Executive Director - OpenCourseWare

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology seeks an Executive Director to lead its highly successful and pioneering endeavor, OpenCourseWare, in the next phase of its development.

Launched in the spring of 2001 with over $30 million of gifts and foundation grants, OCW publishes the educational materials from all MIT undergraduate and graduate courses on the Web for worldwide use, free and open to anyone. Over the past six years, OpenCourseWare has become one of MIT's most important global outreach activities, with over a million visitors each month – more than two million if one includes the affiliated sites around the world that host OCW mirrors and translations. Within MIT, OpenCourseWare is evolving to become a major pillar of the university’s educational technology infrastructure, providing students, faculty, and alumni with a shared, comprehensive collection of the Institute's resources, together with services that rely on this collection. Beyond MIT, OpenCourseWare has become emblematic of the burgeoning movement for Open Educational Resources, which sees in modern communications technology and the Worldwide Web the opportunity for the whole of humanity to share, use, and reuse knowledge.

In November 2007, OCW met its initial goal to publish educational materials representing all 1800 MIT subjects. MIT is now seeking an extraordinary leader to create even greater value and broader impact through the OCW initiative. Reporting to the Office of the Provost, and with the assistance of a distinguished 18-member external advisory committee, the Executive Director will guide the development of programmatic initiatives, institutional partnerships, and external support for OCW.

The successful candidate will be: a visionary leader who can realize new internal and external opportunities for pre-eminent educational and research institutions presented by the changing dynamics of the Web; a seasoned technology manager, ready to run and advance a major information technology project that has worldwide reach; a service-oriented implementer able simultaneously to meet the demands of a world-class faculty and student body and a global community of users; an articulate and engaging representative for MIT on the world stage, and the steward of one of MIT's major outreach initiatives; and a creative developer of a sustainable OCW operation with understanding of both web-based business models and academic resource development activities.

Applications and nominations may be submitted in confidence to:

Vivian C. Brocard and Alan Wichlei
Isaacson, Miller
334 Boylston Street, Suite 500
Boston, MA 02116

Email: 3572@imsearch.com
Electronic submission of material is strongly encouraged.

MIT is strongly and actively committed to diversity within its community and particularly
encourages applications from qualified women and ethnic minority candidates.