Ad Hoc Working Group on Online Continuing and Professional Education

In the final report of Task Force 2021 and Beyond, RIC11 highlighted the importance of Online Continuing and Professional Education (OCPE) together with a number of challenges at MIT that should be addressed, including “understanding and responding to learner and market needs; aligning the incentives of schools, departments, interdepartmental labs and individual faculty; developing fair compensation models; ensuring diversity, equity and inclusion in such programs; developing Institute-wide branding guidelines; establishing guidelines for who can teach, and how, in such programs”. RIC11 also suggested that formulating recommendations to address these challenges be undertaken by “a combination of school and college Deans, Open Learning, and the Chair of the Faculty”.

As part of following up on RIC11, in 2022 former Provost Marty Schmidt charged an Ad Hoc Committee on OCPE with making recommendations for improving OCPE at MIT, with membership including deans, leaders from Open Learning and the Chair of the Faculty as recommended in RIC11, as well as others from a number of units engaged in OCPE. The Committee delivered its findings and recommendations in a February 2023 report.

Drawing on the recommendations in RIC11 and the Ad Hoc Committee report, as well as MIT rules applicable to OCPE, Provost Barnhart has asked Jeff Grossman and Peter Hirst to convene a working group to recommend how to best implement a consistent approach to OCPE across MIT that is compatible with existing rules and with the following objectives:

1. Promote breadth of opportunity for faculty to participate in OCPE offerings relevant to their interests and expertise.
2. Steward use of the MIT name, for the benefit of OCPE learners, MIT’s reputation in OCPE, and to comply with MIT policies on use of name.
3. Provide financial returns to the involved faculty, the units producing the offering, and to support the academic environment of the involved faculty (provost, dean(s), and home department(s)).
4. Develop and deploy consistent vendor management and revenue distribution approaches that are aligned with MIT rules and the above objectives – comprising a base model with potential documented unit exceptions granted by the provost and deans.

While the Working Group is intended to remain small and agile, the co-Chairs may engage additional faculty or staff as needed to support specific workstreams as the project evolves. The membership of the Working Group, or any sub-groups formed, is not meant to be the primary method for ensuring broad and diverse input from across the Institute. Instead, a discovery and consultation process will be the preferred approach to ensure adequate opportunities for gathering and considering input from relevant stakeholders and interested parties.

Members

• Senior Associate Dean Peter Hirst (co-Chair), Sloan School of Management
• Professor Jeffrey Grossman (co-Chair), Materials Science and Engineering
• Professor Yossi Sheffi, Civil and Environmental Engineering
• Professor Peko Hosoi, Mechanical Engineering
• Professor Olivier de Weck, Aeronautics and Astronautics
• Professor Steven Eppinger, Sloan School of Management
• Professor Cynthia Breazeal, Program in Media Arts and Sciences
• Professor Angela Belcher, Biological Engineering
• Professor Jonathan Gruber, Economics
• Professor Duane Boning, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
• Daniel Delgado (staff), Provost’s Office