Provost L. Rafael Reif has announced that the panel he established last December to review the Martin Luther King Visiting Professor and Scholar Program has submitted its report. The charge to the committee, Reif noted in a letter to the faculty, was "to extract lessons learned from the ten-year experience and discuss the program in the context of new Institute initiatives, to evaluate the program and suggest changes, if appropriate, and to consider ways in which this program may serve to increase the number of minority faculty at MIT."
In its report, the panel stressed the importance of integrating the program into an Institute-wide strategy for the recruitment and promotion of underrepresented minorities in the faculty, as well as promoting a better understanding of its goals and providing appropriate infrastructure.
Reif noted that he would ask the new associate provost for faculty equity, once appointed, to develop an Institute-wide strategy for the recruitment, hiring and promotion of underrepresented minorities on the faculty and to integrate the MLK Visiting Professors and Scholars Program, modified along the lines recommended by the panel, into that strategy. He noted that he would also be asking the associate provost for faculty equity to increase the awareness of the goals, objectives and implementation of the program among faculty and academic administrators.
The members of the panel were: Professors Rafael L. Bras (chair), Stephen C. Graves, Sabine Iatridou, Ceasar L. McDowell, F. Dale Morgan and Christine Ortiz. Reif expressed gratitude to the panel for "their contribution in guiding our efforts to improve this program." A public version of the panel's report, omitting appendices, is available to the MIT community at web.mit.edu/provost/reports.html. An MIT certificate is required to access the document.
A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on December 6, 2006 (download PDF).
