Promoting the "Heart" in MIT's Academic Departments

As we head into spring, I wanted to share with you two articles I enjoyed reading recently. It is encouraging to see great work that enables students and adults alike to lead with and develop their humanity:

In "This Is How Scandinavia Got Great," David Brooks explores the power of deeply educating the whole person: "Bildung is the way that the individual matures and takes upon him or herself ever bigger personal responsibility towards family, friends, fellow citizens, society, humanity, our globe, and the global heritage of our species, while enjoying ever bigger personal, moral and existential freedoms.”  

The article below on the MIT MindHandHeart Department Support Project (MHH-DSP) describes a data-informed initiative designed to cultivate welcoming and inclusive learning environments (underway in all 31 of MIT’s academic departments).

Here's to a wonderful start to spring! 

Promoting the "Heart" in MIT's Academic Departments

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The MindHandHeart Department Support Project (MHH-DSP), a data-informed initiative designed to cultivate welcoming and inclusive learning environments, is now working in all 31 of MIT’s academic departments.

The MHH-DSP aims to effect change across five key dimensions:

  • deliver actionable data along measures of learning and academic support, inclusion, well-being, and student satisfaction;

  • connect departmental faculty, staff, and student leaders to existing MIT support resources;

  • share promising practices across departments;

  • strengthen and streamline internal communications; and

  • create measurable, time-bound action plans, outlining goals and concrete steps departments, laboratories, and centers (DLCs) are taking to address gaps revealed in the data.