In This Edition

MIT's Leading Edge

Part 1: Intellectual Leadership

Part 2: Community Leadership

Part 3: Business and Enterprise Leadership

Questions & Answers

Prof. Sheila Widnall '60 Former Secretary of the U.S. Air Force

L. Robert Johnson '63 President of the MIT Alumini Association

William Hanson Co-director, Leaders for Manufacturing Program

Soulaymane Kachani SM '01 President of the Graduate Student Council in 2000-01

Micah Samuels LFM '02 Charles Harrison Smith III Award winner

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MIT's Leading Edge

What constitutes leadership? At MIT, leadership can mean independent thinking and willingness to be the first on a rocky intellectual path. Or innovations that forge new perspectives and economic approaches to contemporary problems. Or creative engagement aimed at improving communities--at MIT or worldwide. Or educating tomorrow's business leaders to maximize economic and social wellbeing.

This month, openDOOR explores how MIT experiences, teaches, and lives leadership roles:

• Intellectual Leadership advances individual disciplines and professions as well as creating broader learning opportunities.
• Community Leadership means helping committed people become leaders within MIT as well as in diverse communities worldwide.
• Business and Enterprise Leadership uses the fast-paced business world as a working laboratory to build strategic decision-making skills.

MIT has led innovations from the first chemical synthesis of penicillin to the fabrication of a single-electron transistor. Last spring MIT's decision to offer most course materials online for free rocked the academic world and established a new model for university dissemination of knowledge in the Internet age. Explore OpenCourseWare and more of MIT's new intellectual frontiers.

The Department of Urban Studies and Planning recently launched the Center for Reflective Community Practice, which aims to develop broad-based community leadership. Projects include "Camfield Estates" a program that explores the impact of universal technology on a low-income housing project. On campus, learning leadership skills through community projects starts early for the Class of 2005 with CityDays as part of Orientation.

"Educating technological elites isn't easy," noted a recent Wall Street Journal article that pointed to MIT's Leaders for Manufacturing program, Entrepreneurship Center, and School of Engineering headed by a management professor as successful examples of cultivating "nerds who can lead." Find out how MIT teaches leadership through Sloan's Leadership Studies and other venues.

Poll: Q.What great leader has inspired you the most and why? A."Bill Clinton's leadership instilled optimism, a very necessary attitude to success of the individual, the nation and the world." - Gary Gromet Read more...(6 comments)