Progress on Recommendations

The Chair of the Faculty and the Vice Chancellor for Undergraduate and Graduate Education have charged a Task Force on the Undergraduate Academic Program. The charge of the Task Force includes reviewing the current program and considering improvements in all aspects of the General Institute Requirements, with a focus on both the curriculum and pedagogy.

The Task Force’s co-chairs, Professors Adam Martin and Joel Voldman, invite members of the MIT community to contact the Task Force at tfuap@mit.edu to share input.

After a successful pilot in 2023, the Office of Experiential Learning has funded a second set of proposals to support the creation of new social impact-focused experiential learning opportunities (ELOs) for students in IAP, spring, and/or summer of 2024. 

A committee of seven faculty, two graduate students, and four staff is working to design a professional development requirement for all graduate students, beginning with PhD students. The committee is engaged in interviews with academic departments and key administrative offices, to gather feedback and socialize the idea of a requirement. In addition, the committee is working on two experiments to gain a better understanding of feasibility, what works well, and where the obstacles lie. The first experiment involves coaching students to set up a personal development advisory group, who may be internal to MIT or external, that will advise on professional development activities. The second experiment has to do with internships, how they might be integrated substantively into the requirement, and how ISO and Registrar processes would be managed. Committee chairs: Professor Martha Gray and Professor David Darmofal

In April 2023, Professors Paula Hammond and Tim Jamison, co-chairs of the Ad Hoc Committee on Graduate Advising and Mentoring, released the committee’s final report on the committee’s website. The report is a compilation of the draft strategic plan and community feedback and provides a roadmap for promoting a culture of excellence in mentoring and advising, and fostering the well-being, research, and professional development of graduate students, faculty, and thesis supervisors.

A new workshop for junior faculty focused on comprehensive advising and mentoring of graduate students will debut in May 2024. Initially focused on the Schools of Engineering and Science, the goal is to expand the initiative to all schools.

Over the past year, the new Undergraduate Advising Center (UAC) has filled key staff positions (the director, associate deans, and assistant deans) and launched a new website. Dr. Diep Luu, Associate Dean & Director, has been meeting with campus stakeholders to share and gather input on the UAC strategic plan. Additional professional advising staff will be hired in the coming year, and a new centrally located undergraduate advising hub will be created over the next 12-18 months.

The Institute has provided additional funds to cover under-recovery of indirect costs for research grants from foundations and other non-profit sources – mitigating a longstanding community pain point and reducing the burden on faculty discretionary resources.

This fall, the Institute launched an under-recovery pilot that allocates new central resources to DLCIs for local decision-making beginning in fiscal year 2024 and streamlines administrative processes for managing under-recovery. In October 2023, two information sessions were held to support administrators, and the under-recovery working group has been actively collaborating with DLCI leadership to help adapt local under-recovery processes to the new approach. In addition, a new app to facilitate requests, reviews, and reporting (part of Research@MIT) has been rolled out to a pilot group of users for feedback and suggestions. The pilot will be expanded to include additional DLCIs over the next several months.

Research scientists, research engineers, and research associates: In a June 2023 letter, Vice President for Research Maria T. Zuber and Vice President for Human Resources Ramona Allen outlined a plan to create a new, more granular job classification structure for the appointments defined in Policies and Procedures 5.2.2; the new structure would establish clearer expectations and paths to advancement. In the latter half of 2023, faculty and other supervisors across MIT, with oversight by DLCI leadership, assigned a job type and one of three levels to each research scientist, research engineer, and research associate that they supervise, according to a set of guiding criteria. P&P 5.2.2 was updated in February 2024 to reflect the new career ladder; it outlines two pathways with levels allowing for progression as a researcher performs more complex responsibilities. The reclassification takes effect on March 1, 2024. Other steps taken to support these colleagues and their career advancement are outlined on the VPR website (Touchstone required).

Lecturers and instructional staff: During spring and summer 2023, a working group of faculty, instructional staff, and administrators was formed to make recommendations for career advancement opportunities and professional wellbeing for instructional staff and gather key data to inform decision-making. In the latter half of 2023, the group reviewed related reports on lecturers and instructors from across the Institute, including Sloan, EECS, OVC, SHASS, and Physics; interviewed instructional staff from all five schools and the College; met with a range of DLCI leadership; and reviewed data from the 2022 MIT Quality of Life Survey and administrative data on instructional staff appointments. Co-chairs Lily Tsai and Bolek Wyslouch are in the process of meeting with school councils to share draft recommendations and request feedback before working towards finalizing the proposed recommendations.

Postdocs: Postdoctoral Services in the Office of the Vice President for Research collaborated with Career Advising and Professional Development (CAPD) to create two new multi-session programs to support the career development of postdoctoral scholars: a grant writing certificate program, launched in December 2023, and a mentoring certificate program, launched in January 2024. These programs will be offered annually to postdoctoral scholars and graduate students in PhD programs. To further support postdocs’ sense of belonging and integrate them into the MIT community, Postdoctoral Services began hosting in-person monthly coffee hours for new postdocs following the monthly HR-sponsored orientation session. These coffee hours provide an avenue for postdocs to ask questions and to ensure that they are aware of the wide variety of career advancement resources available to them, including the Writing and Communication Center, a dedicated full-time postdoc advisor in the office of Career Advising and Professional Development (CAPD), the Kaufman Teaching Certificate Program, new grant writing and mentoring certification programs, and other professional development seminars offered by and in conjunction with the MIT Postdoctoral Association.

Completed: Shared Meeting Spaces enables the MIT community to use the Spaces feature in Atlas Mobile to reserve a variety of room types for holding meetings, including classrooms, conference rooms, and study spaces. Rooms are equipped with Zoom Room capabilities to facilitate meetings involving both in-person and remote attendees – making “flexible work” more workable for all. In the spring, the Spaces feature will provide new functions, enhancing the convenience of this new tool.  

In progress: The Flexible Workspaces initiative is identifying opportunities to support more hybrid and collaborative work and to share campus resources more broadly. Building on the Work Succeeding program resulting from RIC 9, the initiative is exploring how office space can be used more efficiently to enhance the flexible work experience and support future workplace needs, while enabling groups to further their mission.  Findings from this initiative are informing office renovations, resulting in a greater mix of shared spaces and new approaches to reserving places to work.

The Work Succeeding initiative includes tools to help create flexible work options that will: empower teams to work collaboratively and effectively to further the MIT mission; support our employees' varied needs and emphasize job satisfaction and personal well-being; and position the Institute to retain and attract the very best talent. See Toolkits for Flexible Work Planning. Work Succeeding helps to inform the work of RIC 8 on-campus workspaces and RIC 10 on employee development, strategy, and career pathways.

The MIT Careers website was enhanced to make it more inviting to internal candidates, increase transparency related to internal opportunities, highlight specific job groups/positions of greatest need, and include staff voices representing a broad range of career experiences and journeys. Other new features include a mentoring guide for creating local mentoring programs, and new talent planning tools for managers to help with succession planning and for developing employees for current and future roles. 

MIT HR created and distributes a bi-monthly update to current MIT staff regarding new job openings from Human Resources Talent Acquisition. The update is a tool for staff to keep in touch with MIT career opportunities and fosters a culture of career mobility and growth at MIT. Staff can subscribe to the updates (Touchstone required) using their MIT email address. The updates will also contain resources including how to create an MIT job alert and links to professional development workshops.

The Staff Career Connections Slack Workspace continues to provide networking and conversation on career-related topics — membership increased 124% since last report.

MIT Human Resources created a podcast series on career journeys at the Institute. In the podcasts, employees share insights and stories about their roles and career paths at MIT. (Touchstone required.)

Finally, MIT HR developed a web-based course designed to help individuals plan for their professional development and career at MIT. The course introduces employees to job families and job roles at the Institute and describes the job duties needed to be successful. The course helps individuals explore the different job families at MIT, reflect on their work experiences, their current skills, and those skills that individuals would like to develop.

Ad Hoc Committee on Online Continuing and Professional Education was convened to provide a framework and recommendations for how MIT should pursue its online paid offerings in this arena (as distinct from MIT academic subject offerings). A draft report is under review by the school deans and provost. Online master’s programs are typical among our peers, including Stanford and Harvard, and we will continue to contemplate opportunities for MIT. Ad hoc committee submitted its report. OCPE Working Group, charged with reviewing and implementing recommendations, is underway.

OSATT continues to work with the community on its service delivery model. The Vision for the Life Sciences (VITALS) proposes support for the life sciences community whose research is interdisciplinary.

To address the recommendations on international collaborations, VPR has developed awareness and training presentations for DLCs.  They have also updated the Foreign Engagement section of the VPR website and recently launched the Informal International Collaborations (IIC) tool. The Office of the Associate Provost for International Activities has updated the MIT Global Support Resources website with additional information on the elevated-risk project review process. A China Report Implementation (CRI) project team has developed new resources and framework on OPA and COI reporting guidance, to help the community better understand requirements and application.  A separate CRI team has developed notes for PIs to share with lab groups and advisees concerning key points of research security and why heightened awareness around research security issues is valuable for the individuals, lab and other groups, and the entire MIT community.

Recent accomplishments: The Foundation Year for The Strategic Action Plan for Belonging, Achievement and Composition (SAPBAC) closed in September 2023.  Many of the specific recommendations from RIC 13 are addressed in the Plan – both Institute-wide and at the local level.  An analysis of local plans submitted during the Foundation Year show that over 170 actions support advancement of RIC 13 objectives. These include: advancing inclusive recruitment, hiring and onboarding; revising faculty development strategies to be better aligned with best practices and coordinating partnerships with HBCUs, MSIs and other key schools.  Progress on these actions will be tracked within the plan, informed by the Council on Belonging, Achievement and Composition – formerly the CRD. 

One Agile MIT emphasized the importance of prioritizing projects that address legacy business processes, tedious manual tasks, and dated user experiences. As we emerge from the pandemic, we have accelerated projects of this nature. We have recently launched a long-awaited Research@MIT application that provides principal investigators “one-stop” access to information about their grants. We continue to evolve the Atlas Mobile platform to leverage the full range of portable device offerings. We have also implemented modern, software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications for curriculum management (CourseLeaf), graduate student admissions (Slate), housing management (StarRez) and teaching and learning management (Canvas) to complement MIT’s core student information system MITSIS. Over the coming months, we will continue work on modernizing our technology licensing platform and expand the capabilities of Research@MIT and Atlas Mobile.

We are also working to advance structures and develop plans that will enable us to work cross-functionally to undertake larger digital transformation projects, including the modernization of our enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform, related core business systems and administrative processes. The ERP project is still in its early stages, with preparations under way to ensure that the project launches successfully. A key step in preparing us was to hire and onboard a Chief Officer for Business and Digital Transformation to focus on identifying key opportunities for improving business processes and streamlining complex processes, defining and evolving digital strategy, and building and leading a team to work with academic, research, and administrative areas. Renaud Fournier was appointed Chief Officer of Digital Strategy and Transformation in September 2023. Under his leadership, we are developing a thoughtful and actionable multi-year roadmap of projects to accomplish digital transformation. Engagement with stakeholders from central, academic, and research areas will inform how we prioritize projects over the next few years.

We have added materials to the EVPT website to provide transparency to ongoing projects and give community members access to project management toolkits. We will continue to monitor progress against the goals of the One Agile team.

Through the Fiscal 2023 budget, the central budget took on a larger share of research assistant tuition (now up to 55%) and provided additional funding to support the tuition shortfall for active National Science Foundation (NSF) fellows. Fiscal 2024 continued to build on the significant steps taken the prior year and further alleviated burdens for PIs and departments. Additionally, through the Fiscal 2023 budget, the Institute is now providing 12-month funding for base-budget funded PhD students in SHASS and SA+P for the entire time to degree.

Following the ratification of the MIT and MIT Graduate Student Union (GSU) collective bargaining agreement (CBA) on September 22, 2023, salaries associated with research assistantships, teaching assistantships, and instructor-G appointments were increased retroactively effective June 1, 2023 by 5.4%. Going forward, additional adjustments will be made in a small number of cases to ensure these salaries fall within the applicable ranges in the CBA between MIT and the GSU.

In parallel, most fellowships were increased by 0.15% (so that combined with the 5.25% award increase made on June 1, 2023, they now are 5.4% higher than last year).

MIT continues to provide targeted assistance to students with the most pressing financial needs with new programs for graduate students with dependent children and doctoral students who need longer-term support. Combined with a short-term emergency assistance program, MIT has directed $2 million in grants that help to address these students’ needs.

In August 2023, eligible fellows were able to apply for a new annual needs-based supplemental grant of up to $10,000 for students with dependent children. (This is in addition to the need-blind Grant for Graduate Students with Children). Per the MIT-GSU contract, those with RA/TA and IG appointments could also apply for the supplemental award.

The minimum salary/stipend for MIT postdocs in 2024 increased to $66,950, 3 percent over the 2023 minimum of $65,000. The Institute’s new portable child care benefit (launched in 2023) provides up to $5,000 pre-tax funding for qualified postdocs.

The Report of the Ad Hoc Committee on Leveraging Best Practices from Remote Teaching for On-Campus Education was submitted in August 2022 and announced in an email from Krishna Rajagopal, William A. M. Burden Professor of Physics, and Janet Rankin, Director, Teaching and Learning Laboratory. The report was submitted to the chancellor and vice chancellor for consideration and implementation as appropriate.

The Classroom Advisory Board is convened, meeting regularly, and scheduled to issue its first report by the end of the academic year.

The IAP clearinghouse website now utilizes MIT Events Calendar to capture and promote offerings.