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Letters
Faculty Colleagues:
This letter responds to the Chair of the Faculty's "Partnerships and Faculty Governance" article in the November/December 1999 Newsletter and what I see as a disjunction in the President's Annual Report between the sections (as phrased on the Web) "Faculty extend role in student life" and "Industry ties increasingly crucial." Some of the following was originally penned for my contribution to the MIT Class of 1950 50th Reunion Book (but omitted later by me as too negative for that celebratory document). But the experiences which demanded that I "do something" reflect my participation during two IAP meetings, the first of the Mechanical Engineering Department, poorly attended though held in the splendid ambiance of the University Park Hotel, and then the oral examination of candidates for my discipline qualifying for the Departmental Ph.D. Despite pleas by the department head to the faculty, the examiners for my session (out of some dozen full-time faculty) were two emeriti and one adjunct professor, one loyal faculty colleague, and the junior faculty member who had organized the exam but is leaving MIT due to being "burned out."
The bottom line of my remarks are the overburdening of the faculty and the misapplication of MIT resources in the face of demands upon the faculty.
Let me start by reflecting on MIT as I have known it and on how it has changed in recent times. From my first faculty appointment in 1953 through my retirement in 1992, the progress of the individual undergraduate and graduate student could be the be-all and end-all of a faculty person's commitment and focus. One's research program relied on endlessly proposing to external funding sources, virtually all governmental – NSF, NIH, DOE, etc., and winning competitively. Once the federal funds were committed, if appropriate research results were published, one could go back to the well with new proposals with reasonable expectation for further funding. The work-force for the research was composed of graduate students (doctoral and master's candidates), assisted by undergraduates in the S.B. thesis and projects. If a project or thesis task proved more daunting for the student than anticipated, or the student somewhat slower, accommodations could be and were made by the faculty person. Over my academic career, I supervised uncounted pre-UROP and UROP undergraduate projects, 155 bachelors', 104 masters', and 52 doctors' theses. SB and SM graduates mainly went on to industry; for many of those completing doctoral degrees, academia was the goal – about half of my own Ph.D. students are faculty, a former chancellor at Texas A&M, a department head at Caltech, a dean at Penn State, two former heads and four current members of the MIT Mechanical Engineering Department, etc.
For me at least, those fulfilling, intense days have changed and not all for the better. Federal support of research is now significantly complemented by funding from industry. I know from limited experience with industry-funded research, that companies don't just give money and go away; they expect results and regular reports of progress from funded faculty and therefore from the students the funding supports (as well as from the much increased research staff), putting everyone under a lot of pressure to meet deadlines. What's worse, I read in The Wall Street Journal and hear elsewhere that faculty-student effort increasingly leads to forming new companies, sometimes even before the student gets the degree! Intellectual property issues of who owns what intrude upon traditional academic pursuits and secrecy replaces the prior open publishing practice. The pace gets faster and more complex, and scholarly interests are side-tracked. And too many individual faculty, as part of the contemporary society at large, look to their own interests rather than the common good, here that of their students (e.g., the Ph.D. exam). I appreciate that the university cannot be isolated and that it will reflect - and strive to lead - the greater world of industry and commerce. I am just glad that I retired when I did.
And as the Faculty Chair discusses in the article cited, exceptionally funded major alliances with industry and other universities are the order of the day, negotiated not by individual faculty (charged to implement them) and the sponsor, but by senior administrators.
Then there is the Report of the Task Force on Student Life and Learning, and the issue of "quality of student life." I can't agree more with the President's "...view that faculty do have certain collective responsibilities to our students beyond their formal duties in the laboratory and classroom." But achieving that "responsibility" mandates the opportunity for at least some faculty to live nearby. When MIT acquired the Simplex property decades ago (where University Park is now) Ken Wadleigh, then dean of students, and I served on a committee which proposed extensive faculty and student dormitory and fraternity housing along and behind Vassar Street. Shades of the new dorm! The development of Kendall Square, sans any housing, was another lost opportunity.
In the face of these new demands on the faculty, its size remains static, while the total staff burgeons. One small calibration: At a celebration of that marvelous renovation of Baker House, as resident in its first year ('49-'50 as the original "New" Dormitory), I was called upon to make a few remarks. I reminisced that Ev Baker, then dean of students, was supplemented with a freshman dean, and each had perhaps a secretary. Compare that with the current corps in the Office of the Dean of Students and Undergraduate Education!
And not only is the size of the faculty static in the face of new actual and proposed obligations, its funding also seems mired. At that ME Department meeting, in response to questions along the lines of this plaint, the department head noted that the ME budget from the administration is $8.2 million, of which only $200,000 could be considered discretionary - this against what I understand to be an on-campus budget of about $1 billion. Thus the department, with the second largest student enrollment, gets 8.2% of the on-campus MIT budget to run its shop. I ask the Newsletter to publish in its "M.I.T. Numbers" an abbreviated but interpretable MIT budget with allocations to departments, administration, offices, faculty, staff, etc.
I repeat my "bottom line" - over burdening of the faculty and misapplication of MIT resources in the face of demands upon the faculty - neither bodes well for the future.
In frustration,
Robert
W. Mann
To The Faculty Newsletter:
I am writing on behalf of the MIT Year 2000 Team to thank you for your support of our efforts. We are grateful for the opportunity you gave us to submit articles explaining the Institute's Y2K efforts. I also want to thank the faculty and the rest of the MIT community for their cooperation which resulted in the "boring New Year's weekend for which we all hoped" (to paraphrase President Vest). We salute you and, like the proverbial "old soldier," we will now fade away.
Sincerely,
Rocklyn
E. Clarke
for the MIT Year 2000 Team
To The Faculty Newsletter:
After being briefed on the installation schedule for the Libraries' many new photocopiers(1), and updated on the journal circulation policies of the Libraries(2), I believe that Professor Thomas is now sore no more. Indeed, it is clear that Professor Thomas might be downright happy about the Libraries, if only we could afford the journal "Nature" in full text online(3)!
The Libraries welcome faculty suggestions (http://libraries.mit.edu/services/suggested-purchase.html), comments, and questions (awolpert@mit.edu). Please do not hesitate to contact us.
1. Please see http://libraries.mit.edu/docs/copiersfaq.html
2. All the MIT Libraries allow bound journals to circulate, and (excepting only the Lewis Music Library) all the MIT Libraries allow unbound issues to circulate. Only the most recent issue will sometimes be reserved for in-library use in recognition of MIT's limited number of subscriptions and large community of readers.
3. We're working on it.
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