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| Foundation and early years (1857–1917) | |
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Stereographic card showing an MIT mechanical drafting studio, 19th century (photo by E.L. Allen)
Original Rogers Building (MIT), Back Bay, Boston, 19th century (photo by E.L. Allen)
In 1859, the Massachusetts General Court was given a proposal for use of newly opened lands in Back Bay in Boston for a museum and Conservatory of Art and Science.[15] On April 10, 1861, the Governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts signed 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 during the mid-19th century with which classic institutions were ill-prepared to deal.[16][17] Barton believed, “The true and only practicable object of a polytechnic school is, as I conceive, the teaching, not of the minute details and manipulations of the arts, which can be done only in the workshop, but the inculcation of those scientific principles which form the basis and explanation of them, their leading processes and operations in connection with physical laws.”[18]
A 1905 map of MIT's Boston campus.
The Rogers Plan, as it has come to be known, reflected the German research university model, emphasizing an independent faculty engaged in research as well as instruction oriented around seminars and laboratories.[19] Rogers proposed that this new form of education be 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.[20][21]
However, open conflict in the Civil War broke out on April 12, 1861, just two days after issuance of the charter. After years of delay caused by wartime funding and staffing difficulties, MIT's first classes were held in rented space at the Mercantile Building in downtown Boston in 1865.[22] Though it was to be located in the middle of urban Boston, the mission of the new institute matched the intent of the 1862 Morrill Land-Grant Colleges Act to fund institutions "to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes." Although the Commonwealth of Massachusetts separately founded what was to become the University of Massachusetts under this act,[d] MIT was also named a land grant school.[23] The proceeds from land sales went toward new buildings in Boston's Back Bay neighborhood in 1866, and MIT informally came to be called "Boston Tech".[24]
During the next half-century, the focus of the science and engineering curriculum drifted towards vocational concerns instead of theoretical programs. During this period, the MIT faculty and alumni repeatedly rejected overtures from former MIT faculty turned Harvard University president Charles W. Eliot, to merge MIT with Harvard College's Lawrence Scientific School.[25]
[edit] Tags:President,Engineering,Earc,Stereographic Card,E.l. Allen,Rogers Building (mit),Back Bay, Boston,Massachusetts General Court,Back Bay,Boston,Boston Society Of Natural History,William Barton Rogers,Classic Institutions,Civil War,Morrill Land-grant Colleges Act,University Of Massachusetts,Harvard University,Charles W. Eliot,Lawrence Scientific School,Science, | |
| Development and post-war growth (1916–1965) | |
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“
...a school of industrial science [aiding] the advancement, development and practical application of science in connection with arts, agriculture, manufactures, and commerce.
”
—[26], Act to Incorporate the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Acts of 1861, Chapter 183
MIT's Building 10 and Great Dome overlooking Killian Court
A plaque of George Eastman, founder of Eastman Kodak, in Building 6. His nose is rubbed by students for good luck.[27]
Industrialist George Eastman reinforced MIT's independence by donating funds to build a new campus along a mile-long tract on the Cambridge side of the Charles River, almost entirely on landfill.[28] In 1916, MIT moved into the handsome new neoclassical campus designed by William W. Bosworth.
In the 1930s, President Karl Taylor Compton and Vice-President (effectively Provost) Vannevar Bush drastically reformed the applied technology curriculum by re-emphasizing the importance of "pure" sciences like physics and chemistry and by reducing the vocational practice required in shops and drafting studios.[9] In sharp contrast to the Ivy League, MIT catered more to middle-class families, and depended more on tuition than on endowments or grants.[29] Despite the challenges of the Great Depression, the Compton reforms "renewed confidence in the ability of the Institute to develop leadership in science as well as in engineering."[20] The expansion and reforms cemented MIT's academic reputation[9] and the school was elected to the Association of American Universities in 1934.[30]
MIT was substantially changed by its involvement in military research during World War II. Vannevar 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.[31][32] MIT's Radiation Laboratory was established in 1940 to assist the British military in developing a microwave radar, and the first mass-produced equipments were installed on front-line units within months. Other defense projects included gyroscope-based and other complex control systems for gun and bombsights and inertial navigation under Charles Stark Draper's Instrumentation Laboratory, the development of a digital computer for flight simulations under Project Whirlwind, and high-speed and high-altitude photography under Harold Edgerton.[33] By the end of the war, MIT employed a staff of over 4,000 (including more than a fifth of the nation's physicists) and was the nation's single largest wartime R&D contractor.[34]
In the post-war years, government-sponsored research such as SAGE and guidance systems for ballistic missiles and Project Apollo, combined with surging student enrollments under the G.I. Bill, contributed to rapid growth in the size of the Institute's research staff and physical plant, as well as placing an increased emphasis on graduate education.[20] The profound changes that occurred at MIT between 1930 and 1957 included the doubling of its faculty and a quintupling of its graduate student population. These changes were significantly guided and shaped by the institution-building strategies of Karl Taylor Compton, president of MIT between 1930 and 1948, James Rhyne Killian, president from 1948 to 1957, and Julius Adams Stratton, chancellor from 1952 to 1957.[35]
While the school mainly served the needs of industrial patrons in the 1920s, by the 1950s it had gained considerable autonomy from industrial corporations while attracting new patrons and building a close relationship with philanthropic foundations and the federal government. As the Cold War and Space Race intensified and concerns about the technology gap between the US 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.[36][37]
[edit] Tags:Endowment,Provost,Cambridge,Vannevar Bush,Association Of American Universities,Radar,World War Ii,Cold War,George Eastman,Eastman Kodak,Landfill,Neoclassical Campus,William W. Bosworth,Karl Taylor Compton,Ivy League,Great Depression,Office Of Scientific Research And Development,Radiation Laboratory,British Military,Microwave,Gyroscope,Control Systems,Gun,Bombsights,Inertial Navigation,Charles Stark Draper,Instrumentation Laboratory,Digital Computer,Project Whirlwind,High-speed,High-altitude,Harold Edgerton,Physicists,Government-sponsored Research,Sage,Ballistic Missiles,Project Apollo,G.i. Bill,James Rhyne Killian,Julius Adams Stratton,Space Race,Technology Gap,Military-industrial Complex, | |
| Recent history (1966–present) | |
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The MIT Media Lab houses researchers developing novel uses of computer technology. Shown here is the 1982 building, designed by I.M. Pei, with an extension (background) designed by Fumiko Maki and opened in March 2010.
Following a comprehensive review of the undergraduate curriculum in 1949 and the successive appointments of more humanistically oriented Presidents Howard W. Johnson and Jerome Wiesner between 1966 and 1980, MIT greatly expanded its programs in the humanities, arts, and social sciences.[20][38] Previously marginalized faculties in the areas of economics, management, political science, and linguistics emerged into cohesive and assertive departments by attracting respected professors, launching competitive graduate programs, and forming into the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences and the MIT Sloan School of Management in 1950 to compete with the powerful Schools of Science and Engineering.[39][40]
In late 1960s and early 1970s, student and faculty activists protested against the Vietnam War and MIT's defense research.[41][42] The Union of Concerned Scientists was founded on March 4, 1969 during a meeting of faculty members and students seeking to shift the emphasis on military research towards environmental and social problems.[43] Although MIT ultimately divested itself from the Instrumentation Laboratory and moved all classified research off-campus to the Lincoln Laboratory facility in 1973 in response to the protests,[44][45] the student body, faculty, and administration remained comparatively unpolarized during the tumultuous era.[41][46]
In addition to developing the predecessors to modern computing and networking technologies,[47][48] students, staff, and faculty members at the Project MAC, Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, and Tech Model Railroad Club wrote some of the earliest interactive video games like Spacewar! and created much of modern hacker slang.[49] Several major computer-related organizations have originated at MIT since the 1980s; Richard Stallman's GNU Project and the subsequent Free Software Foundation were founded in the mid-1980s at the AI Lab, the MIT Media Lab was founded in 1985 by Nicholas Negroponte and Jerome Wiesner to promote research into novel uses of computer technology,[50] the World Wide Web Consortium standards organization was founded at the Laboratory for Computer Science in 1994 by Tim Berners-Lee,[51] the OpenCourseWare project has made course materials for over 1,800 MIT classes available online free of charge since 2002,[52] and the One Laptop per Child initiative to expand computer education and connectivity to children worldwide was launched in 2005.[53] 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.[54]
MIT was named a sea-grant college in 1976 to support its programs in oceanography and marine sciences and was named a space-grant college in 1989 to support its aeronautics and astronautics programs.[55][56] Despite diminishing government financial support over the past quarter century, MIT launched several development campaigns to significantly expand the campus: new dormitories and athletics buildings on west campus, the Tang Center for Management Education, several buildings in the northeast corner of campus supporting research into biology, brain and cognitive sciences, genomics, biotechnology, and cancer research, and a number of new "backlot" buildings on Vassar Street including the Stata Center.[57] Construction on campus has recently[when?] concluded an expansion of the Media Lab, the Sloan's eastern campus, and graduate residences in the northwest.[58][59]
[edit] Tags:Defense Research,Biology,Economics,Linguistics,Political Science,Mit Media Lab,I.m. Pei,Humanistically Oriented,Howard W. Johnson, | |
| Campus | |
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Main article: Campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The central and eastern sections of MIT's campus as seen from above Massachusetts Avenue and the Charles River. In the center is the Great Dome overlooking Killian Court with Kendall Square in the background.
MIT's 168-acre (68.0 ha) campus spans approximately a mile of the north side of the Charles River basin in the city of Cambridge. The campus is divided roughly in half by Massachusetts Avenue, with most dormitories and student life facilities to the west and most academic buildings to the east. The bridge closest to MIT is the Harvard Bridge, which is known for being marked off in a non-standard unit of length – the smoot.[60][61] The Kendall MBTA Red Line station is located on the far northeastern edge of the campus in Kendall Square. The Cambridge neighborhoods surrounding MIT are a mixture of high tech companies occupying both modern office and rehabilitated industrial buildings as well as socio-economically diverse residential neighborhoods.[62]
MIT buildings all have a number (or a number and a letter) designation and most have a name as well.[63] Typically, academic and office buildings are referred to primarily by number while residence halls are referred to by name. The organization of building numbers roughly corresponds 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.[63] Many are connected above ground as well as through an extensive network of underground tunnels, providing protection from the Cambridge weather as well as a venue for roof and tunnel hacking.[64][65]
MIT's on-campus nuclear reactor is one of the largest university-based nuclear reactors in the United States.[66] The prominence of the reactor's containment building in a densely populated area has been controversial,[67] but MIT maintains that it is well-secured.[68] Other notable campus facilities include a pressurized wind tunnel and a towing tank for testing ship and ocean structure designs.[69][70] MIT's campus-wide wireless network was completed in the fall of 2005 and consists of nearly 3,000 access points covering 9,400,000 square feet (870,000 m2) of campus.[71]
In 2001, the Environmental Protection Agency sued MIT for violating Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act with regard to its hazardous waste storage and disposal procedures.[72] MIT settled the suit by paying a $155,000 fine and launching three environmental projects.[73] In connection with capital campaigns to expand the campus, the Institute has also extensively renovated existing buildings to improve their energy efficiency. MIT has also taken steps to reduce its environmental impact by running alternative fuel campus shuttles, subsidizing public transportation passes, and building a low-emission cogeneration plant that serves most of the campus electricity, heating, and cooling requirements.[74]
Between 2006 and 2008, MIT reported 16 forcible sex offenses, 4 robberies, 13 aggravated assaults, 536 burglaries, 2 cases of arson, and 16 cases of motor vehicle theft.[75]
[edit] Tags:Charles River Basin, | |
| Architecture | |
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The Stata Center houses CSAIL, LIDS, and the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy
MIT's School of Architecture, now the School of Architecture and Planning, was the first in the United States,[76] and it has a history of commissioning progressive buildings.[77][78] 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 US.[79] The utopian City Beautiful movement greatly influenced Bosworth's design, which features the Pantheon-esque Great Dome housing the Barker Engineering Library. The Great Dome overlooks Killian Court, where annual Commencement (graduation) exercises are held. The friezes of the limestone-clad buildings around Killian Court are engraved with the names of important scientists and philosophers.[k] The imposing Building 7 atrium along Massachusetts Avenue is regarded as the entrance to the Infinite Corridor and the rest of the campus.
Alvar Aalto's Baker House (1947), Eero Saarinen's Chapel and Auditorium (1955), and I.M. Pei's Green, Dreyfus, Landau, and Wiesner buildings represent high forms of post-war modernist architecture.[80][81][82] More recent buildings like Frank Gehry's Stata Center (2004), Steven Holl's Simmons Hall (2002), Charles Correa's Building 46 (2005), Fumihiko Maki's Media Lab Extension (2009) are distinctive amongst the Boston area's classical architecture and serve as examples of contemporary campus "starchitecture."[77][83] These buildings have not always been popularly acclaimed;[84][85] in 2010, The Princeton Review included MIT in a list of twenty schools whose campuses are "tiny, unsightly, or both."[86]
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| Housing | |
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Main article: Housing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Simmons Hall was completed in 2002
Undergraduates are guaranteed four-year housing in one of MIT's 12 undergrad dormitories, although 8% of students live off campus or commute.[87] On-campus housing 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. New undergrad students specify their dorm and floor preferences a few days after arrival on campus, and as a result diverse communities arise in living groups; e.g. the dorms on and east of Massachusetts Avenue have typically been more involved in countercultural activities.[88] MIT also has 5 dormitories for single graduate students and 2 apartment buildings on campus for married student families.[89]
MIT has a very active Greek and co-op system which includes 36 fraternities, sororities, and independent living groups (FSILGs).[90] 50% of male undergraduates join a fraternity and 34% of women join sororities.[91] Most FSILGs are located across the river in the Back Bay owing to MIT's historic location there, but eight fraternities are located on MIT's West Campus and in Cambridge. After the 1997 death of Scott Krueger, a new member at the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity, MIT required all freshmen to live in the dormitory system starting in 2002.[92] Because the fraternities and independent living groups had previously housed as many as 3 Tags:Undergraduates, | |
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