The
Massachusetts Institute of Technology is
located on 153.8 acres that extend more than a mile along the Cambridge
side of the Charles River Basin. The central group of interconnecting
buildings, dedicated in 1916, was designed by architect W. Welles Bosworth, '89, in order to permit easy communication among departments and
schools.
The mission of the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology is to advance knowledge and educate
students in science, technology, and other areas of scholarship that will
best serve the nation and the world in the 21st century.
The Institute is committed to
generating, disseminating, and preserving knowledge, and to working with
others to bring this knowledge to bear on the world's great challenges.
MIT is dedicated to providing its students with an education that combines
rigorous academic study and the excitement of discovery with the support
and intellectual stimulation of a diverse campus community.
The Institute admitted its
first students in 1865, four years after the approval of its founding
charter. The event marked the culmination of an extended effort by William
Barton Rogers, a distinguished natural scientist, to establish a new kind
of independent educational institution relevant to an increasingly
industrialized America. Rogers stressed the pragmatic and practicable. He
believed that professional competence was best fostered by coupling
teaching and research and by focusing attention on real-world problems.
Toward this end, he pioneered the development of the teaching laboratory.
