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How Do We Love Thee, River Charles? Let Us Count the Ways…

by Joe McGonegal on April 22, 2013

in Alumni Life, Athletics, Campus Culture, Classroom, Engineering, Events, IAP, Science, Student Life

Happy Earth Day! As you read this, teams are vying to be named champions in the annual MIT Earth Day Challenge this week. Many community members will contribute to the (rescheduled) 14th annual Charles River Cleanup this weekend.
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Being a school on a shoreline, MIT’s celebration of Earth any day is also, quite often, a celebration of the water, and in particular, the Charles River.

Like so many civilizations before us, MIT’s has been built upon a river.

How does this river sustain our work? Ocean engineering majors can tell you; they surveyed the muddy Charles’s depths in 2007. Civil engineers plumb its depths annually: check out this 2012 project to destratify it with turbulent jets.  Art, Culture,and Technology Associate Professor Gediminas Urbonas designed last winter’s IAP “Learning from the River” around it. CSAIL’s lecture series bears its name.

There was Proteus the penguin boat and the pre-Columbian raft. We’ve done sonar tests, problem sets with fictional “Charles River” companies, studied ice patterns, and silt formation.

And the Charles is our playground, too, as any runner, rower or sailor will attest. Maybe you played the MUVE game “Charles River City” a few years back, or watched the 4th of July fireworks from any available rooftop.

Always moving and yet always still, the Charles is a muse for photographers, romantics, barflys, philanthropists, and soul-searchers. Remember how Ernie Knight ’28, for his 70th reunion, took a single scull out for one more row?

2011_sunset_charles_small

Photo: Lydia Krasilnikova.

Seems logical to trek out there once a year—at least, to work on keeping the Charles clean.

In a unique sense of the word, the Charles River is also an MIT invention. Karl Haglund’s 2002 book, Inventing the Charles River, is a great exploration into how engineers (MIT alums included) shaped Boston and Cambridge’s shorelines over the years into a “Back Bay” with stabilized riverfronts. How would one’s MIT experience be different, do you think, if we looked out at mud flats and salt marshes every day?

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Tug-of-War Victory over Harvard, 1887: Was This MIT’s Greatest Unknown Athletic Feat?

by Nancy DuVergne Smith on March 27, 2013

in Alumni Life, Athletics, Remember When...

Guest Blogger: Debbie Levey, CEE Technical Writer

With a student body notable for athletes as well as scholars, MIT’s 33 varsity sports provide the most intercollegiate offerings among the country’s Division III schools. The Engineers have won 22 team national championships and produced 34 individual national champions, plus 23 Olympic athletes. Within the last 10 years alone, students accrued 464 All-America honors.

MIT's victorious tug of war team: R. M. Clement, 188 (clockwise from top left); H.G. Gross, 1888; F. L. Pierce, 1889; and P. H. Tracy, 1890.

MIT’s victorious tug-of-war team: R. M. Clement, 1888 (clockwise from top left); H.G. Gross, 1888; F. L. Pierce, 1889; and P. H. Tracy, 1890.

Although it has slipped from collective memory, one of Tech’s arguably most thrilling games occurred in 1887.

“The defeat of Harvard’s tug-of-war team by our four untrained and inexperienced men is the greatest athletic feat which the Institute has ever accomplished,” trumpeted The Tech in March 17, 1887. “…We have scored many triumphs in the same line, but never when it was so entirely unlooked for, and under such unfavorable circumstances.”

A photo of the champion tug-of-war team was published in The Tech‘s April 28, 1887, issue with this caption: “We take great pleasure in presenting the readers of THE TECH a phototype of our victorious tug-of-war team, which pulled the Harvard University tug-team 2-1/2 inches.”

When MIT decided to enter the 1887 meet just two weeks before the event, it took a full week to round up four volunteers for a team. They only managed three hours of practice together, while The Tech reported that Harvard’s team “pass the 16-pound shot for fifteen minutes every afternoon.” In addition, MIT’s team fell below the weight limit and therefore lacked the advantage of having all possible pounds where it really mattered.

This untrained and lightweight MIT team faced an opponent with the formidable reputation of “the champion team among colleges.” Then as now, MIT’s victories over Harvard proved particularly sweet.

Alas, tug-of-war contests were on their way out. In 1891 the MIT Athletic Club  joined Harvard and other prominent colleges in dropping tug-of-war from the sports roster. In the following spring, the American Intercollegiate Athletic Association officially replaced tug-of-war with bicycle racing.

While tug-of-war remained an Olympic sport until 1920, college competition peaked in the 1880s. Time magazine wrote in May 27, 1940, “Though few U. S. citizens can remember or believe it, tug-of-war was once the most popular of intercollegiate sports.”

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Is There a Grad Rat in Your Future?

by Nancy DuVergne Smith on March 20, 2013

in Alumni Life, Events

Grad Rats include course and degree as well as symbols of campus life.

Grad Rats include course and degree as well as symbols of campus life.

Graduate students are demonstrating a new interest in buying their own Standard Technology Rings, the official name of the Institute’s iconic rings. While more than 90 percent of undergraduates traditionally buy Brass Rats, sales of its sibling, the Grad Rat, have only taken off in the past five years, says EECS graduate student Katia Shtyrkova, chair of the Graduate Student Council (GSC) Grad Rat committee. She knows because she tracked last year’s sales of 800 rings, a 20 percent boost from the previous year.

Why should graduate students and alumni consider buying a Grad Rat?

“MIT’s graduate ring program, the Grad Rat, is the most successful graduate ring program in the country and one of our community’s most unique and cherished traditions,” says Brian Spatocco, GSC president. A materials science and engineering PhD student, Spatocco bought his Grad Rat shortly after completing his qualifying exams last year.

“Owning a Grad Rat has significance in two major ways—first, for many students and alumni it is symbolic of their time at MIT, both the good times and the struggles. The Grad Rat also unites our students and alumni and is the link that brings our members together, no matter where they may be and no matter how long after they’ve graduated.”

The Grad Rat is also getting with the times. The design was unchanged for decades until the 2004 redesign. Now another new design is in the works and GSC would like alumni input. Fill out a survey to share your thoughts on design features for the ring to be unveiled next fall. The survey closes April 7; you can also email the committee.

What does the current Grad Rat look like? Go to the GSC website to view the design. The ring features degree, course symbol, graduation year, as well as   symbols of MIT life. Alumni can order a ring from any year, designating any degree.

Are Grad Rats useful outside MIT?

“Students’ networking and connections improve greatly from the ring exposure,” says Shtyrkova. “Professionals immediate know the origin of the ring, and the pride and hard work that came with it. MIT has a policy not to give honorary degrees. And as such, the only way to get the ring is to have attended MIT.”

Graduate students and alumni can order a ring during campus ring days, when they can get sized, see the details, and try on different metals. They can also order on Balfour’s online store and receive their rings two months later.

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Fighting Flu: “Feet Dry” to Mass Vaccinations

by Nancy DuVergne Smith on March 4, 2013

in Remember When...

Guest Blogger: Debbie Levey, CEE Technical Writer

Advice from MIT Medical: Got hands? Wash them!

Advice from MIT Medical: Got hands? Wash them!

Facing a potential flu epidemic in autumn 2012, MIT Medical mobilized to provide more than 13,000 vaccinations on campus to students, employees, and retirees. Years of planning and drills by the campus Emergency Operations Center plus advance preparation starting in summer, resulted in an impressive inoculation rate of 500 people per hour in several mass flu clinics.

Debbie Friscino, MIT Medical’s director of operations, described how clinicians and nurses from local nursing schools administered injections at 15 stations in the Student Center. Other groups distributed forms, directed people through the stations, and watched for reactions.

Although flu season has peaked this year, Friscino emphasized the ongoing public health effort to remind people about covering their coughs and frequently washing their hands. A popular video by Dr. Howard Heller, chief of internal medicine, explains how to minimize disease exposure even in airplanes with coughing flight attendants. It’s not too late to get a flu shot.

Hand sanitizer helps fight flu, says Dr. Heller.

Hand sanitizer helps fight flu, says Dr. Heller.

Long before mass inoculations, MIT coped with periodic flu epidemics through quarantines and similar advice about washing hands. But the Spanish flu pandemic required more extreme measures as it devastated Boston, killing tens of thousands of residents between September 1918 and January 1919. This flu strain disproportionately struck down young adults, so MIT faced a double threat because of its youthful population and barracks on campus for training World War I aviators.

To minimize exposure, MIT closed for three weeks at the start of the 1918 fall semester. The registrar ordered all students to “keep away from the Institute until further notice,” The Tech reported on Oct. 2, 1918.

Despite these precautions, flu swept through the student body. When the on-campus Naval Aviation hospital was torn down in spring 1919, The Tech described how during the previous semester, “out of the 800 or 900 aviation students stationed here, more than 300 [were] in the infirmary.”

A new, serious flu strain appeared in 1928. On January 7, 1929, The Tech warned that students who had traveled west were the “most likely to be exposed.”

To stave off local flu cases, Dr. George Morse, head of the Medical Department, urged students to “eat plenty of nourishing food,” wash their hands before dining, keep their feet dry, and get enough rest in well-ventilated rooms. In addition, they should avoid Pullman Sleepers [on overnight trains], and “cover telephone mouth-pieces with tissue paper, date with rubber stamp and change daily.”

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Kendall Square Nexus: What’s on the Drawing Board Now?

by Nancy DuVergne Smith on February 25, 2013

in Campus Culture

Kendall Square proposal.

A glimpse of Kendall Square’s proposed future. Image: Elkus Manfredi Architects

Alumni out a few decades may remember Kendall Square as an undistinguished place. No longer. Kendall Square has become an international model for how to seed a neighborhood with great ideas, thanks to MIT’s management of its commercial real estate portfolio. Kendall Square today is a nexus for biotech and pharma companies plus hordes of startups. And, drawn to MIT, more are coming.

As part of MIT’s 2030 planning process, MIT is proposing to enliven the streetscape with restaurants and landscape improvements as well as building spaces for residences, research facilities, and starts ups.

In recent presentations to the Cambridge Planning Board, MIT has described plans to redevelop Institute property in the East Campus/Kendall Square area, which would include a more inviting eastern gateway to the campus. You can download the presentation and learn more in Cambridge Planning Board cites satisfaction with Kendall proposal.

The January-February MIT Faculty Newsletter is weighing in on the plans, particularly with concerns about faculty consultation and the balance of commercial development vs. space for research facilities and graduate student housing.

Meanwhile, things in the square are hopping. Just ask Michael Gilman ′76, a life sciences entrepreneur whose undergrad lab was within sight of Kendall Square. His start-up, Stromedix, had offices a 15-minute walk out of the square, until it was acquired by Biogen Idec in 2012. Now he works a block north of Kendall Square overseeing several drug development programs for Biogen. Sunday’s Boston Globe Innovation Economy blog post describes him and the 2.5 million square feet of new offices and lab space proposed for the area.

For more on campus development, check out the Slice of MIT post, “What’s Going Up at MIT?”

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Transforming MIT’s Educational Experience: Ask President Reif

by Nancy DuVergne Smith on February 22, 2013

in Campus Culture

Reif with Class of 2016 students.

President Reif with Class of 2016 students.

How often do you get to chat with MIT’s president? For most of us, not very often. Yet an opportunity is coming up to do just that in the first of three live, webcast conversations with President L. Rafael Reif this winter.

On Wednesday, February 27, at noon, President Reif will address a core issue: how MIT will reinvent the residential research university in light of rising costs and emerging online alternatives. MIT Alumni Association Executive Vice President and CEO Judy Cole will pose questions submitted by alumni worldwide.

How can you take part? Just register to be part of the conversation. You can submit a question when you register or during the conversation. You’ll receive a reminder Wednesday morning that will provide the URL of the webcast.

Sign up now for Transforming MIT’s Educational Experience

Questions are pouring in from alumni who are already registered. Here are a few samples:

  • Danbee, Portugal: Student culture is a strong and lasting aspect of the MIT experience, and cannot be replicated via online educational opportunities—how do you plan to strengthen and foster residential student life and culture in the upcoming years of MIT?
  • Troy, Naperville, IL: There is no shortage of demand for MIT’s “product” in spite of rising “price.” Is reinvention necessary? Is it really going to look significantly different in 10 years?
  • Kathy, Providence, RI: I am concerned that MIT, in its enthusiasm for exploring and pushing the boundaries of the affordances of online education, may forget the very essence of the ways in which mens et manus serves as framework through which we have realized our aspirations. How will MIT ensure that these deep, engaging experiences are not undermined in the push to go online?

Join the conversation! And come back to post your comments after the discussion.

 

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The Tech Goes Multimedia in 2012: Year in Review

by Nancy DuVergne Smith on February 19, 2013

in Campus Culture, Student Life

A hack on the Stata Center

A hack popped up on the Stata Center

In 2012 The Tech, MIT’s oldest newspaper, created a new Online Media team to expand their coverage via multimedia, social media, and interactives—and produced terrific results.

Interactives offer quick insights and statistics on topics from religion to university endowments. A powerful series of interactive graphics portrayed the results of The Tech’s survey on stress in student life such as this interactive on the most stressful courses.

Videos included an interview with President L. Rafael Reif, the Dalai Lam’s visit, and the MIT Mystery Hunt.

Being MIT, the student journalists are ambitious—and sharing what they do:

“The Tech also open sourced its breakdown graphic (which can be found at https://github.com/TheMITTech/breakdown) to make it easier for other newsrooms to reuse our code.

“We’ve had a great first year navigating the intersection of technology and journalism, and as we mature as a department we hope to develop new competencies, templates, and workflows to further streamline our production process. The Tech will continue pushing the envelope of digital and data-driven student journalism.”

Filming MIT's gangnam style video.

Youngsoo Jang ’15, (from left) Ingwon Chae ’14, and Richard C. Yoon ’13 take a break during filming the MIT Gangnam Style video that went viral this last
semester.

Download the Year in Review PDF to read these and other highlights:

• HarvardX & MITx merge under edX

• Reif Takes the Reins at MIT

• Changes to the first year experience

• Hacks at MIT

• Reflections on the top video games and films of the year

• Opinion: How should students best respond to the emotional stresses of MIT?

• MIT sports teams had a killer year—find out more.

 

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Rafael Reif Is (Finally) in the House

by Nancy DuVergne Smith on February 15, 2013

in Campus Culture

When L. Rafael Reif became MIT president last year, he did not immediately move into Gray House, the Institute president’s home since 1917. Instead, the Newton resident commuted to work as essential repairs—addressing aging wiring and leaky windows—were completed. On Feb. 5 The Tech announced the big move, “Reif Is in the House:”

Reif joins a student snowball fight.

Reif, now a campus resident, joins a student snowball fight.

He didn’t wait long to take advantage of the new proximity—Reif left for the men’s and women’s basketball games in Rockwell Cage on Saturday after just a few hours in his new home. “I asked my wife, ‘Is it okay if I just go to the game?’” he said. “I like the idea that I can just come and walk and watch. This is my way of celebrating I’m in Gray House.”

After two feet of snow fell on campus Feb. 9, President Reif was quickly out the door to engage in a snow ball fight with students. A snowstorm slide show documents the fun.

Curious about Gray House? The MIT Archives and Special Collections provided these notes:

The Italianate style house was designed by William Wells Bosworth Class of 1889, the architect of the 1916 campus. The house was completed in 1917 and was the last part of Bosworth’s plan to be constructed.

Gray House was completed in 1917 on the new Cambridge campus.

When the Maclaurins moved into the house (red square) in 1917, the student union and gymnasium were in Walker Memorial next door.

The 1988 book MIT Art and Architecture describes it this way: “The President’s House, an austere version of a Roman Villa, employs a graceful Pomeiian Corinthian order and was appreciated at the time as expressing a ‘delightful balance of sobriety and lightness of touch held in fine reserve.’”

Stone & Webster, the company that constructed the new campus, built the house as a gift to MIT. Company founders Charles A. Stone and Edwin S. Webster, both members of the MIT Class of 1888, committed $150,000 to the project.

The garden was designed in 1917 by Mabel Keyes Babcock Class of 1908, landscape architect and teacher. Babcock’s commission for the President’s Garden was expanded to the entire campus including Killian Court.

President Richard Maclaurin and his wife Alice were involved in the design, according to the 1937 book, Richard Cockburn Maclaurin:

“They were told to plan the house as exactly to their taste as though they were to own it themselves, and they took the delightful responsibility very seriously.” The house “perfectly adapted to large-scale entertaining, it yet had no great reception room set aside for that purpose. The President’s family lives in it all, without any sense of echoing space; the guests, whether hundreds at a time or only a handful, are conscious of being in a home. For this is what the Maclaurins desired.

In 2002, the President’s House was renamed Gray House in honor of Paul and Priscilla Gray, former president and first lady of MIT.

 

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Mystery Hunt 2013: Longest in History

by Nancy DuVergne Smith on February 11, 2013

in Campus Culture, Modern Geekhood, Student Life

A team readies for Mystery Hunt 2013.

A team readies for Mystery Hunt 2013. Photo: Emilio Pace, courtesy The Tech

MIT’s annual Mystery Hunt used to be a brainteaser for the Institute cognoscenti, fueled by love of puzzles, twisted clues, and sleepless nights. Now it’s expanding. This year some teams swelled past 70 members, with distant members connected by webcam. Now it’s regional news documented by a Boston.com  slide show. And it’s long—this year’s Mystery Hunt, Jan. 18-21, lasted 73 hours and 18 minutes, the longest ever.

The story line unfolded at Rockwell Cage starting Friday at 2 p.m. and The Tech related it like this: “the Manic Sages [last year’s winners who designed this year’s challenge] had mortgaged the coin for their own profit to Enigma Valley Investment & Loan (EVIL), and the coin could not be withdrawn for a period of ‘no less than 50 years.’ Thankfully, Alyssa P. Hacker enlisted the help of consultants from the Institute for Heist Training, Facilitation, and Planning (IHTFP) to rescue the coin so the tradition of the hunt could continue.”

Excerpt of a puzzle clue.

Excerpt of a puzzle clue.

As usual, the competition consists of layers of puzzles that lead to a metapuzzle; those answers set up a super metapuzzle for each round. After seven rounds, teams faced three final challenges that yielded the key cards that unlocked the coin. Although the Manic Sages put in thousands of person hours creating a tough puzzle, they finally showed mercy. On Sunday they helped the teams (by cutting out some puzzles and creating options to earn clues) since it was becoming a very long hunt.

The winning team, nicknamed Atlas Shrugged (the actual name was the complete text of the Ayn Rand novel), had teams operating in Chicago, France, and San Francisco. They found the coin hidden behind a safe constructed in 13-1143 (just off of Lobby 13) amid a pile of similar coins. See past Slice of MIT posts to find out where coins have been found.

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How MIT Got a Front Door on Mass. Ave.

by Nancy DuVergne Smith on January 28, 2013

in Alumni Life, Campus Culture, Remember When...

Guest Blogger: Debbie Levey, CEE Technical Writer

With its dome, columns and limestone, MIT’s Building 7 entrance at 77 Massachusetts Ave. closely matches adjacent buildings from the original 1916 construction. Few people realize that the William Barton Rogers Building was erected over 20 years later to accommodate the School of Architecture, which had remained behind in the Back Bay after the rest of MIT had moved to Cambridge.

Aerial view of MIT in 1920 without Building 7 and the 77 Mass Ave entrance.

Aerial view of MIT in 1920 without Building 7 and the 77 Mass Ave entrance.

Letters exchanged in autumn 1936 between MIT President Karl Compton and architect Welles Bosworth Class of 1889, who designed the original campus, probed the possibilities of a new building. And they agreed that it should “be given a special architectural treatment as a main entrance.”

In April 1937, Bosworth proposed “a fairly dignified vestibule on the central entrance of the Mass. Ave. facade,” circular or octagonal and running “from the main floor up to a skylight, with galleries running around at the upper story levels.” Four sculptured figures in niches at the four corners would represent the spirits of Drawing, Modeling, Geometry and Calculation, “these being, to me, the essential things that an architect needs to know.”

Bosworth predicted in June 1937 that “the new entrance on Massachusetts Ave. will come to be used more than the entrance on the main court.” Asked to cut the design “down to the limit,” he complied but wrote, “Considering the size of the monument, it would be very hurtful to the impression of the institute as a whole to make it look too small and cramped.”

Despite austerity measures, the $700,000 building estimate in 1936 rose to $1.42 million by Aug. 1937. This sum included an extra $15,000 for ventilation to remove large quantities of heat from the Vannevar Bush differential analyzer, a room-size analog electromechanical device.

Students with slide rules gleefully reframed the building statistics in The Tech on Jan. 14, 1938, calculating that the 8,500 cubic yards of concrete used in construction would fill 18,250,000 12-ounce beer cans. “Assuming a height of five inches per can, they would stretch some 1440 miles if laid end to end, which would reach well beyond Chicago.” Keeping all that beer in Boston would provide each thrilled MIT student with about 6,300 cans.

Building 7 under construction in 1938.

Building 7 under construction in 1938.

Stone & Webster Engineering Corp., founded by Class of 1888 alumni Charles Stone and Edwin Webster, handled the construction. Work finished on time and on budget that fall, and the 1938 President’s Report proudly stated, “Real estate experts have described [the Rogers building] as the finest piece of building construction of greater Boston. Reports of its occupants indicate that drafting rooms, offices, classrooms, library, and laboratories are all splendidly adapted to their purposes.”

A reception with 700 guests and MIT’s top dignitaries helped inaugurate the Bldg. 7 in December 1938, with faculty wives recruited to pour tea for the visitors.

While the plinths in the lobby corners never acquired their allegorical figures, a student design competition in 2010 offered prizes for undergrads and grad students to design models of what could enhance the four spaces. See images of proposed designs—and the contest winner.

Thanks to the MIT Archives for information and the MIT Museum for photos.

 

 

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