Published by the MIT News Office at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass.
Published by the MIT News Office at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, Cambridge, Mass.
UROP FOUNDER Professor MacVicar Dies At 47 Professor Margaret L.A. MacVicar, an outstanding educator and scientist who founded MIT's famous Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP) and who became a nationally recognized leader in shaping policies both for undergraduate education and for science education in public schools, died Monday, Sept. 30, after a year-long battle with cancer. She was 47. A child of the Sputnik era, who witnessed and benefited from the effects of a national wave of education reform, Professor MacVicar carried that lesson forward into her career as she sought to enhance the educational experiences of young people through all their levels of schooling. She remained active until her death and was instrumental in formulating MIT's recently announced national initiative for primary and secondary science education programs. As MIT's first dean for undergraduate education, the position she held at her death, she headed the Institute's ongoing comprehensive review and restructuring of its undergraduate academic program. She told an interviewer that an MIT education ought to fit into the context of a student's life and to make students aware of their societal responsibilities. "It is not technicians that we seek to prepare, nor bench-tied engineers practicing narrow specialties and intent on deadlines and objectives devised elsewhere," she said. "Our purpose is to direct the best minds toward inquiries and enterprises concerned for the human condition." Among the changes she had guided through faculty deliberations was a declaration of diversity-in terms of the numbers of women, minorities and students with more varied interests and experiences-as an undergraduate admissions priority. She also was instrumental in the adoption of a deeper, more discipline-centered humanities requirement; a revision of the science distribution requirement; a requirement for the study of modern biology; and a refinement of the pass/no credit grading system for freshmen. Dr. Paul E. Gray, chairman of the MIT Corporation and former MIT president, said of his long-time colleague: "Margaret MacVicar was an extraordinary innovator, leader and educator. She possessed a remarkable combination of ability, insight, judgment and energy which is rare in any generation and which made her a singular teacher of institutions as well as individuals. The greater community of learners-of teachers and students at all levels-is diminished by her death." Dr. Charles M. Vest, MIT president, said: "Margaret MacVicar was one of those rare individuals whose thoughts and actions transformed a great institution and influenced thousands of young men and women. Her development of UROP brought a potent combination of teaching and research to the education of MIT undergraduates. She engaged her profession and her life with an intensity and a courage that have inspired and touched us all." Dr. Mark S. Wrighton, the MIT provost, described Professor MacVicar "as an outstanding academic leader for MIT and the nation. Her life included many accomplishments of value to our community, from academic computing initiatives to ushering in molecular biology as a new Institute requirement for all undergraduates. All that she did she undertook with energy and intense dedication, including her battle with cancer. I am deeply saddened by the loss of our colleague, and her passing will leave a void in academic leadership." While at MIT, Professor MacVicar served as vice president of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, a national research organization, for four years. Dr. James D. Ebert, former president of Carnegie Institution and now director of the Chesapeake Bay Institute of John Hopkins University, said: "Never in my half century in science have I worked with anyone whose goals, values and style I respected and admired more than Margaret's, whether it be in the arena of science and the promotion of human welfare, in primary and secondary education, or at Carnegie. . . One of Margaret's special undertakings was the co-location of research in our two departments in the earth sciences, an endeavor that called not only for a unique vision of the future of those fields but also for the rare ability to pursuade others of that vision." As a 26-year-old junior faculty member, Professor MacVicar contributed to one of the most substantive academic innovations in MIT history when she established the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program in 1969. Acting on a suggestion from the famed inventor of instant photography, Dr. Edwin H. Land, then a visiting Institute Professor at MIT, and with encouragement from senior faculty and administrators, Professor MacVicar launched UROP, which links undergraduate students in collaborative research projects with faculty members in every school and department at the Institute. The program, endowed initially with a $50,000 grant from Dr. Land and directed since its inception by Professor MacVicar, has become an indispensable part of MIT's academic culture. It began with about 25 students and now has about 3,000 students, or three-quarters of MIT's undergraduates, participating each year. Before UROP, hands-on research experience was not a regular part of the undergraduate experience at MIT or elsewhere. The program is now much imitated worldwide, has been cited for national excellence by the US Secretary of Education, and is a model embraced by the National Science Foundation and private foundations. When the Charles A. Dana Foundation awarded Dr. MacVicar its 1986 Commendation in Higher Education Award for designing and implementing the UROP program, Foundation Chairman David Mahoney said, "I can scarcely imagine a development with greater promise for the quality of undergraduate higher education in this country." Professor MacVicar's dual interests as scientist and educator were reflected in her faculty appointments. She was a professor of physical science and she also held an endowed chair as Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Education. As a scientist, Professor MacVicar worked both in physics, her undergraduate major, and materials science, in which she trained as a graduate student. Her principal research interest was in electronic materials, especially high-temperature metal and ceramic superconductors. She and her research group pursued both fundamental and applications-oriented studies, using single crystal and thin-film formats. In recent years, the group pioneered a technique for detecting and investigating corrosion kinetics utilizing superconducting magnetometry. This new method for detecting and measuring electrochemical activity is seen as a way of saving some of the billions of dollars spent each year combatting the effects of corrosion. Industrial collaboration was begun to design a prototype instrument to optimize the technique for future investigation of practical materials. Additionally, a new electrochemical approach to fabricating ceramic superconductor precursors was developed, using thick coatings on three- dimensional geometries. Patents were received in both of these areas. In recognition of her accomplishments in both science and education, Professor MacVicar in 1983 was appointed vice president of the Carnegie Institution. She remained with the Carnegie Institution on a part-time basis until 1987, developing research and education policies in the earth and astronomical sciences and designing a long-range plan for the institution's activities. She also served on national panels, including the National Center on Education and the Economy's Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce. When the commission issued its report in 1990, Professor MacVicar commented that the current emphasis on improving average skills and competency levels would prove to be "a castle-in-the-clouds strategy if the workplace is not also changed to make use of those skills. We must have a workplace that pays well and values people and has prestige for all levels of jobs." Professor MacVicar spoke out on a range of issues. Her responsibilities as dean included oversight of MIT's Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) program and she issued a statement in April 1990 critical of a Department of Defense policy barring homosexuals from ROTC programs. She said such policies "run counter to the values of inclusion and equality which are at the foundation of this institution" and therefore were "deeply troubling." The MIT faculty has since voted to have the MIT administration develop and undertake a program of action "by MIT individually and in collaboration with other schools to work for reversal of the DOD policy." Margaret MacVicar was born in Canada on November 20, 1943 and moved with her family when she was three to Flint, Mich., where she was raised. She was in a seventh grade classroom in Flint in October 1957 when the Soviet Union sent the first satellite into space, triggering an almost instant reappraisal of American science education. "Within a month," Professor MacVicar told an interviewer last year, "most of the best students were in a special science class with good teaching and some attempt at innovation. We were riding a national wave of major efforts at curriculum reform." By the time she was a high school junior, she was taking science courses at a local junior college, achieving many honors and worrying about the cost of college. Then she met an individual she called her "fairy-tale man," a retired senior executive with General Motors well-known for his philanthropic endeavors in Flint, a city with a strong GM presence. Professor MacVicar said he offered to pay the difference between what she had and what she needed to attend MIT, which she entered in the fall of 1961. Reluctant to lean too heavily on her benefactor, she applied for and received scholarship aid from the Institute, held both long-term and summer jobs, and took an overload of courses in order to graduate early. It was a pace she was to emulate throughout her career. She received a bachelor of science degree in physics in 1964 and a doctor of science degree in metallurgy and materials science in 1967. From then until 1969 she was a postdoctoral fellow in the Royal Society Mond section of Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge, England. She returned to Cambridge, Mass., to join the MIT Department of Physics as a faculty member in 1969, almost immediately becoming involved in educational matters in addition to her teaching and research. "There were educational and social issues I wanted to work on, and MIT wasn't a bad place to work on them," she recalled. In fact, she found herself at a crossroads where educational corners were being turned and she became involved in several innovative ventures such as an Experimental Study Group that continues to exist today as a small academic community offering an individualized program in core subjects for freshmen and sophomores. It was soon after that she established UROP. Professor MacVicar was known for her teaching ability and, in 1973, she was the first recipient of the Class of 1922 Career Development Award, endowed by class alumni to support young faculty members of exceptional promise and unusual devotion to teaching. In 1977, she received the Irwin Sizer Award for the most significant contribution to education at MIT. In 1979, she held the Chancellor's Distinguished Chair at the University of California, Berkeley, in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering. She has provided leadership for a number of groups in recent years. She was cochair of Phase I of "Project 2061," a study by the American Association for the Advancement of Science's National Council on Science and Technology, and chair of the National Science Foundation's new Advisory Committee on Education and Human Resources. In past years, Professor MacVicar served as a trustee of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Technology and a member of the Carnegie Council on Policy Studies in Higher Education. Professor MacVicar's many awards included an honorary Doctor of Science degree from Clarkson University in 1985. She was Orator at the 1984 Literary Exercises of Phi Beta Kappa at Harvard University; Cecil and Ida Green Distinguished Lecturer at the University of Texas in 1979; and Vollmer W. Fries Lecturer at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1976. She was a member of the Corporations of the Charles S. Draper Laboratory and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, a trustee of Radcliffe College and of the Boston Museum of Science, and a director of Exxon Corporation, the Harvard Cooperative Society and H. W. Brady Co. She was a fellow of the American Physical Society. Professor MacVicar maintained a residence in Cambridge and was a longtime resident of Lebanon, Me. She is survived by her parents, George and Elizabeth MacVicar of DeBary, Fla., and two sisters, Anne Amato of Brookline, N.H., and Victoria MacVicar of Pepperell, Mass. Arrangements are being made for a small funeral service this weekend. There will be a memorial service at MIT later in the month. Contributions may be sent to UROP at MIT, Cambridge, Mass. 02139, the Dana Farber Cancer Institute at 44 Binney Street, Boston, Mass., 02115, or the American Cancer Society's Hope Lodge at 636 West Lexington Street, Baltimore, Md., 21201.