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Since you've been gone . . .

Janet Snover

Here are some administrative news items that were announced over the summer (and where you can read more about them):

 

Provost Robert A. Brown announced that Professor Alice P. Gast has been appointed MIT's new Vice President for Research, Associate Provost, and the Robert T. Haslam Professor of Chemical Engineering. Formerly the Associate Chair of the Chemical Engineering department at Stanford, Dr. Gast is an expert on complex fluids and colloids.

In her new role, Dr. Gast will coordinate policy regarding research and graduate education and oversee MIT's large inter-School laboratories. She will work with the Provost in coordinating these areas through the budget process and through the planning, assignment, and utilization of space. She also will report to Chancellor Phillip L. Clay on matters of graduate education policy. (Tech Talk 7/18/01)

 

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Dr. Vest and the presidents of 27 other leading colleges and universities produced a set of guidelines that are geared toward reducing institutional variances in student financial aid reviews. The principles are consistent with MIT's long-standing commitment to need-based financial aid and need-blind admissions.

The guidelines, entitled "A Consensus Approach to Need Analysis," are intended to make it easier for families to identify the best match for their college-bound students based on an institution's educational programs, rather than on the financial aid package it offers. The group was chaired by Cornell University President Hunter B. Rawlings III, and some of the other participating schools include Yale, Stanford, the University of Chicago, Wellesley College, Columbia, and the University of Pennsylvania. (Tech Talk 7/18/01)

 

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The start-up/pilot phase of MIT's OpenCourseWare initiative will receive grants of $5.5 million from both the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. OpenCourseWare, which was announced in April, will make nearly all of the Institute's course materials available for free on the World Wide Web over the next 10 years. (Tech Talk 4/11/01 and 7/18/01)

 

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On July 1, the Educational Media Creation Center, MIT Video Productions, and Streaming Media and Compression Services merged into a new organization called Academic Media Production Services, or AMPS. Reporting to Assistant Provost Vijay Kumar, AMPS will serve as a "one-stop shop" to bring instructional and Web design, video production, and digitization and compression into one central organization. An advisory group of faculty and administrators will provide strategic guidance to AMPS. (Tech Talk 7/18/01)

 

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Effective July 1, further adjustments have been made to many telephone and network monthly rates and one-time fees. Some charges increased and some decreased; rates for some services were combined into a single rate; and quantity discount plans were eliminated. Further rate changes are not anticipated for the next two years. For detailed information on all telephone and networking rates, please go to http://mit.edu/is/tel/pricing.html.

 

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For this academic year, the fee for a regular commuter parking pass increased to $420 from $390 last year. This increase keeps the parking subsidy rate comparable to the MBTA Pass program subsidy rate.

 

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The new Web Barton MIT Libraries catalog, Ex Libris Aleph 500, was launched on July 9, and implementation is proceeding well. Information on using the new system is available at all Library locations and on the Libraries' Website http://libraries.mit.edu/. Scheduled for a January 2002 release is a text-only Web browser that will make Barton accessible through telnet via Lynx.

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