Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Foundation History and vision
in 1859, he presented a proposal to the General Court of Massachusetts to use new lands filled Back Bay, Boston for a "Conservatory of Art and Science", but the proposal failed. A proposal by William Barton Rogers carried a letter to the incorporation of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, signed by the governor of Massachusetts, on April 10, 1861.
Rogers wanted to establish an institution to deal with the rapid scientific and technological advances. He did not want to start a vocational school, but a combination of elements of both professional and liberal education, writing that "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 scientific principles underlying and explaining them, and along with this, a thorough and methodical in all its processes and major operations in relation to laws of physics ". The Rogers Plan reflects the model of the German research university, emphasizing an independent faculty engaged in research as well as instruction oriented around seminars and laboratories.
First developments
Two days after the issuance of the letter, the first battle of the Civil War. After a long wait, the first classes were held at MIT in the Mercantile Building in Boston in 1865. The new institute had a mission that 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", and was a land grant school. In 1866, revenue from land sales went toward new buildings in the Back Bay.
MIT informally called "Boston Tech". The institute has adopted the European model and highlighted polytechnic university laboratory instruction from an early date. After a period of financial uncertainty, the Institute has grown in the last two decades of the 19th century under the chairmanship of Francis Amasa Walker. Programs in electrical engineering, chemistry, marine and health were introduced, new buildings were built, and the size of the student population increased to over a thousand.
The curriculum became more professional, with less emphasis on theoretical science. During these years, "Boston Tech", MIT faculty and students rejected President of Harvard University (and former MIT faculty) repeated attempts to Charles W. MIT Eliot to merge with Lawrence Scientific School of Harvard University.
In 1916, MIT moved to a new campus along a mile tract along the Cambridge side of the Charles River, partially fills the earth. The neoclassical "New Technology" campus was funded largely by donations from entrepreneur George Eastman, as the anonymous "Mr. X", which was designed by William W. Bosworth.
Curricular reforms
In the 1930s, President Karl Taylor Compton and Vice-President (effectively Provost) Vannevar Bush emphasized the importance of basic sciences like physics and chemistry and the reduction of professional practice required in shops and drafting studios. The Compton reforms "renewed confidence in the ability of the Institute to develop leadership in science and engineering." Unlike the Ivy League schools, MIT aimed more at middle-class families, and depended more on tuition endowments or grants. The school was elected to the Association of American Universities in 1934.
However, as late as 1949, the Lewis Committee lamented in his report on the state of education at MIT that "the Institute is widely conceived primarily as a training center," a perception "partly unjustified" , the committee tried to change. The report comprehensive review of the curriculum, it is recommended to provide a broader education, and warned against allowing engineering and government-sponsored research to the detriment of the sciences and the humanities. The Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences and the Sloan School of Management at MIT was formed in 1950 to compete with the powerful Schools of Science and Engineering. Previously marginalized faculties in the areas of economics, management, political science, and linguistics emerged into cohesive and assertive departments by attracting respected professors and launching competitive graduate programs. The Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences continued to develop in the successive terms of the more humanistic oriented Presidents Howard W. Johnson and Jerome Wiesner between 1966 and 1980.
Defense Research
MIT Participation in military research arose during World War II. In 1941, Vannevar Bush was appointed head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Development of Science and directed funding to only a select group of universities, including MIT. Engineers and scientists from around the country gathered at the MIT Radiation Laboratory, created in 1940 to assist the British military in developing a microwave radar. The work did not affect significantly both the war and the subsequent research in the area. Other defense projects included gyroscope systems based and other complex control spotlight, bombsight and Laboratory inertial navigation under Charles Stark Draper's Instrumentation, the development of a digital computer for flight simulations under Project Whirlwind , and high-speed photography and high altitude under Harold Edger ton. By the end of the war, MIT became the largest war contractor R & D of the nation (attracting some criticism of Bush), which employs nearly 4000 in the Laboratory of Radiation alone and receiving in excess of $ 100 million (U.S. $ 1.2 billion in 2012 dollars) by 1946. Working in defense projects continued even after then. After the war the government-sponsored research at MIT includes SAGE and guidance systems for ballistic missiles and Project Apollo.
These activities are affected deeply MIT. A 1949 report noted the lack of "any major slowdown in the pace of life at the" to match the return of peace, remembering the "quiet academic years prior to the war," while recognizing the important contributions of military research for the increased emphasis on graduate education and the rapid growth of staff and facilities. Indeed, the faculty doubled and quintupled graduate students in terms of Karl Taylor Compton, president of MIT between 1930 and 1948, James Rhyne Killian, president from 1948-1957, and Julius Adams Stratton, chancellor from 1952-1957 , whose institution-building strategies as expanding university. By the 1950s, MIT not only benefited the industries they had worked so closely with the previous three decades, and was much closer to their new sponsors, philanthropic foundations and the federal government.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, student and faculty activists protested against the Vietnam War and MIT's defense research. The Union of Concerned Scientists was founded on March 4, 1969, during a meeting of teachers and students who wish to shift the emphasis on military research towards environmental and social problems. Finally got rid of the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory and moved all classified research off-campus to the Lincoln Laboratory facility in 1973 in response to the protests, and the students, teachers and administration remained relatively polarized in what was a time turbulent for many other universities.
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