Quotations: About the new MIT-Microsoft Alliance "This partnership draws upon MIT's research expertise and our core strength of highly interactive teaching and learning. Education-focused research supported by Microsoft will lead to new learning environments for our students and will make us an even better university. Still more important, the MIT-Microsoft alliance will help create knowledge and information-based services that can improve higher education worldwide." -- Charles M. Vest, President, MIT Microsoft views education as one of the great frontiers where information-based services and advanced technology can help people improve their lives. Microsoft Research has collaborated with numerous institutions and research organizations through the years. And we are delighted to launch a new era of commitments and support with MIT. With MIT ' s world-class education and research tradition and Microsoft ' s commitment to user-oriented software platforms, the makings of a great alliance are in place." -- Rick Rashid, Vice President, Microsoft Research "The MIT-Microsoft partnership will allow us to work together to explore the expanding role of information technology in higher education. These activities will mesh exceedingly well with our strategies for the use of technology in education both on campus and at a distance." -- Robert A. Brown, Provost, MIT In our other industrial collaborations, we have learned that by working closely with an industrial partner we can accomplish more than we can on our own. By working with Microsoft to develop the next generation of teaching and learning tools, we hope to influence how our faculty and students teach and learn for generations to come." -- Lawrence Bacow, Chancellor, MIT "The partnership aspires to reinvent teaching and learning for the 21st century research university, leveraging all of the great inventions and innovations in computers and telecommunications that occured in the last half of the 20th century. MIT reinvented engineering education in the late 1950s based upon 'engineering science' -- largely in response to the Sputnik scare. Today, by collaborating with such an outstanding software company as Microsoft, we can reinvent again, this time using modern information technologies to enhance teaching, learning, and university administration." -- Thomas L. Magnanti, Institute Professor and Dean, MIT School of Engineering "As we head into the 21st century, ability to gather, sift through , assimilate, reason with, and create new information will constitute skills critical to survival and success. A solid education will no longer be an option, but a necessity. I am delighted that the MIT-Microsoft alliance will explore fundamental new ways in which technology can enhance the reach, quality, and cost-effectiveness of education. The possibilities for research are endless and exciting, and could result in systems that blur the boundary between live and on-demand learning, between same-place and geographically dispersed learners-mentors, and which explore novel pedagogies that enhance education for all." -- Anoop Gupta, Sr. Researcher, Microsoft Research Collaboration and Multimedia Systems Group "MIT has been a leader in educational computing for over thirty years. Experiments such as the Logo Project, begun in the 1960s, and Project Athena, begun in the 1980s, continue to exert influence worldwide. But unlike the individual experiments of the '60s and '80s, information technology today has pervasive impact throughout the educational enterprise. The prospect for leadership in Project I-Campus is to maintain a clear focus on fundamental objectives of excellence in university education. Partnering with Microsoft to engage this goal is a breathtaking opportunity." -- Hal Abelson, Class of 1922 Professor, MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science General Background on Education and Technology, University/Industry Partnerships "The information age is opening up new possibilities for all of us, for our children and for the entire nation. . . .Education in the digital age will offer tremendous promise. Learning will be far more student-centered. Teachers, parents, and students will work collaboratively and students will be prepared for a technology workplace with the opportunity to engage in life-long learning." -- Bill Gates, Chairman and CEO of Microsoft, speaking before the Joint Economic Committee's first National Summit on High Technology, June 15, 1999 "Beyond [public sector support], we must even more effectively couple university research to industry and business by building partnerships. . . . One of the most pervasive and widely accepted conclusions [of the Council on Competitiveness, a nonprofit group of industry, labor, and university leaders] is that the greatest opportunity to strengthen the U.S. system of innovation lies in an improved synergy among industry, universities, and the federal research apparatus." -- Charles M. Vest, "Stewards of the Future: The Evolving Roles of Academe, Industry and Government," President's annual report to the MIT community, September 1997. "The need for leaders to solve the complex problems of the modern world requires a new paradigm for the research university itself ­ one in which industry, academe, and governments work together in effective partnership." -- Charles M. Vest, "MIT: The Path to Our Future," President 's annual report to the MIT community, September 1998. ######### Microsoft is either a registered trademark or trademark of Microsoft Corp. in the United States and/or other countries. MIT and Massachusetts Institute of Technology are either registerd trademarks or trademarks of MIT. For more information, press only:contact Ken Campbell, MIT News Office, at (617) 253-2703 or Megan Kirkwood or Ben Spotts, Waggener Edstrom, at (503) 443-7000.