Listening Tour

Staff are saying...

• The rise of anti-intellectualism across the country concerns me. MIT has a role to play in helping our society navigate this new normal.
• Advanced manufacturing is vital to the country’s security. We have an exciting opportunity to do more in this space.

Faculty are saying…

• Speak with moral authority and articulate substantive ideas about universities as a force for good in society.
• We have a huge opportunity to help implement recent federal legislation like the infrastructure bill and the CHIPS and Science Act. I hope MIT will seize the opportunity and lead, especially with the issue of sustainability front of mind.
• The federal government listens to MIT. If we see things that are making it difficult to do our jobs regarding open scholarship, IT security, grant funding, or anything else, we should make the case to policymakers.
• I’d be proud of MIT if we find ways to advance and support democracy.
• MIT has an outsized voice in advocating for federal research funding, and we need to speak out on the difficulties in increasing graduate student and postdoctoral salaries without increasing the size of grants.
• MIT should do more to speak out on the dangers of scientific misinformation.

Students are saying…

• Be willing to say “no” if you’re not going to do something we’ve asked for. Even if you think we won’t like the answer, be straight with us.
• Students want a seat at the table. There are times when student engagement has been done well and times when it hasn’t.
• Students want consultation to be real—don’t pretend to consult with us and then disregard our input.

Staff are saying…

• Decentralization is great—it allows departments to put their own spin on things—but we need better communication and a baseline of consistency. 
• There’s an incredible loss of institutional knowledge when someone leaves one of our offices.
• Put a link or a simple, anonymous survey on the MIT homepage asking community members to share the problems they see and offer potential solutions. There will be patterns.
• Management isn’t receptive to input from the people who are doing the work.
• There’s a gaping need for enhanced student information systems.
• MIT could do more to improve the flow of communication and create new opportunities for collaboration between campus and Lincoln Lab.

Faculty are saying…

• There’s been a breakdown in trust between the administration and faculty. The most important thing you can do is restore that trust.
• 95% of the time, our faculty governance structure serves us well. 
• The staff to the faculty and Institute-level committees are invaluable.
• A faculty senate or other structural change would signal a desire for serious engagement with the faculty.
• I’ve noticed a shift in faculty governance. Twenty years ago, there wasn’t a lot of space between the faculty and administration, and it felt like the faculty were running the Institute. That’s changed. We now have a dysfunctional system of faculty governance.
• We expect senior officers to make top-down decisions, but meaningful engagement with those of us in the trenches is important. Consult with us and listen to us before making a decision. We won’t agree with every decision you make, but we’ll understand if you talk with us in advance, particularly if you explain your decisions transparently.
• It feels like there’s an implicit communication from the Institute that you can only be successful if you’re in Course 6. That’s where the resources go.
• Do random outreach to faculty. Invite faculty, staff, and students to come talk to you in small groups. Even if you can’t meet with everyone, word will get out that you’re making an effort to engage broadly.
• Create open forums like the 8:00 am calls during the pandemic to bring people together to discuss hard issues and share information. 
• Do more to convene important conversations of faculty across disciplines on hard problems.
• When the administration launches a new initiative, we groan. There’s a big launch with lots of energy, and then the work, including fundraising, is transferred to the shoulders of the faculty.
• SHASS faculty can be made to feel subordinate to our STEM colleagues. We’re invited to play a role, but it’s often as an add-on and without resources.
• We spend so much time doing email that in-person interaction has suffered. The fun of learning and engaging is lost when we’re not physically together. Too much communication is electronic.
• Leading faculty researchers don’t have time to serve on committees and attend lots of meetings. As a result, the people who are most active in decision making aren’t representative of the faculty who have to live with those decisions.
• The burden of procuring clinical data has shifted to individual PIs. Our researchers could be so much more effective with more comprehensive data sharing agreements.
• The faculty are too siloed. I wish we were more integrated and more connected to our colleagues around the Institute.
• Staff are overworked and underpaid, and we simply can’t do our jobs without them.

Students are saying…

• Diversity, equity, and inclusion are among the most important issues for students.
• Graduate students don’t care about the free speech debate. They’re focused on issues like childcare, housing, and the cost of living.
• The Supreme Court’s ruling on affirmative action will challenge you immediately. It’s important to us that we maintain a commitment to diversity.
• Student culture needs to be allowed to flourish or MIT will lose its strength as a draw for talent.
• We want the administration to send messages when hateful things are said and done anywhere on campus, including in the dorms. We see silence as tolerating hate on campus.
• We want you to listen to and respond to the interests and needs of students of color and work with students to create tailored orientation and training programs directed at reducing racism at MIT.
• We want you to address longstanding concerns of the Indigenous community, including increased Indigenous presence in student affairs and on the faculty. We also want you to examine historical issues, such as the naming of Walker Memorial and issues surrounding the land acknowledgement.
• We want you to quickly condemn acts of hatred aimed at the LGBTQ community and work to increase the visibility of and celebration of this community.
• There are so many cool events at MIT, but I don’t usually hear about them until after they’ve happened.
• I don’t always feel that offices like IDHR give me the justice I want. There’s a lot of bad behavior that might not rise to a policy violation. I wish there was more MIT could do to address it.
• Free speech is the most important issue for me as a graduate student.
• MIT has become a bit sterile and corporate.

Staff are saying…

• We say sometimes that there’s a hierarchy at MIT: faculty, then students, then furniture, then staff.
• I haven’t felt the hierarchy that some staff describe. What keeps me going is knowing that I contribute to making things better at MIT, and people appreciate that.
• We sometimes feel afraid to speak up for ourselves if a faculty member says or does something inappropriate.
• So many of us have personal side gigs or hobbies. You could do more to recognize and celebrate staff character.
• There’s an issue of implicit disrespect at MIT, for example, faculty not meeting with staff for performance reviews, or staff often left to clean up a faculty member’s mess.
• You’ve parachuted into a very harsh environment in which everyone is distracted. You’re going to have to work hard to get people’s attention.
• Push efforts to hire more Black and brown people. 
• We want you to quickly condemn acts of hatred aimed at the LGBTQ community and work to increase the visibility of and celebration of this community.
• There isn’t much of a sense of community among academic staff. We’d love it if there was some infrastructure to help us connect with one another across departments.
• Before the pandemic, we had regular in-person gatherings to build community and recognize one another. I wish management would do more to help rebuild community.
• Bad behavior gets rewarded here.
• There’s a challenge with the transfer of knowledge among student leaders post-Covid. In DSL, we’re trying to help address that now.
• Students have historically enjoyed a model of self-governance, but there are so many cultural fights occurring that may require our help to address them.
• When a student violates a policy or value, we hold them accountable, but it’s important we do so in a caring and compassionate way.
• It’s so important that you bring coalitions of people together and get them rowing in the same direction.
• There’s no shortage of problems here but also no shortage of people who want to help find solutions. I love that about MIT.
• Share a concrete timeline of progress toward the recommendations from the Working Group on Reimagining Public Safety at MIT.
• I’m concerned about increased tension between students and the administration.
• If the Supreme Court effectively bans race-conscious admissions, many on our campus will feel unwelcome. And marginalized students applying to college will prioritize schools where they know they’ll be supported. The strength of programs that support marginalized populations will be a differentiator in competing for those students.
• Create a growth culture and a learning culture rather than cancel culture on campus.

Faculty are saying…

• Schools feel more isolated from each other than they used to. We need a more unified institution.
• Be more willing to create faculty slots to enable us to hire candidates from underrepresented backgrounds.
• We don’t have a place where the faculty can gather across disciplines. A lunchroom would go a long way toward fostering a sense of community among the faculty.
• MIT’s work to develop a statement of free expression is very important.
• Our communities of staff, faculty, students, and postdocs are divided. We’re not one community at the moment. The job of leadership will be to help us come back together.
• The whole population of staff makes MIT what it is. Many staff feel their wellbeing is diminished or an afterthought. We have a dearth of kindness across MIT. 
• We need to be more generous toward staff, who are at the front lines of the affordability crisis.
• The tone of discourse on campus has changed significantly because of Covid and the Epstein crisis. We’re facing more demands and less of a sense of collaboration. I hope we can revive a more respectful tone in our engagement with one another. 
• MIT has done a good job supporting faculty of Chinese origin. It’s important to me that that continue, especially as relations between the United States and China further deteriorate. 
• Students who come from places like China, Ukraine, and Russia need a different kind of career advising given political uncertainty in their home countries.
• It’s getting harder and harder to attract the best faculty talent. One reason is the pull of commercial research labs. People are choosing industry, where the starting salaries are so much more than what we can offer.
• We talk about deferred maintenance in terms of buildings, but there’s deferred maintenance in the relationship between faculty and students. When a difficult event occurs, that disconnect becomes clear.
• MIT does not adequately harness the scholarly expertise of its faculty to address problems at MIT (sustainability, computing infrastructure, race relations, etc.).
• Covid was a major setback for grad student research. We’re still feeling the effects and will for some time. Students are distracted, hurt, and damaged; it’s affecting all of our research groups. Let’s find ways to lift the students up and get them back on track.
• The country’s polarization has flooded our campus. This has me deeply concerned.
• I worry that we’re only tinkering around the edges on issues of diversity. I wish there were more help from above and more coordination between the faculty and staff.
• Curiosity is one of our community’s most important qualities. It’s important that we foster it.
• Find ways to get meaningful input from faculty who don’t have the loudest voices. The more interaction in setting priorities, the better. 
• MIT has become overly conservative in interpreting government regulations, especially when it comes to engaging internationally.
• There’s an entrenched bureaucracy at MIT that isn’t aligned with faculty/student interests. It’s making it harder to do routine things.
• My big concern about the future of MIT is that no one’s in the office anymore. It’s so expensive to live in the area, and transportation is so challenging. It’s just easier to work remotely. And that’s a problem.
• Maybe have central staff resources when there’s a staffing gap. We’re sometimes looking for staff who know MIT systems and can fill in short term. Maybe there could be a program that sends floating staff around campus to address a need.
• There isn’t a good mechanism to train staff coming in from outside. We need help getting staff up and running faster.
• There isn’t a career path at MIT for non-faculty researchers. We lose so many good people because of it.

Researchers and postdocs are saying…

• I’m very proud of the work we do in my lab, and I’m proud to be a member of the MIT community.
• Life as a postdoc can be a very lonely experience. Some labs are small and isolated; others are large and welcoming. It’s all based on the tone the PI sets.
• To some extent, we’re left alone to sink or swim as we can. This can be liberating, but it can also be catastrophic. 

Staff are saying…

• Consider creating a research design requirement. Some students have no idea what research design is.
• There’s a growing hunger for hands-on making activities. This has always been important to the MIT experience, and it’s only becoming more so.
• MIT loses a lot of talented, dedicated educators because the commitment to lecturers at an Institute level isn’t the same as it is to researchers.
• There’s so much more we could be doing to leverage online education tools. We’ve learned a lot during Covid and need to think boldly about how to foster the best in-person and online learning experience for our students.
• We have a great opportunity to strengthen undergraduate advising. Bringing in professional advisors and leveraging technology to improve coordination could be a huge win. 

Faculty are saying…

• There’s universal agreement that our current General Institute Requirements (GIRs) structure won’t serve us well for the next 20 years, but there’s no agreement on how the GIRs should be revised.
• MIT needs to reexamine its undergraduate education to incorporate requirements in computing.
• Let’s infuse more climate content into classes, including the GIRs.
• I feel like innovations in teaching move in slow motion. MIT could create more opportunities for dynamic, innovative work in the classroom.
• Traditional classroom teaching might become less relevant. We need to reimagine the future of campus-based education.
• The undergraduate body is the one area at MIT where there’s been limited growth. We have an obligation to the world to produce more alumni at the undergraduate level and we need to think how to expand options here in Cambridge, not just remotely.
• Rethink undergraduate education broadly. Why four years? Why two semesters per year?
• We have an opportunity to take a big step forward on open scholarship.
• ChatGPT presents serious concerns about plagiarism and cheating. MIT should pursue a coordinated, thoughtful strategy that will serve all of us well and that could become a model for academia.
• The college is advancing our ability to infuse disciplines with computing and we particularly like the Common Ground, but the college does not have (or is not devoting) sufficient resources to collaborate with us on all of the classes we would like to see.
• The concentration of majors in computer science continues to be a problem. We need to convince students that “bilingualism” will help them get jobs and it’s not all about CS.
• The new faculty who have been hired in SCC are great, but the joint hires are proceeding more slowly. Also, having one faculty member embedded is not enough to infuse teaching of a discipline with computational thinking.
• I’m concerned that students continue to flock to CS at such an overwhelmingly high rate.
• UROP is a great strength of MIT. Many students work in the same lab for two to three years. Find a way to acknowledge and reward those students with a credential of some sort.
• My UROP experience has been different. My students are never in the lab. They’re doing so many other things and don’t put in the time they should. Students should not do more than one UROP at a time. It would be more valuable to pursue a deeper research experience instead of multiple experiences.
• Students are coming to class less and less, and when they do come, many play on their computers and don’t pay attention.
• We need to do more to make the in-person class time meaningful. Digital learning is still underutilized.
• Alumni sometimes tell me that they regret not taking more SHASS classes when they were students. Maybe MIT could offer a microcredential in certain subjects for alumni.
• Advising for students is too fractured. We often don’t know what students are told by their advisors in S3 or elsewhere, so we’re often sending inconsistent messages. We need a more coordinated system.
• The very late drop date encourages students to load up on classes and overburden themselves. We need to change the messaging to students about course loads.
• The burden on faculty is steadily increasing, but MIT is not providing appropriate support for faculty to meet these new expectations. 
• Changes to MIT’s P/NR grading policies have allowed students to put off some GIRs until their junior or senior year, which I think is harmful. Those courses are meant to be foundational. I suggest restricting P/NR to the first and second year.
• My undergraduate advisees want to take so many classes, which creates all sorts of problems. We need a limit to prevent overloading.
• More and more, students want me to prepare them for tests rather than educate them. It’s disheartening.
• The issue of Course 6 undergraduate enrollment continues to be a problem. I wish we could do more to make students aware of the many other fields of study available to them and the career prospects those disciplines present.
• MIT should set a goal of eliminating undergraduate tuition.

Students are saying…

• Unionization is one of the most important issues for graduate students.

Faculty and staff are saying…

• The faculty observers are a real strength in the negotiation process.
• It will be critical to bring graduate students and faculty and staff closer together once a contract is in place.
• Coming out of the union negotiations, a big community hug would be great. We'll want to reconnect with our graduate students.
• MIT should make a serious and substantial fundraising effort to raise central endowed funds for graduate students. 
• There’s rising concern among our faculty about the impact of graduate student unionization on MIT’s mission. Faculty lack managerial tools to navigate the new reality of a unionized student body.
• Create more of a baseline of financial support for grad students from the center, and then tell individual departments or PIs that they’ll need to provide funding beyond a certain level. Faculty are afraid of a lapse in funding.

Students are saying…

• The cost of living at MIT and in Cambridge is a major concern.
• The cost of housing for graduate students is core to the long-term competitiveness of the Institute.
• The growth in the graduate student body has put enormous pressure on housing and facilities.
• Students have a lot of issues with the quality of life in the dorms.
• Many students are forced to choose where to live based on financial fit instead of community fit.
• Food insecurity is an issue. People are choosing to skip meals because they don’t have the money or the time. And the average price of a meal on a meal plan is a real area of concern.
• Rent accounts for a huge percentage of grad students’ stipends. It’s not sustainable.
• I’d appreciate better communications on all things related to housing.
• The partners of grad students living in MIT housing are often excluded from important emails. We often don’t know what’s going on.
• We have a really strong relationship with the administration when it comes to housing. There are a lot of MIT staff who are invested in our wellbeing, and we appreciate that.
• Students value unique dorm cultures, but it can be hard for the administration to manage so many different systems of governance.
• The best ideas in housing—like the pod program during Covid—result from meaningful collaboration between students and the administration.
• With the intense academic pressures we face as undergrads, dorms are essential for getting the peer support we need.
• Dining remains a serious issue. The minimum swipes for meal plans keep rising, and it’s often not feasible to get back to our dorms to use those swipes during the day. It would be great if we could use our swipes at the cafes on campus.
• We’re missing a reasonably priced grocery store nearby. And although LaVerde’s was expensive, it was at least there for us in a pinch. It will leave a serious gap in our dining landscape. This is a huge concern.
• TechMart—the at-cost grocery store MIT piloted a few years ago—was a good idea, but it wasn’t exactly what we need. The hours of operation weren’t right, it didn’t have fresh produce, and most students didn’t even know it was there. It’s worth revisiting.
• FSILGs help people find their communities. They’re vital for positioning students to support one another.
• Because of the house closures during Covid, FSILGs are dealing with a loss of historical knowledge. We’re working to re-build the knowledge base and reconnect with alumni.

Staff are saying…

• Food insecurity is a huge problem for students, especially during IAP. Vending machines and the dining plans are expensive.

Faculty are saying…

• I wish MIT would do more to subsidize housing for junior faculty or provide local housing. We’re at a competitive disadvantage.
• MIT needs available, affordable housing for trainees, especially grad students and postdocs.

Students are saying…

• Undergrads have a lot of support with mental health. For grad students, we’re kind of left to figure things out on our own.
• With such a large first-generation-to-college population, undergrads feel immense pressure to succeed academically and financially and to send money home. This can present serious mental health challenges.
• Think about academics and mental health together. Mental health is affected by academic pressures. Examples include extra homework over long weekends and issues with grading transparency.
• Mental health services at MIT are always booked. It can be hard to get an appointment. The delay between outreach and an appointment is way too long.
• We need more private spaces on campus to be able to have a private video chat for a mental health appointment.

Staff are saying…

• Students are asking for lots of accommodations and flexibility with their assignments. They have legitimate reasons for the requests, but I’m worried about sending our students off into the working world when they need—and expect—so much support. You can’t always ask for an extension from your boss.

Students are saying…

• Many of our websites, apps, and student systems are really old. It’s definitely time for a refresh.
• MIT should return to building its own IT systems rather than buying them.

Staff are saying…

• We’re always being asked to do more with less. We have enough staff to just barely get the job done. When someone leaves, we’re often asked to do the job of two or three. It’s too much.
• Staff would benefit from greater opportunities for professional development.
• Staff compensation is inadequate.
• MIT needs a system that does more to reward high performers and that creates opportunities for advancement.
• Without the staff, this Institute wouldn’t exist.
• We’re here because we love MIT and we want to help you, but you have to promote us.
• Faculty don’t necessarily have the skillsets they need to be leaders. Do more to train faculty when they move into leadership roles. 
• Our IT and administrative systems are so old. They’re being upgraded, which is great, but we’re often not engaged until the systems are in place, and then it’s too late to make a change.
• We’re struggling with recruitment and retention.

Faculty are saying…

• Underrecovery is a problem. However you decide to fix it, there will be a tradeoff that you’ll need to explain clearly.
• There’s a huge problem in the way research overhead works here. Funders that want to support our work face too many barriers. This affects us deeply.
• We’re facing an increased burden from federal regulation, and MIT’s administrative infrastructure hasn’t kept up. The time we spend attending to research administration issues takes us away from education and research. 
• Graduate students are very costly at MIT; government funding falls short of being able to cover these costs.
• Core research facilities need to be improved.
• The price of doing research at MIT is becoming prohibitive.
• We need to refocus fundraising on basic research, not just applied research.
• It bothers me that MIT is so engineering lopsided. Don’t make engineering smaller, but give more resources to the other fields. Ultimately, we’re educating students who will invent the world of tomorrow. We can only do that by better resourcing disciplines like the humanities, ethics, and arts.
• Faculty and students don’t believe we have financial constraints. We see a disconnect between the size of the endowment and all the needs we still have. Do more to explain how MIT’s finances work.
• Over the last 10-15 years, MIT has moved from being supportive and enabling to creating administrative barriers.
• To make progress in medical research, especially using AI, we need greater access to medical data. MIT would benefit from a central data hub with all of the legal issues worked out at a higher level.
• We had hoped that the college would enhance research computing across campus, and we are now told that this was not the purpose of the college. I hope that the new ORCD effort will meet those needs.
• There aren’t enough support staff in SHASS to get things done, and we don’t have the resources to hire.
• We need a simpler process, and more support, for securing grants. We have to jump through too many hoops.
• So much knowledge about how MIT works is tied to individuals, not offices. When someone leaves, there’s an information void.

Researchers and postdocs are saying…

• MIT’s policies for promotion aren’t clear, and I don’t know who I can ask to gain a better understanding of what’s required of me to advance.
• As a research scientist, I do the same things assistant and associate professors do—research, teaching, supervising, advising—but I can’t sign a grant proposal that I’ve written because I’m not a PI. It’s embarrassing. I feel like a second-class citizen.
• I’d appreciate it if MIT would offer training in how to write grant proposals.
• Compensation for postdocs is an issue.
• If you want to encourage more women to become postdocs, you need to provide more support for daycare. Even if I could afford daycare at MIT, the waiting list is so long.
• Issues such as privilege, rules for promotion, and options for retirement are undefined for these roles.

Students are saying…

• You’ll be successful if students feel listened to and heard.

Staff are saying…

• Leadership needs to be more visible on campus.

Faculty are saying…

• Unity. Schools feel more isolated from each other than they used to.
• Lead with integrity and a commitment to healing.
• A re-commitment to undergraduate education and a serious rethinking of the GIRs.
• A meaningful contribution to solving the climate crisis.
• Let the community see you more as a person. Doing more things like the video after the flyer incident will help bridge gap between the faculty and administration.
• Lift us up and help us do things that we can’t do on our own. A hands-off approach to administration at MIT has historically worked, but that’s not what’s needed now. 
• Return us to being a family, not just a collection of schools and departments.
• Success in this moment would look like revitalizing our communities, bringing us all together in a way that honors and connects our many constituencies.