Supporting the core
Giving to departments, labs, and centers (DLCs)
The work of the School of Architecture + Planning (SA+P) is a marketplace of ideas organized into our departments, labs, and centers. SA+P encompasses five divisions and several associated programs. Each year, approximately 650 students enroll to earn one of 20 different undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral degrees while working with 80 tenure-track faculty and additional visiting scholars, artists, lecturers, and faculty.
Each division is a unique learning environment that encourages students and faculty to boldly pursue the learning opportunities, new ideas, and innovative programs unique to its disciplines.
Department of Architecture
The Department of Architecture, the first in the United States, is dedicated to a socially responsible, technologically sophisticated, culturally engaging, and environmentally sensitive vision of architecture. The department’s setting within MIT encourages breadth and depth in technical areas such as computation, sustainable design, and building technologies. Specialized areas of research include the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture, dedicated to the study of Islamic architecture, and the Special Interest Group in Urban Settlement (SIGUS), which promotes affordable, sustainable, and equitable housing programs.
Unrestricted support of the Department of Architecture helps move innovative and creative ideas into the realm of the possible by providing essential funding to opportunities and projects proposed by students and faculty.
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Department of Urban Studies and Planning
The Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP) brings MIT’s vast technological know-how and resources into planning practice and education. Consistently ranked the top program in the country, it has the largest planning faculty in the United States—many of them practitioners as well as scholars—who bring deep expertise across a diverse array of planning fields.
Cross-disciplinary collaborations and active practice in the field are integral to the planning education and research programs of the department. Students are required to develop practice-related skills by working with community organizations, government agencies, or private firms under the direction of faculty members involved in field-based projects. Programs emphasize interdisciplinary work grounded in the real world. Examples include: the Community Innovators Lab (CoIL), which works with community organizers and community groups to improve the lives of those least served by our society; the MIT-USGS Science Impact Collaborative (MUSIC), which partners with the U.S. Geological Survey to test new ways to bring science into environmental decision-making; and the Special Program for Urban and Regional Studies (SPURS), a one-year fellowship program for mid-career professionals from developing countries, which brings practitioners to MIT to enhance their policy-making and planning skills.
Unrestricted support of the Department of Urban Studies and Planning allows the department to respond nimbly to good ideas, and provides essential support to the work of students across the department.
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Program in Media Arts and Sciences
The Program in Media Arts and Sciences—an integral part of the Media Lab, the birthplace of multimedia computing—is an interdisciplinary community with some of the world’s leading technologists, scientists, designers, and artists who are rethinking the interface between people, technology, and society. It is a community where faculty members and students from numerous, seemingly unrelated, disciplines work together, “atelier style,” as members of research teams, doing the things that conventional wisdom says can’t or shouldn’t be done.
Your unrestricted gift to the Media Lab helps support this community of inventors by funding undergraduate research opportunities, allowing students to travel to conferences, and providing seed funding for student research initiatives.
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MIT Center for Real Estate
The MIT Center for Real Estate (MIT/CRE)—home to a one-year master’s degree program in real estate development, and a respected interdisciplinary research center—has sought to improve the quality of the built environment and lift professional standards for the real estate development industry since 1984. The first program of its kind in the country, MIT/CRE brings science and an understanding of the physical environment into the study and practice of real estate development in a way no other real estate program does. As a result, MIT/CRE is at the leading edge of understanding where the field is going and in a position to explore new knowledge of the discipline—knowledge grounded in scientific inquiry.
Your unrestricted support of the MIT Center for Real Estate provides general support to MIT/CRE lecture programs, new academic initiatives and research, student and faculty activities, and other projects.
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Visual Studies
SA+P offers two ways to pursue an interest in the visual arts. The Visual Arts Program, administered by the Department of Architecture, offers a graduate studio curriculum focused on the development of artistic practices that challenge traditional genres, as well as core courses in photography and videography for the general MIT student population. It offers an unparalleled opportunity to explore other disciplines and develop creative thinking skills from the home base of a studio program.
Your unrestricted gift to the Visual Arts Program helps support important needs like updating and replacing equipment, buying student supplies, and funding student travel.
The Center for Advanced Visual Studies (CAVS) is an artists fellowship program that brings some of the most internationally recognized contemporary artists to MIT every year. Through its programs, CAVS incubates new ideas about art, science, and technology and their intersecting roles in society. Artists can pursue original creative work that is technically sophisticated and requires engineering knowledge and support. Gifts to CAVS support our ability to continue to attract visiting artists of the highest caliber to MIT.
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When you give an unrestricted gift to a specific department, center, or lab within the School of Architecture and Planning, your gift allows each program to flexibly respond to opportunities and projects immediately in its area. You can even designate a part of your annual or reunion gift to a specific area, or split your gift between the Dean’s Innovation Fund and a specific department, center, or lab.
You may wish to search or browse for other giving opportunities within SA+P, or make a gift today by using our secure online giving form.
If you wish to speak to someone about a special gift in support of the School of Architecture and Planning, please contact Tia Tilson, assistant dean for resource development, at ttilson@mit.edu or 617.253.8896.
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