Student Organizations

Using structural equation modeling, this study examined the effects of peer environments on collegiate interracial friendship and how such effects vary by students' race. The results show that the peer environment of Greek life mediated the relationship between structural diversity and interracial friendship in college, in that students attending institutions with greater structural diversity were less likely to frequently interact with peers from Greek life, which had a positive effect on interracial friendship. This mediation effect was consistent for all four racial groups of the study. This study also uncovers unique findings related to Latino/as and interracial friendship: that structural diversity has an indirect effect on interracial friendship via participation in ethnic student organizations for Latino/a students and that participation in ethnic student organizations is also directly and positively linked to interracial friendship for this group. The study discusses implications for understanding intergroup relations and patterns of interracial friendship.

"The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has an established history in international collaborations with objectives to develop new programs, schools, and universities worldwide. MIT is currently collaborating with the government of Singapore to develop the new Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD). SUTD is a new engineering-oriented university that opened its door to its first student cohort on May 7, 2012. The MIT-SUTD Collaboration is thus far the most holistic transplantation venture that MIT has undertaken.

Through this collaboration, MIT is involved in the development and deployment of SUTD’s curriculum, training of new faculty hires, as well as the development of the co-curricular and leadership activities that will be offered to and created by the SUTD students. To achieve institutional transplantation, one of the main goals of the MIT team is, through the development of the aforememntioned structures, to also communicate the academic culture and mentality of MIT, and to defuse it to the newly established SUTD community. The team’s effort towards transfusing the student culture is further discussed in this paper.
In recent years, the impact of out-of-class experiences – especially co-curricular activities – has been studied at length in the higher education literature. As Kuh observes, “Most scholars who study the impact of college on students agree that what happens outside the classroom – the other curriculum – can contribute to valued outcomes of college” [1]. In addition, interaction with older student cohorts is a factor considered to be very influential in the establishment of student identity and student culture in any college or university environment. In its inaugural year, SUTD does not have a pre-existing student cohort or a pre-existing culture of campus life.  The MIT team decided to use of this lack of prior SUTD cohorts as a vehicle to enable diffusion of the MIT student culture and attitude to the newcoming SUTD students. To accomplish this task, the MIT team – in collaboration with the MIT International Science and Technology Initiatives (MISTI) program – initiated a new MISTI program called the Singapore Leadership Initiative (SLI) to send current MIT students to SUTD to act as a surrogate older cohort.  Through the SLI program, eighteen MIT students traveled to Singapore in the summer of 2012 to act as the “older cohort” to freshman SUTD students; these MIT students mentored and aided the SUTD freshmen in creating co-curricular activities and campus life initiatives at the new university in addition to participating in full-time internships related to their studies at MIT. 

To prepare the MIT students for this cross-cultural experience, the MISTI-SLI coordinating team developed a pre-departure training curriculum for the MISTI-SLI program participants focused on Singaporean cultural issues and history, background of the MIT-SUTD collaboration project, and topics in leadership relevant to their work with the new students at SUTD.  The cultural components of this curriculum were developed based on Parkinson’s “Best Practices for Engineering Study Abroad Programs” [2], while the leadership components were developed based on Komives and Wagner’s Social Change Model (SCM) for leadership development [3].  This leadership model was selected based on its change-focused nature; the MISTI-SLI participants and first SUTD student cohort have the opportunity to create a student environment unique in the Singaporean educational context, and a process, value-based system of change is optimal for this type of rapid and creative development.

MISTI-SLI represents a new model for cross-cultural engineering student engagement and collaboration.  This model is proposed as one method for transfusion and establishment of student culture to newly developed educational institutions or as a model for future international cultural student exchange programs. This paper presents the curriculum developed for the MIT students by the MIT-SUTD Collaboration office as well as the rationale behind the choices made in creating this leadership program for the 2012 MISTI-SLI participants.
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The main aim of the article is to describe the activity of members and supporters of Academic Scientific Circle of Spatial Management over the years. It was achieved by presenting the origins of Scientific Circle, people associated with and carried out activities. In author evaluation the role of Scientific Circle is constantly growing. It is a result of focusing on practical project and activities that affect in the urban space. Nowadays, the main aim of scientific circle is to establish the forum of co-operation between Polish circles of spatial management and increase the activity in the sphere of scientific research.