I’m going to break out of my normal ranting state and talk about something actually important here. Below is the text of a press release we’re spreading around about our recent jaunt to Capitol Hill, as well as pictures of us with Senator Herb Kohl (D-WI, owner of the Milwaukee Bucks and former president of Kohl’s Department Stores) as well as Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH).
On October 1st and 2nd, 2009, three members of the MIT Graduate Student Council (GSC) traveled to Washington, D.C. to speak with U.S. senators’ and representatives’ offices about specific graduate student issues. Before their visit, Alex Hamilton Chan, Alex Evans, and Kevin McComber prepared extensively on the topics of open access to federally-funded published research, raising the cap on H1-B visas for advanced-degree holders, and tax exemption of graduate student stipends. The trip was part of the Legislative Action Days of the National Association of Graduate-Professional Students (NAGPS), of which the MIT GSC is a member. NAGPS is a nationwide organization of graduate and professional student governments that aims to connect the governments and lobby for their concerns.
The three students met with the offices of eleven senators and congressmen who hold spots on committees relevant to the issues of interest. With their data-backed knowledge of the issues and the support of both the MIT GSC and NAGPS, the three students found their arguments to be well-received. To their pleasant surprise, a few offices expressed interest in pursuing possible legislation on the issue of graduate student stipend tax exemption.
Chan, Evans, and McComber are now working with MIT’s Washington, D.C. office to draft wording for a possible bill on graduate student stipend tax exemption, and they are continuing to spread awareness of the issues at MIT and to other schools in the Boston area.
The President’s visit to MIT on Friday is one of the most exciting events to have happened to MIT in years. As everybody celebrated and shared their story about how they caught a glimpse of the president (or in my friend Zenzile’s case, jumped over dozens of people to shake his hand ), I couldn’t help but wonder what this visit by the President of the United States meant.
On the surface, Obama came to talk about energy innovation and policy. So, one way to look at it is exactly as how I was quoted in the Daily Free Press, “the President’s visit was an exciting acknowledgement of MIT’s role in energy innovation.” (http://www.dailyfreepress.com/obama-calls-for-u-s-to-become-the-world-s-energy-leader-1.2035198) But I think it is more than that. Obama did not choose any school, not even his Alma Mater, that second most prestigious school in Cambridge – he picked MIT, the iconic institute of science, technology and innovation.
This message is consistent with Michelle Obama’s speech in the UK. She said how making good grades is cool. This country and this world had adopted a definition of “cool” that treats nerds or smart as weird. The “cool” is some sort of combination of a lack or despise of self-discipline and hard-work, the cool kids demonstrate a general indifference about the world and knowledge. What the Obamas are saying is that being smart, getting good grades, doing great in school is the new “cool” – reminding us that the world is improving because we have moved beyond a group of jock-ish cavemen into a species that respect and accumulate knowledge relentlessly, that we have evolved into a group of humans who cares and works for the ideals of the betterment of humanity.
So, the President’s message is clear, smart is the new cool, and nerdy is the new sexy. And a president who chooses to be at MIT rather than a president who talks about how you can be a head of state while getting all C’s in college symbolizes the re-activation of the collective brain of humanity and the path to a better earth.
Don’t mind me — I’m just making my contribution to the slew of orientation-related posts…
I have to say that I’m thrilled to see this new crop of fresh and enthusiastic faces on campus… and sad that I have to miss out on all the action. (I’m leaving tomorrow for this conference in NY… such is the life of a busy graduate student.) Yes, you newbies are THE central focus of orientation, but you’ll find plenty of old fogies like me hanging around too. As for me, I’ll just live vicariously through the rest of you dancing the night away at Sidney-Pacific’s Summer Breeze dance party this Friday.
However, you shouldn’t feel too sorry for me — I’ll be back in time for the Boston Harbor Cruise this Sunday.
Oh, and one last thing. I realize that all of you are being inundated with loads of new information, and it’s impossible to absorb it all completely. It’s inevitable that you will forget much of it two weeks from now. (Pop quiz for you all — where is the ODGE located? How many of you took notes at today’s Grad School 101, hmm?) If there is one thing you should carry away from all these orientation events and information sessions, it’s that you can always turn to the Graduate Student Council as a resource. We are here to serve you, and our job is to make sure that your graduate experience at MIT is a good one.
So don’t be shy — if you see one of us around, say hello (and if you see Alex, he likes big bear hugs)! Tell us what’s on your mind and how we can better serve the graduate community. And I can tell you more about our graduate student dental plan.
How excited are you about orientation week(s)! I sure am! I’m definitely looking forward to the kickoff at the Thirsty today at 5pm. I’m hoping to get one of the plastic mugs for the first 500 people, we’ll see. Maybe I’ll meet you there?
We could talk about fall and new classes, college football starting back up (Boomer Sooner!), and heck, I’m even excited about the Pats playing again and maybe even catching some MIT sports (I’ve heard the water polo team is intense).
Yeah, I’m not sure about you, I’m not so excited about summer being over, but at least a cookout helps with the chill and makes the darker evenings more fun. Come say hi at an Orientation event!
Yes, MIT has such a huge variety of research areas and departments represented. International students represent 39.1% of the graduate student body. These make us one of the most diverse places in terms of research topics and nationality. And benefited from this diversity we have, the diverse research topics and work in MIT allowed for cross pollination of ideas across disciplines. Our international graduate students graduated and went on to become some of the world’s most successful leaders (think Kofi Annan and David Miliband). Institute-wide efforts on recruitment and retention of underrepresented minorities have increased multiple-folds in the past few years. So, from certain angles, MIT is doing well on the front of diversity. However, this is but part of the picture.
On some other measures, MIT’s grade for diversity is less impressive. Just some simple statistics would alert us – only approximately 5.5 percent of our graduate students (or 9.2 percent of our US students) are underrepresented minorities and only 30 percent are women. Moreover, these numbers have not changed significantly in the past five years. So is MIT a diverse place on these counts? No. We have so much space to improve. And by improve, I mean to improve on both making MIT more diverse and taking advantage of the diversity we have to bring value to the community. The second part is often neglected, we can’t stop at recruitment, we must find a way to harness the value of diversity to make it a worthwhile target to pursue. A piece of more encouraging news is that it is a clear strategic goal for the Dean of Graduate Education to increase diversity in MIT’s graduate population, the first part. It is up to us, the student leaders, to employ our creativity to find ways to harness the value of diversity as we plan our events and community building work.
As of August 5, the GSC resolution on the Diversity Task Force is passed unanimously with a white ballot at the August General Council. This reflects the Graduate Student Council’s determination and desire to take a major role to harness the value of diversity in the MIT community.
Now, the GSC needs your help. We are in the process of finding diversity task force members, and leadership for the task force. We welcome participation to this very important initiative.
We also need to locate and appoint chairs to lead this effort. These chair will play a very important role and will work closely with myself and the rest of the executive committee.
Please send an email to gsc-officers@mit.edu if you are interested to be a member and please indicate if you would be willing to take on the chair position.
When I’m not laboring away turning stem cells into cardiomyocytes or drinking my research frustration away at CBC, I volunteer with a project called PATS - Pediatric AIDS Treatment Support. We hire community health workers, in central China, who visit HIV/AIDS children at least once a month and establish linkages between the doctors and the patients. When I first got involved, I was taking several global health/international development classes. I considered myself pretty wired to the success Partners In Health had with community health workers in Haiti and Rwanda. I have to shamefully admit that I thought this project which “only” took care of 40 children was insignificant and would be up and running in no time.
Wasn’t I wrong! I realized that what classes didn’t tell me was that the key to a successful project isn’t only the great idea or model, but also the nuisance details. The course curriculum taught me that I should be careful with cultural sensitivity, but never would I thought I should budget in the fact that Chinese people like to eat hot lunches and there are no restaurants in the villages, so the workers would only like to go to the villages for half day.
I can’t help but be surprised by the “texture” of fieldwork. It’s something no powerpoint presentation or business model can truly grasp. It takes a lot of patience, some punching in the pillows, occasional international calls to friends and family to vent off disappointments. However, at the end of the day, seeing a steady increase of a child’s CD4 count makes all the tears and sweat worthwhile.
At MIT, we are trained to be leaders, to think holistically. When we think about international development or social entrepreneurship, we think about Nobel Laureate, Mohammad Yunus, or large macroeconomics debate on aid, the Sachs vs. Easterly conumdrum. These discussions are absolutely necessary and critical. However, I would like to propose a new model of thinking – sometimes saving a life involves running around in a village looking for a photocopier or chewing over words so no one’s feelings are hurt or borrowing laser cutter from your friend’s lab to make fundraiser items (Thanks, Priam!) Sometimes it’s the smallest detail that determines whether a child will sleep under a bednet or not. Yes, Ted talks are awesome but true changes don’t happen in an air-conditioned conference room. It’s never that grand, put-together or glamorous.
With all that said, I’m not trying to sound like you should ditch all the great courses MIT has to offer. I’m by no means an expert and have really been doing it as a side hobby. I encourage you to take these classes offered by the poverty action lab, D-lab, G-lab, HST.939….the list goes on and on. Just remember, chances are you are not going to change the world in a semester, but the world will never change if you don’t do something.
With great ability comes great responsibility. MIT houses some of the world’s best talents. And as the world’s leading institution on knowledge production, it is upon us to do something for the world, to make it a better place. There are many outstanding groups in MIT that works on International Development issues.
To learn about how to “change the world” here, one could take a look at this group that I am affiliated with: the International Development Network.
Here is someone who I admire tremendously – MIT’s and the IDN’s very own Amy Smith:
“MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW) is a web-based publication of virtually all MIT course content. OCW is open and available to the world and is a permanent MIT activity.”
As someone who is serving on the Faculty Advisory Board of the OpenCourseWare, I have always been interested in finding out a way to make OCW more sustainable. While it is without a doubt a very great contribution to global education (I learned 75% of the my math from using OCW and self-learning), and it has also been instrumental in pushing MIT to the top spot of some world university rankings, it does not have a clear revenue generation mechanism. It is not a paid service nor does it incorporate any form of distance learning/certification.
With the tough economic situation ahead of us, the OCW is bound to face some challenges. Right now, the OCW raises it funds mainly through support by big foundations and MIT’s budget. If we need to preserve and protect the OCW, we must come up with some ingenious ways to raise money or make OCW profitable (while still upholding the spirit of open education and the non-commercial nature of OCW). Charitable givings is one way to go, but on the cost side, maybe we can try to motivate the huge pool of talents within the Institute to provide low cost of voluntary service to get high quality but low cost inputs. Also, more creative fundraising from alumni and from other external funding sources would be helpful.
I have no good solution for the long term financial security for the OCW, but I do hope that this post would provoke some ideas and suggestions.
), I couldn’t help but wonder what this visit by the President of the United States meant.
How excited are you about 
.jpg "Zenzile Brooks"){kind=avatar}
