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On June 30, 2000, Rosalind Williams will be stepping down as Dean of Students and Undergraduate Education. The following reflection was written at the request of the Faculty Newsletter.
In one of my favorite scenes in L.A.Story, Steve Martin shows his English girlfriend around some Los Angeles neighborhoods, bragging, "Some of the houses here are over thirty years old!" Because our national history is so short and our pace of change so rapid, we Americans suffer from historical conceit – a tendency to inflate the significance of short intervals.
So I feel some hesitation in reflecting back on my five (!) years of service as Dean of Students and Undergraduate Education. Most of us would agree, however, that these have been five particularly eventful years in student life and learning at MIT: reengineering of student services, the consolidation of the dean's office, the Task Force on Student Life and Learning, the campaign, the communication requirement, large-scale investment in educational technology, and above all the transformation of residential life (alcohol citation policy, graduate residents in FSILGs [Fraternities, Sororities, and Independent Living Groups], freshmen on campus, plans for a new undergraduate residence, revamped rush and orientation).
Did these events just happen, or were they destined in some way? Are they connected? We can easily feel buffeted by the waves of change, but I would like to focus here on the deeper tides flowing at MIT. One such current is moving MIT towards a new definition of itself as a university. A second is moving MIT toward a new social contract as a learning community.
It should be no surprise that MIT is redefining itself. Every university in the country is undergoing an identity crisis. The advent of information technology, it is often said, challenges the raison d'etre of the residential university. Why go to the expense of gathering people in one place at one time when information can be transported more easily and cheaply? Such arguments are flawed by a careless technological determinism (new IT inevitably produces new social organizations). They also confuse education with information dissemination. Education is a comprehensive process of human development; different forms are appropriate for different stages of life. For young adults who are ready to move away from their parents, but not ready to form families of their own, the intense social interactions of campus life are as essential to educational development as the classroom interactions. At an older stage of life, scholars continue to enjoy daily social interactions with other scholars who may not share their disciplinary specialty, but who do share a love of learning and commitment to teaching.
MIT is redefining itself as a university, not so much because IT compels it to do so, but because we are a "university polarized around science, engineering, and the arts," in President Killian's famous formulation. As the phrase has been handed down through the decades, "the arts" has tended to drop out -and in the more recent past, the meanings of "science" and especially of "engineering" have been mutating. In a talk this past fall, former provost John Deutch told MIT's Technology and Culture Forum that the distinction between science and engineering is rapidly disappearing. "Today we are faced not with disciplines but with situations….The world is dominated by applications, not by technology generation."
In confronting any "situation," an individual needs to apply a mix of science, technology, and management skills. Our students understand this: a recent survey of 1991-99 EECS graduates showed that 30% aspire to be an "entrepreneur" while only 21% aspire to be a "technical leader." This is the deeper current that has motivated curricular innovations such as the communication requirement, as well as many recent initiatives in team-based and project-based learning. It also underlies some of the changes in residential life. If technical skills alone are increasingly inadequate for dealing with "situations," we owe our students a living environment as well as a classroom environment that will develop a full range of their abilities.
This realization has contributed to the second current of change - the rewriting of the social contract at MIT, or rather the first steps in rewriting it. In the mid-nineteenth century, also a time of rapid and confusing change, Matthew Arnold wrote poignantly of his sense of "Wandering between two worlds, one dead,/ The other powerless to be born…." The old world of MIT student life was overwhelmingly masculine, defiant and even resentful of the Institute, and jealously protective of choice outside the classroom (in large part, I am convinced, because choice within the academic realm was and is so constrained). The Institute, in turn, kept its distance from campus life, and for better or for worse students often took things into their own hands. For example, when I became dean, the office budget for freshman orientation was under $50,000, while the collective fraternity rush budget was in the high six digits.
The social contract had some real strengths, and for a long time it was stable. In the last five years, however, destabilization has become evident and irreversible. A low institutional rent structure has put severe financial pressures on the FSILGs. A dramatically higher percentage of women in the undergraduate student body caused multiple changes in residential organization and campus culture. Beyond MIT, there is a much higher level of expectation on the part of formal regulatory agencies (such as the Cambridge Fire Department or the Boston Licensing Board) as well as more informal sources (Back Bay neighbors, parents). But it is not fair to blame outside forces alone for higher expectations. They also come from within MIT. If education is (in the words of the Lewis Report) "preparation for life," then MIT has to prepare students for a world where community rights and individual rights must be balanced. If our students are to work successfully as scientists and engineers, they need to understand that in society as well as in nature, actions have consequences.
A compelling example is provided by the little publicized but important investigation undertaken by MIT in response to the death of Scott Krueger in September 1997. Following the September 1998 release of the report of the Suffolk County District Attorney, MIT initiated its own disciplinary investigation, as we had always said we would do once criminal proceedings were over. As a result, the dean's office brought disciplinary charges against individual students, which were heard by the Committee on Discipline (COD). In addition, the dean's office brought charges against the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity as a whole, which were heard by a dean's office hearing panel. The fact that the chapter voluntarily dissolved itself just before the grand jury reported was irrelevant: MIT still had a responsibility to investigate and if necessary to discipline the chapter.
While disciplinary action involving individual students is usually confidential, one student whose case was heard by the COD has revealed (in the process of suing MIT) that his diploma was revoked for a period of five years. What has not been publicized, but can be revealed because individual students are not involved, is the outcome of the dean's panel hearing of the charges against the fraternity. After deliberating the case, the panel decided that the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity should never again be allowed to have a chapter at MIT. The severity and finality of this decision indicate the emergence of a new social contract at MIT, where individual and collective accountability is valued along with individual and collective liberty.
To bring a new world of student life into being, MIT must continue to bolster support for residential and campus activities and to stabilize our still-too-vulnerable housing system. We are asking all residences – the dorms as much as FSILGs - to consider the campus-wide effects of their actions as well as the effects on the individual living unit. While I deeply believe that overall campus life will improve with a less Balkanized housing system, to the extent that this is still a belief rather than a reality - a world still struggling to be born – many students still feel keenly the loss of the old world and have their doubts about a new one. But at the Millennium Ball this January, we glimpsed the new world in the vision of a student center vibrant with music, art, sociability, and joy. Since then, it has seemed a long, cold spring, with evidence of frustration, lack of communication, and, worst of all, two student deaths. I hope that at the time of Commencement, we will gather at Killian Court to glimpse again the revitalized MIT community still struggling to emerge.
Another eminent Victorian, John Stuart Mill, asserted that he would rather be Socrates dissatisfied than a pig satisfied. MIT is full of dissatisfied people (even if we are not all as wise as Socrates) and this is generally to our credit. I myself am not satisfied with change. I want progress: positive change. MIT is a terrific place in many ways, but we could do better in giving our students a more integrated, more motivating educational experience.
In accomplishing this, the dean's office has a special role, for two reasons. First, it has the responsibility of connecting the residential and campus lives of our students, both graduate and undergraduate, with their research and academic lives. Second, the dean's office has the responsibility of taking a broad, comprehensive view of undergraduate education. Any model for significant, sustainable progress in MIT undergraduate education requires leveraging common resources and exploring boundary opportunities. The dean's office will inevitably play a leadership role in MIT education because the really exciting possibilities here involve the intersection of campus and academic life, the boundary opportunities, or both.
We may soon speak of "the deans offices" – one under the Dean for Undergraduate Education, one under the Dean for Student Life. I have no doubt that the two will work together closely. If there has been progress in MIT education in the past five years, it is above all in MIT's collective articulation of the principle that student life and learning are inseparable and interdependent. The two-dean structure will help us explore the implications of this fundamental advance in our educational philosophy. The next five years may not be as dramatic as the last five: frankly, I hope they're not. I do hope that in quieter ways, we will continue to integrate student life and learning, so that at the end of the decade we can look back and see real progress.
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