MIT Reports to the President 1998-99
As the new dean of the MIT Sloan School of Management, I have had the opportunity to build on the achievements of Deans Glen Urban and Lester Thurow. During this past year, I have worked hard to forge a strong, new direction for Sloan, supported by initiatives that implement what we teach–innovative leading management practices. One such initiative was the development of a new Sloan mission, the collective input of students, faculty, staff and alumni worldwide.
Sloan's new mission is to be the leading source of innovation in management theory and practice. The Sloan School aspires to develop effective, innovative, and principled leaders who advance the global economy; and to conduct rigorous and innovative research that improves management theory and practice. This set of principles will guide us toward reaching our aspirations and fulfilling our mission:
The mission is mirrored and supported by four strategic priorities that I outlined at the start of my tenure as dean. We have made steady progress against them this past year. The priorities include are to improve curriculum and delivery; to foster and leverage the connections across MIT and deepen Sloan's community spirit; to enhance and improve facilities; and to forge stronger links with business regionally, nationally and globally.
Improving the curriculum initially involved efforts to redesign the MBA core to best prepare students for today's global economy. The first step was to realign required subjects so we could offer finance as an option in the fall of the first year. A broader, ground-up redesign effort is now in process. We hired a new executive director of the MBA program and combined the responsibilities for Admissions, Career Development Office and the MBA program into one office for better integration and support. Other curriculum initiatives included the launch of an
e-business and marketing management MBA track that spurred interest from around the world.
We also are expanding executive education to capitalize on the tremendous potential to provide ongoing learning for alumni and corporate partners. The Financial Times this past year ranked Sloan in the top 10 worldwide, number 9, just ahead of Stanford, and number 5 among US schools in executive education.
One of Sloan's strengths, as well as MIT's, is its interdisciplinary approach. One of our priorities is to strengthen ties across MIT through such programs as the Leaders for Manufacturing and the MIT Entrepreneurship Center, housed at Sloan and serving all of MIT. We have undertaken major efforts to expand the reach and work of the Entrepreneurship Center. Professor Ed Roberts, a world-recognized pioneer in entrepreneurship research and practice, was appointed faculty chairman and now heads up the center with Ken Morse.
Strengthening Sloan's community is a key initiative that involves building and strengthening connections with alumni worldwide. Sloan's new online people directory, launched in February 1999, enables Sloan alumni to locate and network with alumni worldwide.
There are two dimensions to improving Sloan facilities. One is technology; the second is a new building. Sloan was the first business school this year to accept only online MBA applications. This is part of the Web infrastructure we are building to increasingly support the operations of the school. Sloan hired a new executive director of technology services this year charged with significantly upgrading the school's technology infrastructure. Most important, Sloan is part of the MIT capital campaign with plans to raise money for a new state-of-the-art management facility to consolidate activities and accommodate future programs.
The fourth strategic priority is to forge stronger partnerships with business - regionally, nationally and globally. Sloan has a number of key strategic partnerships with the private sector. Corporate partners have cost-effective, direct access to Sloan programs and services in recruiting students, executive education, international initiatives and research centers. We have taken a number of steps to invest in these connections and better integrate and coordinate our efforts. One such effort has been combining of the offices of resource development and alumni relations into one Office of Alumni and Corporate Relations.
In this past year, Sloan also:
Dick Schmalensee
MBA PROGRAM
Our mission is to create and deliver a small MBA program based upon collegiality and teamwork, an international focus, and a diversity of cultures and interests. The innovative and integrative curriculum aims to provide a strong analytical foundation to management, encourages the interplay of ideas and their practical application, and allows students to design an individualized educational program exposing them to leading-edge research and practice.
For academic year 1999—2000, overall full-time MBA student enrollment at Sloan, including Leaders for Manufacturing, is 718 (619 MBAs and 99 LFMs). The fall of 1999 marks a transition year for the MBA curriculum, with the addition of an introductory finance elective in the Fall Core, as well as the reconfiguration of the Data, Models and Decisions and Strategy courses into half-term formats. After students complete their required fall core requirements, they then choose a specific Management Track or Self-Managed Track. Next fall, a completely revamped MBA Core (Core 2000) is slated for rollout; an in-depth planning process involving current students, alumni/ae, faculty, the Dean's Office, industry representatives, and administrators is underway.
Sloan's newest Management Track, Electronic Commerce and Marketing, was launched in the spring of 1999, and brings the school's roster of Management Track offerings to seven. A reinvigorated New Product and Venture Development Track continued to enjoy an especially strong enrollment of students interested in entrepreneurship and product marketing. More than two-thirds of graduating MBA students completed a Management Track in academic year 1998—1999; the balance opted for the Self-Managed Track, which provides them with maximum flexibility of course selection and the ability to customize their program following completion of the Fall Core.
The Minority Business Club and Minority Student Support Group met regularly during the academic year to discuss minority student issues. Representatives from the MBA Program and Master's Admissions Offices also attended school Diversity Committee meetings and participated in a diversity training day in the spring term.
The MBA Program again subsidized the membership of minority students in the National Black MBA and National Hispanic MBA associations, allowing students to attend national conferences. Résumé books were developed for both groups and were used at career fairs for these events.
U.S. News and World Report ranked the Sloan MBA Program #5 in the nation in its 1999 annual survey of graduate business schools published in March, down slightly from #3 in 1998. The program's continued high rankings (#4 in 1997, #2 in 1996) are recognition of our student selectivity, high graduation rate, career placement success, and academic reputation.
MBA students and faculty participated in five international trips last year. The international trips continue to be an important part of the MBA Program student experience. The trips are initiated by students (itineraries, logistics, and fundraising) and are supported by the MBA Program Office and International Management faculty. The trips are preceded by an academic seminar that examines the relevant management, social, and cultural issues of the countries visited. The trip destinations last year were Japan and Korea; Brazil and Argentina; Egypt and Lebanon; Russia; and China. More than 200 MBA students participated.
LEADERS FOR MANUFACTURING
The Leaders for Manufacturing Program (LFM) is a partnership between MIT and 22 global manufacturing firms to discover and translate into teaching and practice principles that produce world-class manufacturing and manufacturing leaders. This partnership is motivated by our shared belief that excellence in manufacturing is critical to meeting the economic and social needs of individuals, firms, and society, and that the health of companies operating in global markets is essential to society's well-being.
Now in its 11th year of operation, LFM is a partnership between the School of Engineering, the Sloan School of Management and leading manufacturers. Launched in 1988 with significant industry funding, the program emphasizes collaboration and knowledge sharing with its partner companies across the entire spectrum of "Big-M" manufacturing enterprise issues. LFM supports students both as fellows in the program (with fully paid tuition) and as research assistants throughout the Institute. The largest component of the educational efforts is the Fellows Program, a 24-month dual-master's degree (engineering and management) involving a single integrative research project carried out on site in partner firms.
Forty-two students in the class of 1999 completed the Fellows program and 86 percent have taken positions in manufacturing firms. Twenty-nine students have taken positions with one of the LFM partner companies. Qualcomm and Dell were notable for a large number of hires from the class.
Each of the 42 graduates completed an internship at a partner company during the summer and fall of 1998. Internships are focused projects of concern to the partners, accomplished by interns with company support and MIT faculty guidance. Representative projects this past year included modeling and optimizing the supply chain resulting in cutting major inventories in half and an implementation of the "Critical Chain" method of task management to product development resulting in up to 25 percent reduction in project lead times.
Forty-eight students (Class of ‘00) completed their first year of on-campus studies and are starting their six-month internships. Forty-nine new students (Class of ‘01 were admitted and have completed an intense summer session. The students have an average of approximately 4.5 years of practical work experience.
LFM has worked with the Deans of the Sloan and Engineering schools to create a position of Director of Leadership for the Sloan School and LFM. Bea Mah Holland joined MIT full-time early in FY 2000. The new Director of Leadership should significantly increase activity in the classroom about the concept of leadership and what it means for industry.
Research has been conducted with seed funding from LFM in the following areas: product life cycle analysis, scheduling and logistics control, variation reduction, design and operation of manufacturing systems, integrated analysis and product development, culture and organizational change, and the next generation manufacturing project. Each area has both a faculty and an industry leader. The groups focus on detailed issues of benefit to several member companies, but with implications for many companies. On-site student interns have played a valuable role in teaming with on-campus researchers to more effectively define problems, gather data, and analyze it. Mid-stream and end-of-internship presentations convey research results to MIT and partner company personnel.
The three-year study, "The Utilization of LFM Graduates" includes research findings of interviews with alumni, supervisors and managers from each company that has utilized LFM graduates and students. These companies include ALCOA, Boeing, Chrysler, Digital (now Compaq), Kodak, Ford, GM, HP, Intel, Motorola, Polaroid, and UTC.
Representatives from ALCOA, Boeing, Ford, Intel, Kodak, and LFM's class of 2000 reviewed the reports and compiled their respective interpretations of the results for attendees' review at a workshop in June. The study reports and workshop findings were shared at LFM's annual utilization workshop, held in mid-September when LFM students participating in internships returned for Midstream Review.
The National Coalition for Manufacturing Leadership (NCML), a partnership of 14 universities with joint management and engineering programs, hosted a joint recruiting forum at the University of Michigan. This has been very popular with Coalition partner companies and will be repeated each year. Representatives from the coalition meet each year to share curriculum, research and program best practices.
Class size LFM99: 42 students
(8 partner company-sponsored students and 34 nonsponsored free agents.)
Table 1. Placement
|
# Hired |
% of Class |
|
|
Partner Companies |
29 |
69 |
|
Other Mfg. Companies |
7 |
17 |
|
Total Manufacturing |
36 |
86 |
|
Consulting/Banking |
4 |
9 |
|
Other |
2 |
5 |
|
Total employed graduates |
42 |
100 |
|
Free agents hired by partner companies |
21 |
50 |
Students accepted positions with the following companies:
Explicit steps for dissemination of the learning of internships will be built into the definition process for the projects. There is a strong feeling that the internships are very valuable as they are, but that the inter- and intra-company dissemination of learnings will be significantly improved.
LFM will work with its industry partners to better define those learnings which are gained through real-life, on-the-job experiences which are critical to successful manufacturing leaders. Having better defined these usually implicit expectations of company leaders, LFM will work with the partners to bring these in an accelerated fashion to those people the companies look to as future leaders, both LFM students and current company personnel.
LFM and SDM have consolidated their administrative resources to provide a more holistic approach to the Total Enterprise and to better serve our stakeholders. Accordingly, two joint hires have been made. These include Lois Slavin (1/4 time for ESD, 3/4 time for SDM-LFM) and Jeff Shao, Finance Manager, LFM-SDM.
For the combined enterprise, Jonathan Griffith will assume the role of Director of Partner Relations, Sarah Shohet will be SDM-LFM Admissions and Placement Coordinator, and Constance Emanuel will be SDM-LFM Communications Assistant. Further staff consolidation is planned for FY 2000.
Current Program Co-directors are Stephen C. Graves, William C. Hanson, Paul Lagace, Hanson, Thomas P. Kochan and John Williams.
More information about LFM can be found on the Web at: http://lfmsdm.mit.edu.
William C. Hanson
EXECUTIVE EDUCATION
Sloan's Office of Executive Education has continued its efforts to provide superior programs to key partner companies and alumni of executive education, drawing on Sloan's research depth and expertise to help managers and executives solve important business problems. The offerings of Executive Education increased greatly during the year responding to the demand for open-enrollment courses and for customized programs.
Both the Sloan Fellows and Management of Technology programs, flagship programs for executive education at Sloan, successfully recruited large classes for 1998—1999, indicating continuing strong demand for these mid-career management degrees. (See separate reports that follow.)
Five executive short courses of five days each were successfully presented in May and June. A two-week course on Latin American business was run in October and will be offered again in response to enthusiastic demand. And the portfolio of open enrollment two-day courses has increased dramatically over the year.
Responding to market demand for more customized programs, Sloan increased its offerings of executive education programs for individual companies. In addition to the successful Siemens "change agent" program, Sloan Executive Education is working with a set of companies on programs addressing the issues of change management, information technology, ebusiness and financial engineering.
We have reaffirmed our commitment to maintaining and expanding our research base as a means of adding value to our educational programs.
More information on executive education at Sloan can be found on the Web at: http://mitsloan.mit.edu/execed.
Susan C. Lowance
MANAGEMENT OF TECHNOLOGY PROGRAM
The MIT Management of Technology Program (MOT), the first joint program between the Sloan School and the School of Engineering, was established in 1981 to develop leaders who will create the linkages between their organizations' underlying technology and overall strategy. The program grants the special degree SM in Management of Technology. In addition to providing executive development for strong technical leaders who are taking on senior leadership positions in their firms, the program has also attracted an increasing number of participants who are involved in entrepreneurial opportunities.
The MOT Class of 1999 included 50 participants from 16 countries. They averaged 12 years of work experience, representing a wide variety of industries and functional expertise. More than 80 percent of the participants were sponsored by their organizations during their year at MIT. More than half of the class had advanced degrees prior to joining the MOT Program, most in technical disciplines.
During the January MOT International Trip, the class of ‘99 met with government and industry leaders in London, Paris, Frankfurt and Madrid, all within days of the implementation of the new Euro currency. In addition to the European Trip, the group also took field trips to New York and Connecticut for the first time. Key industries represented in the international and domestic field trips included telecommunications, financial services, pharmaceuticals, petrochemicals, media, technical consulting, software development, construction, and electronics manufacturing.
In October 1998, more than 40 MOT alums returned to campus for the triennial Executive Education Convocation, which was focused on "The Networked Society." During the spring semester, Dan DiLorenzo, MOT ‘99, was awarded the $30,000 Lemelson-MIT Student Prize for his outstanding track record of inventions in the health sciences. Also in the spring term, two ‘97 MOT alums, Seth Taylor and Wayne Xiao, won first prize in this year's MIT $50K Entrepreneurship Competition for their entry, MolecularWare, Inc.
More information about the MOT Program can be found on the Web at http://mitsloan.mit.edu/mot.
David A. Weber
SLOAN FELLOWS
As the flagship of Sloan's executive education programs, the MIT Sloan Fellows Program continued to attract the highest-caliber candidates from an increasing applicant pool in 1998—1999.
The strength of the program was evident in the diversity and stature of the people who were sponsored for the program. The class of 1999 represented middle and senior managers being groomed by their organizations for leadership roles. The number of applications increased with a healthy geographic distribution and a balance of public and private institutions. There were an increasing number of Web requests for information. The class of 1999 represented 12 countries, with 26 out of 55 fellows coming from international organizations. All of the Sloan Fellows were fully sponsored by their organizations.
The faculty continued to provide a core program with electives that received the highest customer satisfaction ratings. All of the 1999 Sloan Fellows completed their theses in the spring with faculty advisors. Following the prior year's trend, 80 percent of the Sloan Fellows elected to receive an MBA degree. Innovations were introduced into the program as a result of the change projects undertaken by Sloan Fellows.
Alumni involvement continued to be very strong. At the Executive Education Convocation, 244 Sloan Fellows returned to campus with their guests to participate in formal and networking sessions. Six Sloan Fellows came as guests speakers during the Seminar in Leadership. A newly constituted Sloan Fellows Board of Governors was appointed.
The program continued to actively integrate examination of the world of practice with the classroom experience. Increasingly, the Web was used as a resource for gathering data. Key leaders of industry, including Jack Welch, John Reed, Carly Fiorina, and Michael Armstrong, received visits from the Sloan Fellows during their New York field trip. In the spring, the Sloan Fellows met with federal government leaders in Washington, D.C. The capstone international study trip went to Europe, where students studied the European Union as an emerging market and the introduction of the Euro.
The program continues to offer a unique opportunity for mid-career managers to prepare for leadership roles.
Toby W. Woll
DOCTORAL PROGRAM
Sloan's Doctoral Program aims to provide institutions in the United States and abroad with outstanding management faculty and researchers. On the output side, we graduated 16 people this past academic year with job successes and placements being quite good in all of our management fields. Recent graduates have found positions at Case Western, Northwestern (two), Univ. of Minnesota, ESSEC, Univ. of Pennsylvania-Wharton, the Rochester Institute of Technology, INCAE-Costa Rica and the London School of Economics. Although two graduates succumbed to the lure of industry, most remain interested in academic careers.
On the input side, we experienced a record-breaking year, due in part to the ease of access to the Web. We received 640 applications from 61 countries, 28 percent from China. We made 29 offers and got 19 acceptances (a yield of 67 percent, higher than in past years). Total enrollment now stands at 84. The number of women in the Doctoral Program has fallen to 22 reflecting recent graduates. While the number of under-represented minority students remains small, at three active students, we have continued initiatives begun two years ago to increase our diversity, including participating in the KPMG Peat Marwick PhD Project (an annual recruitment event). We are exploring other means to increase the participation of minority students in Ph.D. studies.
SLOAN VISITING FELLOWS PROGRAM
The MIT Sloan Visiting Fellows Program provides the opportunity to pursue full-time, nondegree studies tailored to individual goals and interests. Each Visiting Fellow's program of study, usually for one or two semesters, is designed in consultation with a faculty adviser to meet individual professional needs and interests.
Originally a small program with about four to six participants a semester, the program has steadily increased to almost double that amount. Eleven participants were enrolled for fall 1999.
The 1998—1999 academic year included both self-sponsored and company-sponsored participants, as well as four students each semester through the Stephan Schrader Fellowship at the Digital Institute of Technology in Munich. Graduates of the Management of Technology Program continue regular participation in the Visiting Fellows Program as a second semester or year of sponsored study.
Regular sponsors of participants included the World Bank and NEC Corporation.
More information on the Sloan Visiting Fellows Program can be found on the Web: http://mitsloan.mit.edu/vf/.
Jennifer Mapes
SYSTEM DESIGN AND MANAGEMENT PROGRAM
The mission of System Design and Management Program is to educate future technical leaders in the architecture, engineering, and designing of complex products and systems, preparing them for careers as the technically grounded senior managers of their enterprises. SDM intends to set the standards for delivering career-compatible professional education using advanced information and communication technologies. SDM was MIT's entry into the field of distance education and remains the only degree program at MIT that can be earned primarily at a distance.
The SDM 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. 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 three curricular options: a 13-month in-residence format; a 24-month distance education format for company-sponsored students, requiring one academic semester in-residence at MIT; and a 24-month, on-campus program for self-supporting students who can obtain a research assistantship in one of MIT's labs or centers. 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.
Thomas L. Magnanti, representing the Sloan School, and John R. Williams, representing the School of Engineering, served as the program's codirectors through fall 1998 when it was announced that Professor Magnanti would assume the position of dean of Engineering effective January 1, 1999. The subsequent departure of Dean Magnanti from SDM became a catalyst for the consolidation of SDM with the Leaders for Manufacturing (LFM) Program, another master's level program offered jointly by the School of Engineering and the School of Management. In March, LFM codirectors Paul Lagace (Engineering), Steve Graves (Management), and Bill Hanson (Industry), along with John Williams, assumed leadership of both programs. In June, Thomas Kochan from the Sloan School also joined the combined enterprise with the rank of codirector to fill in for Steve Graves's upcoming sabbatical.
On June 4, 1999, SDM's, and MIT's, first distance education degree-granting program graduated its first full class. Thirty-two students attended the commencement ceremony to receive their degrees. The graduating class includes 14 employees from UTC and six from Kodak, as well as employees from ITT, HP, Lockheed Martin, IBM, Fidelity, Elcotel and Aerospace Corp.
In January 1999, SDM admitted its third class, enrolling 47 students. An additional 57 students admitted in 1998 continued in the program, with one 13-month student from the January 1998 class graduating in spring 1999. In all, 18 companies sponsored students, including four sustaining enterprise companies: United Technologies Corporation sponsored 13 students; Ford Motor Company sponsored 12; Xerox Corporation sponsored 7; and Eastman Kodak sponsored 1 student. Other sponsoring companies include GTE, Polaroid, Delphi Packard, Comicrom (Chile), Fidelity Investments, U.S. Navy, IBM, United Space, B.F. Goodrich, Gemcorp, Fuji Xerox, and Intel.
Table 2. SDM Student Statistics
|
1997 |
1998 |
1999 |
|
|
Admitted |
35 |
58 |
47 |
|
On-Campus |
8 |
16 |
6 |
|
Self-Supported |
3 |
1 |
2* |
|
Research Assistant |
3 |
12 |
2* |
|
Distance Education |
27 |
42 |
41 |
|
Company-sponsored |
29 |
45 |
43 |
*One self-supporting student obtained a research assistantship that began in summer 1999. Although the total number of students admitted to the program in January 1999 was down from the previous year, these numbers in part reflect the inability of students accepted into the research assistantship option to obtain assistantships. A sizeable number of students (10) were accepted last year but deferred matriculation until January 2000.
Specific program accomplishments included the following.
SDM admitted the third class of 47 SDM students. 30 students graduated from the 1997 distance education program for new careers in systems as well as graduating two thirteen-month students from the 1998 class. All 1997 students have now graduated and 13 students have successfully parlayed their SDM education into new positions in their companies. These promotions occurred either while they were in the SDM program or after graduation. The Program Office has begun the process of exit interviews with this group of newly graduated students. SDM continues to support of a student council to work on student concerns and issues unique to the SDM program. Student council initiatives this year included planning for the International Business Trip and changing the format of the on-campus Business Trips to include more speakers in a seminar format.
SDM continues to develop its three core subjects in system architecture, system engineering and system and project management; adding distance learning engineering and management electives for the spring term in Technology Strategy and Product Design and Development. Specially adapted half-semester summer session courses were added for Summer 1999, These courses included System Dynamics, System Dynamics in Practice and TQM. Funds were secured through CIPD for curriculum development. SDM will secure a $100K grant from ITT for curriculum development through PD21 (see description below).
SDM is developing a staffing plan in concert with the Leaders for Manufacturing program that incorporates shared staff resources. SDM and LFM began sharing four staff positions, a communications coordinator, a financial administrator, a financial assistant and an admissions and placement coordinator in FY1999, as a first step in establishing enhanced administrative coordination. Although sponsored SDM graduates will return to their companies, unsponsored graduates will typically seek new careers in systems engineering and product design. LFM offered placement services to all nonsponsored SDM students, resulting in one SDM graduate finding employment through this process at Pratt & Whitney. SDM leads an effort to replicate the SDM product development track at other universities to help them develop and introduce an SDM-like program. Together with Ford, IBM, ITT, RIT, UDM, the U.S. 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.
The full range of SDM course offerings are delivered 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. The faculty have substantially adapted other courses for the distance education medium of multipoint videoconferencing to as many as 15 simultaneous company sites. SDM distance education incorporates the latest in Web technology. With minor support from an SDM student, KJ Ryan, an employee of Lotus Development Corporation who has an SDM fellowship, SDM has developed the COMMAND system, which has been running since January 1998, to support distance education courses on the Web. Collaborating with Lotus on the third release of the system, we have incorporated video streaming. Release 2, scheduled for the end of July 1998, was in final testing at the end of the fiscal year. COMMAND also supports the PD21 product development courses at Rochester Institute of Technology and University of Detroit Mercy.
LFM and SDM have consolidated their administrative resources to provide a more holistic approach to the Total Enterprise and to better serve our stakeholders. Accordingly, two joint hires have been made. These include Lois Slavin (1/4 time for ESD, 3/4 time for SDM-LFM) and Jeff Shao, Finance Manager, LFM-SDM.
For the combined enterprise, Jonathan Griffith will assume the role of Director of Partner Relations, Sarah Shohet will be SDM-LFM Admissions and Placement Coordinator, and Constance Emanuel will be SDM-LFM Communications Assistant. Further staff consolidation is planned for FY 2000.
The position of Director of Fellows (SDM) was created to mirror the position held by Don Rosenfield in LFM. The position, which reports to the LFM/SDM co-directors, has primary responsibility for the overall SDM program and involves both administrative and teaching responsibilities within the SDM program. Dennis Mahoney, a retired captain in the Navy (engineering duty) was hired to serve in this new position and began his employment on August 1, 1999.
SDM has already benefited considerably by its association with LFM. Processes already established by LFM have been adapted to SDM, including exit interviews with graduates and greater emphasis in the admissions process in collecting data for determining profiles of successful SDM students. In addition, the Operating Committee and Governing Board for LFM have agreed to assume oversight of the SDM program and will begin the process in FY2000 of bringing advocates for both programs onto these boards.
This past year, SDM, through the efforts of the director of finance, reviewed and revised the SDM budget, income and expenditures for the program since its inception to determine the program's financial status. At the request of the Provost's Office, the program codirectors have proposed changing the SDM financial model from one in which the program collects its own tuition and pays its faculty and staff from this revenue to one in which the program is mainstreamed with the rest of Institute and operates from an Institute budget. (The codirectors met with the dean of the School of Engineering and with the associate dean of the Sloan School to present this proposal for feedback. The Provost asked for a resolution of this situation by the end of the Summer 1999. The program codirectors feel that this mainstreaming of SDM is an essential step for its long-term stability. As of this writing, the proposal is still under discussion.)
John R. Williams, Thomas A. Kochan, Bill Hanson, Steve Graves, and Paul Lagace
UNDERGRADUATE PROGRAM IN MANAGEMENT SCIENCE
Sixty-six seniors majoring in management science were graduated during the 1998—1999 academic year, nine in February and 57 in June. Of those 66 seniors, 42 chose the option in finance, 11 selected information technologies, eight chose marketing research and five operations research. Thirteen had double options in finance and information technologies, one had a double option in finance and marketing, and one had a double option in information technologies and marketing. Twenty-three of our graduates received simultaneous SB degrees. Thirteen also received SB degrees from the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, six from the Department of Economics, two from the Department of Mechanical Engineering, one from the Department of Chemical Engineering, and one from the Department of Mathematics.
As of the end of the spring, there were 226 students enrolled in the Management Science SB Program. Of these, 44 students were enrolled in Management Science as their second SB degree program at MIT. Our total spring undergraduate enrollment was up from 213 in the spring of 1998. Enrollment in the undergraduate program has doubled since spring 1994, when total enrollment equaled 110. Sloan is the fifth largest undergraduate program at MIT, larger than most departments in the School of Engineering, and larger than all but one department (biology) in the School of Science.
A large number of students from other MIT degree programs continue to enroll in our management subjects. In the 1998—1999 academic year, there were 709 such undergraduate enrollments in Sloan School subjects. This represents the equivalent of 89 full-time students. There were significantly more enrollments in the spring (437) than in the fall (272). The spring enrollments represent 182 virtual Sloan undergraduates (full-time students divided by 60 percent).
IAP AND SLOAN JANUARY SUBJECTS
During January 1999, Sloan offered a number of IAP activities: five subjects for credit, and four noncredit subjects. Three entrepreneurship subjects were offered. Senior Lecturer Russell Olive offered "Personal Entrepreneurial Career Strategy and Preliminary Venture Analysis"; Visiting Lecturer Zenie offered "Starting and Running a Technology-Based Company"; and Visiting Lecturer Joseph Hadzima presented "The Nuts and Bolts of Business Plans." Professor Nelson Repenning offered "Sustainable Solutions: A System Dynamics Approach in Organizations and the Environment"; Professor Andrew Lo offered "Quantitative Equity Management"; Professors Jeffrey Meldman, Franco Modigliani, Andrew Lo and two Visiting Lecturers, F. Vitagliano and J. Bollinger, together offered a series of lectures on "Financial Patents–Promoting Progress in Financial Engineering"; Professors John Little and Dimitris Bertsimas presented a series on "What is Management Science? What is Operations Research?" and Sloan sponsored "The Lemelson-MIT Awards Program's Innovation Forum"; and "Surviving MIT Using Organization, Time Management and Interpersonal Skills."
UNDERGRADUATE ADVISING AND COMMITTEE ASSIGNMENTS
Faculty serving as undergraduate advisors were Professors Dimitris J. Bertsimas, Paul Carlile, John de Figueiredo, Chyrsanthos Dellarocas, Stephen Graves, Denis Gromb, Leigh Hafrey, Neal Hartman, John Little, Stuart Madnick, Michael Mikhail, Stewart Myers, J.D. Nyhart, Jim Orlin, Maureen Scully, Ed Steinfeld, Scott Stern, John Van Maanen and Roy Welsch along with Sloan administrators Dr. Jeffrey Meldman, Director of Undergraduate Programs; Ms. Heather Madnick, Assistant Director Undergraduate Programs and Assistant Director of Educational Services; and Debbie Shoap, Associate Director, Sloan Educational Services. Dr. Meldman served as the departmental coordinator of MIT's Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP) while Professor John Carroll was on sabbatical. Neal Hartman served as departmental writing coordinator for Phase Two of the Institute Writing Requirement, and Prof. Van Maanen again led the Sloan Orientation Workshop for students new to Sloan. Dr. Meldman served as chair of the Undergraduate Advisors Committee, and he and Ms. Madnick were IAP Co-Coordinators. Ms. Madnick continued to serve as Co-Chair of the MIT Undergraduate Administrators Round Table. Faculty serving on the Undergraduate and Interdepartmental Policy Committee included Professors S. Graves, D. Gromb, A. Lo, S. Madnick and J. Van Maanen, together with Dr. Meldman, Ms. D. Shoap and Ms. H. Madnick. Professors Gabriel Bitran and Jim Orlin served ex-officio members and Professor J. Little chaired the committee.
Steve Graves and Tom Magnanti contributed to undergraduate education at the Institute by advising freshmen and by conducting a Freshman Advisor Seminar for their advisees.
Heather Madnick, Jeff Meldman
CENTER FOR COORDINATION SCIENCE
The MIT Center for Coordination Science conducts multidisciplinary research to help understand how information technology can provide new ways of organizing human activity and help people work together better. Primary funding comes from a variety of government sources, including ARPA, NSF and the Defense Logistics Agency. The center has corporate sponsorship from Fuji Xerox and is open to sponsors from the 21st Century Initiative listed below.
The past year has brought significant progress on the center's main project, the Process Handbook, a set of tools for inventing organizations that joins both coordination theory and coordination technology. A significant new project was also added in this year, focusing on using intelligent software agents to do exception handling.
Other activities included hosting a sponsor workshop and the publication of several working papers on a range of topics, among them measures of the value of information technology, and software tools to support exception handling. We also hosted a visiting scientist from Fuji Xerox.
In the coming year, we plan to continue developing the Process Handbook software and content. Three specific areas of focus are exploiting the concepts of coordination and dependencies in the handbook; developing specific content in the areas of ebusiness and ecommerce; and developing software tools for exception handling. We also plan further research and activities in genres of electronic communication and virtual organizations.
More information about this center can be found on the Web at http://ccs.mit.edu/.
Thomas W. Malone
CENTER FOR ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY RESEARCH
The Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research (CEEPR) has been the locus of research at MIT on energy economics since the mid-1970s and on environmental economics since the late 1980s. CEEPR is jointly sponsored at MIT by the Sloan School, the Department of Economics and the Energy Laboratory. CEEPR receives financial support from corporate sponsors and government agencies in the United States and Norway. In conjunction with MIT's Center for Global Change Science, CEEPR co-sponsors the Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, which conducts interdisciplinary research to inform global climate policy. CEEPR research is focused on four principal areas: emissions trading; electricity markets; productivity improvements in energy supply; and energy futures, forwards and arbitrage.
The major publication effort for the year was the completion of the manuscript for Markets for Clean Air: The U.S. Acid Rain Program, which reports CEEPR's research over the past four years on SO2 emissions trading. This book, co-authored by Denny Ellerman, Paul Joskow, Dick Schmalensee, Juan Pablo Montero and Elizabeth Bailey and to be published by the Cambridge University Press in early 2000, will become the definitive source of information and analysis concerning the U.S. experience in using tradable permits to achieve environmental goals.
As in former years, a number of working papers (12) and article reprints (5), reporting CEEPR-sponsored research, were published. In the fall and the spring, CEEPR convened its usual Energy and Environmental Policy Workshop to present and discuss research results to sponsors and other interested parties. The director and executive director of CEEPR are also invited to make numerous lectures and other presentations of CEEPR's research and to participate in various advisory and expert groups.
The 1998—1999 academic year was the final year of the multiyear research project on productivity improvements in the U.S. coal industry, although papers reflecting this major research on the micro foundations of productivity improvement will continue to appear for several years. As this research project winds down, greater emphasis will now be given to productivity improvements in oil and natural gas production. Another area of increased emphasis in the 1999-2000 year will be analysis of the organization and functioning of new electricity markets.
For more information, please refer to http://web.mit.edu/ceepr/www/.
A. Denny Ellerman
INVENTING THE ORGANIZATIONS OF THE 21ST CENTURY
Inventing the Organizations of the 21st Century is a five-year-old research and education initiative that works with innovative managers, leaders and academicians to help them invent the organizations that will become common 10 to 20 years from now.
Activities in the past year included research and sponsor visits in the areas of new organizational forms, process knowledge repositories and electronic commerce. A final symposium to conclude the initiative and review its five years of research is planned for November 1999.
More information about this program can be found on the Web at http://ccs.mit.edu/21c/.
Thomas W. Malone
LABORATORY FOR FINANCIAL ENGINEERING
The focus of the Laboratory for Financial Engineering is the quantitative analysis of financial markets using state-of-the-art mathematical, statistical and computational models. The LFE's goals are to spur advances in financial engineering and computational finance; and to support curriculum development for financial technology in undergraduate, graduate and executive educational programs.
The LFE has received major funding support for its activities from Merrill Lynch this year as part of the five-year MIT/Merrill Lynch partnership announced in March 1999. As a result, several new research initiatives will be launched, including the following: Trading Costs and Liquidity Project; Global Financial Crises Project; Risk Preferences Project; Financial Visualization Project; and Nonlinear Financial Time Series Analysis Project.
In addition, the LFE continues to make progress on several existing projects, including the following: Trading Volume Project; Derivatives Project; Derivatives Sourcebook Project; and Risk Management Project.
These projects and their corresponding preprints and reprints, along with LFE staff and affiliated faculty, are described in more detail at the LFE's web site http://lfe.mit.edu/.
The MIT/Merrill Lynch partnership also includes an important educational component, the Financial Technology Educational Initiative, in which a new graduate minor in financial technology will be developed, a joint undertaking anchored in the Sloan School of Management and the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences (EECS) in the School of Engineering. The program will provide training in financial engineering for MIT graduate students from technology fields such as engineering, math, computer science and media studies. The minor will increase financial applications within the School of Engineering's technology courses and boost the number of technology courses available to MBA students in Sloan's Track in Financial Engineering.
Research support for the LFE has been generously provided by a number of industry sponsors, including the following.
More information about the LFE's research program can be found on the Web at http://lfe.mit.edu/.
Andrew W. Lo
MIT ENTREPRENEURSHIP CENTER
The mission of the MIT Entrepreneurship Center is to train and develop the leaders who will make high-tech ventures successful. To that end, we offer educational programs to inspire, educate and coach new generations of entrepreneurs from all parts of MIT. To support this mission, MIT's Entrepreneurship professors, practitioners and staff teach and conduct basic research to enhance our fundamental understanding of the dynamic process of high-tech venture development in the United States and around the world.
The MIT Entrepreneurship Center was launched as an Institute-wide initiative in 1996. At that time, President Vest said, "We must not only be the best. We must also serve as a model for others and ensure that, together, we all make a significant global impact in this vital field." To achieve these objectives set out by our president, we established two goals: to recruit 10 leading professors and practitioners and to raise $60 million in endowment to fund their teaching and research.
In March 1999, Dr. Edward B. Roberts, the David Sarnoff Professor of Management of Technology at the MIT Sloan School, joined the MIT Entrepreneurship Center as Chairman. Roberts is a pioneer in entrepreneurship research and is known internationally as an expert on technology-based entrepreneurship and the management of technology-based enterprises. With his appointment, Roberts affirmed that the Entrepreneurship Center enter will undertake major efforts to expand its full-time faculty, its research agenda and its student programs. Roberts joins Managing Director Kenneth P. Morse in directing our MIT-wide programs.
In 1998—1999 the Center continued its rapid growth, increasing student enrollment in entrepreneurship courses while launching new courses, student activities and faculty initiatives.
From 1996 to 1999, student enrollment in the Center's courses grew from 327 to 1,043. In the same period, the Center increased its recurring course offerings from five to eleven.
Table 3. Entrepreneurship Center Student Enrollment
|
Course |
1996—97 |
1996—97 |
1997—98 |
1998—99 |
|
New Enterprises |
70 |
107 |
270 |
180 |
|
Entrepreneurship Lab |
20 |
60 |
138 |
150 |
|
Entrepreneurship Without Borders |
70 |
55 |
||
|
Entrepreneurial Marketing |
60 |
|||
|
Technology Entrepreneurship |
34 |
|||
|
Independent Activities Period |
128 |
170 |
283 |
418 |
|
All Others |
70 |
180 |
165 |
146 |
|
Total |
288 |
517 |
926 |
1043 |
In 1998—1999, our faculty launched two new courses: Entrepreneurial Marketing and Technology Entrepreneurship. The latter was a joint initiative between Prof. Scott Shane in the Sloan School and Prof. Anna Thornton in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. In the coming year, our faculty will develop and teach two additional courses: Venture Capital Without Borders, and Entrepreneurs on the Internet. We recruited experienced entrepreneurs Francis H. Zenie (EE'56) and Howard Anderson as Senior Lecturers and Kenneth Zolot (GM'97) and Andy Sack (GM'94) to serve as Visiting Entrepreneurs. In 1999—00 we plan to continue to build our academic and research programs by hiring two tenure-track faculty.
Student organizations supported by and housed in the MIT Entrepreneurship Center achieved new heights this year. The MIT $50K Entrepreneurship Competition celebrated its 10th Anniversary. The MIT/Sloan Venture Capital Club hosted its inaugural MIT Venture Capital Conference, for which the student organizers received the first annual Patrick J. McGovern, Jr. Prize. The McGovern Prize will be awarded each year to a student organization working closely with the center which contributes most to the entrepreneurial spirit of MIT.
Other initiatives included the successful launch of our executive education program through the Sloan School, and the conclusion of the first phase of the MIT Venture Support Systems Project, resulting in a report and teaching note on Angel Investing in Boston and Silicon Valley.
On the financial side, endowment pledges of support from entrepreneurial alumni increased to $18 million toward our goal of $60 million. Six corporate sponsors were selected for their ability to add to our educational programs and assist our students and alumni in starting new technology ventures contributed one-third of our operating budget.
Kenneth P. Morse
MIT PROGRAM ON THE PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRY
The MIT Program on the Pharmaceutical Industry (POPI) was founded in 1991 as a research and education program for understanding the structure and dynamics of the global pharmaceutical industry, the firms and their suppliers, customers and regulators.
Currently, more than 15 MIT faculty and 12 outside collaborators from other universities are participating in the research program. Since POPI's inception, some 25 MIT graduate students have completed doctoral work with support from POPI. More than 20 pharmaceutical, biotechnology or other healthcare firms have contributed funding and/or data for POPI's research or educational activities. As of June 30, 1999, 65 articles and working papers have reported on research conducted by POPI faculty and students.
In 1998—1999, faculty associated with POPI continued research on case histories of important drugs, the cost of new drug development, the use of new tools to systematize key aspects of drug discovery, pharmacoeconomics and many other topics.
Stan N. Finkelstein
SYSTEM DYNAMICS GROUP
The System Dynamics Group, founded in the early 1960s by Professor Jay W. Forrester, studies complex systems, often with the aid of computer simulation models, to learn how their structure influences their behavior. The group is composed of Sloan School of Management faculty plus graduate students and MIT undergraduates. Inquiries should be directed to Nan Lux, the Program Manager, at nlux@mit.edu.
The System Dynamics Group has three main areas of research. The National Model Project continues research, under the supervision of Professor Jay W. Forrester, on how the U.S. economy works and on the effects of proposed economic policies.
The second project is "The Improvement Paradox: Designing Sustainable Quality Improvement Programs" directed by Professor John Sterman. This research involves detailed field study with four partner organizations to ground computer models in intensive longitudinal study of quality improvement programs. Designing sustainable quality programs has proven to be difficult, and the evidence linking quality improvement to financial benefits is mixed. Even highly successful quality programs under certain conditions can lead to significant short-run deterioration in financial results and subsequent loss of commitment to the quality program.
Participants in the System Dynamics in Education Project continued writing Road Maps, a series of self-study guides that use modeling exercises and selected literature to teach the methods and principles of system dynamics. The initial nine chapters of Road Maps are now available free on the Web at http://sysdyn.mit.edu.
More information about this organization can be found on the Web at http://web.mit.edu/sdg/www/.
Nan S. Lux, John D. Sterman
ADMISSIONS OFFICE
This has been another highly successful year for Sloan Admissions. The new MBA Class of 2001 is made up of 356 students, including 49 Leaders for Manufacturing joint Sloan/Engineering candidates. Continuing the trend of the past several years, the class is an experienced one, having an average of 5 years of employment before matriculating. The average age is 28 years. Average GMAT score has risen to 695 (median is 700).
Sloan continues to be a diverse population on all dimensions. The incoming class is 38 percent international (47 countries are represented), 27 percent women, and 9 percent underrepresented minority students. Twenty-nine members of the first-year MBA class are from underrepresented minority groups. The Class of 2001 includes 17 African-Americans and 11 Hispanic-Americans; they joined 27 second-year minority students.
In addition, students have come from all over the United States with backgrounds in engineering, mathematics, economics, political science, history, languages, international studies, social science, business, publishing, law, computer hardware and software, communications and transportation. Many are already entrepreneurs who have founded their own businesses.
The number of applications fell slightly this cycle to 3,164, reflecting a leveling off of candidates for MBA programs in general and the effects of a continuing expansionist trend in a strong economy. Nonetheless, as business becomes more complex and reaches into sectors that were previously less business-oriented, such as health care, we continue to see a diversification of our applicants to include doctors, lawyers, architects and other professionals who find themselves in need of sophisticated management skills to complement their professional expertise. This year's applications came from all 7 continents, including Antarctica.
Plans for the coming year include building on the virtual community developed by the incoming students, our first class of applicants to apply exclusively on line, as well as continuing our traditional recruitment events and activities worldwide. The voluntary participation of current students and alums in these efforts gives evidence of the satisfaction with our program.
ALUMNI RELATIONS OFFICE
The mission of the Sloan Alumni Relations Office is to keep its 16,000+ alumni worldwide connected with each other and the School, and to foster goodwill toward Sloan. Specific challenges for FY99 were to expand visibility of the programs and services available; determine alumni perceptions regarding their Sloan education; and implement a new online alumni directory. The alumni relations staff remained at three, which is 30 percent the size of comparable departments at similar institutions.
In FY99, overall alumni activity and involvement was high. Highlights include nearly 100 alumni events held around the world, involving more than 2,000 alumni. More than 700 alumni volunteered to assist Sloan in recruiting, student mentoring and admissions. Nearly 200 alumni took advantage of the personalized career counseling services. Reunion ‘99 had more than 400 participants, a record high, including a 40th year reunion class. Two educational convocations were held this year hosting more than 120 alumni in New York City, and more than 500 alumni and guests in Cambridge.
A significant change was the launch of an online alumni directory. Since networking is critical to business school alumni, the online directory and other Web-based services are considered "mission-critical" for Sloan. Collaboration with MIT's Alumni Association and Alumni Network Services will continue to play a critical role to ensure the accuracy and integration with MIT databases.
Key focuses for FY99 will be to improve overall communications with alumni, execute meaningful community building events and enhance alumni-student relations. Challenges will be to strengthen the infrastructure supporting the alumni community via clubs and to enhance Web-based services, including the development of online programming, providing networking, continuing education and distance learning opportunities.
More information on the Alumni Relations Office can be found on the Web at http://mitsloan.mit.edu/alum.
Carmon Cunningham
CAREER DEVELOPMENT OFFICE
The Career Development Office provides a comprehensive career planning curriculum, hosts presentations by nearly 200 companies, and schedules interviews with more than 300 during the recruiting season. We solicit and receive more than 400 job postings and manage a Career Resource Center to assist students in obtaining the information and counseling they need to launch the career of their choice.
The Sloan School made a strong showing in the job market in this year, with 98 percent of the Class of 1999 successfully launching their careers upon graduation. Twenty-two students out of the class of 345 chose to join startups or are in the process of starting new companies. The number of students choosing careers in consulting is on the increase again, with a 2 percent gain over last year (39 percent vs. 37 percent), though still down from a high of 43 percent in 1996. Investment banking dropped 3 percentage points, from 21 percent to 18 percent. Sloan continues to be the leader in placing students in high tech. 24 percent of the class has chosen careers in computers/electronics, telecommunications, biotechnology or software/ecommerce.
The number of students choosing finance and operations as job functions declined, with finance decreasing 4 points from 31 percent to 27 percent and operations 3 points from 11 percent to 8 percent. Consulting as a function increased from 37 percent to 40 percent, and marketing increased from 12 percent to 14 percent.
For the year 1998—1999, the Career Development Office intensified its focus on career planning, in an effort to provide students with better tools and more guidance as they make their career decisions. We were able to nearly double the enrollment in our popular Career Core, by offering two sessions simultaneously during the month of September. We again drew heavily on independent career professionals in Boston and New York to supplement our workshop offerings. For the coming year, we have hired an Associate Director of Career Planning with an MBA and 15 years of international business management experience. He will teach the second session of the Career Core and offer workshops and individual counseling throughout the year.
Our recruiting operations continued to run smoothly this year, with our Web-based bidding and interview signup software firmly established. Students are able to access company information, the CDO contacts database (including prospects) and presentation schedules and signups from a single, password-protected web site. The number of companies recruiting on campus remained relatively flat, largely because of space constraints and the limited three-week window for fall recruiting. We have successfully implemented a relationship management structure, so that recruiting companies now have a single point of contact with our organization.
Our Career Resource Center is now an integral part of our career services offering, focusing on the increasing number of companies that hire through job postings rather than coming on campus to interview. Job postings are the preferred route for the increasingly popular high-growth, high-tech companies. They are more inclined to hire from industry than to participate in MBA campus recruiting programs. This puts a much greater burden on individual students, who have to proactively research firms, identify job opportunities, network with alumni and travel onsite for interviews. The Career Center is set up to assist students with the proactive job search, by providing job postings and tutorials on researching companies. The career planning staff offers workshops as well as individual counseling, and the Recruiting staff organizes just-in-time job fairs and interview schedules to accommodate this fast-moving segment of the market.
More information on the Career Development Office can be found on the Web at http://mitsloan.mit.edu/cdo/.
Ilse Evans
RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT
Highlights of the year include:
The School is now benefiting from the strong commitment and hard work by the Deans (past and present), faculty and staff. Sloan is now in an excellent position to raise $150 million during MIT's imminent $1.5 billion capital campaign. In fact, about $50 million or 33 percent of the School's capital campaign goal of $150 million will have been raised in cash and pledges during the nucleus fund period, July 1, 1997 through November 1, 1999.
The Sloan Development Team is well staffed and highly motivated to achieve even better results in the next five years by focusing on cultivating gifts of $1 million from the School's top individual prospects and by rapidly developing a comprehensive class reunion giving program.
FY'00, for the first time in many years, will witness gifts from alumni in the $5 to $25 million range. In addition, MIT's partnership with Merrill Lynch will provide at least $20 million over five years, almost half of which will directly benefit the Sloan School's education and research programs in financial technology.
At the beginning of FY'00 the Sloan Development Team formally merged with the Sloan Alumni Affairs office to become the Office of Alumni and Corporate Relations (OACR). The merger will undoubtedly lead to greater synergies and more coordinated outreach to the School's alumni and corporate constituencies.
Notable gifts and pledges include chairs, fellowships, and scholarships:
Programs also were supported:
EDUCATIONAL SERVICES
Educational Services manages the infrastructure upon which Sloan's academic mission is carried out. The Education Services Office team prepares the space (facilities work), arranges for the players (faculty and course scheduling, student registration, student advising, program support), and manages information flow (internal communications, interface with MIT Registrar, grades, evaluations).
The office team oversees all registration issues for approximately 1100 Sloan students; manages the Web-based course prioritization system used by more than 2,000 MIT students, which equitably resolves difficult supply and demand issues in a department with increasingly popular classes and already high enrollments; handles scheduling of the nearly 200 class sections and recitations offered each term; maintains Sloan facilities; and produces both online and paper resource material for the School (including the PhotoBook, Directory, biocards, and weekly News@Sloan.
The Educational Services team focused this year on better service through technology. New online waitlist and section swap procedures benefited more than 1,000 students who opted to use these services. CourseFest became high-tech as well, and is now a completely online video production, so that students can view this valuable information at any time. Continued upgrading of the bidding system through the new system rollout and the addition of a test server meant faster, better student use. Online curriculum management was a priority for the ESO team, with much effort being placed on supporting the Virtual Campus system. This system was the "home" for our first online biocards as well.
Facilities management also was a high priority. The restroom renovation was completed in time for the start of school. Better study facilities (including a Quiet Room) were identified, and an easier system developed to handle the hundreds of student/club room reservations. New lockers were installed for all students. Major initiatives over the spring and summer included the whole-scale renovation of E38 office space for the newly formed Office of Alumni and Corporate Relations. In addition, three suites in E52 were renovated, and the team orchestrated the late summer move of more than 60 staff people.
A major effort is underway in the area of internal communications. While some students expect advanced technological solutions to information flow, others respond best to the old-fashioned approach of a newspaper. The Educational Services Office team kicked off its efforts with a month-long series of focus groups to gather ideas from a very diverse population. This information will be used by our new Publications Coordinator as she overhauls our communications processes this year to better meet student needs. This year the Educational Services Office published a faculty calendar/handbook to provide guidance for faculty on navigating Sloan's systems.
Sloan enrollment remains high and Sloan classes have become increasingly popular with MIT students in all departments. The School is working on creative ways to meet demand, including more executive custom courses and more attention to other MIT departments. The Educational Services staff faces daily challenges to maintain high levels of service to all. Balancing resources, both classroom space and faculty teaching time, to accommodate the needs of all Sloan programs will continue to be a high priority. Through all of this, great attention has been paid to finding new and more appropriate means to measure student satisfaction.
Goals for 1999—2000 include renovating the Sloan Lobby; constructing a student communications area where job-hunters, as well as student teams working on class projects for outside companies, can use phones and fax; and working with the Registrar's Office on handling the complicated issues posed by the new MBA core (many exciting new ideas that don't currently fit MIT's scheduling/units/grades protocols). Online historical bidding data and online course evaluation data will help all students make far more informed bidding choices. In all areas, streamlining of services continues to be the focus. Our goal is to find new ways to provide even higher-quality service to a larger client base.
More information about this department can be found on the Web through the Students tab on the Sloan web site at http://mitsloan.mit.edu/.
Lucinda Hill
LEMELSON-MIT PROGRAM FOR INVENTION AND INNOVATION
The Lemelson-MIT Program is a nationwide educational initiative promoting invention and innovation through annual awards, an ongoing outreach campaign and MIT courses in the areas of product design/development and venture creation. Each year the program presents inspirational role models in science, engineering, technology and entrepreneurship through its $500,000 Lemelson-MIT Prize, $30,000 MIT Student Prize, High School Invention Apprenticeship and Lifetime Achievement Award. The program's goal is to encourage young people to pursue careers in these areas as well as to raise public awareness of the critical role inventor-innovators play in society. In 1999, the program set out to increase year-round visibility for its activities and spokespeople, expand reach, particularly among high school students, and collaborate with other science/technology outreach initiatives on activities.
The winners of the 1999 Lemelson-MIT Awards are microelectronics pioneer and California Institute of Technology professor Carver Mead (Prize); biomedical inventor and recent MIT HST/Mechanical Engineering graduate Daniel DiLorenzo (Student Prize); 16-year-old designer of a water-bike for the physically disabled Krysta Morlan (Invention Apprenticeship); and DuPont chemist and inventor of Kevlar(r) Stephanie Kwolek (Lifetime Achievement Award).
The Program garnered unparalleled success in generating year-round and meaningful coverage of its activities in 1999. Lemelson-MIT "Invention Ambassadors" were profiled in several feature-length articles, including Forbes (domestic and international editions), Fortune, Red Herring, Popular Science, and the New York Times; its "Invention Index" survey received attention from a variety of outlets, including the Wall Street Journal (domestic and international editions), Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, CNN and MSNBC.com. The program also conducted joint outreach programs with the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, the MIT Museum and the MIT Edgerton Center. In addition, the program expanded its reach to high school students through numerous in-school teaching guides based on program materials as well as through recruiting activities with organizations such as the Intel Science and Engineering Fair, National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering and National Science Teachers Association. In addition, the Program's "Invention Dimension" web site was featured in an array of online outlets, including Lycos' "Top 5% of the Web" Inc. Online, SmartComputing's "Best of the Web," and Nickelodeon's "Using the Web with Mr. Wizard."
Through funding to courses in the schools of Engineering and Sloan, the Program supported the student development of new prototypes in a team-based environment at both the undergraduate and graduate levels (2.009 Product Engineering Process and 2.739J Product Design and Development), and for Sloan's entrepreneurship internship program (15.399 Entrepreneurship Lab).
For more information on the Lemelson-MIT Program, please visit http://web.mit.edu/invent/.
Annemarie Amparo
SLOAN COMMUNICATION OFFICE
The Sloan Communication Office develops and implements innovative, multimedia approaches to market Sloan as a world-class business school. The four-person staff designs and executes a global media strategy, coordinates and manages Sloan's Web presence, provides communication support for the dean's office, publishes a magazine for alumni and other constituencies, and develops and produces Sloan's marketing collateral.
Communication activity at Sloan tripled in FY1999 and is expected to continue to grow in FY2000. The added load involves ongoing management and development of the Web, increased media coverage, regular publication of ROI magazine, increased support for the dean (especially with international visits to alumni and the media), support for the capital campaign and increased coordination with resource development, alumni relations and technology services.
The number of media queries worldwide coming into the office tripled in 1999 and the volume of coverage increased by more than 600 percent over the previous year. The dean's media tour and the relaunch of the Sloan web site contributed to this increase.
The number of news releases distributed by the office more than tripled in the past year, particularly with the publicity of an increasing number of student-run events. Growth of the Internet is also pushing up media relations demands. Nearly 25 percent of Sloan's media work (a percentage that's increasing) now involves working with Web-based media.
Dean Richard Schmalensee's testimony as an expert witness in the Microsoft antitrust trial generated nearly 200 mentions for Sloan and the dean's expertise in print and broadcast. They included Business Week, Wall Street Journal, Asian Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Seattle Times, The Los Angeles Times, AP, Reuters, Fortune, USA Today, CNN, CNBC and PBS Newshour.
The appointment of Richard Schmalensee as Sloan's seventh dean in November 1998 garnered much local, national and international coverage in the Boston Globe, The New York Times, Business Week Online, BBC Online, and Financial Times. FT quoted President George Bush as saying, "Dick was a valued member of my Council of Economic Advisers. MIT is lucky to have him."
By far the largest activity for the Communication Office in FY1999 was the relaunch of the Sloan web site. On February 4, before an overflow crowd of students, faculty, staff, alumni and recruiters in the Wong Auditorium, the new Sloan web site went live. Dean Schmalensee thanked more than 200 people from across MIT as well as alumni around the world who contributed to the Web project. The launch event also featured a panel on the future of business and the media on the Internet led by Roger Black, foremost designer of major media and web sites and author of Web Sites that Work.
The Sloan web site receives, on average, approximately 12,000 unique visitors each week and has had more than 4 million page hits since the Web launch. Approximately 2,000 different pages on the core Sloan site are hit each week. The site has received nominations for an Invision award from NewMedia magazine and for a MIMC award from the Massachusetts Interactive Media Council.
In FY 1999, the Office of Communication supported the development of an online alumni directory for Sloan. Although part of the increase in coordination with Sloan Technology Services was related to the search for a new IT director, such interdepartmental collaboration not just within Sloan but with the rest of MIT's information technology staff will continue given the increased role of the Web in Sloan's marketing strategy.
Ranking business schools is a lucrative and growing industry. As a result, more and more publications and other rating agencies are conducting surveys - more than double in the last year. Responding to the 20 or more major surveys requires coordination with various offices throughout the School. Financial Times added two major surveys this year. Business Week conducts two surveys that are now updated annually on the Web. US News and World Report is adding a second major survey on undergraduate management education. The US News and World Report survey alone required input from at least six program offices.
The overall goal for FY2000 is to continue to manage the increasing global coverage of Sloan and its activities and ensure that the school's key messages are well represented. With the dean's visibility and his visits worldwide along with the capital campaign, we expect media coverage to at least double again this coming year.
The office has four overall goals for Web work:
Our goal is to support communication with and engagement of alumni worldwide. Primary activity is through regular issues of ROI and coordination of communication with alumni relations office, and coordinating Web development of the alumni subsite. The plan calls for publishing a streamlined ROI three times a year. This is our main vehicle to communicate schoolwide initiatives along with the capital campaign. With the new directory capabilities, we will supplement ROI with email broadcasts to alumni who have registered online.
Mary Schaefer
SLOAN TECHNOLOGY SERVICES
Sloan Technology Services (STS) supports the computing needs of faculty, staff and students at the Sloan School. It is dedicated to the support of research, teaching and the best uses of information technology. STS undertook a number of initiatives during FY99.
Plans for FY00 include:
Alfred Essa
SLOAN MANAGEMENT REVIEW
Sloan Management Review (SMR) is a peer-reviewed journal that disseminates research form the top business schools, with the dual purpose of affecting management practice and publicizing the Sloan School. FY99 was a very successful year for SMR in terms of revenues, profits, circulation and citation levels.
The journal finished the year with revenues of $3 million and profits of $1.3 million, contributing over $600,000 to the School's operating expenses. SMR's paid circulation was about 25,000 readers and renewal rates exceeded 55 percent. Reprints and permissions sales were at all-time highs.
SMR's citation and impact ratings, measured by the Social Science Citation Index, were higher than ever. It ranked fourth in management journals. Until last year, when it ranked seventh, it had been ranked thirteenth or fourteenth. Only one managerially directed journal had a higher rating.
Seventy-three percent of the academically generated articles came from top-20 business schools; of those, two were from MIT faculty. Well-known authors include Sumantra Ghoshal, Christopher Bartlett, Henry Mintzberg, C.K. Prahalad, Kathleen Eisenhardt, Richard T. Pascale, Richard D'Aveni, Constantinos Markides, Arnoldo Hax, John Quelch and Toshihiro Nishiguchi.
We plan to continue to upgrade our electronic offerings and increase revenues from permissions, reprints and advertising. Revenues, profits and circulation numbers are projected to go up modestly in FY2000.
Jane Gebhart
MIT Reports to the President 1998-99