Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Office of the President and Chancellor, records of Jerome B. Wiesner

Top-ranking administrative offices at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have evolved over the lifetime of the Institute. The position of the president was established in 1862, when the Institute charter was accepted by MIT. The position of the chancellor was created for the first time almost a century later, in the 1950s, to share administrative responsibilities of the president. The following section provides a summary of the president’s functions and responsibilities, followed by a brief historical sketch of the office of the chancellor, and by a more detailed account of the structure of the office of the president and chancellor during the tenure of Jerome Wiesner and Paul Gray.

Office of the President

The president is elected by the MIT Corporation and serves as the chief executive officer of the Institute in charge of its administrative matters. In this capacity, he serves as ex officio member of the MIT Corporation and of the following Corporation committees: Membership Committee, Development Committee, and Executive Committee. The president presides over Executive Committee meetings and sets the agenda. As the chief executive officer, the president makes recommendations to the Executive Committee regarding the organizational structure of MIT and presides over the Institute’s faculty and Academic Council. The president is also responsible for initiating budgets, tuition increases, changes in the educational and research programs, new plant and facilities needs, and all other matters relating to Institute operations on which Executive Committee action or concurrence may be necessary or appropriate. In all matters that do not require Executive Committee action or concurrence, the president is responsible for both initiation and action.

1862-1970

William Barton Rogers

1870-1878

John Daniel Runkle

1879-1881

William Barton Rogers

1881-1897

Francis Amasa Walker

1897-1900

James Mason Crafts

1900-1907

Henry Smith Pritchett

1907-1909

Arthur A. Noyes, acting president

1909-1920

Richard Cockburn Maclaurin

1920-1921, 1922

Elihu Thomson, acting president

1921

Ernest Fox Nichols

1923-1930

Samuel Wesley Stratton

1930-1949

Karl Taylor Compton

1949-1959

James Rhyne Killian, Jr.

1959-1966

Julius Adams Stratton

1966-1971

Howard Wesley Johnson

1971-1980

Jerome Bert Wiesner

1980-1990

Paul Edward Gray

1990-2004

Charles Marstiller Vest

2004-

Susan Hockfield

Office of the Chancellor

The office of the chancellor of MIT is a position created at the discretion of the president and the Executive Committee. The Institute bylaws state: “the Chancellor shall have duties as the Executive Committee shall from time to time confer upon him.” The chancellor is a member, ex officio, of the Corporation and the Executive Committee and reports to the president and the Executive Committee.

The position of the chancellor was first created in 1956 under President Killian in recognition of the increased scope of responsibilities at MIT, its many and unusual national obligations during the period, and the consequent need for greater sharing and delegation of administrative responsibilities. Julius A. Stratton served as the first chancellor, 1956-1959. Stratton’s responsibilities included administration of the Institute’s academic program in all its parts, with all academic officers coming under his jurisdiction; serving as deputy to the president and general executive officer for all Institute affairs; and, in the absence of the president, holding the powers and performing all duties and functions of the president.

The position was reinstated in 1971, when Paul Gray was appointed chancellor under President Wiesner, with authority to serve as deputy to the president on all matters. Gray served in this post until he became MIT president in 1980.

As academic administration became increasingly complex, the position of chancellor was again reinstated by President Charles M. Vest who appointed Lawrence Bacow as the third chancellor of MIT. He served from August 1998 to June 30, 2001 and was succeeded by Philip L. Clay who served from July 1, 2001 to February 28, 2011.

Effective March 1, 2011, W. Eric L. Grimson became the fifth chancellor of MIT. His duties are to coordinate undergraduate and graduate education, manage and develop programs with institutional partners in industry and in the international arena, and have a major responsibility for long-range strategic planning for MIT.

http://web.mit.edu/chancellor/

1956-1959

Julius Adams Stratton

1971-1980

Paul Edward Gray

1998-2001

Lawrence Seldon Bacow

2001-2011

Philip L. Clay

2011-

W. Eric L. Grimson

Office of the President and Chancellor, 1971-1980

When Howard Johnson announced his intention to retire as MIT president as of June 1971, the Corporation appointed a presidential search committee to select the new president. The committee chaired by James Fisk nominated Jerome Wiesner as Johnson’s successor. At the same time, responding to the needs of the Institute, the committee recommended that the post of chancellor be reestablished and named Paul Gray, associate provost, to the position.

During the first year of their working together, Wiesner and Gray shared most of their responsibilities, the chancellor having major responsibilities for the Institute’s budget. In the fall of 1972 they divided their responsibilities to allow the president to concentrate on policies and strategies for the future development of the Institute, and the chancellor to assume general management responsibilities for academic, research, and administrative programs . Those changes led to modification of the reporting structure. Vice presidents were to report to the chancellor on all administrative matters, and the provost was to report on the academic and research programs. In addition, several other offices reported directly to the chancellor, including the Dean for Student Affairs, the Special Assistant to the Chancellor for Pre-professional Programs, the Assistant to the President and Chancellor for Minority Affairs, and the Director of Information Processing Services.

Recognizing the need to address the major issues facing the world such as those related to controlling the proliferation of nuclear weapons, providing energy and food for exponentially growing populations, protecting the environment, and increasing industrial productivity, Wiesner and Gray set the goals of their administration to continue and enhance searching for the “ways to apply knowledge and skills of science and technology to the pressing problems of our society.” That meant providing the best scientific and technological education and fostering diverse research efforts relevant to the most important issues of today and to the anticipated needs of generations to come.

Educational and research initiatives introduced during Wiesner’s and Gray’s administration included creating the Center for Policy Alternatives in 1972 to examine technology and engineering problems and their relation to social issues. An interdisciplinary major in the School of Science was established in 1971 , fostering programs linking science, technology, and social policy, and promoting diverse selection in environmental studies, education, and law. The Division for Study and Research in Education, formed in 1973, focused on studies of knowledge structures, including learning processes. The new Institute requirement in Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences was approved in 1974, and the Writing Program was introduced the same year. Efforts to integrate the humanities into the education of scientists and engineers resulted in the establishment of the MIT Program in Science, Technology, and Society in 1978.

In the mid-1970s, the Committee on Research Structure, under the chairship of Professor Frank Press, evaluated the influence of the “national research climate” on research operations at MIT. In its report, published in 1976, the committee recommended enhancing the role of the research centers at the Institute to provide new sources of funding and research opportunities. It also recommended expanding research staff opportunities by creating new research positions in addition to the traditional teaching faculty structure.

Growing interest in the life sciences and health studies led to new major programs on the campus. The Center for Cancer Research, under Professor Salvador E. Luria, was created in 1972. The [Harvard-MIT] Division of Health Sciences and Technology and the College of Health Science, Technology, and Management were established in 1977 to provide venues for research and academic activities that were outgrowing the mandate of the Joint Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology.

The recognition of the importance of the arts and humanities in complementing educational and research activities led to the establishment in 1971 of the Council for the Arts, a volunteer group of alumni and others promoting development of the arts at MIT, and to the formation of the Corporation Visiting Committee for the Arts. President Wiesner’s strong support for the arts and his interest in exploring interactions between the arts and technology led in the late 1970s to the Arts and Media Technology project under the leadership of Nicholas Negroponte.

The ambitious, forward-looking goals of the Institute in the 1970s led Wiesner and Gray to create several new senior administrative posts during the first years of their tenure:

1972/1973

Special Assistant to the Chancellor (later Special Assistant to the Chancellor for Pre-professional Programs)

Assistant for Minority Affairs (later Assistant to the President and Chancellor for Minority Affairs)

1973/1974

Special Assistant to the President and Chancellor for Women and Work

Special Assistant to the President on Urban Resources

Assistant to the President for the Arts

The next major revision of the division of responsibilities between the president and the chancellor came in December 1977. For the duration of the Leadership Campaign, a major fund raising campaign launched by the Corporation in 1975, the president was to focus on the campaign-related activities in close collaboration with Howard Johnson—the leader of the campaign and chair of the Corporation. At the same time, the chancellor assumed responsibility for all management decisions regarding academic and administrative activities on the campus, including planning and developing strategies for the future. This change led to the transfer of a wide variety of functions and responsibilities from the president to the chancellor, including chairing committees and meetings. The position of the chancellor was discontinued in 1980 when Paul Gray became the president of the Institute in 1980³.