What is the purpose of a University President? How has that purpose changed over the past century? We now clearly have a new set of such people and they seem to be implementers of agenda that are dramatically different that their predecessors 50 years ago and even more dramatically than 100 years ago.
Excerpts from the Inaugural Address by Dr. Julius A. Stratton, eleventh President of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, June 15, 1959.
This institution was created by William Barton Rogers as an expression of faith in certain new concepts of professional education, and from the very outset our academic policies have been directed by a few central ideas. In essence, Rogers maintained that there is dignity and importance in the mastery of useful knowledge; that the foundations of a professional life may profitably be laid in the undergraduate years, combining with and contributing to a liberal education, to the enrichment of both; and that science and engineering can be the legitimate foundations of a higher education. M.I.T. has been built upon these convictions. The contributions of our graduates over the years both at home and abroad provide ample proof of their essential worth.
The highest goal to which a university may aspire is that its sons and daughters shall be leaders in art and science and that their influence shall be brought powerfully to bear for the welfare of mankind. Throughout the entire history of the Institute, much of the strength of our educational plan has been derived from the rigor and thoroughness of our method. From the day he enters as a freshman, the undergraduate learns to work in depth and to be held accountable for the results. He learns also to work under pressure and to marshal and employ his knowledge under test.
From this discipline and mastery of fundamentals comes an intellectual self-reliance that will stand him in good stead. But the formal instruction of lectures and classroom is properly only part of the educational process. The intellectual discipline of tests and problems must be supplemented and enlivened by other forces that will arouse and stimulate the impulses of originality latent in every student. We seek to stir our students’ imaginations, to encourage them to break free from the channels of conventional thought, and to teach them to bring to bear upon their problems the facts and methods acquired in the classroom.
By its very nature, research demands originality in thought and action; and it is in research that the student as well as the faculty can find an outlet for creative interest and energy and share in the intellectual excitement of new discoveries. University research serves but half its purpose if it becomes remote and isolated from the students themselves.
From his earliest history, man has been driven to build and to do, and the fulfillment of this urge finds its highest expression in the work of the engineer. The engineer is concerned with making and with producing, with converting the yields of pure science to useful products and services. His function is to adapt knowledge to beneficial ends, to find ways and means of solving the practical problems of human existence.
There is therefore in the education of the engineer the most compelling reason to develop by all possible means the creative and constructive powers of each student. The contributions that the humanities and social sciences have to make to the education of the architect, the scientist, and the engineer have been clearly established.
Over the past decade the Institute has won wide recognition for the support that has been given to these more liberal aspects of our curricula. The range of our professional activities at M.I.T. has for some time been steadily widening. We are concerned not alone with architecture, science, and engineering for their own sake, but increasingly with fields on which these disciplines have a direct impact in contemporary society. In addition to the obviously related fields of management and economics, we are also active in such areas as psychology, political science, international relations, and other social studies. …
M.I.T. is a professional school and as such we have an obligation to impart to our students an understanding of both the privileges and responsibilities inherent in the professional estate. Above and beyond all technical competence, the truly professional man must be imbued with a sense of responsibility to employer and client, a high code of personal ethics, and a feeling of obligation to contribute to the public good.
As a great educational institution, we shall fall short of our mission if we fail to inspire in our students a concern for things of the spirit as well as of the mind. By precept and example we must convey to them a respect for moral values, a sense of the duties of citizenship, a feeling for taste and style, and the capacity to recognize and enjoy the first-rate. M.I.T. is a product of our age. By its aims, its methods, and its ideals it is keyed to the needs and problems of the contemporary world.
Today, more than ever, the measure of our greatness will be determined by our capacity to educate for leadership.
JULIUS A. STRATTON
This was from the MIT catalog just before my Freshman year. It meant something then. The leadership of the Institute had made it through WW II and saw the need for continuing improvement and growth. The model worked for several more decades. Today, not so much. Most of the senior leaders are not from MIT, they are culture warriors, promulgating social ideas often neo Marxist. The MIT of today is unrecognizable in the context of President Stratton's vision.
Posts
