Not so many weeks have elapsed in academic-semester time since my first column, but the interim has been eventful. On February 4, the Task Force on the Undergraduate Academic Program released its draft recommendations, and as I describe in the last paragraphs of this column, we are now in a crucial phase of public deliberation and feedback. On January 16 Paula Hammond became our new Dean of Engineering, and on February 15 Maria Yang became our new Vice Provost for Faculty. The faculty officers work closely with the vice provost for faculty (who meets every two weeks with the chair of the faculty) including collaborating on Women Faculty Advocates gatherings and a new faculty event series on academic freedom. The first academic freedom event took place on February 9, a Faculty Seminar on Academic Freedom: The Relationship Between Institutions and the State, and featured a lecture by Professor Malick Ghachem (History) followed by Q&A and small-table discussion. Professor Ghachem’s lecture was built around eleven key quotations, which also appear as an article in this issue of the Faculty Newsletter.

From my vantage point, much of the activity of note in recent months has involved committees, task forces, and working groups, which along with similar bodies I’ll sometimes collectively refer to in my columns as “committees” for convenience. A few general notes on the ins and outs of committees – both how they work and the nature of their substantive inputs and outputs. At MIT, some committees are “persistent,” with no end date: these include the Standing and Special Committees of the Faculty, the Standing Institute Committees Appointed by the President, the Standing and Visiting Committees of the Corporation, and others. Other committees have a life cycle: a charge is written, members are assembled, the group does its work, and reports out (with interim or draft reports sometimes preceding the final report). The final report concludes the committee’s work, and at that point it is up to the community and in particular those who charged the committee to determine next steps. For some committees, the inputs and outputs are primarily formal and may involve decision-making authority. The Committee on Curricula, for example, takes as inputs proposals for new subjects and curricula, and acts with power in response to them; these actions, typically conveyed in letters from the committee, are its output. For other committees, the inputs and outputs may vary in form. For the Faculty Policy Committee (FPC), for example, the inputs and outputs are wide-ranging, at present primarily involving discussions with and feedback to leaders across the MIT community, but sometimes taking other forms. An example of the latter occurred during the days following MIT’s receipt of the “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education,” when FPC played a key role in conveying faculty perspectives to the faculty officers, President Kornbluth, and ultimately the Corporation.

And now to the committees and their activities.

As you may recall from my first column, in the fall I appointed a Transitional Support Committee for the Faculty Newsletter as part of the recommendations accepted by the faculty in October 2025. With the Committee’s support, the Newsletter held a special election from February 10-17, 2026 to fill five vacancies on its Editorial Board. Out of 1,450 eligible to vote, 455 cast ballots, and Catherine D’Ignazio, Alan Jasanoff, Nancy Kanwisher, Warren Seering, and Yang Shao-Horn were elected to the Board. I am grateful to the Editorial Board, the Transitional Support Committee, Managing Editor David Lewis, the staff of Institutional Research, and all faculty colleagues who participated in the election by voting or standing for election.

In January, Chancellor Nobles, Provost Chandrakasan, and I jointly charged the Committee on AI Use in Teaching, Learning, and Research Training, co-chaired by Professors Eric Klopfer and Samuel Madden. As I noted in my welcoming remarks at the September 2025 Institute Faculty Meeting, artificial intelligence offers profound challenges and opportunities for what an MIT education can and should be. This committee’s charge includes assessing current uses of AI, identifying innovations, and proposing AI use policy. The committee seeks input from across the Institute and will hold in-person input sessions on March 5, 9, and 10, for which you can register online. You can also contact the committee directly at ai-teachingandlearning@mit.edu.

Also in January, President Kornbluth and Provost Chandrakasan charged the Committee on Accelerating Translation and Entrepreneurship (CATE), co-chaired by Professors Jeffrey Grossman and Antoinette Schoar. The committee’s potential topics range broadly, including policies on faculty leave and conflict of interest, support for entrepreneurial activities by MIT community members and recent alumni, and strategies for global impact. The committee is intended to work rapidly; you can send your input directly to the co-chairs.

In February, Provost Chandrakasan charged the Committee on Guidelines for Establishing New Institute Entities (GENIE), chaired by Professor and Associate Vice President for Research Administration Anne White. Here “entities” should be understood broadly, including alliances, centers, institutes, and initiatives. Comments can be directed to genie@mit.edu.

And also in February, the Task Force on the Undergraduate Academic Program (TFUAP), co-chaired by Professors Adam Martin and Joel Voldman, released its draft proposal containing recommendations for strengthening the overall experience of MIT undergraduates. Developing recommendations for changing our undergraduate program is a significant undertaking. The Task Force was charged in February 2024 by then-Chair of the Faculty Mary Fuller and then-Vice Chancellor for Undergraduate and Graduate Education Ian Waitz. In the two years since, it has devoted thousands of person-hours to preparing this proposal, including assessment of undergraduate educational programs at MIT and peer institutions, dozens of meetings with groups across the Institute, solicitation and review of white papers from across the community, and weekly internal deliberations. Potential changes range from curriculum to undergraduate-facing policies to pedagogy to governance. The undergraduate academic program draws on numerous constrained, non-fungible resources: student time, interest, and attention; availability and expertise of faculty and staff for curriculum development, stewardship, and governance; and technological, financial, and logistical support from offices across the Institute. Additionally, the potential implications for MIT’s 57 majors and 59 minors of any curricular changes need to be accounted for. It’s reasonable to hypothesize that these factors create inertia, and there is evidence consistent with this hypothesis: the time since the last  changes to the formal structure of our General Institute Requirements (GIRs), for example, is measured in decades – even as there has been considerable teaching innovation within that formal structure. That is not the only plausible hypothesis, however: structures may also be long-standing because they continue to serve needs. The goal, then, is not to change simply for change’s sake. Rather, the goal is to collectively formulate a vision for the program that will best serve students going forward, given (a) the resource constraints described above, together with (b) what is reachable from where we are today – and to make whatever changes our vision warrants. TFUAP has done the Institute a great service by formulating and disseminating such a vision.

Analogizing to academic publishing, the Task Force’s draft proposal of February 4 is a preprint reflecting not only its two years of hard work but also years of work by committees and task forces before it. The next phase, of public deliberation and feedback, has just begun, and it is absolutely crucial. The February 18 Institute Faculty Meeting was dedicated entirely to presentation and discussion of TFUAP’s recommendations, and the Task Force held its first all-community town hall meeting on March 2. They will hold a second all-community town hall Tuesday, March 10, 2:00-3:30 pm in W20-306, and a town hall specifically for students on Wednesday, March 11, 7:00-8:30 pm in 2-190. Feedback can be emailed to tfuap@mit.edu; please send it by March 15 if at all possible. Based on community feedback and on further deliberation, TFUAP will revise its recommendations and submit a final report. And at that point, it will be up to the community and in particular the offices of Chair of the Faculty and the Vice Chancellor for Graduate and Undergraduate Education, which originally charged the Task Force, to determine next steps. Now is the time to engage in public discussion and to send feedback to the Task Force. The first two such discussions were informative and constructive, with real potential to shape the final form of its recommendations. Not every suggestion will ultimately be adopted, but all inputs will be taken into account. Although many constituencies across MIT have stakes in our undergraduate academic program, decisions regarding its future are Institute-wide. I ask that you keep this perspective in mind. I urge you to engage, now and fully, in this crucial step toward shaping the future experiences of undergraduates at MIT.

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