A few weeks before this issue of PLAN went to bed, I announced my decision to step down in June from my position as dean. I’d originally planned to hold the position five years but it ended up taking ten to do what I considered to be the most important things—to consolidate the school’s six locations, to make crucial hires and promotions and to increase the school’s overall visibility.
At this point I feel I’ve achieved most of the things I came here to do. Forty percent of the school’s current faculty was hired during my tenure, 38 percent have been tenured and 55 percent promoted. The school has been centralized from a diaspora of six locations to two dense concentrations, and applications for the MArch and masters in MAS programs have both more than doubled, while applications for the SMArchS program have risen by 85 percent and applications for the MCP program have risen by 70 percent. All in all, in the last ten years I believe we’ve become more like MIT at large—we have more labs, more research, more collaboration within and outside the school—and the new Center for Advanced Urbanism represents our increased ability to operate on the international stage.
It has been an honor to be part of this inspirational community: being here has enabled me to see the direction of the future, and I will stay on the faculty so I can continue to play a small part in bringing that future about. And so I can take my time to thank all the people, here and elsewhere, who have helped this to be a successful run.
Adèle Naudé Santos
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This fall, associate dean Mark Jarzombek is teaching his popular class, A Global History of Architecture, as a Massive Open Online Course presented through edX, an online learning initiative originated at MIT in 2011 as MIT...
Current research at SA+P’s Center for Real Estate is investigating the economics of virtual real estate using techniques customarily used for bricks-and-mortar and dirt. While the Internet has always been thought of in terms of real esta...
With a $3M grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, SA+P’s Education Arcade has designed, built and researched a Massive Multiplayer Online Game (MMOG) to help high school students learn math and biology. The proje...
Azra Akšamija, Assistant Professor in SA+P’s Art, Culture and Technology Program, has been recognized with a 2013 Aga Khan Award for her part in the creation of an Islamic Cemetery in Austria. Akšamija received a PhD in 201...
For the past two years, SA+P’s James Wescoat has been working with Afreen Siddiqi, a research scientist in MIT's Engineering Systems Division, to examine the connections between energy, water and food in the Indus River Basin of Pak...
Xavier de Souza Briggs, associate professor of sociology and urban planning and associate head of SA+P’s Department of Urban Studies + Planning, has been appointed vice president of the Economic Opportunity and Assets program of the Ford...
New research into the power of community engagement in the design of public spaces was presented at SA+P in October with the release of a report entitled Places in the Making. Led by Susan Silberberg, lecturer in urban design and...
This year, for the second year in a row, SA+P is hosting an intern from the Boston chapter of the nation-wide Year Up program – a one-year, intensive training sequence that provides under-privileged adults between the ag...
Friends and colleagues of the late William J. Mitchell, dean of SA+P from 1992 - 2003, have joined to establish a fund in his honor, to be used to support student travel and research projects that embody Mitchell’s spirit of creativity, pla...
Jennifer Pahlka, founder of Code for America – a non-profit dedicated to promoting openness, participation and efficiency in local government – has been named winner of the 2013-2014 Kevin Lynch Award. SA+P presents th...
