Three MIT students were named Rhodes Scholars last Sunday, setting a record for the number of MIT students awarded the prestigious Oxford fellowship in any one year.

Ugwechi W. Amadi ’10, Caroline J. Huang ’10, and Steven Mo ’10 were among the 32 American and 80 international recipients of this year’s scholarship, which will allow them to pursue any course of full-time postgraduate study at the University of Oxford for up to three years.

“Everything has been surreal,” Huang said in an e-mail. “The quality of the other applicants in my district was extremely high; I feel extremely fortunate to have won.”

After being nominated by their home university, two winners were chosen from each U.S. district by the Rhodes Trust based on an extensive series of essays, letters of recommendation, and rounds of interviews. Judges rate applicants on their scholarship, athletics, community service, and character.

“The support from MIT has been unbelievable,” said Huang. “It’s a grueling process — transcript, two-page curriculum vitae, 1,000 word essay that essentially says who you are and what you want to do with your life, eight letters of recommendation, and an institutional endorsement — but it was bearable because of the support from MIT.”

The award covers all university fees and includes a stipend for living and travel, which is estimated to amount to roughly $50,000 per year.

MIT’s three recipients each hailed from different U.S. regions.

Amadi (Camden, North Carolina — District 5) is a senior majoring in Brain and Cognitive Sciences with a minor in literature. At MIT, she has been active in post-traumatic stress disorder and atherosclerotic restenosis research as well as brain and atrophy research at the Massachusetts General Hospital.

Amadi has served as president of the Brain and Cognitive Sciences Society. She founded the brain and cognitive freshman pre-orientation program, is an MIT Burchard humanities scholar, and has mentored middle school girls for three years through the STEM Summer Institute program. She plans to continue her studies with a M. Sc. in psychological research at Oxford.

Huang (Newark, Delaware — District 4) will also graduate this spring with a major in Brain and Cognitive Sciences, with minors in psychology and political science. She founded MIT’s branch of Camp Kesem — a free, student-run summer camp for children of cancer patients — and has completed research on MRI imaging, with applications to dyslexia, as well as on casual learning in children.

Adding to her list of activities, Huang is also an EMT, contributing editor for The Tech, co-chair of the Student Health Advisory Committee, and has interned for the late Sen. Edward Kennedy as well as the Cambridge Women’s Commission. At Oxford, she plans to earn a doctorate in public health “with a focus on bioethics.”

“Eventually, I would like to be a health policy professor and government advisor, conducting research on other ethical questions in health care and creating support mechanisms to help families dealing with difficult situations,” Huang wrote in an e-mail to The Tech.

Mo (Pearland, Texas — District 8) is a senior majoring in Biology with a minor in economics. Mo spent his junior year abroad, studying biochemistry and molecular biology through the Cambridge MIT Exchange.

At MIT, he has been active in research, studying breast cancer pathology at Cambridge and tumor suppressing nanoparticles at the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology. For his research, he has been named an MIT Burchard Scholar, an MIT Amgen Scholar, and has received the MIT Johnson & Johnson Excellence in Biomedical Engineering Research Prize.

Mo has also taught for MIT’s Educational Studies Program’s Splash and Splash on Wheels for multiple years, and is president of the MIT Student Ambassador Program and MIT’s Chapter of National Society of Collegiate Scholars.

At Oxford, he hopes to earn a doctorate in biomedical engineering.

As a long-term goal, Mo says that he hopes to return to the U.S. and possibly serve as a leader in a biotechnology company, non-profit organization, or government agency such as the NIH, although he said he’s keeping the option of becoming a professor open.

“Right now, I’m still open to [the idea of] being a professor. It was always one of my dreams, but as I realized, there are more ways that you can impact things in society.”

“I just hope to come back to the States and inspire next generation of young scientist,” he says.

Amadi, Huang, and Mo will join a long list of over 40 MIT alumni who received the award when they begin their fellowships next fall.

For years, MIT has dreamed of increasing the number of undergraduates back to 4,500. That dream is still distant. Adding about 300 students means adding support staff, adding more sections of the General Institute Requirements and finding a place for all the students to stay. Adding students means finishing the renovation of the undergraduate dormitory W1, and untold other costs.

“We’re not ready to increase the student body size,” Chancellor Philip Clay said. “We haven’t systematically explored the questions yet.”

Though the Institute Task Force suggested increasing enrollment as a way for MIT to make more money, MIT might actually lose money by admitting more students, Dean of Undergraduate Admissions Stuart Schmill ’86 said. Administrators say that the real reason they want to add students is to give more students a chance at an MIT education.

“Report after report from the government [says] the country needs to produce more engineers,” Dean for Undergraduate Education Daniel E. Hastings PhD ’80 said. “In service to the nation and the world, we’d like to educate more students,” Schmill said.

Before class size can increase in a significant way, MIT must find a place to put the students. MIT’s undergraduate dorms are operating near capacity, with many forced triples and quads. W1, which planners say will house at least 460 students, must be finished in order for MIT to start accepting more freshmen.

It is not clear when W1 will be finished, or even if there will be money to finish it. Budget problems are holding the project back. “It’s all about the funds available to complete,” said Sonia Richards, the project manager for the W1 renovation. A large, anonymous donation is helping to fund this stage of the construction.

Because of a lack of clear plans and budget, there is no current indication of when the construction at W1 will be completed, though it will not be in the near future.

“It is very difficult for us to commit to any time frame,” Richards said. Currently, workers are repairing the exterior of the building. They plan to finish in January 2010, at which point they will begin interior demolition. That phase is scheduled through March 2010. Richards said there are no plans past next March.

Some preliminary plans have been confirmed. Richards said the dorm will have a dining facility. In planning the building, the historical aspect of Ashdown was kept in mind. “We are attempting to maintain the historical components in the building. That was one of our number one goals during the design of the project,” said Richards.

More freshmen also means more-crowded freshman classes. Already, classes like 7.012 and 3.091 are so big that the students cannot all fit into one lecture hall. Lectures have to be broadcast to overflow classrooms.

The Technology Enabled Active Learning courses, 8.01 (Physics I) and 8.02 (Physics II), are particularly hard to scale up. Both 8.01 and 8.02 are operating near maximum capacity. Peter A. Dourmashkin ’76, one of the developers of TEAL and a current 8.01 instructor, said that the issue isn’t as simple as space — adding more students goes “all the way around: more work, more students, more time.” In TEAL, the rooms are already almost at capacity, and ideally, they would be under capacity so that students can get more personal attention. Dourmashkin added that the problem “isn’t black or white.” MIT has to balance the national demand for more scientists and engineers with the difficulties of adding undergraduates. “I think [increasing class size] is worth it in terms of rewards across the large picture,” said Dourmashkin.

One way to increase enrollment without putting as much pressure on housing and the GIRs is to admit transfer students, who could live off-campus and may have passed out of most GIRs. MIT might also admit more transfer students of a particular major to fill departments that are operating under capacity.

But it is not clear that MIT has enough transfer applicants to pad out undergraduate enrollment. “A careful examination of the pool of transfer students needs to occur,” Schmill said. Every year, a couple hundred apply for transfer admissions, and about six percent, or 20 students, are admitted. If MIT were to suddenly decide to accept 50 or 100 transfers, it might not be able to find enough qualified students. Schmill said that the transfer students MIT currently takes are extremely talented, and that additional transfers would have to be just as talented.

Schmill said MIT might need to start recruiting transfer students in order to adequately increase class size.

MIT is not increasing undergraduate enrollment for the money, Schmill said. At this point, it is not even clear if MIT will make or lose money by admitting more students. More students means more tuition, but also more costs, to educate and house them. Because of need-blind admissions and MIT’s commitment to meeting all demonstrated need for admitted students, it is difficult to estimate whether there will be a net gain or loss of revenue from the addition of students. “Whether costs overwhelm tuition revenue, we don’t know at this point,” Schmill said.

MIT once had 4,500 undergraduates, when many freshmen lived at fraternities. MIT stopped that practice after a freshman died of alcohol intoxication in 1997. In order to fit the entire freshman class in the dormitories, MIT started admitting fewer freshmen.

Hastings says that the fact that MIT has successfully educated 4,500 undergraduates in the past indicates that it can happen again. “No one believes that the quality of our education then was somehow worse than now,” says Hastings. “The historical evidence is that we can teach 4,500 students and we can do it well.”

In the end, Schmill believes that despite the obstacles, increasing MIT’s student body will have a positive impact on campus. “There is an obvious advantage if you get more talented students — potential for student organizations, sports teams, music, classes … the campus would benefit in a really big way,” said Schmill. With any increase, however, there are risks that must be carefully evaluated, said Schmill, adding, “We want to make sure any sort of increase in undergraduate student body size wouldn’t have a negative impact on the educational experience”. Hastings also says that any increases that happen should not come at the cost of educational quality, but “the assumption is that the current size is optimal. The current size is what people know. There’s no evidence that the current size is optimal.”

You don’t always get into the college you want, but some students get a second chance.

Hundreds of students try to transfer to MIT every year. About 20 make it. Those lucky few have proven themselves at their own colleges, and have come to MIT looking for new challenges. For some, the Institute is everything they dreamed of. Others find the adjustment to MIT’s academic expectations and stressful lifestyle difficult. All of them give up schools which may have been easier, more social, or closer to home to come tool with the rest of the students at the Institute.

Many transfer applicants once tried to get in as freshmen, but were rejected. Associate admissions director McGreggor Crowley ’00, says that too many talented students apply for MIT to take them all. “Every year there are some amazing kids that we can’t admit as freshmen, and we hope that they apply as a transfer,” he says.

As hard as it is to get into MIT, it’s even harder to transfer in. Crowley says that there are very few spots for transfer students, who take the place of students who drop out, take a leave of absence or study abroad. This fall, only 6 percent of transfer applicants, or 24 students, were accepted. The regular admission rate was 10.2 percent. 21 of the 24 accepted transfer applicants chose to enroll at MIT.

Many students who were turned away the first time spend the next year at a backup college building their resumes. Shimeon Zerbib, a sophomore in courses 18 and 14, applied for the class of 2012 but was rejected. He was pretty sure he knew why he hadn’t gotten in: He had received his GED at 17 but never really graduated high school. Then he applied when he was 22, after spending 5 years out of school. After he was rejected, he started at New York University planning to transfer to MIT.

Crowley remembers Zerbib as a very strong applicant his first time around, but found a few things lacking in his application. Crowley was very happy to see Zerbib come back as a transfer. Zerbib had “been in the pipeline for a while,” Crowley says. The classes Zerbib took while at NYU were designed to fill whatever gaps there were in his application, and to serve as the prerequisites for a smooth transfer to MIT.

Crowley says that many students, like Zerbib, are in a much better position to apply after a year of college than after high school. Some students “really hit the ground running in college,” he says. “That’s the transformative element for them that makes them a very appealing transfer student.”

Sabine Schneider, now a sophomore in course 7, says her good grades at college and the close relationships she built with her professors at St. John’s University in New York helped her transfer to MIT. Though she had been rejected the first time, her professors at St. John’s recommended that she reapply.

It was a hard choice for Schneider to transfer. After she was denied at MIT, she immersed herself in college life at St. John’s. She didn’t want to obsess over what could have been. “Let’s buckle down, let’s do this,” she told herself. But Schneider was drawn by the allure of MIT’s biology program and cancer research labs, even though she’d built up a life and had friends at St. John’s. She was torn. It was difficult to motivate herself to fill out the transfer application.

But her doubts vanished as soon as she heard that she had been accepted. “I was like ‘Yeah, I’m going,’” she says.

Other students never even considered MIT when they started looking at colleges. Raghu Mahajan, a junior in Courses 8 and 18, was ranked first out of 200,000 on the standardized test which determines college placement in India. There’s a lot of pressure on you when you’re in the top ranks, Mahajan says. You’re expected to stay in India and major in the most prestigious subjects, which in India are computer science and electrical engineering. Mahajan chose to major in computer science at the India Institute of Technology in New Delhi.

But Mahajan soon realized he really wanted to study physics, and IIT would not let him change majors. His professors encouraged him to apply to MIT. They knew MIT was better for physics, he says.

Crowley says Mahajan, with his strong academic background, was an excellent candidate for a transfer student. He’ll have a Nobel Prize someday, Crowley says.

Some students realize they want to attend MIT only after seeing what life is like elsewhere. Christian Perez, a sophomore in Course 14, went to Northwestern University for a year but found that the curriculum was too easy for him. He knew he would have a much better chance at graduate school for economics if he went to a place like MIT with a more challenging curriculum and better research opportunities.

According to Crowley, students like Perez and Mahajan, who are driven to MIT after other schools have failed to give them what they need, stand out as transfer students because they will use the resources at MIT to their full advantage.

Crowley is extremely proud of MIT’s transfer students, speaking of them in glowing terms and calling them “future CEOs.” “They’re great kids,” he says.

The students themselves are not always so confident. Lekha Kuhananthan, a second-semester freshman, is grateful to be at MIT, but calls her acceptance “a happy fluke.” She doesn’t see what changed after she was denied the first time around. Zerbib feels like he’s still playing catch up at MIT. “I’m just a regular student,” he says, “there’s nowhere I can say — ‘oh, this is where I’m amazing.’” Since Zerbib hadn’t been in school for a long time before attending NYU, he felt had to relearn all of his study habits.

Schneider also feels that she started off behind in her classes. She says she feels a little inferior, especially compared to the freshmen who have placed ahead into her sophomore level classes, that she’s so far behind and can’t change it.

Schneider compares being a new transfer student to being an older freshman. “You’re new to this whole thing,” she says. Transfer students have to deal with many of the same adjustment issues that freshmen do, but they don’t get the same advantages.

All transfers, regardless of how many years they’ve spent at their previous college, start as sophomores at MIT. Transfer students can petition, like Kuhananthan did, to start as a second semester freshman, which means they don’t have to declare a major, and they get an extra semester of financial aid. Many transfer students start their first semester in GIR classes like 3.091 and 18.02, which are full of newly minted freshmen, but, unlike those freshmen, transfer students don’t get pass/no record grading. This can be frustrating for people like Zerbib who try to work in study groups only to find the freshmen have different goals. “People are studying for a 50, and you’re studying for a 100,” says Zerbib.

Most transfer students find that the academic bar at MIT is set much higher than at their previous college. Schneider says the professors at St. John’s broke their material down into bite size pieces and fed it to them in lecture, a method she hasn’t seen at MIT. Schneider often finds her classes here much more satisfying. “For the first time in my life I have the feeling that my exam grades really count for something,” she says. At other times, it’s extremely frustrating. I know exactly how much easier this would be somewhere else, she says. When she showed her old friends at St. John’s one of her Organic Chemistry tests, they responded “Oh, this is hard.”

Kuhananthan also both enjoys and struggles with the academics at MIT. “At UT I was always at the top, and here I finally know what it’s like to struggle and earn a grade,” she says. “It’s a challenge, and I think that’s what I love about it.”

The transfer students say that students are more serious here, but also tighter-knit. “People here are very focused on doing very well in what they do,” says Zerbib. He feels that MIT and NYU are both excellent schools, but describes the atmosphere at MIT as “more my style.” Schneider likes that students bond over difficult courses. At St. John’s she describes the atmosphere as students versus students, while at MIT she sees it more as students against the institution. “It’s just wonderful, the feeling of community,” she says of MIT.

Many MIT students are involved in sports and extracurriculars, taking advantage of the broad offerings available in both categories. When Kuhananthan transferred in she noticed that “everybody seems to have some type of passion or something they’re interested in.” Kuhananthan has been trying her hand at various student activities: Most recently, she has been involved in the Musical Theatre Guild.

A lot of transfer students come from schools where sports played a much bigger role than at MIT. Kuhananthan’s previous school in Texas was obsessed with football, and she likes that she doesn’t feel the same pressure at MIT. “Here’s it’s OK if you don’t notice sports,” she says.

Schneider and Perez both came from schools where they played very competitive sports. Perez misses having more people to play tennis with. Schneider was on a Division I track and cross country team at St. John’s, a sport she has continued here, but MIT’s team is in a lower division. Schneider does note how impressed she was that MIT sports were so inclusive and almost all teams take novices. That’s a “really special thing about MIT,” she says.

There are often many more resources available at MIT than at a transfer student’s previous college. Mahajan likes how much technology is available to students, and admits the Internet connection in his IIT dormitory was painfully slow. In general, Perez observes that “everything seems to be upgraded — besides the dining.”

The move to Boston also introduces some stark differences for some transfer students. Zerbib calls Boston a “little cute village” compared to New York City and doesn’t like the fact that everything, even the T, closes at night. “MIT’s not in the center of the Village,” he says, referring to NYU’s placement in the middle of Greenwich Village, a lively neighborhood of New York. Kuhananthan complains that even in November the weather is already freezing. Although, she says, laughingly, “I did buy a coat.”

This occasional feature follows up on news stories long past their prime. In this edition: the dismissal of long-time Student Support Services Dean Jacqueline Simonis and what caused the faculty uproar over her departure.

On June 22, 2009, Jacqueline Simonis was abruptly dismissed from her job as associate dean and co-director of Student Support Services after 23 years at MIT.

According to a July 9 letter written from six faculty members to former faculty chairs, Simonis was told she was being laid off due to budget cuts and that her job would end immediately.

“She was told that she was expected to be available to coordinate the transfer of her responsibilities while working from home,” the letter stated. “She was not allowed to speak with her colleagues in private, nor to return to work in her office.”

Around the same time, Dean for Student Life Chris Colombo lowered S^3’s reporting rank within the Division of Student Life and moved to initiate an administrative review of S^3’s services.

Neither Colombo nor any other administrator had consulted faculty members about the decision to lay off Simonis, the decision to restructure S^3, or the decision to initiate a review of S^3.

These actions aggravated some faculty members and prompted a flurry of letters and heated discussions. The faculty had three major concerns, which Clay summarized in an article in the September/October issue of the Faculty Newsletter:

¶ first, that such important changes had been made without faculty consultation;

¶ second, that the changes might “degrade” S^3’s quality of service;

¶ and last, that the manner in which Simonis was dismissed was “inconsistent with Institute culture and procedures.”

A July 2 letter addressed to Clay from current and former faculty members of the Committee on Academic Performance lamented the changes to S^3: “The academic careers (and even lives) of innumerable MIT students have been saved … thanks to [Simonis’s] work … These recent actions … have created a tentativeness within the Student Support Office and the overall support system for our students.”

The Committee on Academic Performance decides when to give students academic warnings or require them to withdraw from the Institute. S^3 advises CAP on many students’ cases, and the S^3 deans “often have a much better picture than anyone else of what’s going on,” said Jessica T. McKellar G, who was CAP member for three years as an undergraduate.

“We do not believe that CAP can properly fulfill its duties to the faculty in collaboration with a Student Support Office in such a state,” the CAP letter to Clay went on.

The letter recommended that the Simonis layoff and other interim changes be reversed since they “put the Institute’s core mission at risk.”

In response to these concerns, Faculty Chair Thomas A. Kochan arranged a meeting between concerned faculty, Clay, Vice Chancellor Steven R. Lerman PhD ’80, and Colombo, during which, “All parties … acknowledge[d] the seriousness of the issues and concerns raised by the faculty,” according to an article in the September/October Faculty Newsletter.

At this meeting, faculty and administrators agreed to create a joint faculty-administration-student task force to review S^3.

The committee, which is co-chaired by Professor W. Eric L. Grimson PhD ’80 and Lerman, will not address the significance or circumstances of Simonis’s layoff or the interim changes planned during the summer, which were rolled back before the 2009 fall term began. The committee was also not specifically asked to address budget cuts that affect S^3.

The task force was originally due to submit its report to Clay on October 30 and has not yet done so, but should “very soon,” Clay wrote in an e-mail yesterday.

Discussion with administrators and the task force’s creation has renewed some faculty members’ faith in the administration and in S^3’s ability to support students. Active discussion about the events that provoked a storm over the summer appears to have ceased.

Still, concerns linger among other faculty who never felt satisfied by the administrative response to their grievances.

Professor and former member of the faculty Committee on Student Life John W. Belcher said he, too, was upset that faculty, including those on the CSL, were not consulted prior to Simonis layoff. Belcher said that in his 38 years at the Institute, “I’ve never quite seen this kind of reaction.”

He said he is “still not happy with the actions” that have been taken to resolve faculty concerns. He sees “the appearance of a conflict of interest” in the membership of the S^3 task force: Since three of its members report to Clay, the group’s work “doesn’t have the appearance of an independent review.”

Several faculty and administrators, including Clay, Kochan, and task force members Professor and CAP Chair David A. Pesetsky, Grimson, and Colombo did not respond to or declined requests to be interviewed for this article stating variously that it would not be appropriate to discuss S^3 while it was undergoing review.

The events that transpired over the summer had, thus far, only been detailed publicly in the September/October issue of the Faculty Newsletter, which is the source of all letters excerpted in this article.

While Simonis’s dismissal from S^3 will not be reversed, her legacy as a dean lives, perhaps most powerfully in the minds of students whose lives she directly impacted.

Grace Kenney ’07, who worked with Simonis both before and after she took time off from MIT, said she was shocked when she found out in an October 25 e-mail on the ec-discuss mailing list that Simonis had been laid off.

Kenney said that Simonis helped through an academic crisis in her sophomore year. “Things were spiraling out of control and I couldn’t figure out how to get back on track,” Kenney said. Simonis “got me to calm down and helped me figure out a plan to get things back together,” she said.

During that time, Kenney met with Simonis every one or two weeks. Later, around the time of her graduation, she stopped by Simonis’s office to thank her for her support earlier on. Kenney is now a PhD student at Northwestern University.

Sari A. Canelake ’10, who also worked with Simonis during a period of academic struggles, learned about Simonis’ dismissal in the same ec-discuss e-mail.

She said Simonis helped her decide not to drop out of MIT, take a year off, and switch courses (from 5 to 6). Later, she reviewed Canelake’s application to be readmitted to MIT.

“I felt like she cared that I was doing poorly and happy that I was doing well,” said Canelake, which was especially valuable since “My parents have never really been involved in my education.”

When she discovered that Simonis had been laid off, “my jaw dropped,” Canelake said. “It was like finding out your close family member left.”

The Division of Student Life’s decision to dismiss Simonis made them seem “out of touch” with the student body, the very group it is their job to serve, said Canelake.

McKellar said that Simonis’s experience made her “a very good advocate for students” and gave her “a good sense of when student could come back and be successful.”

The death of Kabelo Zwane, a sophomore studying mechanical engineering, has been ruled a suicide, according to Terrel Harris of the Massachusetts Executive Office of Public Safety and Security.

Zwane was found dead in a wooded area in Bedford, Mass. on November 7 by a hiker. A plastic bag containing helium was wrapped around his head. The body was released to relatives in Swaziland on November 16.

Walk-in counseling is available weekdays in E23 from 2–4 p.m. People may also call 617-253-2916.

“He was the sweetest guy I’ve every met … a really kind, soft spoken person,” said Holly B. Sweet, associate director of Experimental Study Group and Zwane’s freshman advisor.

A memorial service will be held after the Thanksgiving holiday, according to Institute chaplain Robert M. Randolph.

—Nick Bushak

Faculty members unanimously passed two motions at Wednesday’s faculty meeting: one establishing academic guidelines for prolonged emergencies on campus and the second scheduling the September student holiday on the same day as the fall career fair.

Later, a team of faculty working within the Initiative on Faculty Race and Diversity presented recommendations for increasing and sustaining the levels of minority faculty members at MIT. They are expected to produce a full report by mid-December.

The faculty voted swiftly to approve the emergency procedures and guidelines under which the Institute will operate during times of “significant disruption.” Such events are defined in the new amendment as including “natural disaster, civil unrest, or pandemic illness,” which causes “substantial absenteeism among students or instructors,” and “prevents academic work from progressing.”

The Institute has shut down three times in its history — due to an influenza pandemic in 1918, student strikes in 1970, and a blizzard in 1978 — but before Wednesday, no formal emergency academic procedures had ever existed.

Now, if the faculty chair declares a significant disruption, that chair will have the power to change the school calendar, class registration, assignments, exams, grades, or any other academic systems, depending on the “uniqueness of any emergency situation.”

The procedures also established an alternate grading scale that may be used during a significant disruption, which includes a specific transcript mark for incomplete work that may be replaced by a final mark if work for the course is completed by a specified date.

If alternate grades are implemented, they will not factor into a student’s GPA and instead will be listed on the transcript with an explanation of the disruption.

Professor of Chemical Engineering Paula T. Hammond ’84 presented the findings of the Initiative on Faculty Race and Diversity, created in 2007 to study how race affects the way faculty experience MIT.

Through demographic analysis, surveys, and interviews, the team examined how race affected the lives of faculty members. After identifying key problems in the way MIT handles diversity, they developed recommendations for implementation.

In terms of recruiting, they found that 36 percent of MIT underrepresented minority (URM) faculty have MIT degrees, and 60 percent of MIT URM faculty were drawn from other positions at MIT, Stanford, and Harvard. “We are not gaining from certain pools of talent,” said Hammond, saying that to increase diversity MIT must expand where it searches for potential faculty.

To increase retention of URM faculty members, the group’s report will suggest that MIT assign mentors to act as both advisors to and advocates for junior faculty.

Hammond also asked that individual departments implement annual reviews of all faculty, institute a “comprehensive feedback and evaluation process,” and to build relationships with other institutions to attract and retain star URM students.

One obstacle the team identified was apathy for the issue on campus. “There is a tension created by the outward presumption that true meritocracy is already essentially achieved at MIT,” said Hammond. She cited a group finding that “MIT non-URM faculty viewed diversity as less critical to the MIT core values of excellence.”

Not all faculty were impressed with the Initiative’s suggestions. One professor said he felt offended by the Initiative’s report because it seemed to suggest that academic departments would not understand the benefits of diversity and therefore would not make appropriate efforts to encourage diversity.

The Initiative’s full report is expected to be published by mid-December.

Before Hammond’s report, Provost Rafael L. Reif spoke at the meeting about efforts to increase the number of underrepresented minority faculty.

He presented data showing upward trends in the diversity of both students and faculty:

Ever since a resolution in 2004 to increase the number of URM faculty by a factor of two and URM graduate students by a factor of three within a decade, MIT has gradually increased its URM population, said Reif.

Since 1991, the undergraduate URM percentage rose from 10 to 23 percent, while the URM graduate student percentage rose from 3 to 7 percent.

Of 236 faculty hires from the last year, 27 were URMs and 70 were women.

During questioning, Reif said that MIT does not have lower admission standards for women and URMs, but that those groups of applicants “self-selected pretty harshly,” so that women and URMs who applied to MIT were already “the best of the best,” explaining their higher acceptance rates.

When asked by Professor Albert R. Meyer how MIT compares with other universities in efforts to increase diversity, Reif said that during the MIT’s recent Institute-wide reaccreditation, other institutions that reviewed MIT, including Yale and Emory, were impressed with MIT’s level of diversity.

The faculty passed a motion to experiment with scheduling the September student holiday to correspond with the career fair in fall 2010 and fall 2012 . In fall 2010, there will be no student holiday in September, as is the case every year Labor Day falls late in the month.

The Undergraduate Association and Graduate Student Council which created the motion, will collect feedback on the change from students, companies, and other members of the community each year. In spring 2013 the groups plan to present a final report on whether the holiday should be permanently moved or remain on a Monday, when it has been scheduled historically.

Undergraduate Association President Michael A. Bennie ’10 spoke before the vote and said that, by holding the career fair on a holiday, students would not have to miss class to attend, and companies would be able to hold presentations and interviews for more students.

Some faculty members expressed concerns about how would affect students uninvolved with the career fair. June L. Matthews, professor of physics and associate chair of the faculty, noted one concern brought up in discussion: “Many students value their three day weekend early in the semester … We are taking something away from this part of the community, and not really giving them anything in return.”

Despite these concerns, the motion passed unanimously and applause followed.

The next faculty meeting is scheduled for December 16.

MIT Medical vaccinated nearly 1,050 students against the H1N1 flu-virus last Tuesday as part of a quickly arranged clinic.

Medical will hold an appointment-only clinic for an additional 200 students between 9:00 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. on Tuesday, November 24 in E23.

Undergraduate and graduate students interested in receiving this vaccine must be under age 24 and may arrange appointments by calling 617-253-4865.

Another 100 to 150 students were vaccinated on November 11 when a Medical clinic was opened up to all students under 24, due to low turnout from the original target group of children under 17. Extra vaccines that went unused would have expired after 24 hours.

Between the three clinics, MIT will have vaccinated about 1,350 students, or over ten percent of its combined 10,000-member student body.

Medical anticipates supplying more vaccines to students, staff, and MIT community members in future clinics as more of the vaccine becomes available. More information on Tuesday’s clinic can be found on Medical’s website.

The recent clinics on campus were part of federally-funded and state-implemented efforts to help limit the ongoing spread of H1N1, which infected roughly 22 million Americans, based on data collected by the Center for Disease Control between April and October 17, 2009.

Medical has documented over 480 cases of “influenza like illnesses” over the past ten weeks, although Associate Medical Director of MIT Medical David V. Diamond notes that not all of these cases are H1N1 and that not all H1N1 cases are reported.

Although Medical hopes to eventually make the vaccine available for free to the whole MIT community, Diamond said that the main problem with increasing outreach is that the vaccine is “slow in coming.”

Regarding next Tuesday’s clinic, Diamond said “we likely will not have enough vaccine next week for all who may be interested.”

It is likely, however, that another clinic will be offered after Thanksgiving, Diamond said. “Depending on additional vaccine deliveries, we will designate eligibility and logistics for the clinic.”

John M. Auerbach, State Commissioner of the Department of Public Health, recently reported on his public health blog that Massachusetts has received about 1 million doses of the H1N1 vaccine and suggested that future clinics — like next Tuesday’s and the one hoped for after Thanksgiving — will become more frequent.

Tuesday’s vaccines were offered free of charge to undergraduate and then graduate students from 11:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. in MacGregor House on a walk-in basis after Medical received the vaccine from the Massachusetts Department of Public Health a few days earlier.

Diamond said that Medical received Tuesday’s vaccines late last week and that, in accordance with Center for Disease Control (CDC) policy, the earlier vaccine deliveries were first offered to Medical staff, pregnant women, and children before students.

As more vaccines arrive, Medical will continue to follow CDC policy, giving high-risk patients and younger students first priority before staff and other community members.

Diamond said that, for Tuesday’s clinic, Medical first considered offering the vaccine to freshmen, but decided to increase the scope of the clinic to include all undergraduates because of the large number of vaccines available.

The undergraduates were notified via e-mail from dorm housemasters.

Medical decided to open the clinic to graduate students mid-day when less than half of the vaccines had been used.

Medical uses its own syringes and needles, which might make the vaccine less painful, instead of the government-provided ones. Diamond said that the clinics have cost Medical an amount “in [the] thousands of dollars” and that MIT has not yet designated specific funds to the clinics.

For future clinics, Diamond said Medical would try to administer the vaccines on different days of the week to accommodate more students’ schedules. Running clinics on nights and weekends, when students would be less likely to have class or other activities, would substantially raise the cost of delivering vaccines, he said.

In response to potential concerns from community members about the long-term safety of the H1N1 vaccine, Diamond said the new vaccine presents the “same risk as the usual flu shot” and “is made by the same companies and processes as seasonal influenza shots that are given to 100 million people each year.”

He said the vaccine is “very safe” and that “there is a higher risk from the illness than the vaccine.”

As the University of California struggles to absorb its sharpest drop in state financing since the Great Depression, every professor, administrator and clerical worker has been put on furlough amounting to an average pay cut of 8 percent.

In chemistry laboratories that have produced Nobel Prize-winning research, wastebaskets are stuffed to the brim on the new reduced cleaning schedule. Many students are frozen out of required classes as course sections are trimmed.

And on Thursday, to top it all off, the Board of Regents voted to increase undergraduate fees – the equivalent of tuition – by 32 percent next fall, to more than $10,000. The university will cost about three times as much as it did a decade ago, and what was once an educational bargain will be one of the nation’s higher-priced public universities.

Among students and faculty alike, there is a pervasive sense that the increases and the deep budget cuts are pushing the university into decline.

The budget cuts in California, topping $30 billion over the last two years, have touched all aspects of state government, including health care, welfare, corrections and recreation. They have led to a retrenchment in state services not seen in modern times, and for many institutions, including the state university system, have created a watershed moment.

The state’s higher education budget has been slashed by $2.8 billion this year, including $813 million from the university system – about the equivalent of New Mexico’s entire higher education budget.

“Dismantling this institution, which is a huge economic driver for the state, is a stupendously stupid thing to do, but that’s the path the Legislature has embarked on,” said Richard A. Mathies, dean of the College of Chemistry here at Berkeley, long the system’s premier campus. “When you pull resources from an institution like this, faculty leave, the best grad students don’t come, and the discoveries go down.”

As the litany of cuts continues, there is a growing worry that senior faculty members may begin to defect. In fact, some colleges around the nation have begun identifying funds to use to recruit U.C. professors.

Since California adopted a master plan for higher education in 1960, the state has been, in the words of the historian Kevin Starr, “utopia for higher education.” Eight of the 10 University of California campuses – all but Merced and San Francisco – are in the top 100 in this year’s U.S. News & World Report’s rankings. But maintaining that edge, without resources, is difficult.

In 2004, international rankings by the London-based Times Higher Education named Berkeley the No. 2 research university in the world, behind only Harvard. This year, Berkeley plummeted to No. 39, mostly because of its high faculty-to-student ratio. The other international rankings, by Shanghai Jiao Tong University, rated Berkeley No. 3 this month.

Patrick M. Callan, president of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, a nonpartisan group that promotes access to higher education, said that while public universities in many states were facing financial problems, California was in a class by itself.

“In most states, it’s the economy, and you can say that in a couple of years, it will bounce back,” Callan said. “But in California, it’s really part of a significant retrenchment of the whole public sector. If the perception is that it’s going to be chronic, and people give up on California, the pre-eminence of Berkeley and UCLA would be in danger.”

No wonder, then, that people like Bruce Fuller, a Berkeley professor of education and public policy, are asking themselves whether it is time to move on.

As co-director of the Institute for Human Development, an interdisciplinary research group that suffered big cuts, Fuller worries that the unit is losing its intellectual excitement and its ability to support his grant proposals. Then, too, he lost his two best graduate students last year to Stanford.

“To stay on top, you need to be bringing in new people,” Fuller said. “And I’m not sure how many of my most stimulating colleagues will still be here in three years.”

So although he was not swayed last year when the University of North Carolina came calling, Fuller said, he may be more receptive this year.

Formerly taboo ideas, like allowing UCLA and Berkeley to charge substantially more than other campuses, or even eliminating the research mission at some of the newer campuses, are being put forward.

MIT’s Graduate Student Council (GSC) recently added national policy to its otherwise campus-based advocacy agenda, pushing for tax exemption of graduate student stipends, open access to federally funded published research, and higher caps on H1-B visas for advanced-degree holders to members of Congress earlier this fall.

By engaging in national lobbying efforts and making plans to help draft a House bill focusing specifically on tax exemptions of graduate student stipends, the GSC has taken steps to integrate national-level policy into its standard itinerary ­— a task that President Alex Hamilton Chan said has not been attempted in previous years.

“The GSC is moving toward looking at national legislation because a lot of grad student welfare stems from this,” Chan said.

According to the GSC platform, both graduate students and the nation at large would benefit if any of these majoring lobby issues were implemented.

By making graduate student stipends tax exempt ­— as they were before Tax Reform Act of 1986 — the GSC says that students could save hundreds of dollars a month, encouraging more individuals to pursue much-needed advanced degrees.

Lifting the cap on H1-B visas could likewise help the nation to hire more skilled professionals in the US, which would in turn create more jobs for the economy.

The GSC also felt that the pending Federal Research Public Access Act of 2009 (S. 1373) was worth lobbying for. By making federally funded research over $100 million dollars open access, it would “enhance advanced research access and ensure that taxpayer-funded research is available to those who paid for it.”

MIT’s GSC was recently recognized for its work, being nominated by the National Association of Graduate-Professional Students (NAGPS) for the 2009 “Graduate/Professional Student Organization of the Year.”

Executive members of MIT’s GSC travelled to Washington, D.C. to lobby for graduate student stipend tax exemptions, lifting the H1-B visa cap, and implementing open access publication policies for federally funded research as part of the NAGPS’s annual “Legislative Action Days” from last September 30 to October 2.

“This is the first time we’ve done such a comprehensive lobbying effort on a national level,” Chan said.

Chan, Vice President Kevin A. McComber G, and Alex J. Evans G represented MIT’s GSC lobbying interests at the annual event and independently presented their support for the three issues to the offices of eleven Congressmen.

The GSC said it tried to aim its efforts at national lawmakers either from the New England area or active in education policy.

Additionally, Chan said the GSC “talked to [offices of] Republicans and Democrats” because he felt that the GSC’s lobbying efforts were based on “truly bipartisan issues.”

Among the offices addressed were those of Congressmen John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), George V. Voinovich (R-Ohio), Russell D. Feingold (D-Wis.), C. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), Marcia L. Fudge (D-Ohio), John F. Tierney (D-Mass.), Michael E. Capuano (D-Mass., and representing MIT’s district), Thomas E. Petri (R-Wis.), and Ronald J. Kind (D-WI).

The group was also able to arrange an in-person meeting with Senator Sherrod C. Brown (D-Ohio).

The GSC team spoke of doing extensive background research — reviewing and completing data from recent studies — to prepare their platform for the meetings, which lasted “usually around 40 minutes or an hour” according to Chan.

Several other universities also participated in NAGPS’s “Legislative Action Days,” but Chan said MIT’s group “met more senators than any other college in the nation and really took the lead.”

The source of the GSC’s lobbying initiatives came from NAGPS’s list of suggested topics, which also included resources and white papers for topics such as health care and student loan reform.

Chan said the GSC chose to focus on the stipend tax exemption, open access publications, and H1-B visa reform compared to the other suggested issues because they were among the most relevant to graduate student life at MIT and best aligned with the current legislative activity on Capital Hill.

According to Evans, “$250–300 a month is the amount of graduate student stipend that goes to taxes,” on average.

By returning graduate stipends to their former federal tax-exempt status, the GSC told congressmen in a statement that the U.S. “could better meet the demands of growing sectors requiring highly-skilled individuals” by encouraging more students to pursue a PhD.

“Before 1986, grad students’ stipends were tax exempt.” Chan said. “What we are advocating [for] is to go back to that.”

Current law says only 65,000 H1-B visa statuses may be issued per fiscal year, and Chan said the GSC “basically wants to have this quota lifted.”

The H1-B visa allows for the temporary employment of foreign workers in specialty occupations, such as those found in math, science, and engineering. By altering or removing this cap, the GSC argues that national legislation could “increase overall employment opportunities in the U.S. and reduce jobs lost to other countries, especially in the technology sector.”

McComber also pointed out that “one of the big expenses [for MIT libraries] is journal subscriptions,” making federally funded research open access appealing to MIT grad students and taxpayers alike.

“Publishers are commanding a very unhealthy sum in this area,” said Chan.

Solidifying their platform on these lobbying issues, the GSC signed “The Student Statement on the Right to Research” on the Federal Research Public Access Act and plans to continue lobbying efforts in the spring.

Since travelling to Washington for their lobby efforts, the GSC has also outlined plans to help write a bill that would return graduate stipends to their former federal tax-exempt status.

Evans, Chan, and McComber have begun work on drafting the bill with guidance from MIT’s Washington Office.

The bill will be based on a more broad education policy legislation introduced by former House representative Philip S. English (R-Pa.).

Currently, Evans says that the tax exemptions called for in the bill will include all levels of graduate students (masters and PhD students) from all academic fields, regardless of stipend source.

The GSC hopes to make their own version of the bill more successful by focusing solely on the stipend tax exemption and gaining the support from House members in taxation and education related committees.

As part of their tentative legislative drafting plans, the GSC execs hope to have a final draft of the bill ready for when they return to Washington next spring.

The race for the APO Ugliest Man on Campus kicked off yesterday with the first three contestants: Roberto J. Melendez ’12, Chinua E. Shaw ’13, and Jeremy B. Dalcin ’13. Interestingly, all candidates are residents of Next House. However, there are rumors from APO’s Kelly A. Drinkwater ’11 that the Bexely-Minus-Fascists Sink will enter the competition soon. Students can vote for the ugly candidates by placing pennies or bills into their corresponding jars. One point is equal to one cent.

—Robert McQueen

The following incidents were reported to the Campus Police between October 14 and October 29. The dates below reflect the dates incidents occurred. This information is compiled from the Campus Police’s crime log. The report does not include alarms, general service calls, or incidents not reported to the dispatcher.

Compiled by Steve Howland