Massachusetts Institute of Technology

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private, coeducational research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing 32 academic departments,[2] with a strong emphasis on theoretical, applied, and interdisciplinary scientific and technological research. MIT is one of two private land-grant universities as well as a sea-grant and space-grant university.

MIT was founded by William Barton Rogers in 1861 in response to the increasing industrialization of America. MIT's founding philosophy of "learning by doing" made it an early pioneer in the use of laboratory instruction[3] and undergraduate research as well as making its campus a showcase for a diverse cross-section of neo-classical, modern, and post-modern architectural styles. As a federally funded research and development center during World War II, MIT scientists developed defense-related technologies that would later become integral to computers, radar, and inertial guidance. After the war, MIT continued to have a high profile throughout the Space Race and Cold War and its reputation expanded beyond its core competencies in science and engineering into the social sciences including economics, linguistics, and management.

MIT's endowment and annual research expenditures are among the largest of any American university.[4] MIT graduates and faculty are noted both for their technical acumen — with 63 Nobel Laureates and 29 MacArthur Fellows[5] as of October 2006 — as well as their entrepreneurial spirit: a 1997 report by MIT claimed that the aggregated revenues produced by the 4,000 companies founded by MIT and its graduates would make it the twenty-fourth largest economy in the world.[6]


[edit] History


In 1861, The Commonwealth of Massachusetts approved a charter for the incorporation of the "Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Boston Society of Natural History" submitted by William Barton Rogers. Rogers sought to establish a new form of higher education to address the challenges posed by rapid advances in science and technology in the mid-19th century with which classic institutions were ill-prepared to deal.[7] The Rogers Plan, as it came to be known, was rooted in three principles: the educational value of useful knowledge, the necessity of “learning by doing,” and integrating a professional and liberal arts education at the undergraduate level.[8][9]

Because open conflict in the Civil War broke out only a few months later, MIT's first classes were held in rented space at the Mercantile Building in downtown Boston in 1865[10] Construction of the first MIT buildings was completed in Boston's Back Bay in 1866 and MIT would be known as "Boston Tech." During the next half-century, the focus of the science and engineering curriculum drifted towards vocational concerns instead of theoretical programs. Proposals to merge MIT with Harvard, "the school up the river", began as early as 1869[11] but this and other proposals in 1900 and 1914 were ultimately canceled.[12][13][14][15]

[edit] Expansion


The attempted mergers occurred in parallel with MIT's continued expansion beyond the classroom and laboratory space permitted by its Boston campus. President Richard Maclaurin sought to move the campus to a new location when he took office in 1909.[16] An anonymous donor, later revealed to be George Eastman, donated the funds to buy a mile-long tract of swamp and industrial land along the Cambridge side of the Charles River. In 1916, MIT moved into its handsome new neoclassical campus designed by the noted architect William W. Bosworth which it occupies to this date. The new campus - with the largest academic buildings in the world at the time - fomented some changes in the stagnating undergraduate curriculum, but in the 1930s President Karl Taylor Compton and Vice-President (effectively Provost) Vannevar Bush drastically reformed the curriculum by re-emphasizing the importance of "pure" sciences like physics and chemistry and reducing the work required in shops and drafting. Despite the difficulties of the Great Depression, the reforms "renewed confidence in the ability of the Institute to develop leadership in science as well as in engineering."[17] The expansion and reforms thus cemented MIT's academic reputation on the eve of World War II by attracting scientists and researchers who would later make significant contributions in the Radiation Laboratory, Instrumentation Laboratory, and other defense-related research programs.

MIT was drastically changed by its involvement in military research during World War Two. Bush was appointed head of the enormous Office of Scientific Research and Development and directed funding to only a select group of universities, including MIT.[18][19] During the war and in the post-war years, this government-sponsored research contributed to a fantastic growth in the size of the Institute's research staff and physical plant as well as placing an increased emphasis on graduate education.[20] As the Cold War and Space Race intensified and concerns about the technology gap between the U.S. and the Soviet Union grew more pervasive throughout the 1950s and 1960s, MIT's involvement in the military-industrial complex was a source of pride on campus.[21][22] However, by the late 1960s and early 1970s, intense protests by student and faculty activists (an era now known as "the troubles") against the Vietnam War and MIT's defense research required that the MIT administration spin classified and defense-related research off into what would become the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory and Lincoln Laboratory. The extent of these protests is reflected by the fact that MIT had more names on "President Nixon's enemies list" than any other single organization, among them its president Jerome Wiesner and professor Noam Chomsky. Memos revealed during Watergate indicated that Nixon had ordered MIT's federal subsidy cut "in view of Wiesner's anti-defense bias."[23]

[edit] Challenges and controversies


MIT has been nominally coeducational since admitting Ellen Swallow Richards in 1870. Female students, however, remained a tiny minority (numbered in dozens) prior to the completion of the first women's dormitory McCormick Hall, in 1964. By 1993, MIT's male/female ratio had risen to 68:32.[24] Richards also became the first female member of MIT's faculty, specializing in sanitary chemistry.[25] In 1998, MIT became the first major research university to acknowledge the existence of a systematic bias against female faculty in its School of Science and supported efforts toward corrective measures; a 2003 MIT news release cites various statistics suggesting that the status of women improved during the latter years of President Vest's tenure.[26] Susan Hockfield, a molecular neurobiologist, became MIT's 16th president on December 6, 2004 and is the first woman to hold the post as well as the first non-engineer. While the student body has become more balanced in recent years, women are still a distinct minority among faculty. In 2006, Professor Susumu Tonegawa was accused of intimidating a promising female faculty candidate and several of his colleagues have called for an investigation.[27]

In 1986, Professor David Baltimore, a Nobel Laureate, became embroiled in an investigation of research misconduct that led to a Congressional investigation. Also in the mid-1980s, the dismissal of David F. Noble, a historian of technology, became a cause celebre about the extent to which academics are granted "freedom of speech" after he published several books and papers critical of MIT's reliance upon corporations and the military.[28] In 2000, Professor Ted Postol accused the MIT administration of attempting to whitewash potential research misconduct at the Lincoln Lab facility involving a ballistic missile defense test, though a final investigation into the matter has not been completed.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, a number of student deaths resulted in considerable media attention to MIT's culture and student life.[29] After the alcohol-related death of Scott Krueger in September 1997 as a new member at the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity, MIT began requiring all freshmen to live in the dormitory system.[30] The 2000 suicide of MIT undergraduate Elizabeth Shin drew attention to suicides at MIT and created a controversy over whether MIT had an unusually high suicide rate.[31][32] In late 2001 a task force's recommended improvements in student mental health services[33] were implemented, including expanding staff and operating hours at the mental health center.[34] These and later cases were significant as well because they sought to prove the negligence and liability of university administrators in loco parentis.[35]

[edit] Organization


MIT is governed by a 78-member board of trustees known as the MIT Corporation which approve the budget, degrees, and faculty appointments as well as electing the President.[36] MIT's endowment and other financial assets are managed by a subsidiary MIT Investment Management Company (MITIMCo).[37] MIT is organized into five schools and one college containing thirty-two academic departments. The chair of each department reports to the dean of the school, who in turn reports to the Provost under the President. However, faculty committees assert substantial control over many areas of MIT's curriculum, research, student life, and administrative affairs.[38]

MIT was once characterized by James R. Killian as "a university polarized around science, engineering, and the arts."[39] MIT has no school of law or medicine.[40]

MIT students refer to both their majors and classes using numbers alone. Majors are numbered in the approximate order of when the department was founded; for example, Civil and Environmental Engineering is Course I, while Nuclear Science & Engineering is Course XXII.[41] Students majoring in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, the most popular department, collectively identify themselves as "Course VI." MIT students use a combination of the department's course number and the number assigned to the class number to identify their subjects; the course which many universities would designate as "Physics 101" is, at MIT, "8.01."[42]


* School of Architecture and Planning
o Architecture (4)
o Media Arts and Sciences (MAS)
o Urban Studies and Planning (11)

* School of Engineering
o Aeronautics and Astronautics (16)
o Biological Engineering (20)
o Chemical Engineering (10)
o Civil and Environmental Engineering (1)
o Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (MIT link) (6)
o Engineering Systems Division (ESD)
o Materials Science and Engineering (3)
o Mechanical Engineering (2)
o Nuclear Science and Engineering (22)
o Ocean Engineering (13)

* School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences
o Anthropology (21A)
o Comparative Media Studies (CMS)
o Economics (MIT link) (14)
o Foreign Languages and Literatures (21F)
o History (21H)
o Linguistics and Philosophy (24)
o Literature (21L)
o Music and Theatre Arts (21M)
o Political Science (17)
o Science, Technology, and Society (STS)
o Writing and Humanistic Studies (21W)

* Alfred P. Sloan School of Management
o Management (MIT link) (15)

* School of Science
o Biology (MIT link) (7)
o Brain and Cognitive Sciences (9)
o Chemistry (MIT link) (5)
o Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences (12)
o Mathematics (MIT link) (18)
o Physics (MIT link) (8)

* Whitaker College of Health Sciences and Technology
o Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology (HST)

[edit] Campus


MIT's main Cambridge campus spans approximately a mile of the Charles River front. The campus is divided roughly in half by Massachusetts Avenue, with all academic buildings to the east and most dormitories and student life facilities to the west. Essentially all classes are held on main campus, although MIT owns or leases a number of research facilities throughout Cambridge and the greater Boston area.

MIT buildings all have a number (or a number and a letter) designation and most have a name as well. Typically, academic and office buildings are referred to only by number while residence halls are referred to by name. The organization of building numbers is believed to roughly correspond to the order in which the buildings were built and their location relative (north, west, and east) to the original, center cluster of Maclaurin buildings. Many are connected above ground as well as through an extensive network of underground tunnels, providing protection from the Cambridge weather.

The bridge closest to MIT is the Harvard Bridge, which is marked off in the fanciful unit – the Smoot. The Kendall MBTA Red Line station is located on the far northeastern edge of the campus. The neighborhood of MIT is a mixture of high tech companies combined with residential neighborhoods of Cambridge (see Kendall Square).

Somewhat controversially,[43] MIT operates a highly visible nuclear reactor on campus. Other notable campus facilities include a pressurized wind tunnel, a towing tank for testing ship and ocean structure designs, and a low-emission cogeneration plant that provides most of the campus electricity and heating requirements.


View of MIT's campus looking east. Several west-campus undergraduate dormitories (Simmons Hall on the left, Next House and New House in the foreground), Briggs Field, the Harvard Bridge spanning the (frozen) Charles River, and downtown Boston in the background are visible.
View of MIT's campus looking east. Several west-campus undergraduate dormitories (Simmons Hall on the left, Next House and New House in the foreground), Briggs Field, the Harvard Bridge spanning the (frozen) Charles River, and downtown Boston in the background are visible.

[edit] Architecture


MIT's campus is noted for its progressive, if inconsistent, architecture.[44] Many buildings exemplify neoclassical, brutalist, and deconstructivist styles.

The first buildings constructed on the Cambridge campus, completed in 1916, are known officially as the Maclaurin buildings after Institute president Richard Maclaurin who oversaw their construction. Designed by William Welles Bosworth, these imposing buildings were built of concrete, a first for a non-industrial — much less university — building in the U.S.[45] These buildings feature the Pantheon-esque Great Dome, housing the Barker Engineering Library, which overlooks Killian Court, where annual Commencement exercises are held. The friezes of the marble-clad buildings around Killian Court are engraved with the names of important scientists and philosophers. The imposing Building 7 atrium along Massachusetts Avenue is regarded as the entrance to the Infinite Corridor and the rest of the campus.
The Green Building beyond the Alexander Calder sculpture, The Great Sail.
The Green Building beyond the Alexander Calder sculpture, The Great Sail.

Over the years, MIT has made an effort to bring noted architects to campus for particular commissions. Alvar Aalto's Baker House (1946), Eero Saarinen's Chapel and Auditorium (1955), and I. M. Pei's Green Building, Dreyfus Building, Landau Building, and Wiesner building are excellent showcases of post-war modern architecture. Frank Gehry's Stata Center (2004), Steven Holl's Simmons Hall (2002), and Charles Correa's Building 46 (2005) are other examples of contemporary campus "starchitecture." These buildings have not always been popularly accepted; the Princeton Review includes MIT in a list of twenty schools whose campuses are "tiny, unsightly, or both."[46]


The Stata Center necessitated the removal of the much-beloved Building 20 in 1998. Building 20 was erected hastily during World War II as a temporary building that housed the historic Radiation Laboratory. Over the course of fifty-five years, its "temporary" nature allowed research groups to have more space, and to make more creative use of that space, than was possible in more respectable buildings. Professor Jerome Y. Lettvin once quipped, "You might regard it as the womb of the Institute. It is kind of messy, but by God it is procreative!"[47][48]

[edit] Academics

[edit] Student body

MIT enrolls more graduate students, (approximately 6,000 annually) than undergraduates (approximately 4,000). In 2006, Women constituted 43 percent of all undergraduates and 29 percent of graduate students. The same year, MIT students represented all 50 states, the District of Columbia, five U.S. Territories, and 110 foreign countries. African-Americans make up 5.8% and 1.9% of the undergraduate and graduate student bodies respectively, Asian-Americans 26.5% and 11.5%, Hispanics 11.3% and 2.9%, and Native Americans 1.5% and 0.3% respectively.[49] International students comprised 9% of undergraduates and 40% of graduate students.[50] The admissions rate for freshmen in 2006 was 12.7% with over 66.7% of admitted freshmen ("pre-frosh") choosing to enroll. Although graduate admissions are less centralized, they are similarly selective: 22% of 15,007 applications were admitted with 61% of admitted candidates enrolling.[51]

[edit] Classes


Getting an education at MIT has been characterized as "drinking from a fire hose."[52] MIT has an extensive core curriculum required of all undergraduates called the General Institute Requirements (GIRs). The science requirement, generally completed during freshman year as prerequisites for classes in science and engineering majors, comprises two semesters of physics classes covering Classical Mechanics and E&M, two semesters of math covering single variable calculus and multivariable calculus, one semester of chemistry, and one semester of biology. Undergraduates are required to take a laboratory class in their major, eight Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (HASS) classes (at least three in a concentration and another four unrelated subjects), and non-varsity athletes must also take four physical education classes. In May 2006, a faculty task force recommended that the current GIR system be simplified with changes to the science, HASS, and Institute Lab requirements.[53]

Although the perceived pressure is high, the failure rate and freshmen retention rate at MIT are similar to schools of similar caliber.[54] Some of the pressure for first-year undergraduates is lessened by the existence of the "pass/no-record" grading system. In the first (fall) term, freshmen transcripts only report if a class was passed while no external record exists if a class was not passed. In the second (spring) term, passing grades (ABC) appear on the transcript while non-passing grades are again rendered "no-record."

Most classes rely upon a combination of faculty led lectures, graduate student led recitations, weekly problem sets (p-sets), and tests to teach material, though alternative curriculae exist, e.g. Experimental Study Group, Concourse, and Terrascope.[55] Over time, students compile "bibles," collections of problem set and examination questions and answers used as references for later students. In 1970, the then-Dean of Institute Relations, Benson R. Snyder, published The Hidden Curriculum, arguing that unwritten regulations, like the implicit curriculae of the bibles, are often counterproductive; they fool professors into believing that their teaching is effective and students into believing they have learned the material.

[edit] Collaborations


MIT has close ties with many institutions throughout the Boston area as well as internationally.

MIT has both a friendly rivalry with Harvard University as well as a substantial number of research collaborations such as the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, Broad Institute, Center for Ultracold Atoms, and Harvard-MIT Data Center.[57] In addition, students at the two schools can cross-register without any additional fees, for credits toward their own school's degrees. The relationship and proximity between the two institutions is remarkable, considering they are often regarded as the world's top two universities.[58]

Boston University (BU) lies between MIT and Harvard on the Boston-side of Charles River and collaborates with both on the Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology. MIT has a limited cross-registration program with BU, as well as with Brandeis University, Tufts University, and Massachusetts College of Art. MIT has an extensive cross-registration program with Wellesley College and an undergraduate exchange program with the University of Cambridge known as the Cambridge-MIT Institute.[59]

MIT maintains substantial research and faculty ties with independent research organizations in the Boston-area like the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

Through the Singapore-MIT Alliance, MIT-Zargoza International Logistics Program, and MISTI programs, MIT supports international science and engineering education as well as collaborating with international universities like Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur and the Malaysia University of Science and Technology.

MIT publishes the mass-market magazine Technology Review through a subsidiary company as well as a special edition which also serves as the Institute's official alumni magazine.

MIT students, faculty, and staff are also involved in over 50 educational outreach programs through the MIT Museum, Edgerton Center, and MIT Public Service Center.[60]

[edit] Rankings

MIT is ranked #2 overall among the world's top 200 universities by The Times Higher Education Supplement (2005/2004), #1 worldwide in technology and engineering, and #2 in science.[61] The National Research Council, in a 1995 study ranking research universities in the US, ranked MIT #1 in "reputation" and #4 in "citations and faculty awards."[62] The Lombardi Program on Measuring University Performance has identified MIT as one of the top national research universities since it began ranking in 2000.[63]

In US News and World Report's (USNWR) 2007 rankings, MIT's undergraduate program was tied for #4 with Stanford University and Caltech among national universities. MIT has more top-ranked graduate programs than any other school in the 2007 USNWR survey, including programs in computer science, economics, engineering, mathematics, physics, biology and chemistry.[64][65] MIT's School of Engineering has been ranked first among graduate programs since the magazine first released the results of its survey in 1988.[66] The MIT Sloan School of Management is ranked #2 in the nation at the undergraduate level and #4 among MBA programs by USNWR's 2007 rankings.[67] The Washington Monthly's unusual college rankings, focusing on social mobility and national service, placed MIT #1 in the nation in its inaugural college rankings in 2005, and again in 2006.

[edit] Faculty and research


MIT has 992 faculty members, of which 181 are women and 138 are minorities.[68] Faculty are responsible for lecturing classes, advising both graduate and undergraduate students, sitting on academic committees, as well as conducting original research. Many faculty members also have founded companies, serve as scientific advisers, or sit on the Board of Directors for corporations. As of October 2006, 25 MIT faculty members have won the Nobel Prize.[69] Sixty-four current faculty and staff members belong to the National Academy of Engineering, 61 to the National Academy of Sciences, 22 to the Institute of Medicine, and 118 to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. There are 31 National Medal of Science recipients, 80 Guggenheim Fellows, 6 Fulbright Scholars, and 19 MacArthur Fellows among current MIT faculty and staff.[70] Institute Professor is the title awarded to faculty who have made extraordinary contributions to their field and the MIT community.

For fiscal year 2006, MIT spent $587.5 million on on-campus research.[71] The federal government was the largest source of sponsored research, with the Department of Health and Human Services granting $180.6 million, Department of Defense $86 million, Department of Energy $69.9 million, National Science Foundation $66.7 million, and NASA $32.1 million.[72] MIT employs approximately 3,500 researchers in addition to faculty, as well as supporting 2,500 graduate students through research assistantships. In the 2006 academic year, MIT faculty and researchers disclosed 523 inventions, filed 321 patent applications, received 121 patents, and earned $42.3 million in royalties.[73]

[edit] Research accomplishments


In electronics, magnetic core memory, radar, single electron transistors, and inertial guidance controls were invented or substantially developed by MIT researchers. Harold Eugene Edgerton was a pioneer in high speed photography. Claude E. Shannon developed much of modern information theory and discovered the application of Boolean logic to digital circuit design theory.
The GNU project and free software movement originated at MIT
The GNU project and free software movement originated at MIT

In the domain of computer science, MIT faculty and researchers made fundamental contributions to cybernetics, artificial intelligence, computer languages, and public-key cryptography. Richard Stallman founded the GNU Project and Free Software Foundation while at the AI lab (now CSAIL). Tim Berners-Lee established the W3C at MIT in 1994. Popular technologies like X Window System, Kerberos, Zephyr, and Hesiod were created for Project Athena in the 1980s.

MIT physicists have been instrumental in describing subatomic and quantum phenomena like elementary particles, electroweak force, laser cooling, Bose-Einstein condensates, superconductivity, fractional quantum Hall effect, and asymptotic freedom as well as cosmological phenomena like cosmic inflation.

MIT chemists have discovered number syntheses like metathesis, stereoselective oxidation reactions, synthetic self-replicating molecules, and CFC-ozone reactions. Penicillin and Vitamin A were also first synthesized at MIT.

MIT biologists have also been recognized for their discoveries and advances in RNA, protein synthesis, apoptosis, gene splicing and introns, antibody diversity, reverse transcriptase, oncogenes, and phage resistance. MIT researchers discovered the genetic bases for Lou Gehrig's disease and Huntington's disease. Eric Lander was one of the principal leaders of the Human Genome Project.

MIT economists have been recognized for their contributions to system dynamics, financial engineering, neo-classical growth models, and welfare economics. Fundamental financial models like the Modigliani-Miller theorem and Black-Scholes equation were likewise developed in part at MIT.

[edit] UROP

In 1969, MIT began the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP) to enable undergraduates to collaborate directly with faculty members and researchers. The program, founded by Margaret MacVicar, builds upon the MIT philosophy of "learning by doing." Students obtain research projects, colloquially called "UROPs," through postings on the UROP website or by contacting faculty members directly. Over 2,800 undergraduates, 70% of the student body, participate every year for academic credit, pay, or on a volunteer basis.[74] Students often become published, file patent applications, and/or launch start-up companies based upon their experience in UROPs.

[edit] Current Initiatives

In 2001, MIT announced that it planned to put many of its course materials online as part of its OpenCourseWare project. Building upon MIT's leadership in the "open source movement", Nicholas Negroponte of the MIT Media Lab started the One Laptop per Child initiative to expand computer education and connectivity to children worldwide. Upon taking office in 2004, President Hockfield launched an Energy Research Council to investigate how MIT can respond to the interdisciplinary challenges of increasing global energy consumption.[75]

[edit] Student life and culture

Main article: Student life and culture at MIT

MIT faculty and students value meritocracy[76] and technocracy[77] highly. MIT has never awarded an honorary degree; the only way to receive an MIT diploma is to earn it.[78] In addition, it does not award athletic scholarships, ad eundem degrees, or Latin honors upon graduation — the philosophy is that the honor is in being an MIT graduate. It does, on rare occasions, award honorary professorships; Winston Churchill was so honored in 1949 and Salman Rushdie in 1993.[79] MIT students' passion for their subjects is balanced by the perception that their classes are more rigorous than their "grade inflated" peer institutions[80]— a love-hate relationship embodied by the school's informal motto/initialism IHTFP[81] ("I hate this fucking place," jocularly euphemized as "I have truly found paradise," "Institute has the finest professors," etc.).

[edit] Activities

MIT has over 380 recognized student activity groups,[82] including a campus radio station, student-run ambulance, and student newspaper. In addition, MIT has a unique (unofficial) marching band, a vibrant folk dance scene, and the "world's largest open-shelf collection of science fiction" in English. MIT hosted a Time Traveler Convention in 2005, but other popular events include the annual Steer Roast, Spring Weekend, as well as music, dance, and theater performances. The Lecture Series Committee (LSC) has weekly screenings of popular films as well as lectures by prominent speakers. The annual MIT Entrepreneurship Competition has supported the creation of at least 60 companies worth a combined $10.5 billion since it started in 1990.[83]

MIT's Independent Activities Period is a four-week long "term" offering hundreds of optional classes, lectures, demonstrations, and other activities throughout the month of January between the Fall and Spring terms. Some of the most popular recurring IAP activities are the 6.270, 6.370, Maslab competitions, the annual "mystery hunt", and Charm School.

MIT students are represented by various student government organizations, the largest being the Undergraduate Association and Graduate Student Council. These organizations represent the interests of their respective student bodies to the MIT faculty and administration and can nominate students to various administration committees that determine Institute policy. Other student governing bodies include the Dormitory Committee (Dormcon), the Interfraternity Council (IFC), and the Panhellenic Council (Panhel) which independently govern and discipline their respective undergraduate living groups.

[edit] Athletics


MIT's student athletics program offers 41 varsity-level sports, the largest program in the nation.[84][85] They participate in the NCAA's Division III, the New England Women's and Men's Athletic Conference, the New England Football Conference, and NCAA's Division I and Eastern Association of Rowing Colleges (EARC) for crew. They fielded several dominant intercollegiate Tiddlywinks teams through 1980, winning national and world championships.[86] MIT teams have won or placed highly in national championships in pistol, track and field, swimming and diving, cross country, crew, fencing, and water polo. MIT has produced 114 Academic All-Americans, the third largest membership in the country for any division and the highest number of members for Division III.[87]


The Institute's sports teams are called the Engineers, their mascot since 1914 being a beaver,[88] "nature's engineer." Lester Gardner, a member of the Class of 1898, provided the following justification: "The beaver not only typifies the Tech, but his habits are particularly our own. The beaver is noted for his engineering and mechanical skills and habits of industry. His habits are nocturnal. He does his best work in the dark."

The Zesiger sports and fitness center (Z-Center) which opened in 2002, significantly expanded the capacity and quality of MIT's athletics, physical education, and recreation offerings. It features an Olympic-class swimming pool, squash and racketball courts, as well as a well-equipped gym.

[edit] Housing


MIT guarantees four-year, dormitory housing for all undergraduates[89] and provides live-in graduate student tutors and faculty housemasters who have the dual role of both helping students and monitoring them for medical or mental health problems. Students are permitted to select their dorm and floor upon arrival on campus, and as a result diverse communities arise in living groups. Although many dorms contain a wide range of living options, the dorms on and east of Massachusetts Avenue are stereotypically more involved in countercultural activities. MIT also has six graduate student dormitories, which house about one-third of the graduate student population.[90] New incoming graduate students are given the highest priority for this housing.

MIT has a very active Greek and co-op system. Approximately one-half of MIT male undergraduates and one-third of female undergraduates[91] are affiliated with one of MIT's 35 fraternities, sororities, and independent living groups (FSILGs).[92] Most FSILGs are located across the river in the Back Bay owing to MIT's historic location there. Since 2002, all freshmen are required to live in the dormitory system for the first year before moving into an FSILG.

[edit] Hacking


Many of the values of the Institute have influenced the hacker ethic. At MIT, however, the term "hack" has multiple meanings. "To hack" can mean to physically explore areas (often on-campus, but also off) that are generally off-limits such as rooftops and steam tunnels. "Hack" as a noun also means an elaborate practical joke, and not just a clever technical feat. 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. In 2005, MIT and Caltech students became involved in a cross-country "hacking war" - the latest installment involved the theft of Caltech's cannon.

[edit] Brass Rat


Many MIT students and graduates wear an MIT class ring, which is large, heavy, distinctive, and recognizable from a distance. Originally created in 1929, the ring's official name is the "Standard Technology Ring," but its colloquial name is far betterknown—the "Brass Rat." The undergraduate-ring design varies slightly from year to year to reflect the unique character of the MIT experience for that class but always features a three-piece design, with the MIT seal and the class year each appearing on a separate face, flanking a large rectangular bezel bearing an image of a beaver. To show that one has graduated from the Institute, one wears the ring so that the beaver's feet point to the tips of one's fingers, and the wearer looks back on MIT via the Cambridge skyline; those who have not graduated wear the ring so the beaver's feet point toward the wearer's wrist, and the wearer looks away from MIT via the Boston skyline. In the local vernacular: "Before you graduate, the beaver shits on you; afterwards, it shits on the world."[citation needed]

[edit] Noted alumni


Many MIT alumni and alumnae have had considerable success in scientific research, public service, education, and business. As of October 2006, 27 MIT alumni have won the Nobel prize and 37 have been selected as Rhodes Scholars.[93]

Although no MIT graduate has yet become President of the United States, alumni currently in American politics and public service include Chairman of the Federal Reserve Ben Bernanke (Ph. D XIV '79), New Hampshire Senator John E. Sununu (MS II '87), US Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman (Sc.D. XX '65), MA-1 Representative John Olver (Ph. D V '61), CA-13 Representative Pete Stark (BS IX '53).

MIT alumni in international politics include former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan (MS XV '72), Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Ahmed Chalabi (BS XVIII '65), and former Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu (BS IV '76).

MIT alumni founded or co-founded many notable companies, such as Intel, McDonnell Douglas, Texas Instruments, 3Com, Qualcomm, Bose, Raytheon, Koch Industries, Rockwell International, Genentech, and Tyco International. Tech alumni who have led prominent corporations include former CEO/Chairman of General Motors Alfred P. Sloan (VI 1892), former CEO of Hewlett-Packard Carly Fiorina (MS XV '89), former chairman and CEO of Ford Motor Company William Clay Ford, Jr., (MS XV '84), and New York Stock Exchange Chairman John S. Reed (MS XV '65) and CEO John Thain (BS VI '77).

MIT alumni have also led other prominent institutions of higher education, including Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University, Carnegie Mellon University, Tufts University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Tecnológico de Monterrey, Purdue University and the London Business School. Although not alumni, former Provost Robert A. Brown is President of Boston University, former Provost Mark Wrighton is Chancellor of Washington University in St. Louis, and former Professor David Baltimore was President of Caltech.

More than one third of the United States' manned spaceflights have included MIT-educated astronauts, among them Buzz Aldrin (Sc. D XVI '63), more than any university excluding the United States service academies.[94]