MIT
Reports to the President 1994-95
This has been a successful, but arduous year for CSS. The counseling staff has
been short one counseling dean and was taxed heavily with demands for
individual counseling, crisis management, and emergency consultation and
referrals. Student programs, support to special student groups, and work with
the Committee on Academic Performance (CAP) and other constituencies around the
Institute added to the demands for service. Hiring a fourth counseling dean at
the conclusion of a search currently underway will improve the ability of CSS
to serve the Institute.
Rich Goldhammer was hired as a learning disabilities consultant and he has
already proven to be an important resource for students, staff and faculty.
Learning disabilities and attention deficit disorders are crucial areas for CSS
staff, since they intersect frequently and obviously with students' academic
and personal experiences at MIT.
An increase in the demands for counseling on college campuses has been reported
nationally and MIT has not been an exception. This year, the death of a former
student who was well-known in the MIT community, and several complex student
psychiatric situations requiring hospitalizations and extensive follow-up
inside and outside MIT, added to an already heavy counseling load in CSS.
Readmission, withdrawals, leaves of absence, and excused absences from finals
were managed by the CSS staff, with increased emphasis on collective
decision-making by the deans, uniform guidelines and input from academic
departments.
Students of Color (Arnold Henderson and Ayida Mthembu)
Committee on Race Relations; Martin Luther King, Jr. Committee; Minority
Administrators Group; Albert Hill Award Committee; Presentations to the Black
Student Union, the National Society of Black Engineers and Hispanic
Professional Engineers; assistance with Kwanzaa, Black History Month and
Hispanic Month; support for Minority Awards Banquet and Commencement's Minority
Student's Luncheon.
Women Students (Ayida Mthembu, Lynn Roberson, and Jackie Simonis)
Coordination of 1995 East Coast Latina Conference; Sponsorship of
Asian/Asian-American Women's Lunch series; presentations/trainings on rape,
harassment and violence; "success and strategy" workshops for graduate women
featuring women faculty speakers; personal development workshops for
undergraduate women; advising of special women's groups, including women's
committee of GAMIT, women of African descent, Mujeres Latinas; Cheney Room
renovations and maintenance.
Students with Disabilities (Arnold Henderson and Jackie Simonis)
Hiring and supervision of learning disabilities consultant; Americans With
Disabilities Act Advisory Committee; management of accommodations (readers,
notetakers, etc.) for students with physical disabilities; coordination of
Commencement disabilities support.
Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Students (Arnold Henderson, Lynn Roberson)
Sponsorship/participation in gay/lesbian/bisexual R/O reception; Contact Line
peer helpline supervision
Jacqueline R. Simonis
The Council on Primary and Secondary Education (CPSE) includes representatives
from all of MIT's schools. CPSE is developing and overseeing programs which
bring the strengths of MIT to the American K-12 educational system.
The Institute for Learning and Teaching (TILT) is a year-long professional
development program for educators that begins with a three-week, residential
workshop on MIT's campus in July. Community-based teams of teachers, school
administrators, and interested volunteers (parents, school board members,
university representatives, or industrialists) experience activities that
promote personal growth, integrate disciplines within a research/technical
project, and develop their skills at working in groups and partnerships.
Throughout the three weeks, teachers develop skills in team building, group
dynamics, effective communication, negotiation, grant writing, brainstorming,
mind mapping, working with different learning styles, group reflection and
debriefing, and computer use.
Every year, TILT chooses two different technologies to investigate. Formerly
called How a City Works, the program in past years focused on water treatment
and delivery, construction, mass transportation, and telecommunications. In
1994, the workshop ran from July 11-29, and teams explored either power
generation, and health care. Each team was linked to a site (a business or
facility engaged in the technology) and explored in detail one technical aspect
of the technology, determining who it serves and how it serves them. Teams
examined how the sciences, mathematics, and the social sciences intertwine to
produce the technology, how it might be changing, and how it compares with
trends in education. In 1995, TILT will begin with its three-week workshop
running July 10-28 and will focus on food processing and aviation
technologies.
Attending TILT'94 were teams from Berkeley, CA; Attleboro, MA; Fall River, MA;
Haverhill, MA; Salem, MA; Sutton, MA; and New York, NY. All teams returned to
their communities in August with the charge to share their experiences with
colleagues in their home community and to promote school improvement. To help
them maintain communication with TILT, MIT, and other community groups, each
team was given seed money and was loaned a laptop computer with a subscription
to America Online for one year. TILT staff also continued to help them to think
about the possibilities of the TILT a program based on the philosophy and
techniques.
TILT'94 was funded by the Noyce Foundation, Pew Charitable Trusts, Citibank,
ComEnergy, Polaroid, GTE Foundation, National Science Foundation's Engineering
Coalition of Schools for Excellence in Education and Leadership, Sutton Public
Schools, Whittier Regional Vocational Technical High School, and Diman Regional
Vocational Technical High School. Support for the UROP students was provided by
the MIT Class of 1992.
MIT is part of a new collaborative including Harvard, UMASS Boston, Wheelock
College, and the Boston and Cambridge school systems that seeks to improve
teacher preparation courses for students who will teach mathematics and science
at the K-12 levels. The project, which at MIT will reside in the Department of
Urban Studies and Planning, has been funded by the National Science Foundation
for $5,000,000 over five years. Monies from the grant at MIT will be used to
further develop the Teacher Certification Program, which is supervised by
Professor Jeanne Bamberger.
To foster the continuing growth of a cadre of new teachers who meet MIT's
standards of excellence in science, mathematics, and technology, MIT, through a
joint program with Wellesley College, offers undergraduates preparation for
Massachusetts State Certification in mathematics and science at the middle and
high school levels. This program, started in the fall 1993, has now been
integrated into 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; these observations often take
place in the classrooms of teachers participating in the MIT Teacher Fellows
Program at Cambridge Rindge and Latin High School.
The Noyce Prize, a $10,000 prize provided by the Noyce Foundation, is awarded
each year to an outstanding undergraduate student who completes a degree in
science, mathematics, or engineering and who elects to teach in the public
school system. This June, the award was given to Ricardo J. Campbell, a
graduating senior in chemical engineering. The first recipient of the prize,
Sally Buta, has just completed certification and will started teaching physics
this fall.
The Teacher Fellows Program in 1994 focused on four master mathematics teachers
at Cambridge Rindge and Latin High School. With the enthusiastic support of
their school administration, they were released from 20% of their teaching
responsibilities; they continued to teach their regular classes in the
remaining time. During their released time, they visited one another's
classrooms, discussed, discovered, clarified, and documented as a group the
practice and the strategies that they find are most effective in encouraging
students to learn, understand, and practice mathematical reasoning.
Periodically, the teachers led meetings of the school's mathematics staff and
disseminated their insights to these teachers.
This program is supported with a two-year grant from the Department of Energy
that began in the fall of 1994.
ScienceMedia, Inc., is a new toy company created by MIT alumna Joan Roth that
promotes science literacy through toys and TV, the goal being to attract
children usually turned off by science. The company will produce science kits
that contain all necessary equipment for an experiment, full instructions, and
science trading cards. The first product line will focus on Better Sports
Through Science. MIT's name and logo will appear on the kit box. The Council
will share in the royalties from the sales of the kits. The first products
developed by ScienceMedia debuted at the Toy Manufacturers of America annual
meeting in New York in February 1995.
Professor Ron Latanision, Chairman of CPSE, is also a co-principal investigator
for the NSF-supported statewide systemic initiative in Massachusetts, PALMS
(Partnerships Advancing the Learning of Mathematics and Science). As such, his
primary areas of responsibility are changing public attitudes and enhancing
educational technology. An essential component of the American educational
system is the public's attitude towards educational achievement. Professor
Latanision has engaged the expertise of MM&L, a Boston public relations
firm, to advise his efforts in assessing and raising public awareness levels
about educational reform in the areas of mathematics and science. As a first
step, Latanision and his public relations team will be conducting a telephone
survey of Massachusetts parents to obtain baseline data. This will be followed
by a media campaign, and attitudes will be reassessed to determine the efficacy
of the campaign.
Professor Latanision and PALMS personnel have also established the
Massachusetts Software Partnership Task Force as part of the statewide
technology initiative Mass Ed Online. The task force will establish a
partnership between school members and software developers that will enable
them to work together to develop curriculum software to provide students with
high quality, hands-on learning experiences. The task force will also set up
criteria for software developers and school districts to participate in this
partnership, and will evaluate its effectiveness.
Through the efforts of another PALMS co-principal investigator, Dr. Pendred
Noyce, the Noyce Foundation has lent support to the Council's TILT program for
the past two years. Dr. Noyce is the daughter of MIT alumnus Robert Noyce,
founder of Intel.
Professor Latanision, the National Academies of Sciences and Engineering, the
Institute of Medicine, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences convened a
group in Cambridge on June 5-6, 1995, to consider the potential roles of the
academies and of research universities in confronting the national challenge
posed by K-12 education. The new National Science Education Standards point out
several areas that need to be addressed: to introduce effective science
teaching in all grade levels, a large number of scientifically trained young
people must enter the precollege teaching profession; those who teach the
introductory mathematics and science courses in the university need to examine
how the inquiry-based instruction that the nation is advocating for K-12
students in mathematics and science should affect their own approach to
teaching; present university admission policies inhibit the kind of K-12
teaching called for in the standards.
The academies and the Institute of Medicine are planning a second meeting in
Washington, D.C., this time of selected chairs of mathematics and science
departments of AAU universities, to help them design ways of supporting reform
efforts in American K-12 science and mathematics education.
Professor Latanision directs the Science and Engineering Program for Middle and
High School Teachers, which shares the Council's goal of technological 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. In 1995, the program ran from June 26-30 and had about 70 participants
from across the United States, two from Sweden, and one from Switzerland.
The alumni of this program, now totaling approximately 338, become members of
the New England Science Teachers (NEST). This year, NEST members came to MIT's
campus on June 30th for a two-day meeting to assess the program and determine
future directions for the organization. NEST members also explored the
potential of using the Internet and World Wide Web. These meetings are
essential to maintain contact and to foster collegiality amongst the NEST
membership. NEST will be supported by a grant from Raytheon through 1998.
R.M. Latanision
Lynn A. Roberson
Arnold R. Henderson, Jr.
Brima A. Wurie
Ayida Mthembu
MIT
Reports to the President 1994-95