Fifteen

Issue date: 9/15/09 Section: News

Welcome Home!
First: Welcome to the home of innovation - MIT Sloan. The home of building new businesses. Of building small businesses into large businesses. Of bringing to the world the new products and services that change society for the better. Of innovations that save money, save jobs, save companies and save communities. Innovation is the key reason we lead our competitors in job opportunities for our students, why we are at the very top in selectivity among MBA programs.

Second: Welcome to the home of management concepts and methods that stand the test of time - MIT Sloan. In other words, welcome to a community of faculty, staff, students and alumni who are able to have the courage of well founded convictions.

Third: Welcome to the acknowledged leader in learning by doing. The home of "action learning" on a truly global scale. Project-based learning that has always been at the heart of MIT; that gives you the chance not just to sit in class and discuss a case about health care delivery in Africa - but to go to Africa and redesign a country's health care delivery system.
No other school offers as many curricular chances
- to manage real business situations,
- to learn in real turbo-environments,
- to put concepts, methods and principles in action, and
- to come away not just a more capable and more knowledgeable manager; but a better - more resilient, more balanced, person.
Welcome to the home of action learning.

Fourth: Welcome to MIT - not just to a school of management.
Many of you have friends who chose another leading school of management. Every one of them was welcomed by a dean in the last few weeks. Unlike the entering students at Sloan, none of them were being welcomed by their university's president. Why? Because all other leading schools of management wall themselves off from their university community. MIT Sloan, alone, doesn't do this. Unlike other schools, we share our university's mission. MIT creates the ideas that improve the world; and brings them out into the world. This is not really what other universities do. We share in the mission of MIT. And MIT is nothing if not a mission-driven institution. So when you join MIT Sloan, you are not just part of a B-school alumni base, you are part of a network of over 120,000 MIT alumni worldwide: People who have the ideas that change the world.

Fifth: welcome to the MIT Sloan community. Unlike our peer schools with 500, 800 or 1000 students per class, we are a real community. We stand together when access to our program is threatened, as in last year's challenge to reinvent the MBA student loan portfolio. We stand together when our collective values are challenged. We stand together helping all members of our community develop as managers and leaders, and helping as well to broaden career opportunities for all.

As you can see, we are a mission driven institution. Most other leading schools are, in all honesty, not.

MIT Sloan's mission:
Develop principled, innovative leaders who improve the world.
Develop the ideas that improve management practice.

As you begin this year and consider its potential I trust you realize:
• You chose a school of management that is ideal for these times of change and challenge.
• You chose a school that is committed to innovation - and that means continued improvement in all out educational programs.
• You chose to come to MIT Sloan during a great year - because we will create it together.

Welcome Home.

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