"Civil and Environmental Engineering at MIT"
is published quarterly by the
Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
Bldg. 1-383, 77 Mass. Ave., Cambridge, MA 02139

Editor: Debbie Levey
(617)253-7101
levey@mit.edu

Letter from the Department head

It has been almost four months since my last newsletter column and the pace has been dizzying -- even more intense than my first six weeks of transition. I haven't unpacked my boxes from Texas
yet -- some of them labeled "important." Everything is relative.

Beyond the normal activities of an academic semester with decisions on teaching, budget, space, promotions, and filled with meetings with faculty, staff, students, and administrators, I have continued to systematically evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the Department, paying specific attention to the positioning of the Department within MIT and within other civil and environmental engineering programs in the world. Several faculty committees have been formed to look at various aspects of our academic undergraduate and graduate programs and provide feedback on their current and future viability, vibrancy, and organizational structure.

These fall evaluations provide the necessary background for our forthcoming spring strategic planning, whose outcome will significantly impact the future directions of the Department. Without going into details on our strategic planning, let me simply indicate that it will be an intense but relatively short process, starting and ending with a retreat, with many one-hour focused sessions sandwiched in between. You will undoubtedly hear about this in my future Newsletter columns.

One important event of these past four months was the meeting of the Department Visiting Committee on Nov. 14 and 15, 2002. Visiting committees have been a long and important tradition at MIT. They were established in 1875 to "visit and inspect the several departments of instruction and other divisions of MIT, and to report thereon from time to time to members of the Corporation." Since their inception, they have had strong influence on education and research at MIT.

Thirteen of the 17 members of the CEE Visiting Committee participated in a packed agenda for the Fall 2002 session. Activities included an opening session by Dean of Engineering Tom Magnanti, followed by a personal presentation on the state of the Department. The Committee then heard presentations on our different academic programs and on some of our research activities and initiatives. They also met with senior faculty, junior faculty, undergraduates, and graduate students. The meeting ended with two open-ended sessions addressing key questions on leading the Department forward: one dealing with context and vision issues, the other with implementation issues.

As I said before, this first year is critical for the Department, and the Visiting Committee meeting provided a key milestone. In addition to reporting on the state of the Department, the meeting provided a unique opportunity for sharing and discussing our vision of the future of Civil and Environmental Engineering at MIT and beyond. It also was an opportunity to discuss key fundamental questions about implementation issues in order to achieve this vision. By all accounts the meeting was a success. The Visiting Committee believes that the Department, having identified key operational challenges, will address these successfully. Most importantly the Committee recognizes that "a more significant challenge ­ in fact, opportunity ­ now presents itself: to rethink the disciplines that are at the core of the Department, to redefine the Department's strategic thrusts, and to reconsider the Department's relationship to other parts of the Institute."

The Committee is extremely optimistic about the Department's future and lists several factors leading to this optimism such as: "the work of the Department remains critically important to the world and to MIT. Significant issues face the built environment, the natural environment, and their relationship to each other. There is significant opportunity for MIT to demonstrate leadership in these areas"; "the Department has a distinguished faculty and a strong intellectual platform from which to build"; "the Committee saw examples of research of extraordinary quality"; "the Department has demonstrated, on several occasions, its ability to reinvent itself." I can't agree more with these quotes. We are at an exciting time and I look forward to your help and support in growing this Department into an indisputable leader at MIT and worldwide.

Let me end my column by noting other events which helped all of us maintain a fast tempo this fall: the Registration and Departmental Award Dinner on Sept. 26, 2002; the MEng First Alumni Dinner on Oct. 5; CEE Phonathon on Oct. 21; ASCE 150th anniversary in Washington on Nov. 3; cocktails at Parsons Lab to celebrate the authors of three new books on Nov. 7; CEE and Dept. of Architecture Joint Talk (Swiss structural engineer Jurg Conzett on Nov. 26 and Leslie Robertson, engineer of record of the World Trade Center on Dec. 3); CEE holiday party on Dec. 13 and Parsons Lab party at Endicott House on Dec. 14. You will find information on many of these events featured in the Comings and Goings column of this Newsletter.

We at CEE wish you the very best for a wonderful 2003.

Patrick Jaillet