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In April1997, the MIT faculty approved "by unanimous voice vote" the view that
" …the ability to communicate clearly is fundamental; that students should receive instruction and feedback in writing and speaking during each undergraduate year; and that responsibility for teaching these abilities should be distributed across the entire MIT undergraduate curriculum."
Having affirmed the importance of communication, the faculty went on to direct the Committee on the Undergraduate Program (CUP)
"…to conduct a series of experiments and pilot programs to help in the design of the new Communication Requirement. These experiments should be evaluated by a subcommittee [which] should report back to the Faculty with its recommendation for a new Communication Requirement not later than the Spring of 2000."
Three years later at the March 2000 faculty meeting, the Final Report of the CUP Subcommittee on the Communications Requirement was presented – on schedule. After some intense negotiation, the proposal was approved by a strong majority voice at the April Faculty meeting.
While no one should minimize the challenging issues of implementation that remain on the table, the die is cast and the Rubicon crossed. After three years of negotiation, discussion, argument, exhortation, experimentation, evaluation, bargaining, and consensus-building, one can state as fact that yearly requirements for communication-intensive courses will be a part of the MIT undergraduate curriculum.
During the three years between the initial motion to conduct "a series of experiments" and the final faculty vote this April, I served with Professor Gene Brown as co-chair of the CUP Subcommittee on the Communication Requirement. As a member of the Department of Urban Studies and Planning, what I often described during the three-year process as a department "on the far edges of the MIT Empire," I found the experience a fascinating opportunity by which to come to know the heartland of MIT – the Schools of Science and Engineering – and to witness the parallels between my experience in the community planning process in urban neighborhoods with that of planning in the MIT community.
The following narrative is not a blow-by-blow account of each move made in our journey to the April 2000 faculty meeting. That exercise would represent a sufficiently long and Byzantine account to end the engagement of those of you who have managed to read this far. Rather think of the following as constituting, in Don Schon’s term, "reflections on the practice" of what Gene and I, our committee and a host of other members of the MIT "community" experienced during the past 36 months as we moved from the initial faculty resolution in the spring of l997 to the affirmative vote three years later.
When our committee began meeting in the fall of 1977, there was unanimous agreement that we faced a steep uphill battle. Several of us had participated in a day-long event in January of l997. At that time, a roomful of articulate people from both the academic and administrative sides of the Institute had reeled off a spool of reasons against a tentative proposal for a mandatory yearly communication course for all undergraduates. Hostility to the idea was the order of the day as professors from the Schools of Science and Engineering argued that MIT undergraduates had no time in their schedules for more requirements; that the demands of the professional fields were already overtaxing; and if MIT undergraduates were to learn how to communicate in writing, such lessons should be taught by the School of Humanities and Social Science. Representatives from HASS were not thrilled with the prospect of doing "remedial work" for the rest of the Institute and responded accordingly. Our committee and its exploratory, experimental charge was the outcome of that grim day in January when the voices of opposition to the idea of a communication requirement rang out with precision.
Searching for advice, we thought we might learn from the experience of past MIT committees that had addressed undergraduate education. Fortunately, there was a summary of such initiatives.
In December l994, the Ad Hoc Working Group to Review Past Reports on Undergraduate Life and Learning, chaired by then Professor now Chancellor Bacow, submitted its report. That Committee had been set up to "…review a number of past reports of committees charged with evaluating different aspects of undergraduate life at MIT." The committee concluded that while it was
"…impressed by the capacity of our colleagues to diagnose problems and prescribe reasoned solutions…all too often the process by which we move the Institute from status quo to reasoned solution has been ignored. Our review of past reports leads us to believe that the committee process frequently undervalues problems of implementation as well as the reality of resource constraints. Furthermore, committees sometimes fail to look beyond their own membership in determining whether broader support exists for their recommendations."
The Bacow Report’s advice to any new effort to change undergraduate life was to focus on "a consensus building effort not just another report to be defended."
MIT as Institutional Ecology
As we began the 1997 Fall Offensive, process and participation issues were at the center of our agenda. The complexity of the institutional ecology in which we were operating was outlined in CUP’s charge constituting the subcommittee:
"The CUP subcommittee is part of a complex network of individuals, committees, and academic units, each of which has responsibilities for moving along the Communication Requirement initiative."
In addition to the CUP itself that list included:
To this list one has to add the undergraduates themselves and the Chancellor.
The "process" of conducting and evaluating experiments was to be negotiated through and with the "participation" of the institutional players in the MIT organizational ecology, any one of whom, if not engaged and supportive, could jeopardize the outcome of the faculty meeting in the spring of 2000. We needed a majority of the voting individuals at that event. While the substantive elements of our experiment were multiple and in many cases yet to be discovered, the "process goal" of our exercise was straightforward: get a positive vote at the faculty meeting two-and-a-half years down the road.
With this overarching political
reality in mind, the Committee began to frame a strategy which, in
retrospect and reflection, had the following components.
In retrospect, our strategy seems to have been the right one for getting the kind of participation we needed for sufficient "buy in" at a full faculty meeting. Again, were this a case study, I would take you through the endless steps by which that strategy was advanced over the two-and-a-half year period. Again, don’t worry, I don’t intend to do so.
I do, however, want to mention several "but for…" factors without which the best-laid strategy in the world would have ground to a halt in the institutional maze that is the Institute. I think there are at least eight such elements.
Access to the Heartland
Access and a positive reception was critical to our grass roots strategy. As a long-time member and former head of the Biology Department as well as former dean of the School of Science, Gene Brown is a highly respected veteran of MIT’s Heartland. As we made the rounds of the various departments, it became obvious how often Gene had a "special relationship" with department heads or their key spokesperson. Gene got us in the door, got us the attention of those in power in the individual departments, and with his courtly and compelling manner got us their serious consideration.
"There is a tide …"
It became apparent as we made the rounds of the departments pitching our message about the need for communication – writing and speaking – that our message was not falling on deaf ears. Gradually it dawned on us that there was a "paradigm shift" in how scientists and engineers at MIT viewed the written and spoken word. Perhaps it was that graduates of the departments were letting their old professors know how important these concepts were given the new technology of dot/com and Power Point. Perhaps it was the fact that we were not asking departments to change radically the way they were doing business or telling them that we would impose requirements and standards from outside. We never quite figured out what caused the "supportive environment." But we certainly knew it was there. We were not fighting uphill against entrenched departmental opposition. Quite the contrary. People were interested, often enthusiastic and primarily concerned that they not be asked to deliver an unfunded mandate. Resources were the issue not the concept itself. Fortunately we could deliver on the resource issue when we asked for pilot efforts on their part.
The overall attitude among undergraduates, both those on our committee and others with whom we spoke at length, was supportive. Students expressed enthusiasm for efforts to improve writing and speaking skills as long as we were not increasing the number of required courses or dictating what courses had to be taken. What we thought might be viewed by the recipients as spinach – eat it, it's good for you – was seen rather as a necessary and desirable competence for the world of science and engineering beyond MIT.
Money Matter
It was the Committee’s job to encourage experiments. But experiments cost money in terms of teaching time and course assistance. We could not convince departments to undertake innovative activity if we were only advocating "unfunded mandates." The NSF-funded project to "develop an integrated communication-intensive curriculum at MIT" along with other grants, such as resources from the chancellor and the William R. Hewlett Presidential Leadership Fund, provided greatly needed support for the first two years.
Building Trust
Our exercise in process and participation was imposed on an existing set of organizational relationships, many with long histories of interaction. Unsurprisingly, these relationships were a mixture of positive and negative. History matters. We were fortunate to be able to take advantage of the positive ones and repair damage where it existed. While we were viewed with considerable distrust in some quarters at the start (and in a few places at the end) trust among the players built as we moved forward. Events and decisions seemed to reinforce trust-building rather than the opposite. Dean Williams, Susanne Flynn, head of CUP, Steve Lerman, chair of the faculty, and Win Markey, head of the Committee on the Writing Requirement, were all "team players" who worked hard to move the agenda forward. They undertook the "institutional game" with the greater good of MIT in mind rather than enhancing the power of their committee or role. Their "public-regarding" behavior made an enormous difference in the outcome.
The HASS Factor
The assumption always was that HASS would play a major role in providing communication-intensive courses, particularly for the freshman and sophomore years. But it was a tough balancing act to insure HASS’ involvement without its diverse departments feeling used by the rest of the Institute as simply "serving writing needs." The HASS Overview Committee did a masterful job of steering the "The Design of the HASS Component of the Communication Requirement" through the school’s shifting tides and cross winds. At the HASS helm was the School’s dean, Philip Khoury, who provided sustained and creative leadership and support throughout.
Super Pilots
It was clear from the beginning that early on we needed a few spectacularly successful "pilots." Among a large number of outstanding efforts, a couple are particularly worthy of mention. Professor Robert Jaffe in the Physics Department and Professor Paul Matsudaira in Biology took charge of projects that resulted in outstanding publications of student writing. The excitement and energy generated by both efforts had positive repercussions throughout their departments and beyond.
Support from Above
Larry Bacow was chair of the faculty when the motion was passed to undertake the Communication Intensive experiment. He had much to do with getting it on and through the faculty agenda. As soon as he became chancellor in the summer of 1998, it was clear the Committee had a champion at the top. The Chancellor remained one throughout the process in political, institutional, and financial terms.
Technical, Administrative and Staff Support
As our chief staff person, Les Perelman was a sign from the gods that they intended our experiment to succeed. We would not have made it without Les. His understanding of the institutional complexities of the MIT administration was that of organizational analyst. His capacity for work, for rolling out yet another memo, rivaled John Henry’s abilities with that hammer. His knowledge of the actual process of academic writing in a technical institute was invaluable. He had great political judgment and an extraordinary capacity to keep his ego out of the room. Les’ associate, Madeline Brown, was also a gift. Les counted on her as we counted on Les.
Jim Paradis, as head of the writing program, was the individual upon whom fell the day-to-day responsibility for providing the "writing support" to burgeoning experiments. It was his program and his "people" who had to carry the ever-expanding load of the experiments and the greater demands should we be successful. Jim bought into the experiment even when the going got rough and the issues of resource and organization were unclear. The legitimacy of our "department rounds" was underlined by the fact that Gene, Les, and I were joined by Jim. Jim’s enthusiastic support at the final faculty meeting was courageous and critical.
Retrospective
In 1963, my first serious job after college was as a community organizer in Boston’s South End. I was involved in trying to mobilize support from 16 neighborhood groups for an urban renewal project, part of Ed Logue’s New Boston. The planning process was to culminate in a hearing at which all residents in the South End could show up and voice their opinion of the plan before the Board of the Boston Redevelopment Authority. If there was not a majority of approval at the meeting, the plan would have to go back to the drawing board. Getting the positive vote meant planning one neighborhood association at a time. Process, engagement, dialogue, and compromise were all in play in inching towards that public hearing. Almost 40 years later, the lessons of the South End were useful in the three year effort to get approval for a communication intensive at a MIT faculty meeting. As Yogi Berra once said, it was really déjà vu all over again.
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