chemical Engineers as well. In cooperation with other CAES groups, we successfully concluded a trial arrangement with Sylvan Learning/NTU through which we will offer four of our distance learning courses to NTU students.

CAES strengthened its relationship with the System Design and Management Program (SDM) in two ways this year. The Advanced Study Program successfully offered a special online version of its "System Dynamics Foundations" course to SDM students as an elective during the 2001 summer term. Thus, SDM students were able to take advantage of a summer elective course without leaving their home/work sites. We have been asked to repeat this program again this summer. In addition, CAES's senior multimedia producer spent a portion of time working with SDM to improve the distance learning aspects of their program. CAES and SDM are looking at other ways to cooperate and collaborate in academics, as well as technology, support, and training issues.

We revised the system of accumulating costs of the distance learning courses to more accurately reflect the revenue/cost picture. Of particular note is an increase in revenues for this fiscal year of about 3 percent from the previous year in spite of adverse economic conditions worldwide with a particularly strong fall term enrollment. Recognizing the global financial crisis, we maintained tuitions at the previous levels.

Research Programs

Center for Educational Computing Initiatives

The Center for Educational Computing Initiatives (CECI) is a research division within CAES that focuses on emerging technologies for educational use and evaluates their effectiveness. CECI projects focus on collaborative learning and on enabling technologies for educational applications, including authoring systems and toolkits or libraries of computer code that make the creation of effective computer applications easier and less expensive. CECI also evaluates how computer technology affects education, particularly how computer applications improve the quality of education.

CECI served as the physical and intellectual home of OpenCourseWare during its startup, with Professor Steven Lerman, director of CECI also serving as chairman of the interim management team until May 2002. During that period he gave four major keynote addresses at conferences abroad and at several universities, including Lehigh and Duke. Fifteen pilot sites for OCW were created at CECI.

Professor Lerman was also appointed deputy co-director of the Singapore MIT Alliance and funds from SMA supported four doctoral students working on various research projects, including ideas for computer-supported learning.

CECI projects are as follows:

PIVoT, the Physics Interactive Video Tutor

Following several years of research and development, the Physics Interactive Video Tutor (PIVoT) has become a stable resource available both to the MIT community and to registered guest users worldwide. PIVoT is a web-based learning environment that supports the teaching of college undergraduates in core science courses—in this case, subject 8.01 Introductory Newtonian Mechanics. Its most substantial feature is 50+ hours' worth of streaming digital video, including 35 lectures and about 20 hours of tutorial help sessions. To provide ease of use, all of the video is presented in short, well-described segments with associated keywords and topics stored as metadata in the PIVoT database. Additional resources on the web site include a 600-page textbook, practice problems, java simulations, and answers to frequently asked questions. PIVoT also includes a customizable personal tutor feature that allows learners to select the type and level of tutorial support they are seeking. The PIVoT web site contains a complete set of study materials for any student taking first-semester physics at MIT or a similar course elsewhere. PIVoT attracts a steady, undiminished stream of guest users requests from around the globe, and while it is neither a commercially developed nor a commercially supported product, it is highly regarded, widely requested, and admired by users at MIT and abroad.

Two follow-on activities to the initial PIVoT research were completed in 2001–2002:

Access to PIVoT Project

Since December 1999, the National Center for Accessible Media (NCAM) at the WGBH Education Foundation in Boston has worked in collaboration with the CAES PIVoT team to research techniques and best practices for making web sites with complex scientific content accessible to users with hearing and vision disabilities. The team has focused on several aspects of this work, including:

It is worthy of note that students created much of the work needed to implement these accessibility features. While the results met with varying degrees of success, it is important to acknowledge that a number of MIT undergraduates made substantial, thoughtful, and well-executed contributions to the project and to the research.

As we approach completion of the three-year project, co-funded by the National Science Foundation and the Mitsubishi Electric American Foundation, NCAM is working on a set of guidelines and recommendations that will be published in print and electronically by the end of 2002. More information about the research can be found at the WGBH web site: http://ncam.wgbh.org/webaccess/pivot/.

Other continuing projects include:

TEAL

During the fall term of 2001, The Technology Enabled Active Learning (TEAL) project implemented an entirely new version of 8.02 Electricity and Magnetism using the TEAL classroom. This "active learning" approach is a highly collaborative, hands-on environment with extensive use of desktop experiments and educational technology. The results of this new teaching method have been evaluated and results will be incorporated in next year's teaching when all 8.02 students will be taught 8.02 in the TEAL studio.

Studio 1.00

CECI is pioneering an active learning approach involving studio-style teaching in MIT subject 1.00 Introduction to Computers and Engineering Problem Solving—fundamental software development and computational methods for engineering and scientific applications. This past year every third class was held in a lab setting, with students in pairs with a laptop. Next year, we will expand active learning sessions so that by the spring, all classes will be delivered using this active learning method.

Jewish Women's Archive

This web site, devised to uncover, chronicle, and transmit the historical record of Jewish women's lives, continues with the database now converted to Oracle to reduce the search base and the development of a new administrative interface. Future funding has been sought for Weaving Women's Words—an oral history project.

Hewlett-Packard–MIT Partnership

This partnership funded research on collaborative learning tools for use in software development projects. A group at CECI is developing an experiment in which teams of students are assigned a software design and implementation problem. Each team is provided with different software tools to enable some degree of collaboration at a distance. The goal is to assess the potential usefulness of collaborative tools by determining the effectiveness of the team in reaching established goals.

Masters' Voices

This year saw completion of the Masters' Voices™ web project, conceived of as a means to preserve and communicate a unique and valuable body of knowledge accrued by Ford engineers through many years of experience. The purpose of the project was to research how streaming video and other web-based multimedia technologies could be used to capture the expertise and wisdom of veteran engineers, and to readily and meaningfully transmit this knowledge to rising young Ford engineers. The project has the potential to significantly benefit Ford by guiding less experienced engineers to avoid design and engineering errors that can cause repeated, costly recall campaigns

Visitors and External Relations

In 2001, CAES hosted 50 group and individual meetings during the year, giving presentations on distance learning and technology-enabled education at MIT. These included visitors from the UK, Hong Kong, Japan, Malaysia, France, Korea, Netherlands, Singapore, Algeria, China, and Germany. Two major delegations came to us via MISTI Germany (under secretary for education and six colleagues) and MISTI China (25 educators), in addition to corporate leaders from the ILP.

Published articles about CAES and its projects appeared in IS newsletter, Research Digest, IT Report, Educational Pathways, Technology Review, Boston Business Journal, and Elearn Magazine.

Finances and Funding

With funding provided by the Office of the Provost, CAES was able to hire a project manager for MIT World to build and market the site and provide streaming video of 75 public events at MIT and measure its effectiveness. MIT World has secured funding for its second year of operations from the Alumni Association, the Industrial Liaison Program, and the Lord Foundation of Massachusetts. This funding will allow MIT World to more than double the number of videos available to 150, and make some significant changes to the organizational aspects of the web site. These changes include making the site a database- driven, searchable site with features that enable easier updating as well.

With financial support from Pfizer, CAES and the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology created the first two in a series of free, interactive web-based courses for healthcare professionals: Good Practices in Clinical Research and Fungal Infections: Virtual Grand Rounds (see section on accomplishments above).

The Lord Foundation supported the videotaping of second-semester physics lectures on electricity and magnetism, in anticipation of building a future PIVoT 2 web site. The PIVoT team continues to collaborate with WGBH's National Center for Accessible Media (NCAM) to research web accessibility for deaf and blind users, and funds from the National Science Foundation and the Mitsubishi Electric American Foundation enhanced accessibility to the PIVoT web site (see section on accomplishments above).

The Lounsberry Foundation awarded a grant of $50,000 towards a conference and the planning of a new initiative, the Learning International Networks Consortium planned for fiscal year 2003.

Future Plans

CAES continues to reorganize, and next year the Professional Institute and Advanced Study Program will become part of the School of Engineering. The focus of CAES in the future will be outreach beyond the MIT campus with an emphasis on research and development in technology-enabled education. CAES will continue to work with AMPS to develop asynchronous teaching and learning with current projects such as MIT World and future planned interactive web sites. We plan to expand video tutors to new subjects reaching audiences in Asia; and to develop projects to empower educators in developing countries to create tertiary education programs and projects using technology-enabled distance learning through a new initiative entitled the Learning International Network Consortium (LINC).

We will build on relationships initiated this fiscal year with external partners such as the African Virtual University and National Technological University; and we will work closely with internal MIT projects and departments such as OpenCourseWare and the Council on Educational Technology. We plan three new interactive web sites for the medical community.

Personnel

The following staff changes occurred during fiscal year 2002: Laura Koller won the Infinite Mile Award; Pam Homsy was promoted to administrative officer of CECI effective May 2002; Sen-Ben Liao joined CECI as a visiting scientist in August 2001; Michael Danziger joined CECI as a technical assistant on a 12-month temporary appointment; and Norman Derby returned to Bennington College in June 2002, after spending one year with CECI as a visiting scholar.

Publications

The following papers, articles and books were published or in are in process this year:

Conferences and Panels

Professor Richard C. Larson gave the following service to the profession:

Professor Richard C. Larson gave the following presentations and foreign lectures:

Dr. Judy Dori gave the following presentations:

Richard C. Larson
Director
Professor of Electrical Engineering

More information about the Center for Advanced Educational Services can be found on the web at http://caes.mit.edu.

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Center for Archaeological Materials/ Center for Materials Research in Archaeology and Ethnology

The mission of the Center for Materials Research in Archaeology and Ethnology (CMRAE), a consortium of eight Boston-area educational and cultural institutions, is to advance our understanding of prehistoric and non-industrial societies through analysis of the structure and properties of materials associated with human activity. Plant and animal food remains, human skeletal material, as well as metal, ceramic, stone, bone, and fiber artifacts, are the objects of study, along with the environments within which these materials were produced and used. At the Center for Archaeological Materials (CAM) at MIT, investigators concentrate on the materials processing technologies that transform natural materials into cultural objects.

At MIT, CAM is administered by the Department of Materials Science and Engineering (DMSE). In 1998–1999 DMSE established a new, undergraduate major in archaeology and materials, Course III-C, as well as an interdisciplinary doctoral degree program in archaeological materials. These are the only academic degree programs of their kind in the United States. During AY2002 two graduate students were enrolled in the PhD program and two majored in Course III-C.

Archaeological Science, the CMRAE/CAM undergraduate subject introduced during the 1995–1996 academic year, and offered jointly by DMSE and the Chemistry Department, continues to enjoy high popularity among students from CMRAE institutions. Fifty-four students enrolled: 35 from MIT, four from Boston University, nine from Harvard University, three from the University of Massachusetts, and three from Wellesley College; twelve faculty members from five CMRAE institutions lectured in the subject.

CMRAE and DMSE jointly received a grant in May 2001 from the Division of Materials Research at NSF. The $750,000 award will support an MIT Summer Institute in the Materials Science of Material Culture over the course of three years. Professor Heather Lechtman is principal investigator for the project: Professors Dorothy Hosler, Linn Hobbs, and Samuel Allen are co-PIs. The purpose of the Summer Institute (SI) is to assist professors at liberal arts colleges in introducing materials science and engineering to their undergraduate curricula. At each two-week SI session, MIT faculty, faculty from undergraduate liberal arts institutions, and DMSE archaeological materials graduate students supported by the grant will consider case studies that combine materials science and engineering with social science and humanities fields. The case study modules will include intensive laboratory exposure to the processing and testing of materials. The pedagogic aims of the modules are to put people at the center of the materials polyhedron described by structure/properties/processing/and product, and to provide case studies exemplifying these relationships that college professors can use to present engineering science and human sciences to their students.

The first two-week Summer Institute convened in June 2002. Twelve faculty members from 12 liberal arts colleges represented the fields of archaeology, chemistry, civil engineering, materials engineering, mechanical engineering, and science, technology and society (STS). Professor Hobbs taught the first one-week module: Monumental Glue; Professor Lechtman taught the second one-week module: The Power of Metal in the Andean World. Both modules incorporated intensive, hands-on laboratory sessions providing the SI participants with a range of practical experience in the processing of mortars, metals, and alloys that they can call upon for use with their students. The two-week schedule included an evening lecture by Professor Hosler on Mesoamerican Metallurgy and another by Professor Allen on Japanese and Damascus Swords. SI participants were highly committed, enthusiastic, and used their time together at MIT to discuss plans for incorporating the SI module material into their own curricula.

The SI philosophy is based on principles the PIs consider fundamental to the design of higher education in the 21st century: (1) that science and engineering have their origins in multiple cultural traditions which account for their richness and permanence in human endeavors; and (2) that access to the social wealth of society lies in education that allows people to generate and interpret a wide range of data from a broad methodological base.

Heather Lechtman
Director
Professor of Archeology and Ancient Technology

More information about the Center for Archaeological Materials/Center for Materials Research in Archaeology and Ethnology can be found on the web at http://web.mit.edu/cmrae/cmrae_home.htm.

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Office of Educational Opportunity Programs

The Office of Educational Opportunity Programs was created in January of 1992 to organizationally locate the MIT/Wellesley Upward Bound Program, the MIT Educational Talent Search Program (ceased operation in FY1998), and all future programming serving low-income community youth. MIT has operated the Upward Bound Program since 1966 and began operation of the Educational Talent Search Program in September of 1991.

Upward Bound and Educational Talent Search are two of six US Department of Education: Special Programs for Students from Disadvantaged Backgrounds (TRIO programs) created under the Higher Education Act of 1965.

The goal of these programs is to provide college admission and preparatory information, academic support, advising, career information, and college and career exploration opportunities to the economically and/or educationally disadvantaged youth of Cambridge and formerly Somerville.

To a large extent, the development of both programs was influenced by the research done by psychologist Kurt Lewin and his associates. Lewin's hypothesis was that ego growth and academic performance were closely related. Moreover, he concluded that a developing ego needs to experience success in a warm and personal, structured environment for greatest development, in both a personal and social sense. Lastly, it was determined that this personal and social growth could be achieved through intervention outside the institutions of family and school. Educational Talent Search and Upward Bound, through their year-round academic support and advising, and cultural experiences represent just such interventions.

MIT/Wellesley Upward Bound

The MIT/Wellesley Upward Bound Program is a year-round, coeducational, multi-cultural, college preparatory program for high school youth who reside or attend school in Cambridge. Currently in its 35th year, the program serves 70 academically promising young men and women from disadvantaged backgrounds. The goal of Upward Bound is twofold: to motivate client high school youth such that they persist on to post-secondary education; and, at the same time, to provide them with the fundamental skills necessary for success at the collegiate level.

The following is an overview of the program's operational phases.

The six-week summer program, conducted in residence at Wellesley College, is designed to provide the participants with a rigorous academic experience. Classes are taught by experienced high school teachers, and graduate and undergraduate students from MIT, Wellesley College, and other local colleges and universities. Each participant is required to enroll in a mathematics course, an English course, and an elective course: social studies, science, or world languages. (Additionally, due to an agreement with the Cambridge Public Schools, students may receive summer school credit for up to two failed major courses taken during the preceding school year.)

The academic-year program, located at MIT, plays an equally important role in the educational development of participants. Building upon the motivation and enthusiasm developed during the summer, the academic-year program is designed to assist and support the participant while in school. To accomplish this task, programs staffed primarily by MIT and Wellesley College students, when appropriate, have been developed. (We continually strive to maintain MIT and Wellesley College students' participation through our continued involvement as a pre-practicum site for the Wellesley College Teacher Certification Program and through various outreach efforts.)

The Upward Bound office is open for study, on a drop-in basis, four days a week. Tutors are available to assist participants with homework problems in addition to meeting individuals and/or small groups for specific content-area tutorials.

The program offers workshops monthly to address more specialized participant needs (e.g., SAT preparation, computers, study skills development, time management, job readiness skills, etc.).

Also, in an effort to help participants cope with a myriad of problems—academic, social, family, etc.—the program offers support in the areas of guidance, college, career, and personal adjustment. The college advising component includes campus visits to many local colleges and universities, as well as to historically black institutions, and participation in at least two local college fairs. The program hosted its Annual College Day Program in July during the summer session at Wellesley College. There were approximately 70 colleges and universities represented, as well as five visiting Upward Bound Programs from the greater Boston area. The career-advising component offers exposure to career options through our Speaker Series Program, as well as through research on the internet.

Lastly, the program provides numerous field trips that have as their purpose the intellectual, social, and cultural development of the participants. Such trips included the Museum of Science, the Omni Theater, dramatic productions, Museum of Fine Arts, skiing, bowling, and roller-skating.

Seventy-seven percent of the program's graduating seniors have been accepted into post-secondary educational institutions. The program's Class of 2002 has enrolled in the following colleges and universities: Alabama State College, Bridgewater State College, Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University, Massachusetts Bay Community College, Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, University of Massachusetts at Boston, University of New Hampshire, and University of New Haven.

Ronald S. Crichlow, Director of Educational Opportunity Programs
Evette M. Layne, Director, MIT-Wellesley Upward Bound Program

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McGovern Institute for Brain Research

The McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT is a research and teaching institute committed to advancing human understanding and communications. The goal of the McGovern Institute is to investigate and ultimately understand the biological basis of all higher brain function in humans. The Institute is conducting interdisciplinary research that combines and extends the results of recent breakthroughs in three major, interrelated areas: systems and computational neuroscience, imaging and cognitive neuroscience, and genetic and cellular neuroscience.

Personnel

James DiCarlo, a McGovern investigator and assistant professor in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, arrived this past year and set up his laboratory. Professor DiCarlo examines object recognition by the inferotemporal (IT) cortex, which is thought to be critical for visual recognition. He researches how the brain extracts object identity regardless of object position, size, view, illumination, and the presence of distractions. He is particularly interested in how a single object presented at different distances and from different perspectives stimulates the IT region.

Activities

The McGovern Institute held its inaugural symposium, New Approaches in Neuroscience, in May 2002. The key sessions were Novel Avenues for Electrophysiology, Genes in Neuroscience, Imaging the Brain, and Neural Stem Cells and Repair. Major sponsorship of the symposium was provided by Merck Research Laboratories, with additional sponsorships by Schering-Plough Research Institute, Amgen, Pfizer, Genzyme, and Transkaryotic Therapies.

The McGovern board of directors held its first meeting on October 29, 2001. Members of the board are Patrick McGovern, Lore McGovern, Elizabeth McGovern, Gerald Fischbach of Columbia University, Robert Langer from MIT, Edward Scolnick from Merck and Company Inc, Robert Silbey from MIT, Sheila Widnall from MIT, and Torsten Wiesel of Rockefeller University

The institute is also guided by a distinguished scientific advisory board composed of some of the world's most prominent neurobiologists. It held its first meeting on March 19, 2002, and spent the day meeting with the McGovern investigators. At the end of the day they gave a report to Patrick and Lore McGovern, Robert Brown, and Robert Silbey. Members of the board are John Duncan, Medical Research Council, England; Eric Kandel, Columbia University; Nikos Logothetis, Max-Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics; William Newsome, Stanford University Medical School; Carla Schatz, Harvard Medical School; Charles Stevens, Salk Institute; and Robert Wurtz, National Eye Institute.

Awards and Honors

Emilio Bizzi was named Institute Professor, the highest honor awarded by the MIT faculty and administration. He was cited for his work in the field of motor control, an area of neuroscience that deals with the generation and control of movement by the brain, and for his discoveries about the way the nervous system creates and coordinates complex movements."

James DiCarlo was named a 2002 Pew Scholar in the biomedical sciences by the Pew Charitable Trusts. These awards are granted to young investigators who show outstanding promise in the basic and clinical sciences and are intended to encourage scholarly innovation in their research and to help them advance the state of knowledge in the biomedical sciences. DiCarlo is also the recipient of an Alfred Sloan Research Fellowship.

Ann M. Graybiel was named a recipient of the 2001 National Medal of Science. The National Medal of Science is the nation's highest science and technology honor and recognizes individuals in a variety of fields for pioneering scientific research and for their lifetime achievements. In addition, Graybiel was named the 2002 recipient of the James R. Killian Faculty Achievement Award, which recognizes extraordinary professional accomplishment by full-time members of the MIT faculty. Graybiel's research focuses on the neurophysiology of the basal ganglia, brain regions implicated in the control of movement and cognition, as well as our ability to acquire habit.

In the fall of 2001, H. Robert Horvitz received the 14th Annual Bristol-Myers Squibb Award for Distinguished Achievement in Neuroscience Research for his landmark discovery that specific genes control programmed cell death, or apoptosis.

Research Accomplishments

During the past year the Kanwisher lab and collaborators reported that they identified a part of the brain that responds primarily to images of the human body or parts of the body. With the help of state-of-the-art brain imaging, Kanwisher and colleagues had previously uncovered the parahippocampal place area, which responds to photographs of indoor and outdoor scenes, and the fusiform face area, which responds exclusively to faces. The newest region is on the lateral surface of the brain, just inside the skull from a point behind the ears.

Tomaso Poggio and Tony Ezzat, an MIT graduate student in electrical engineering and computer science, have simulated mouth movements that look so real, most viewers can't tell that Mary 101 isn't an ordinary videotape of a person speaking. Given a few minutes of footage of any individual, the researchers can pair virtually any audio to any videotaped face, matching mouth movements to the words.

The Sharp lab and collaborators reported on a form of RNA developed at MIT which has inhibited replication of HIV-1 virus in human-derived cell lines, potentially showing a new way to combat AIDS. The in vitro work uses RNA interference (RNAi), a naturally occurring technology used by a variety of organisms to silence genes.

Phillip A. Sharp
Director
Institute Professor

More information about the McGovern Institute for Brain Research can be found online at http://web.mit.edu/mcgovern/.

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Council on Primary and Secondary Education

The Council on Primary and Secondary Education (CPSE) develops programs that bring the strengths of MIT to bear on the American K–12 educational system. The projects sponsored by the council include the MIT/Wellesley Teacher Education Program, Teacher Sabbaticals, and Educational Outreach Programs. The council's chairman is also involved in a number of K–12 educational efforts, including theScience and Engineering Program for Teachers and its product, the Network of Educators in Science and Technology, as well as a collaboration with the Association of American Universities (AAU).

MIT/Wellesley Teacher Education Program

To foster the growth of a cadre of new teachers who meet MIT's standards of excellence in science and mathematics, yet appreciate the value of different ways of approaching and understanding a problem, MIT has created a joint program with Wellesley College, the Teacher Education Program (TEP). It prepares undergraduates for Massachusetts State Certification in mathematics and science at the middle and high school levels. This program, started in the fall of 1993, has its administrative home in MIT's Department of Urban Studies and Planning. Undergraduates in the program must complete a major in the subject area in which they wish to teach. In addition, they must complete three courses at MIT and two at Wellesley; one of the latter is a seminar taken in conjunction with the required 150 hours of supervised practice teaching. Students must also complete 75 hours of supervised classroom observations.

TEP is led by Dr. Eric Klopfer, the Joseph B. ('54MG) and Rita P. Scheller professor of teacher education. TEP enrollment in the AY2001 reached 35 students from 16 departments, and is the largest in the history of this program. Although the administrative home for TEP is in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning, students come to the program from a multiplicity of disciplines. During the past year Professor Klopfer has moved into a newly renovated office and laboratory. The latter is an electronic classroom dedicated to the use of educational technology in science education. Eric's emphasis on simulation and modeling of chemical, physical and biological phenomena as a tool in science education is drawing considerable attention as is his newly published book "Adventures in Modeling: Exploring Complex, Dynamic Systems with Star Logo" with co-authors Venessa Colella and Professor Mitchell Resnick from MIT's Media lab.

Teacher Sabbaticals

The Class of 1952 Educational Initiatives Fund launched the MIT Teacher Fellows Program, which brings middle and high school teachers together with MIT faculty. Not only is this program effective in helping teachers develop new and creative ways to teach math and science, it allows MIT faculty to share their expertise in the development of K–12 math and science curricula.

Ken Brody, retired from Boston Technical High School, will return to MIT in AY2003. Mr. Brody continues to serve as the Secretary of the Network of Educators in Science and Technology (NEST). Additionally, he arranges tours of MIT by NEST teachers and students . We are pleased to have precollege educators with us. Their understanding of the needs of classroom teachers is essential to the development of MIT's agenda in K–12 education.

Educational Outreach Directory

The council's booklet MIT's Educational Outreach Programs continues to be widely circulated. Approximately 65 programs are listed; programs are either conducted on MIT's campus or have the involvement of people from MIT's faculty, staff, or student body. The directory is now also available through the council's home page on the web. Activities range from the Chemistry Magic Show, a 45-minute-long road show of attention-getting chemistry experiments along with a running commentary, to the Voyage of the MIMI, an interdisciplinary, multimedia math and science presentation geared toward 4th–8th graders using connected educational television, software, and other instruction materials.

Programs by the CPSE Chairman

Association of American Universities

The Association of American Universities (AAU) Task Force on K–16 Education, which I chair, continued its work during the past year. The task force hosted a Forum on Best Practices in Teacher Education at the House of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in Cambridge on 30 September–2 October. The goal of this forum was to provide all the AAU member institutions with the intellectual and programmatic means to establish programs on their campuses that will certify disciplinary majors to teach at the precollege level. This is in response to the adoption by the presidents and chancellors of the AAU institutions of the task force's resolution on teachers education, which encouraged the establishment of such programs on the AAU campuses. More than 120 people representing AAU member institutions attended this forum, which was web cast.

The AAU initiative Standards for Success (S4S) moved into its third year of work. With $2.4 million of support, largely from The Pew Charitable Trusts, this program will provide admissions officers with the tools to compare the qualifications and skills of students from states with different proficiency standards. Tools developed by S4S will enable AAU universities, and others as well, to make better informed admissions and placement decisions about incoming students.

In addition, with encouragement from the National Science Foundation and MIT's Center for Materials Science and Engineering as a model, the task force is working to make research experience available to in-service teachers on the campuses of all 63 member institutions. During the summer of 2002 we will have 12 such teachers at MIT in a variety of center and laboratory settings: the Center for Materials Science and Engineering, the Biotechnology Process Engineering Center, and the Center for Environmentally Benign Semiconductor Manufacturing. My goal is to accommodate 50 people each summer. If all AAU member institutions were to develop similar initiatives, we would collectively reach thousands of in-service teachers each year with such experience.

Science and Engineering Program for Teachers

Professor Latanision directs the Science and Engineering Program for Teachers, which shares the council's goal of science literacy for all students. Key to a good education is an enthusiastic, knowledgeable teacher. Since 1989, this program has endeavored to give educators a unique perspective of how the basic sciences, mathematics and engineering are integrated to meet the technological challenges and needs of commerce and society. Our Science and Engineering Program for Teachers continues each summer with sustaining support from MIT alum H. Johan von der Goltz ('60MG), founder and general partner of Boston Capital Ventures. During summer 2001, of the 74 participants who attended, 22 were from countries other than the US—Argentina, Hong Kong, Norway, Lebanon, and Saudi Arabia. We had a waiting list of over 50 people that we would like to have had at MIT. The alumni of this program, The Network of Educators in Science and Technology (NEST), are truly outstanding teachers. During the past summer we set a record for alumni involvement in this program as 14 MIT alumni clubs around the world sponsored 43 teachers who participated in the program. After our Friday evening banquet, Johan made bilingual remarks for the benefit of our guests from abroad. Johan preceded Radio Hall of Famer Fred Foy, our dinner speaker. Fred was the announcer for The Lone Ranger show on radio and television and later for the Dick Cavet Show on television.

The alumni of this program, now totaling approximately 900 people, become members of the Network of Educators in Science and Technology (NEST). This year, NEST members came to MIT's campus on June 28 for a two-day meeting to assess the program and determine future directions for the organization. The year 2002 agenda for returning NEST alums represents a continuing alliance between NEST and MIT's Center for Materials Science and Engineering. CMSE director Michael Rubner arranged a full-day program for NEST on 28 June. NEST teachers also participated in the Star Logo Community of Learners Workshop aimed at developing useful, curriculum supporting modeling tools. The workshop, 24 June–3 July, was led by Professor Klopfer and supported by the Siemens Foundation. The annual fall retreat of NEST was held in Milford, MA, on 9–10 November 2001.

Once again eight Siemens Scholars were identified from among the participants in the Science and Engineering Program for Teachers. These teachers were supported during their visit to MIT by the Siemens Foundation. In addition, the foundation provided the resources for MIT's first Siemens Teacher Fellow: a teacher, Rebekah Ravgiala, was in residence at MIT during the summer of 2001 as a member of the research team of Professor Michael Rubner, director of the Center for Materials Science and Engineering. The object of this effort is to make research experiences available to in-service teachers. It is my goal to have 40–50 such teachers on campus during the summer in a few years.

R.M. Latanision
Chairman
Director, H H Uhlig Corrosion Lab

More information about NEST and the Council on Primary and Secondary Education can be found on the web at http://web.mit.edu/cpse/.

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OpenCourseWare

Academic year 2002 was the inaugural year for MIT OpenCourseWare, a large-scale, web-based electronic publishing initiative funded jointly by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and MIT. OCW's overarching goals are to:

Current Goals, Objectives, Priorities

This first year was a period of ramp-up and pilot development. Key goals we pursued during this time include:

Accomplishments

During AY2002, the following key milestones were reached:

Finances and Funding

The pilot phase of OCW, which began July 1, 2001, runs through September 30, 2002. Funding for this pilot phase comes from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation ($5.5 million), the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation ($5.5 million), and MIT.

Future Plans

For the coming year, OCW's plans include:

Personnel Information

Appointments as of June 30, 2002 are Anne Margulies, executive director; Pamela Homsy, administrative officer; Tamara Cupples, faculty liaison; John Dennett, faculty liaison; and Stephen Downey, administrative assistant.

Anne Margulies
Executive Director

More information about OpenCourseWare can be found on the web at http://ocw.mit.edu/.

 

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