Revision history:
Oct. 1, 1999 * Liana Lareau * Rough Draft
Oct. 4, 1999 * Christopher Beland * Addendum ("4.3.4 Easy Access to
Community Facilities")
Oct. 5, 1999 * Christopher Beland * Document formatting and section
numbering. Minor clarification in 4.3.4. Added "4.2.4
Resident-directed programming." Changes in green. Non-content comments in red.
Oct. 5, 1999 * Christopher Rezek * Added "4.1.4 Alumni Interaction" in
purple.
Oct. 6, 1999 * Matt McGann * Added stuff in orange
Further revisions coming soon from Jeremy Sher and Shawn Kelly.
The current residential system fosters strong communities within the individual living groups. These communities provide a preliminary structure for campus wide interaction, while also contributing a strong base of support for students. An ideal residence system -- house, home, and community -- ensures student happiness, and thus supports academic success. To this end, the system must contain both formal and informal advising and mentoring. It is also essential that the residence system encourage interaction between all members of the MIT community, including undergraduate and graduate students, alumni, faculty, and staff. Interactions of this sort, while sometimes spontaneous in nature, often require an additional degree of organizational support. The idea is not to force interactions within and between communities, but to break down the barriers that may prevent these interactions and increase the total number of possibilities.
Many documents have established the need for a stronger commitment to faculty-student interaction. [quote from task force?]. MIT students are surrounded by some of the world's most prestigious and enthusiastic professors, yet many students have never even spoken personally with a member of the faculty. In turn, the faculty wonder why they are so distant from the students whom they see each day in class, but who rarely approach them with questions. Currently, MIT has implemented a few programs to improve the situation, but more and better support is needed. The House Fellows program has brought a handful [insert numbers? 10? Matt will ask] of faculty in contact with undergraduate residential life; the housemasters of dormitories provide another handful of involved faculty. However, both of these programs are woefully undersupported by the administration.
The House Fellow program needs to provide an incentive and a means for faculty to get involved. The program coordinator for residence life should work hand in hand with students to seek appropriate house fellows for the individual cultures of each residence. Faculty who volunteer for this program should be compensated in a manner similar to freshman advisors; that is, they should receive on the order of $1500 in research grants. Ideally, the number of house fellows should be approximately the same as the number of GRTs in the dorms and FSILGs. The administration must provide more financial support for programs and events sponsored by the house fellows, both because of the increased participation, and to allow more significant programming. The programming should range from practical to cultural, from social to intellectual. Faculty could arrange trips to Red Sox games, the Boston Pops, hiking, service days, or even just study breaks or house activities like installing a hammock.
Currently, House Masters have severe constraints on their schedule, including teaching, research, and family. To facilitate residential programming and faculty-student interaction, the administration should provide staff support for housemasters. These support staff could assist faculty in the day-to-day dealings of the residence, and in planning student events for the residence, leaving the faculty with more time to interact with students. This support should be in the form of one half-time assistant for each housemaster; seven full-time or fourteen half-time staff members would be required for the current system, at a cost of approximately $250,000 per year.
The current event funding level for housemasters is adequate, and should be maintained. However, that housemasters must divvy up funds between themselves and their GRTs is less than acceptable. [Matt will add more here]
Faculty and staff must recognize the value of participating in the residence system, and ensure that students have enough time to do so. Consequently, existing academic regulations must be rigorously enforced, and departments should carefully consider the content and instruction quality of their subjects to ensure that students are not doing "busywork." Also, it is important to provide incentive for faculty to become involved in residence-based programs; faculty should not be penalized for spending time on student interaction. Indeed, contributions to student life should be considered in the tenure process for junior faculty; participants in programs should be able to submit recommendations testifying to their commitment to this goal.
Subcommittee on Residential Programming of the Student Life
Committee will be responsible for events and programs to encourage
student-faculty interaction. By sponsoring events and by facilitating
student-run events, the subcommittee can generate interaction between
students and faculty, both inside and outside of the residences.
Promising events include student-faculty gatherings in the Bush Room,
faculty invited to dinners or study breaks at living groups, and
family-friendly events such as carnivals or picnics. The Subcommittee
should have a budget of $50,000 per year for
such events grants to residences for community-building and
intellectual events.
Alumni/ae are one of the most valuable yet often overlooked
community group at MIT. They combine the wisdom of age and experience
with an intimate knowledge of the MIT experience. Incorporating the
larger body of alumni into the MIT community will benefit both alumni
and students.
4.1.4 Alumni Interaction
This can be accomplished in many ways. The same
programs described above for faculty would also be effective for
alumni, especially those residing in the greater Boston area.
We especially encourage a further rollout of the student-alumni
adiving matched program. This program, piloted with European students
and alumni, matched students one-on-one with alumni who shared a
common academic/professional interest in a similar geographic
location. This program should include all students, beginning with
the first year.
If treated in these ways, alumni would be utilized as more than simply
potential donors, but rather important contributors to the MIT
community. This may in the end be cause for alumni to be more active
donors, among other benefits already listed.
Much has recently been made of the emergence of the residential communities as a haven of sorts from the harshness of MIT. Many community members feel that this "sanctuary" dynamic of the residences works against the development of Institute-wide community. We agree. However, in the rush to place blame for this dynamic, we believe the residential system has been unfairly accused. We agree that there is at least something of a "fortress mentality" in the residence halls, expressed most often in the form of a vehement and near-unanimous opposition to the idea of academic classes encroaching into the residences. However, we believe that this "fortress" feeling is an effect rather than a cause of the problem.
We believe that the "freshman malaise" (as the familiar first-year loss of enthusiasm has come to be called) is primarily due to the quality and quantity of academic work during the freshman year. Indeed, not much has changed about the freshman year since ODSUE's 1994 student survey, which ranked the least-liked aspects of the freshman year as quality of instruction, relevance of instructional material to students' interests, and quality of advising. [NOTE: NEED CITATION.] When first-year students, bright with ideas and the spirit of innovation, are forced to spend their first year drudging away at uninteresting problem sets, memorizing material that they know they will not need in the future, cramming for exams that are meaningless and dry, is it any wonder that they turn to the home for refuge? Add to this the Physics Department's questionable practice of failing [FORGOT THE HORRIFIC PERCENTAGE]% of students taking 8.01, and the Writing Requirement's policy of giving 5/6 of the freshman class a taste of failure as soon as they arrive, and you have a much more plausible candidate for the cause of the "freshman malaise" than any story about poor advising by upperclassmen.
Moreover, we do not believe that this "fortress" mentality is particularly self-perpetuating. In contrast to some who have recently argued that the advice of upperclassmen -- an entrenched factor -- is to blame for freshman cynicism, we believe that upperclass advice amounts to commiseration rather than corruption. The freshmen are already disappointed with MIT by the time they go to upperclassmen to complain. If the cause for this disappointment were removed, so, we believe, would be the commiseration dynamic. The fact is that most students are deeply disappointed with MIT's first-year academic offerings. If their love for learning erodes during freshman year, we, as students, submit that this is why.
Currently, the residence system provides informal mentoring and support by upperclass students in living groups. While this is one of the successes of the current residence system, the system could benefit from a more established support framework. MIT is a stressful and difficult place to live, and the emotional wellbeing of students is crucial to their academic success. However, setting students in positions of authority over other students raises a number of issues.
(then outline how this will work: database of *trained* medlinks, judcomm, physics gods, counselors like nightline people, etc)
(add something about "Graduate Residents should receive substantial peer counse ling and conflict resolution training.")
In addition to their current student support role within the living groups, the GRTs and FSILG resident advisors should plan and implement residence-wide and campus-wide events. Each tutor should be responsible for one dorm-wide social or educational event per term. In addition, the tutors of each dorm should collectively be responsible for one campus-wide event, held outside of the residence hall. The ORLSLP will provide appropriate funds for GRT events.
Residence hall programming seems to have been generally successful, though the results of a recent Planning Office survey of Housemasters [1] very neatly summarizes a number of areas that could use improvement. We would like to underscore the need to provide highly customized programming to each residence hall, based on the needs and wants of the residents. Once again, additional funding and administrative support are also required, especially for those programs which successfully engage the participants of residents and other members of the MIT community.
(intro??)
Regular campus-wide events maintain and foster campus-wide
community. To this end, living groups shall be responsible for one
event per year which is open to the community and held outside of the
living group. These events need not be large enough to accomodate the
entire community, but should be of interest to a variety of students,
faculty, staff, and alumni. Various events of this sort exist
currently; the new "Tuesday Nights at Baker" program is an excellent
example. Occasional larger events may be co-sponsored by several
living groups. To facilitate planning of these events, MIT needs to
reorganize its administrative structure to engender cooperation
amongst the various program coordinators. e.g. CAC, athletics,
departments, living groups, ORLSLP.
Correction: Tuesday Nights at Baker is
an Orientation program, not a community-wide event sponsored by the
Baker residents.
Also consider the following from the DDT
report:
On a broader level, one very common solution to the
problem of a weak "campus-wide community" has been to propose various
campus-wide events. Some events, like the Infinite Buffet[1] have
been wildly successful (if judged by attendance) but
resource-intensive. Others, like concerts, debates, or traditional
"school spirit" events, do not necessarily appeal to a cross-section
of campus denizens. Programs meant to engage the attention of the
whole MIT community should appeal to some fundamental common interest
of the population of the Institute. For example, 6.270 robotics design
contest is very popular among mechanical engineering and EECS
students, but the showmanship of the final contest also appeals to a
much broader audience.
If the Institute is interested in facilitating
faculty-student interaction, it must not merely provide a room and
label it "interaction space." Instead, it must either provide a new or
utilize an existing real-world motivation. For instance, an organized
MIT-wide "Find a UROP Day" would almost certainly draw considerable
interest, while simultaneously fostering research opportunities and
communication - communication with a purpose. Careful advertising to
area alumni could also bring increased participation and valuable
perspective to campus-wide events. Adequate funding and support for
large events is also critical to their success.
[1] MIT News Office article:
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/tt/1997/nov26/buffet.html; Tech news
article: http://www-tech.mit.edu/Issue/V117/N60/infinite.60n.html;
Tech column: http://www-tech.mit.edu/Issue/V117/N61/altschul.61c.html;
video: http://caes.mit.edu/mvp/html/infinitebuffet.html
A crucial aspect of residential programming is a residential dining system.
"The dining system is another setting in which community is created and sustained. Yet much of the dining system at MIT has been allowed to languish." [1]
It is crucial to support dining halls as well as personal cooking. As was noted by this Committee in the community-based planning phase of Residence2001, the two most successful comunity dining programs in the current system are Baker Dining and Random Hall's floor kitchens. [2]
[1] Task Force on Student Life and Learning, Chapter 4
[2] http://web.mit.edu/buildings/residence2001/10-09_sac.html
Much thought needs to be put into designing a first-rate residential dining system. Luckily, this was done by the Food Services Working Group (FSWG), concluding in its 1998 Institute Dining Review (IDR). Unfortunately, only a subset of the IDR's recommendations have been implemented. MIT must make dining a central piece of its residence system. The senior administration must allocate resources to run a first-rate system (see Chapter 5, Capital Expenditures).
The following recommendations are taken directly from the IDR. We endorse them in full.
In general. The campus dining system will (a) provide students with a nutritious, high quality diet in a convenient manner and at reasonable cost; (b) provide opportunities for students to meet and dine with each other and other members of the MIT community; and (c) provide opportunities for students to develop leadership and citizenship skills through their dining program.
The Review recognizes the value that our unique student residence have for the student body and the MIT community. Therefore, the dining program in each residence hall should be structured in cooperation with the residents of that hall to ensure that the dining program is consistent with the hall's particular characteristics and culture.
The Review recognizes that students' freedom of choice is an important aspect of the undergraduate experience at MIT that must be maintained. However, it is neither practical nor feasible to provide all dining options in all halls at all times. Therefore, a full range of residential dining options will be provided system-wide, allowing students freedom to choose a dining program that best meets their particular needs.
Management of Residential Dining. Each residence hall will have a local oversight group. The groups will assist in developing dining programs for their respective houses. In houses centered around personal cooking, the oversight groups will arrange cooking and food purchasing programs, as well as plan catered meals and other related special events for the house. In houses with dining halls, the oversight groups will help the vendor with menu selection, relations with the house, and planning programs and events around the dining hall.
Dining Halls. The following houses will have dining halls: Ashdown House, Baker House, Burton-Conner, MacGregor House, McCormick Hall, and Next House. Baker and Next currently have operating dining halls. McCormick's hall should be reopened by the Fall of 199, and the hall will be a pilot program for the new dining system. MacGregor's hall should also be reopened as soon as possible. Reopening Ashdown and Burton will require substantial renovations, making these longer-term projects.
Dining hall hours will be changed. In general, the halls will serve dinner seven nights a week during 2.5-3 hour time blocks, including during IAP (a few halls would be kept open during the summer, as well). However, dinner will be eliminated in Lobdell to encourage dining in the halls and through community meals. Improvements to Networks and the dining halls will satisfy the remaining need for "quick dinners."
A convenience store (like the one currently operating in MacGregor) will remain open. However, the store probably will be moved to Burton-Conner, since MacGregor probably will not have enough space to accommodate the convenience store and full kitchen facilities.
Finally, Pritchett serve as a dining hall- like facility, providing dinner to residents of East Campus and Senior House. Pritchett is already hosting community meals for East Campus residents.
All dining halls will be open to all students. We realize that issues of security are of serious concern, but we believe that the Office of Campus Dining can work with the dining halls to establish proper security programs.
Support for Personal Cooking. Dining programs will be centered around personal cooking in the following houses: Random, Bexley, East Campus, Senior House, New House, Eastgate, Westgate, Green Hall, Edgerton, and Tang. (Ashdown and Burton will be cooking houses in the short term, as well.) These houses will provide appropriate support for individual cooking, as well as run regular community meals.
Residents in all halls will be provided with convenient and secure kitchens (including some convenience kitchens provided in houses with dining halls). MIT will provide for basic kitchen maintenance in all halls. Day-to-day cleaning tasks will be required, but will vary by house. Halls may choose to have cleaning services contracted out (the cost added to house rents), form a cleaning schedule for students to share cleaning duties, or some combination thereof. The House Managers will be charged with the enforcement of the sanitation and maintenance standards.
Meal Plans. Meal plans will be made available to the MIT community. These plans will offer packages of meals at significant savings over the regular a la carte prices.
To further relieve financial burdens on students, vendors will be required to offer low-priced "value meals." These meals will include an entree, side dishes, and a beverage. They will be full, healthy meals (not "junk food") and will cost under $5.00.
Mandatory, system-wide meal plans will not be implemented. The residents of a house certainly may require meal plans to build a house dining program, however.
"If participation in the community is to become an integral part of the MIT experience, in accordance with the principle of the educational triad, the Institute must explore ways to recognize participation in the community appropriate to its educational role." [1]
MIT needs to provide a variety of rewards and recognition for people participating in the residence system. This should range from recognition of one-time efforts to sustained contributions over periods of time.
One easy example would be to have a column in each issue of Tech Talk highlighting community-building accomplishments of MIT faculty, students, and staff.
A more substantial example would be to give greater consideration to a faculty member's community involvement as part of the tenure, promotion and performance review process. [2]
Another substantial example would be to provide academic credit for student leadership in the community, in conjunction with a faculty member's guidance. This would be an expansion of classes such as 17.903, Community Service: Experience and Reflection. In this class, students receive credit (units arranged) traditional communtity service, in combination with related reading and writing assignments and a seminar. The Management, Urban Studies, and Political Science department curricula would be natural homes for such a venture.
Further examples of community rewards and recognition are outlined in chapter 6, Governance and Management.
[1] Task Force on Student Life & Learning, Chapter 4
[2] Ibid.
Many dormitories have spaces which are intended for use by the entire MIT community - Baker Dining and MacGregor Convenience, for example. The current arrangements in many dormitories often either prevent easy and convenient access to these spaces by the public, compromises the security of private areas, or both.
Currently, for example, residents have also often become dangerously accustomed to opening doors for anyone who requests entry, on the assumption that they are on their way to a community area visiting a friend. Visitors also often find explaining themselves to desk workers to be a hassle, which discourages them from visiting friends at other dormitories, or eating in another in-dorm dining hall. On the other hand, due to the high volume of legitimate traffic in many entryways, desk workers are not always diligent about questioning every person who wanders by. To take one concrete example in particular, there is currently nothing to stop a student visiting Baker Dining from wandering the entirety of the dormitory.
MIT should conduct a comprehensive review of physical security in its residence halls, with aim of accomplishing all of the following goals:
MIT must implement the changes requested as a result of this review process. This will require a minor but important commitment of Institute funds toward updating the physical security infrastructure of its residence system.
In a dormitory with a dining hall, event space, or similar common areas, residents may opt to give 24-hour (or limited-hour) open access to all members of the MIT community in order to promote inter-residence interaction. Weight room, music practice rooms, and similar facilities might be allocated by a reservation mechanism controlled by the front desk, with priority given to residence. Additional card readers or key locks might be requested on entries to private hallways from public areas. Additional security "checkpoints" would allow different access policies to be enforced for different areas in a given building.
Students in many floors and entries enjoy the social and physical benefits they get from being able to leave their doors open all of the time. In other places, students would prefer ease of public access to common hallways. Taking into account these differing preferences is important, and under no circumstances should the security policies of a building be changed against the wishes of the majority of the residents.
Footnotes:
[1] "Residence Hall Programming: Summary of Responses to Housemaster Query." Draft, July 13, 1998. Available at http://web.mit.edu/residence/systemdesign/residence_hall.html.