School of Engineering Infinite Mile Awards

Congratulations to the 2007 recipients.

WELCOME BY DEAN THOMAS L. MAGNANTI:

I’m Tom Magnanti, Dean of Engineering, and once again it’s my pleasure to welcome you to the School’s Annual Infinite Mile Awards Ceremony. As Dean, I love the month of May. We award tenure to young faculty, and fellowships and prizes to students. We take time to honor the members of our community who will soon retire (granted those are bittersweet events) and, in the School of Engineering, we celebrate the accomplishments of our staff with these Infinite Mile Awards. Of course, there’s also the beautiful weather and baseball.

It doesn’t seem possible, but this is our Seventh Infinite Mile Award Ceremony! There are currently 99 members of the fellowship of School of Engineering Infinite Mile Award winners. Today 15 people, with a combined total of 260 years of MIT experience, will also receive Infinite Mile Awards and their names will be added to the IMA plaque in the School of Engineering conference room.

I ask all of you who have received School of Engineering Infinite Mile Awards in previous years to stand up. (Let’s give them a round of applause, too.)

Thank you. I’m so pleased that you have been able to join us today as we honor more of your colleagues for their contributions of excellence.

My next pleasure is to recognize and thank the members of the Dean’s Team who organized today’s event: they are Catherine Avril, Mary Anne Gowen, Donna Harding, Lisa Magnano-Bleheen, Brian Tavares, and Sandy Tenorio. We owe a special note of thanks to Donna Harding for keeping us on track and for handling so many of the details that go into staging an event like this one.

I like to say that MIT’s School of Engineering is the best school of engineering in the galaxy, because it’s true! And I do not doubt for a moment that we have the best staff in the galaxy as well!

As those of you who have attended this ceremony before might recall, we have two intertwined themes:

Excellence and Joy. They are indeed a powerful combination.

You might also recall that on this occasion, I like to quote Pearl Buck who said,

The secret of joy in work is contained in one word – excellence.

As you will soon hear, our Infinite Mile award winners embody joy in excellence.

A very special note of thanks is to those of you who took the time to nominate your coworkers and colleagues. Your thoughtful contributions make this IMA celebration possible.

It seems an appropriate time to provide you a brief update on the status of the current Rewards and Recognition Assessment Pilot we are conducting in the School of Engineering. This School assessment, covering not only the Infinite Mile Award program, but also your local DLC spot award programs, is led by Catherine Avril in cooperation with HR. As you know, a major component of the assessment was a School wide survey. We sincerely thank all who took the time to respond. We received a respectable response rate and the initial analysis indicates, as we expected, some successes and some areas that need evaluation. We are hopeful that a complete analysis will enable us to substantially enhance the Programs.

Finally, we would like to thank all of you for taking the time today to share in this joyful and inspirational event.

Now, on with the show.