The MIT Residential Scholars @ Simmons Hall Program

Supported by a Gift from William and Betsy Leitch

and

The Office of the Dean for Student Life

The Founders Group of Simmons Hall envisioned a combined residential and multi-use environment in which the undergraduates of MIT could integrate seamlessly with other members of the community. Simmons includes many common spaces on the first floor that are intended to welcome our colleagues from across campus and our neighbors from the Cambridge community. The Residential Scholars program is meant to enrich all of MIT with fresh ideas and perspectives brought to us by people who have had a wealth of life experiences that they are eager to share with the community.  The program is populated mostly by faculty members on sabbatical leave from other institutions, artists, industry professionals visiting MIT and a limited number of MIT faculty members who have shown, by a long history of contributions to the community, a reason to participate in this program.  The program is based in Simmons Hall but services the entire community.

The Scholars, working with the permanent House Team, typically run programs on Friday evenings. Since its inception in 2003, the financial resources to support the program primarily have been provided by the scholarly allowance associated with the William and Betsy Leitch Professorship, which is held by John Essigmann, one of the Housemasters of Simmons Hall. The community is indebted to the Leitchs for their generous support of this program.

To apply to the Residential Scholars Program, please contact Simmons Housemaster, Professor Jesus del Alamo at alamo@mit.edu.

Click here for the application form to become a Residential Scholar @ Simmons Hall. 

Click here to see the most current MIT Residential Scholars schedule.

Click here to see profiles of the MIT Residential Scholars Emeriti.

The 2006-2007 MIT Residential Scholars:

"The Venerable Tenzin LS Priyadarshi"  Tenzin became a Residential Scholar in July, 2003. He is co-serving the MIT Buddhist community as Chaplain and teacher. Tenzin is a Buddhist monk who entered the monastery in India at the age of ten. He was ordained by His Holiness the Dalai Lama and currently sits on the adjunct faculty of the Namgyal Monastery of Buddhist Studies, the North American Seat of the of the personal Monastery of the Dalai Lama. Tenzin is unusual in that he has had parallel monastic and secular training. He has an undergraduate degree in physics. His advanced training was in India, Nepal and Japan and, in 2003, he was graduated from the Harvard Divinity School. At Harvard, he was a Research Assistant in the Center for the Study of World Religions. 

Immediately after the December 26, 2004 tsunami hit Asia, Tenzin Priyadarshi began working with MIT's Buddhist community to raise funds for rebuilding permanent housing in Sri Lanka. As director of the Prajnopaya Foundation, Tenzin's goal is to rebuild 1,000 new homes, at a cost of $1,200 each.  This project was done in collaboration with former Residential Scholar, Carlo Ratti. 

Tenzin started a program of meditation, with two sessions each morning, held on one of the terraces of Simmons Hall. The event has been well attended and has attracted participants from outside of the Simmons Community. He next put on a festival of films dealing with India and with the life of the Dalai Lama.  In 2004 and 2005 he coordinated the construction of a sand mandala in Simmons Hall which, in 2004, won the award for the best community event of the year.  It and its parallel "children's mandala" event attracted an estimated 1,500 people in 2004, and many more than that in 2005.  He has also held events involving calligraphy and throat singing, as well as lectures on Nepal, Japan and Cuba, which are among his scholarly interests.

Professor William Harris joined the MIT community during the Fall of 2006 as Martin Luther King, Jr. Visiting Professor in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning.  He is professor and former chair of the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at Jackson State University.  He served for ten years on the planning commission for the City of Charlottesville, Virginia. In Jackson, Mississippi, he is a board member of the Farish Street Historic Preservation Foundation and the Mississippi Housing Partnership.  Elected to the inaugural class of Fellows of the American Institute of Certified Planners, he has authored a number of scholarly articles, books, and book chapters related to African American economic development, professional ethics, and higher education. Professor Harris is active in land use expert witness consultation, community service activities, and scholarly research.

Patricia Acosta became a visiting scholar in the Fall of 2006, and lives in Simmons Hall with her daughter Gabriella.  She is a Fellow of the Hubert Humphrey Fellowship Program of MIT's SPURS Program.  Architect and Urban Planner. She currently works for the municipal planning department of Bogotá, focusing on land-use planning. She was manager of the master plan revision team in 2003. She has an architecture degree from Universidad de Los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia, and is a candidate for a master’s degree in urban planning at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia in Bogotá. Her current work at MIT focuses on habitat issues in developing nations and policy evaluation.
 

Professor Abeer Alwan and Mohamad Ali Alwash are professors in Southern California.  Abeer is professor of Electrical Engineering at UCLA and Ali, a professor of Mathematics at West LA College. Abeer holds a Ph.D. from MIT (EECS) and Ali, a Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. Abeer's research is in the area of speech processing and Ali's, in non-linear differential equations and dynamical systems. Abeer is currently a Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, and is also a visiting scientist at RLE, MIT. They are accompanied by their children Nial (8) and Nora (2), who were born in sunny California and will experience their very first cold winter!
 

Professor Gilles Coppin and Professor Catherine Coppin became Residential Scholars in the Fall of 2006.