Vol. 1, No. 5, September 2004
Welcome to Engineering Our World, the MIT School of Engineering's free bulletin for alumni and friends. Updated six times yearly, Engineering Our World describes some of the work we're doing at the leading edge of technological change, providing news and articles of the School's major initiatives.Past Issues
Diversity: Critical to Our Educational Mission
by Dean Thomas L. Magnanti
"The progress in diversity made by MIT will help the entire nation because it will serve as a role model for other universities." – Donna Nelson, Associate Professor of Chemistry at the University of Oklahoma, visiting MIT on a grant from the Ford Foundation to disseminate the results of her surveys on faculty diversity in the 50 top U.S. academic institutions
Increasing diversity within the MIT School of Engineering, particularly among our faculty, has stood as one of the School's key goals in my nearly six years as Dean. At MIT, we welcome individuals representing all segments of our population – embracing ethnic, racial, and gender diversity, as well as individuals of any economic status, sexual orientation, and national origin. Diversity in our educational community is critical to achieving MIT's and the School's educational mission.
I am proud that we have historically been at the leading edge in recruiting and retaining people from groups that have traditionally been, and continue to be, underrepresented in engineering. We have made steady progress in increasing the numbers of our women and minority faculty members. Nineteen women have joined our faculty in the past three years alone, and now 50 of the 357 full-time faculty members in our eight departments and two divisions are women. [2006 figures *] Three minority faculty members are joining the School, bringing the total to 18 in our ranks who are African American or Puerto Rican. Despite this progress, we still have much to do to create and maintain a more diverse community at all levels, but especially among our graduate students and faculty.