MIT Reports to
the President 1997-98
SYSTEM DESIGN AND MANAGEMENT PROGRAM
The mission of the Systems Design and Management Program is to
educate future technical leaders in architecting, engineering, and
designing complex products and systems, preparing them for careers as
the technically grounded senior managers of their enterprises; to set
the standards for delivering career-compatible professional education
using advanced information and communication technologies.
The System Design and Management Program is a joint offering of
the School of Engineering and the Sloan School of Management, leading
to a Master of Science degree in Engineering and Management. During
1997-98, John R. Williams, representing the School of Engineering,
served as the program's codirector, and Thomas A. Kochan served as
acting Management codirector during Thomas L. Magnanti's sabbatical
leave.
Targeted for professional engineers with three or more years of
experience, the program centers on a 13-course curriculum in systems,
engineering, and management, including a project-based thesis. It
offers two curricular options: a 13-month in-residence format and a
24-month distance education format, requiring one academic semester
in-residence at MIT. The program was conceived as an alternative to
the MBA for professional engineers, allowing working professionals to
pursue a degree without interrupting their careers and relocating
themselves and their families.
This year the SDM program admitted its second class, enrolling 58
students in January. An additional 35 students admitted in 1997
continued in the program. In all, 22 companies sponsored students,
including four sustaining enterprise companies: United Technologies
Corporation sponsored 26 students, Ford Motor Company sponsored 17,
Eastman Kodak sponsored 8, and Xerox Corporation sponsored 4. Allied
Signal, IBM and ITT each sponsored 2 students, and each of the
following companies sponsored one student: Aerospace Corporation,
Cummins Engine Company, Elcotel, Fidelity, Fuji Xerox, HP, Intel,
Lockheed Martin, Los Alamos National Labs, PictureTel, Raytheon,
Silicon Graphics, Sun Microsystems, and Texas Instruments.
|
SDM STUDENT STATISTICS
|
1997
|
1998
|
|
ADMITTED
|
35
|
58
|
|
ON-CAMPUS
|
8
|
16
|
|
SELF-SUPPORTED
|
3
|
1
|
|
RESEARCH ASSISTANT
|
3
|
12
|
|
DISTANCE EDUCATION
|
27
|
42
|
|
COMPANY SPONSORED
|
29
|
45
|
The program begins in January with an intensive month in residence
for new students, including completion of one and one-half courses,
leadership and teamwork exercises, and projects and activities
designed to promote student cohort-building, to mitigate the
isolation of the remote education experience.
This year, the SDM program confronted new issues and challenges
related to its increased popularity, the demand for increased growth,
the need to expand the distance education offerings to accommodate
two simultaneous student groups, and changes in staff. The program
grew by enrolling more students, by offering a more extensive array
of courses at a distance, by introducing a new track in product
development, and by beginning a formal process to transfer the
curricula to other universities.
In addition, the small staff worked to continue to improve the
program's quality, to provide a greater range of services to
students, to incorporate new communications technology in course
delivery, and to respond dynamically to the changes in staffing
requirements of both the program and the Institute.
Specific program accomplishments included:
STUDENTS
- Admitting the second class of 58 SDM students and enrolling
two additional sustaining enterprise partners, bringing our
sustaining partnerships to four companies: Eastman Kodak, Ford
Motor Company, United Technologies Corporation, and Xerox
Corporation.
- Graduating six students from the 1997 on-campus program for
new careers in systems. Most of the remainder of the 1997 entering
class, approximately 30 students, will graduate in February 1999,
most continuing with their sponsoring companies in expanded
roles.
- Establishing an SDM student council to work on student
concerns and issues that are unique to the SDM program, including
the initiation of a student honor code that will apply to both
on-campus and remote students.
CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT
- Continuing the development of three new SDM core courses in
system architecture, system engineering, and system and project
management; adding distance education engineering electives for
the spring term in axiomatic design, computer science engineering,
and product design and development; adding specially adapted
half-semester summer session courses in robust design and system
dynamics.
- Successfully developing a new program option, allowing two
half-semester summer session segments to fulfill the MIT residency
requirement (approved by the MIT faculty in November 1997). SDM
created this option as a mechanism for retaining the benefits of
combined on-campus and off-campus instruction while better
accommodating the workplace needs of any single company enrolling
a large numbers of SDM students .
COLLABORATION AND OUTREACH
- In collaboration with the Center for Innovation in Product
Development (CIPD), developing a product development track to
serve as the academic component of CIPD's research program. The
track aims to develop a consistent set of concepts and language
for describing the end-to-end product development process within
enterprises. The CIPD sponsoring companies (Ford and Xerox) are
now enrolling approximately 20 students in SDM, and several
additional companies have expressed an interest in this curricular
specialty.
- Developing a staffing plan for SDM in concert with the Leaders
for Manufacturing program that incorporates the sharing of staff
resources. SDM and LFM will begin sharing two staff positions, a
Communications Coordinator and a Financial Administrator, and a
member of support staff, a Financial Assistant, in FY1999, as a
possible first step to establishing enhanced administrative
coordination.
- Developing a placement program for the SDM non-sponsored
graduates, in conjunction with the Sloan School of Management
Career Services Office (CSO). Although the majority of SDM
graduates will return to their companies, each year a number of
graduates seek new careers in systems engineering and product
design. CSO worked with SDM to tailor a program to meet the needs
of these students.
- Continuing to work with other MIT administrative units,
including the Graduate School, the Bursar's Office, and the
Registrar's Office, to develop polices and procedures for
incorporating non-standard students into the MIT system.
- Leading an effort to replicate the SDM product development
track at other universities. Because the demand for this program
is greater than SDM's capacity to accommodate student enrollments,
SDM has been working with Ford and Xerox to replicate the SDM
curriculum at the University of Detroit Mercy College and
Rochester Institute of Technology. Together with Ford, IBM, ITT,
RIT, UDM, the US Navy, and Xerox, SDM and CIPD have formed a
consortium called PD21: The Education Consortium for Product
Development Leadership in the 21st Century, to disseminate the
product development curriculum to other universities.
DISTANCE EDUCATION DELIVERY
- Delivering the full range of SDM course offerings to both
on-campus and remote students, including three core systems
courses, six fundamental courses, and five elective courses
satisfying SDM's design, engineering, and management elective
requirements. One of these courses was new to MIT (Robust Design),
especially designed to satisfy the SDM's design elective
requirement. The faculty have substantially adapted other courses
for the distance education medium of multipoint videoconferencing
to as many as 15 simultaneous company sites.
- Incorporating the latest in web technology into SDM distance
education. With support from Lotus Development Company, SDM has
developed the COMMAND system, which has been running since
January, to support distance education courses on the web. The
program now supports approximately 40 courses from 10 departments,
serving nearly 700 students. Collaborating with Lotus on the 3rd
release of the system, we are striving to incorporate video
streaming. Release 2, scheduled for the end of July 1998, was in
final testing at the end of the fiscal year. COMMAND will also
support the PD21 product development courses at Rochester
Institute of Technology and University of Detroit Mercy. Lotus
will award SDM a fellowship to continue this work.
- Initiating the retrofitting of two new distance education
classrooms in the Engineering School, to accommodate course
offerings with larger enrollments to remote students.
While SDM is still adjusting to the challenges of significant
growth, the year was full and satisfying. The program looks forward
to FY1999 to further enrich and improve the curricula, to serve an
expanded set of students and company employees, to come closer to
achieving the goal of excellence in distance education, and to
realize more organizational stability.
Thomas A. Kochan, John R. Williams
MIT Reports to
the President 1997-98