MIT has been named the number two school in the country in this year’s Wall Street Journal/Times Higher Education College Rankings. MIT Vice Chancellor Ian Waitz explains that MIT offers students a “candy store” of learning opportunities, including opportunities for undergraduates to participate in research projects. “We invest a great deal in the students here,” he says.
Will Shortz, crossword editor for The New York Times and chair of the World Puzzle Federation, reports from Beijing on the second China Sudoku Championship. Shortz notes that incoming MIT freshman Shiyu Chen was crowned the winner of the U18 category (the most advanced group).
Glendale News-Press reporter Andrew Campa highlights Leanorine Lorenzana - a rising high school senior in Glendale, California – and her experience with the MIT Women’s Technology Program. Lorenzana noted that she loved how at MIT, “it’s a culture where anything nerdy wasn’t seen with a negative connotation. Everyone is nerdy, and everyone is talking about different things all the time.”
WCVB-TV’s Karen Holmes Ward highlights how MIT students created a summer camp, called DynaMIT, aimed at getting middle school students interested in STEM fields. MIT undergraduate Julia Cho explains that DynaMIT tries to, “focus on hands-on activities because we know that students are much more interested in those sorts of experiments and places where they can explore to their heart’s content.”
Jeffrey Brown of PBS Newshour sits down with Prof. Daniel Jackson and students to discuss “Portraits of Resilience,” a collection of portraits and essays about individual experiences with mental health issues. “I hoped to capture the personality and charisma of the person that I was interviewing, the strength and the vulnerability,” says Jackson.
MIT’s Course 2.007 Design and Manufacturing I hosted its annual robotic competition with a Willy Wonka-themed course. The event, which involves five “sudden death” rounds, is about “more than just taking home first place,” says WBZ’s Lisa Hughes. “I cannot even explain…how much opportunity this class has given us,” a student shares.
Katie Johnston writes for The Boston Globe about a series of workshops at Sloan that are intended to teach business leaders how to identify, confront, and address sexual harassment in the workplace. “People are waking up in business schools and realizing we’ve had a blind spot,” said senior lecturer Daena Giardella. “We can’t have leadership without this being taught.”
In an opinion piece for The Boston Globe, two Sloan students and their co-authors argue that “business school leaders, instructors, and students must bring workers’ perspectives into the MBA curriculum.” They caution that, “an economy that delivers gains only to the top will suffer ills far worse than inefficiency.”
60 Minutes previews an upcoming episode where Scott Pelley visits the MIT Media Lab “and finds a crystal ball full of technologies that may someday become a part of our everyday lives.” Pelley highlights the history of the lab, started in 1985, and showcases some of the new projects being developed there.
The Koch Institute has chosen 10 new scientific images from MIT researchers to display in a public gallery in its lobby. The images “span a range of subject matters and approaches, capturing both fundamental biology and how that biology is upended by disease processes,” writes Lisa Raffensperger of STAT.
In comments told to NCAA’s Champion magazine, MIT’s recently retired lacrosse coach reflects on 43 years at MIT. The coach, Walter Alessi, describes the feeling when hundreds of former players who attended his retirement ceremony. “I was overwhelmed that I had this kind of an influence over guys who are now doctors, lawyers, engineers, scientists,” said Alessi. “It made me feel pretty good.”
Lecturer Amy Carleton speaks with Times Higher Ed reporter Holly Else about how she uses Wikipedia in her courses. Carleton explains that by asking students to write new pieces and add information to existing Wikipedia entries, she is attempting to help students “start to understand how important it is to have a high-quality source to back up any statements that they are making.”
Twenty years after its release, “Good Will Hunting,” which follows an MIT janitor turned math genius, remains incredibly popular with Boston-area college students. MIT junior Scott Cameron, “credits “Good Will Hunting” with shifting his notion of MIT from a far-off place to an actual goal. He first saw the film at 14 and, years later, it remains one of his favorites,” writes Sonia Rao at The Washington Post.
Rebecca Flint Marx of Wired writes about the ways automated technology is being used in the food industry. Highlighting Spyce Kitchen, which was developed by MIT students, Flint Marx writes, “at Spyce Kitchen, the robot chef needs less than five minutes to cook meals such as jambalaya or chickpea coconut curry.”
Boston.com reporter Erica Yee highlights several Boston-area residents who were named to Forbes’ “30 under 30” list, including MIT postdoctoral associate Yichen Shen, who was honored for his work with nanophotonic breakthroughs, and undergraduate Jenny Xu, who was recognized for her work creating popular mobile games.