In September of 2024, President Sally Kornbluth announced the MIT Presidential Initiatives, a set of collaborative efforts “to empower faculty to pursue their most innovative ideas, collaborate with others outside their field, and explore fresh approaches to teaching.”

We believe that in addition to fostering bold ideas and collaborations, our faculty, students, and the broader MIT community are deeply motivated to see innovations that have positive societal impact. To that end, students must develop the communication, teamwork, and leadership skills essential to turn ideas into implemented solutions. Accreditation and advisory bodies including ABET, the National Academy of Engineering, and the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) emphasize the importance of this broader skillset. To maximize students’ ability to change the world for the better, we must recognize that developing their capacity to conceive and design solutions is only the beginning.

MIT’s Technical Leadership and Communication (TLC) programs were established to address this need. Organized in 2022 with Dr. Reza Rahaman as the managing director, the purpose of the TLC is to empower students to develop the critical skills that, combined with their technical proficiency, equip them to tackle the greatest technical challenges of our future. This organization is designed to consolidate and synergize on a robust and proven heritage, and comprises four existing programs, housed within the School of Engineering and serving the entire Institute, that have been nurtured, developed, and validated over the past 25 years: the Undergraduate Practice Opportunities Program (UPOP, founded in 2001), the Gordon-MIT Engineering Leadership Program (GEL, founded in 2007), the Riccio-MIT Graduate Engineering Leadership Program (GradEL, founded in 2017), and the SoE Communication Lab (Comm Lab, founded in 2013).

Taken together, the TLC programs have impacted thousands of MIT students. Many of you may know students who have participated in one or more TLC programs and who stood out as leaders in your own classroom activities. Our data demonstrate that TLC students are better prepared for future academic and professional opportunities. As supported by recent longitudinal studies, the individual TLC programs complement and empower MIT’s outstanding technical education by experientially developing our students’ teamwork, communication, and leadership skills, enabling them to leverage their technical expertise to develop and implement processes and products that will have an impact on the world. Findings also demonstrate that TLC program alumni advance more quickly into leadership positions of greater responsibility. The programs also equip TLC students to perform better in their current academic studies and research at MIT and in their job searches.

The TLC programs are not just complementary to MIT’s world-class technical education – they are essential to realizing MIT’s mission of advancing knowledge and preparing students to meet the world’s greatest challenges. By equipping students with the skills that transform technical excellence into societal impact, TLC enables them to step into roles where they can make change happen.

In supporting these programs, we are investing in MIT students’ ability to turn ideas into impact, research into breakthroughs, and prototypes into solutions that matter. We invite you to encourage your students, advisees, and research group members to engage with TLC offerings, and we welcome your partnership in shaping how these programs can further serve our community. Together, we can ensure that MIT continues to lead – not only in technical innovation, but also in developing leaders who will shape a better future.

You can find more information about TLC and its individual programs on our newly redesigned website, tlc.mit.edu.

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