Paul Penfield, Jr.
Dugald C. Jackson Professor of Electrical Engineering in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and affiliated with MIT's Microsystems Technology Laboratories.
Comment from Professor Penfield:
Everybody knows that the way to make progress in science is by using the best results of others -- "standing on the shoulders of giants" is one way of expressing this idea. That's why we publish scientific results. OCW will let the same thing happen in education. I'm personally looking forward to having my ideas used and improved on by others.
Jonathan A. King
Professor of Molecular Biology
Comment from Professor King:
This initiative is particularly valuable for courses covering emerging new areas of knowledge, as well as intersecting disciplines. Having spent many years developing a course on protein folding that served the needs of biochemists, chemists, chemical engineers and computational biologists, I am delighted that this work will be made available to a far broader audience.
Olivier J. Blanchard
Class of 1941 Professor
Deparment Head, Department of Economics
Comment from Professor Blanchard:
A clear case of a small effort, and large benefits. I very much hope that our collective lecture notes become the most popular net destination.
Shigeru Miyagawa
Professor of Linguistics and Kochi Prefecture-John Manjiro Professor of Japanese Language and Culture
Comment from Professor Miyagawa:
OCW reflects the idea that, as scholars and teachers, we wish to share freely the knowledge we generate through our research and teaching. While MIT may be better known for our research, with OCW, we wish to showcase the quality of our teaching.
John Lienhard
Professor of Mechanical Engineering
Comment from Professor Lienhard:
Why do I support OpenCourseWare? Last year, I posted my undergraduate heat transfer textbook on the web for no-charge distribution. It is a 700 page pdf file, fully hyperlinked, and also properly typeset. In the domestic book market, the cost for this book would be $85 for the hardback or $45 for the paperback. My aim, however, is to provide the knowledge to those who can't afford to buy the book. The book has been downloaded by users from around the globe. Those users include many professors and students at remote universities in the third world. But the book is also being downloaded by students at universities in the United States and engineers in domestic industry. So the reach of my ebook has been quite broad. I therefore have every reason to believe that MIT's OpenCourseWare Initiative will immediately gain such a worldwide reach, and that it will allow MIT to expand its influence to students, teachers, and technical professionals, domestically and, especially, in less-developed nations.
Stephen C. Graves
Abraham J. Siegel Professor of Management & Engineering Systems
Co-director, Leaders for Manufacturing Program & System Design and Management Program
Comment from Professor Graves:
The OpenCourseWare initiative is a bold act of leadership by MIT to apply technology to foster a global learning community that conceivably will strengthen all components of our higher education system.
