Massachusetts Institute of Technology

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is an independent, coeducational university centered on science and technology, located along the Charles River in the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts directly across from Boston and downstream from Harvard University. MIT is one of the premier research universities in the world. The school has a very good academic environment for learning. MIT excels in science and technology, but is also strong in philosophy and a few of the social sciences such as economics, linguistics, and anthropology. Its best-known computer-related labs are Artificial Intelligence and Computer Science (soon to be merged), as well as the Media Lab. The MIT student body comprises roughly 4000 undergraduates and 6000 graduate students.

MIT culture

MIT culture is characterized by a love-hate relationship. The informal motto of the school is IHTFP (http://www.mit.edu:8001/people/mjbauer/ihtfp) ("I hate this fucking place", although some also render it as "I have truly found paradise"). The antipathy felt in some quarters for the Institute as a whole is in contrast with the strong affection students feel for various parts of the school and the fierce loyalty paid to the school after graduation. The school has a powerful anti-authoritarian ethos in which it is believed that one's social status should be determined by raw intellectual prowess (with a strong bias for scientific prowess over mastery of the liberal arts) rather than by social class or organizational position. Other beliefs that are strongly held by people within the school are that information should be widely disseminated and not held secret, and that truth is a matter of empirical reality rather than the result of popular belief or management directive. Many of the values of the Institute have influenced the hacker ethic.

In fact, the term "hacker" and much of hacker culture originated at MIT, starting with the TMRC and MIT AI Lab[?] in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Resident hackers have included Richard Stallman and professors Gerald Jay Sussman and Tom Knight[?]. At MIT, however, the term "hack" also means an elaborate practical joke (see the MIT Hack Gallery (http://hacks.mit.edu)).

There is a distinct difference in culture between the dormitories on the east side of campus, where people tend to be more "hippie-ish" and the dormitories on the west side of campus, where people tend to be more "preppie[?]-ish." Random Hall, living up to its name, is on the north side of campus, and Bexley House, in ironic juxtaposition to its "far-out" culture, is located centrally. Within each housing unit, there are often distinctive subcultures on each floor or entry.

The domitories tend to be extremely close-knit, and the institute provides live-in graduate student tutors and faculty housemasters who have the dual role of both helping students and monitoring them for medical or health problems. A 2001 Boston Globe study reported that MIT had the highest suicide rate in the 1990s out of 12 major universities of similar caliber, although Institute officials contend that the study was statistically flawed. Suicide rates continue to be a controversial issue that has influenced recent MIT policy, including a mandate of at least one holiday per month and renewed attention to mental health services (at McLean Hospital and elsewhere).

A great many MIT students live in fraternities and independent living groups; however, after an alcohol-related death in the late 1990s, MIT decided that all freshmen must live in Institute housing.

Activities and groups MIT is also known for its hacks[?]. In this context, a hack is a practical joke, not just a clever technical feat -- the best hacks are humorous technical feats. The most famous hacks have been the balloon at the Harvard / Yale Football Game and The Great Dome Police Car Hack.

Other uniquely MIT traditions and groups include Shower night[?], IAP (including the IAP Treasure Hunt[?]), the live-action role playing[?] group Assassins' Guild[?], and course 6.270[?], the autonomous robot competition.

The number of students who play musical instruments, particularly piano and violin, is quite large for an institution that does not specialize in the arts. A number of a capella singing groups composed of MIT students regularly give free concerts on campus. Among these are the Chorallaries[?], the Logarhythms[?], the Cross Products[?], the Muses, Techiya[?], the Toons[?] (which also includes some Wellesley women), and Res(((o)))nance. There are also the MIT Gilbert & Sullivan Players[?] and the MIT Musical Theatre Guild[?].

Undergraduate academics

There is a large amount of pressure in the classes, which have been characterized as "drinking from a firehose" or as "academic bootcamp". Although the perceived pressure is high, the failure rate both from classes and the institute as a whole is low. There is a refreshing lack of so-called "weed out" classes. The anti-authoritarian nature of the school -- combined with its emphasis on technical excellence and information sharing -- results in a situation where faculty, upperclassmen, and fellow students are remarkably helpful even to newly arrived freshmen. This culture of helpfulness offsets the academic stress to a certain degree.

Most of the science and engineering classes follow a standard pattern. Typically, a professor gives a lecture that explains a concept. Then teaching assistants lead recitations to explain how to apply a concept to a specific problem. Weekly problem sets are designed to enable the student to master the concept. Students often gather in informal groups to solve the problem sets, and it is within these groups that much of the actual learning takes place. One important element study technique is the use of "bibles," which are compilations of problem set questions and answers created over the years by the students and handed down from generation to generation.

The problem set usually makes up a very small fraction of the grade. Most of the evaluation consists of performance on tests, which are typically grueling problems that measure the students' ability to apply what was learned in class to something not covered in class. Problem sets and tests are always free response, hand graded, with much partial credit given to people who almost get the answer right. This is highly labor intensive, but the lack of machine grading and multiple-choice stems from the belief that understanding the concept is almost as important as getting the right answer.

This mode of instruction has been criticized for not encouraging creativity and collaboration. Partly in response to such criticism, the Institute has a number of project-based courses such as the world-famous 2.70 design contest, in which students compete with each other to design a machine that achieves a specific goal. Also, an important part of the undergraduate education is the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP), in which undergraduates are encouraged to perform real research under a structure similar to a mentorship program. The academic pressure results in a lively extra-curricular environment on Fridays and the weekends.

MIT and other institutions MIT has close ties to a number of institutions. Lincoln Labs[?] and Draper Labs[?] draw from MIT and do military and other research. The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution runs its graduate program jointly with MIT.

MIT maintains a strong rivalry with Harvard and other Ivy League schools. Not surprisingly, the rivalry is one-sided. MIT students tend to regard Harvard students as pretententious, arrogant and more interested in social position than in acquiring knowledge. Harvard students tend to regard MIT students not at all; but when pressed, they see their would-be rivals as socially maladjusted geeks. The truth lies somewhere between these two extremes -- Harvard students do tend to be social climbers and MIT students are mostly interested in building things. The fact that these two opposing energies exist within a few miles along Massachusetts Avenue makes Cambridge one of the most interesting places to live in the United States.

MIT has great affinity and close ties with Britain's University of Southampton.

MIT also maintains an exchange program with Cambridge University in England known as the Cambridge-MIT Institute[?].

Architecture MIT buildings all have a number and a name. Typically, academic and office buildings are referred to only by number while residential halls are referred to by name.

Although Killian Court (the large courtyard that is always pictured in MIT publicity shots) is beautiful, most of the campus contains a jumble of buildings with different architectural styles and all the charm and elegance of a typical run-down industrial park. A few other buildings are of impressive quality and architectural significance, including Baker House (the dormitory designed by Alvar Aalto) and the Weisner building[?] (E15), designed by I. M. Pei with a striking tiled exterior by Kenneth Nolan[?] (scorned by some as the "Pei Toilet").

The one very large beautiful building, nominally several buildings identified only by numbers, which surrounds Killian Court and is the oldest part of the campus (completed in 1916), was successfully designed to admit large amounts of light through (1) exceptionally large windows on the first and second floors, (2) many internal windows, not only on office doors but above door-level, and (3) skylights over huge stairwells. The interior decor of that old building is stylistically consistent throughout. Its major architectural features are the Infinite Corridor, an impressive central dome, and the expansive domed lobby at the Mass. Ave. entrance.

A major building effort is, as of 2002, underway, including the Stata Center designed by Frank Gehry, the Simmons Hall[?] dormitory designed by Steven Holl[?], the Media Lab[?] extension designed by Fumihiko Maki[?], a new gym, and various other complexes.

The buildings built from the 1950s through 1970s have less charm, but at least one contributor to this article finds the "parking garage" description absurd, causing one to wonder if it was written by an alumnus whose impressions are colored by memories of the very onerous nature of the work students do at MIT. All students agree that when it rains or snows, the maze of underground tunnels is a welcomed feature that enables students to get from class to class without getting cold or wet.

The bridge closest to MIT is the Harvard Bridge. It is the longest bridge crossing the Charles River. The bridge is marked off in the fanciful unit called the Smoot: 364.4 Smoots and One Ear.

In contrast to the centrally located subway stop outside Harvard University, the Kendall stop is located at an extremely inconvenient place on one side of the MIT campus. The #1 bus is more centrally located and runs along Massachusetts Avenue to Boston to the south and Harvard Square to the north.

History

MIT was founded in 1861 by William Barton Rogers[?], whose last words were given at an MIT commencement and were bituminous coal. Around 1900, a merger was proposed with Harvard University, but was cancelled after loud protests from the alumni. MIT's prominence increased as a result of World War II (radar, most prominently) and the United States government's investment in science and technology in response to Sputnik. In the 1960s, anti-war protests caused MIT to spin off Draper Laboratories[?], which designed ICBM guidance systems.

In 2001, President Charles Vest made history by being the first university official in the world to admit that his institution had severely restricted the career of women faculty members and researchers through sexist discrimination.

Sports

MIT has a very broad student athletics program, boasting 41 varsity level sports.

MIT's sports teams are called the Beavers. They participate in the NCAA's Division III, the New England Women and Men's Athletic Conference[?], and the New England Football Conference.

Wikipedia Entries for MIT Departments

• Radiation Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Computer Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology[?]
• Media Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology[?]
• Infinite Corridor

External links

• Official homepage -- http://web.mit.edu/
• Hack gallery -- http://hacks.mit.edu/
• MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab -- http://www.ai.mit.edu/
• MIT Laboratory for Computer Science -- http://www.lcs.mit.edu/
• MIT Media Lab -- http://www.media.mit.edu/

People Associated with MIT

• Vannevar Bush -- scientist & engineer, bureaucrat
• Noam Chomsky -- linguist
• John Deutsch[?] -- former CIA director
• "Doc" Edgerton -- photographer, scientist
• David A. Huffman -- computer scientist
• Shirley Jackson (1946 - ) -- African-American mathematician
• J. C. R. Licklider[?] -- leader of the IPTO
• Alan Lightman -- writer, physicist
• Robert C. Merton[?] -- economist
• Marvin Minsky -- artificial intelligence guru
• Franco Modigliani -- economist
• Nicholas Negroponte -- media wonk
• Seymour Papert -- education & computers
• Steven Pinker -- cognitive scientist
• Gian-Carlo Rota -- mathematician & philosopher
• Paul Samuelson -- economist
• Edgar Schein -- organizational psychologist
• Myron S. Scholes -- ecomomist
• Claude E. Shannon -- information theorist
• Richard Stallman -- free software activist
• Ivan Sutherland -- computer graphics pioneer
• Sherry Turkle -- clinical psychologist and sociologist
• Joseph Weizenbaum -- computer scientist

Former MIT Students

• Buzz Aldrin -- astronaut
• Kofi Annan -- United Nations Secretary-General
• Virgilio Barco[?] -- president of Colombia
• Hans A. Bethe[?] -- physicist
• Amar G. Bose[?] -- audio entrepreneur
• K. Eric Drexler -- nanotechnologist
• George Eastman -- entrepreneur
• Luis A. Ferre -- governor of Puerto Rico
• José Figueres Ferrer[?] -- president of Costa Rica
• Richard Feynman -- physicist
• William R. Hewlett[?] -- co-founder of Hewlett-Packard
• Larry Kahn[?] -- tiddilywinks[?] champion
• Brewster Kahle -- internet archivist
• Mitch Kapor -- software entrepreneur
• Daniel C. Lewin -- internet entrepreneur
• Arthur D. Little[?] -- entrepreneur
• Ray Magliozzi[?] -- radio personality (Car Talk)
• Tom Magliozzi[?] -- radio personality (Car Talk)
• Murray Gell-Mann -- physicist
• Ronald E. McNair -- astronaut
• Robert S. Mulliken -- chemist
• Robert Mundell -- economist
• Benjamin Netanyahu -- Prime Minister of Israel
• Ken Olsen[?] -- founder of Digital Equipment Corporation
• I. M. Pei -- architect
• William Shockley -- physicist
• Alfred P. Sloan, Jr. -- automobile entrepreneur
• George P. Schultz -- United States Secretary of State
• Louis Sullivan -- architect
• Lawrence H. Summers -- economist
• Norbert Wiener -- mathematician

Open Courseware

In the year 2001, MIT announced that it planned to put all of its courseware online as part of its Open Courseware project.