Objectives and Design

The SIMSMC educational objective is to engage undergraduate students in liberal arts colleges in studying the science and engineering of materials. These students will become acquainted with materials science and engineering through multidisciplinary courses their professors design that combine the study of materials with certain fields of science, social science, and humanities. The specific role of the Summer Institute is to enable faculty at liberal arts colleges to introduce materials science and engineering into their undergraduate curriculum in a manner that is intellectually consistent with the educational aims of their institutions.

The MIT Summer Institute in Materials Science and Material Culture is designed to join two fields, each of which is noted for uncommon breadth and diversity. One is archaeology, with its global culture-geographic scope and the time depth of its inquiry. The other is materials science and engineering, which seeks to identify and understand the principles and phenomena that underlie the behavior of all materials, including those materials properties that societies utilize in the production of their material inventory.

Together these two fields help provide an integrated educational experience for students as they explore the relations between people and their material world.