Tag: Education, teaching, academics

Learning with audiobooks

Millions of students nationwide use text-supplemented audiobooks, learning tools that are thought to help those who struggle with reading keep up in the classroom. A new study from scientists at MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research finds that many students do benefit from the audiobooks, gaining new vocabulary through the stories they hear. But study […]

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MIT graduate engineering and business programs ranked highly by U.S. News for 2026-27

U.S. News and World Report has again placed MIT’s graduate program in engineering at the top of its annual rankings, released today. The Institute has held the No. 1 spot since 1990, when the magazine first ranked such programs. The MIT Sloan School of Management also placed highly, occupying the No. 6 spot for the best […]

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3 Questions: Communicating about climate, in audio and beyond

Since her first journalism fellowship covering energy and the environment at the NPR station in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Madison Goldberg has been drawn to science communication and audio storytelling. Now, after reporting on topics from solar storms to sewer systems to cryptography, she’s bringing her passions to MIT as the new host of the Institute’s climate […]

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Preserving Keres

Growing up in the village of Kewa — located between Santa Fe and Albuquerque in New Mexico — William Pacheco, a member of the Santo Domingo Pueblo, learned the value of his language, its history, and the traditions it carries. “We speak Keres, a language isolate found in seven villages and communities in central New Mexico,” […]

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Financial Times ranks MIT Sloan No. 1 in 2026 Global MBA Ranking

The Financial Times has placed MIT Sloan School of Management at the top of its recently released 2026 Global MBA Ranking. It is the school’s first time gaining the No. 1 spot in the list. In its announcement of the rankings, the publication noted MIT’s school of management tops the list “at a time of sharpening focus […]

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Discovering the joy of future-forward electrical engineering

“It’s a real validation of all the work behind the scenes,” says Karl Berggren, faculty head of electrical engineering within the MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS). He’s looking at the numbers of new enrollees in Course 6-5, Electrical Engineering With Computing, the flagship electrical engineering degree offered by EECS, which was […]

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3 Questions: Fortifying our planetary defenses

When people think of asteroids, they tend to picture rare, civilization-ending impacts like those depicted in movies such as “Armageddon.” In reality, the asteroids most likely to affect modern society are much smaller. While kilometer-scale impacts occur only every tens of millions of years, decameter-scale (building-sized) objects strike Earth far more frequently: roughly every couple […]

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2026 MacVicar Faculty Fellows named

Two outstanding MIT educators have been named MacVicar Faculty Fellows: professor of mechanical engineering Amos Winter and professor of electrical engineering and computer science Nickolai Zeldovich. For more than 30 years, the MacVicar Faculty Fellows Program has recognized exemplary and sustained contributions to undergraduate education at MIT. The program is named in honor of Margaret MacVicar, […]

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MIT undergraduates help US high schoolers tackle calculus

This year in a rural school district in southeastern Montana, one high school student is taking calculus. For many people, calculus is daunting enough, even when teachers are used to offering it and peers are around to help. Studying it solo can be even harder. Yet this lone student has an unusual source of support: […]

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Personal tech, social media, and the “decline of humanity”

Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt presented a forceful analysis of the damage smartphones and social media are doing to our cognition, our civic fabric, and our children’s wellbeing, while calling for renewed action to ward off their effects, in the latest of MIT’s Compton Lectures on Wednesday. “Around the world, people are getting diminished,” Haidt said. “Less […]

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For one learner, online MIT courses are “like getting a Ferrari for the price of an electric scooter”

As a professional mechanical engineer, Badri Ratnam was inspired when MIT started offering massive open online courses (MOOCs) in engineering and science in 2012. He wondered if he was up to the challenge of solving problem sets and successfully completing exams from MIT. Ratnam first began his journey with the course 8.MReVx/8.MReV (Mechanics ReView), and he […]

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Engineering confidence to navigate uncertainty

Flying on Mars — or any other world — is an extraordinary challenge. An autonomous spacecraft, operating millions of miles from pilots or engineers who could intervene on Earth, must be able to navigate unfamiliar and changing environments, avoid obstacles, land on uncertain terrain, and make decisions entirely on its own. Every maneuver depends on […]

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Les Perelman, expert in writing assessment and champion of writing education, dies at 77

Leslie “Les” Perelman, an influential figure in college writing assessment; a champion of writing instruction across all subject matters for over three decades at MIT; and a former MIT associate dean for undergraduate education, died on Nov. 12, 2025, at home in Lexington, Massachusetts. He was 77. A Los Angeles native, Perelman attended the University […]

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Turning curiosity about engineering into careers

It’s not every day that aspiring teenage engineers can see firsthand how planes are built. But a collaboration between nonprofit Engineering Tomorrow, aerospace firm Boeing, and alumni of the MIT Leaders for Global Operations (LGO) program working at Boeing is aiming to turn curiosity about aerospace engineering into possible careers for young students. Boeing is […]

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How MIT OpenCourseWare is fueling one learner’s passion for education

Training for a clerical military role in France, Gustavo Barboza felt a spark he couldn’t ignore. He remembered his love of learning, which once guided him through two college semesters of mechanical engineering courses in his native Colombia, coupled with supplemental resources from MIT Open Learning’s OpenCourseWare. Now, thousands of miles away, he realized it […]

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T. Alan Hatton receives Bernard M. Gordon Prize for Innovation in Engineering and Technology Education

The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) has announced T. Alan Hatton, MIT’s Ralph Landau Professor of Chemical Engineering Practice, Post-Tenure, as the recipient of the 2026 Bernard M. Gordon Prize for Innovation in Engineering and Technology Education, recognizing his transformative leadership of the Institute’s David H. Koch School of Chemical Engineering Practice. The award citation highlights […]

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Brian Hedden named co-associate dean of Social and Ethical Responsibilities of Computing

Brian Hedden PhD ’12 has been appointed co-associate dean of the Social and Ethical Responsibilities of Computing (SERC) at MIT, a cross-cutting initiative in the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing, effective Jan. 16. Hedden is a professor in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy, holding an MIT Schwarzman College of Computing shared position with the […]

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Keeril Makan named vice provost for the arts

Keeril Makan has been appointed vice provost for the arts at MIT, effective Feb. 1. In this role, Makan, who is the Michael (1949) and Sonja Koerner Music Composition Professor at MIT, will provide leadership and strategic direction for the arts across the Institute. Provost Anantha Chandrakasan announced Makan’s appointment in an email to the […]

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