Introducing the new Concourse Faculty Director

Introducing the new Concourse Faculty Director

Dear colleagues,

I am pleased to let you know that Lily L. Tsai will be the next Concourse faculty director. She will begin her role on August 1. Outgoing director Anne McCants has graciously agreed to help with the transition over the summer months, prior to departing for her year-long professorship in Helsinki.

Lily is an ideal leader for Concourse, as she is a natural at bringing disciplines into conversation with one another; has a deep understanding of the Institute and our academic programs, having served as chair of the MIT faculty from 2021-2023; and is committed to advancing innovative teaching and improving student advising. 

A member of the MIT faculty for more than two decades, she is the Ford Professor of Political Science and the Class of 1960 Innovation in Education Fellow. Lily’s scholarship focuses on governance, legitimacy, and the role of moral evaluations in political behavior, particularly in the creation of trust, cooperation, and community. In 2014, she founded MIT GOV/LAB to work with policymakers and practitioners on innovations in collective self-governance and civic engagement. 

Over the last two and a half years, she has served as a member of the Task Force on the Undergraduate Academic Program (TFUAP), and she previously chaired the Refinement and Implementation Committee on Educational Innovation for Civic Responsibility for the Task Force 2021 and Beyond, which resulted in the creation of new social impact-focused experiential learning opportunities.

Her contributions to educational innovation include the development of the Democracy and AI course and the AI for Democracy Reading Group as collaborations between MIT GOV/LAB and the Schwarzman College of Computing’s Social and Ethical Responsibilities of Computing. 

Of particular note is her co-development of the Compass Initiative, which encompasses: a new undergraduate subject, 21.01 Compass: Moral and Social Questions about the Human Condition, that draws on expertise across the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (SHASS) to introduce students to a variety of frameworks in the humanities and social sciences for understanding fundamental questions; a new undergraduate advising seminar, 21.A01 Reading Great Books with Compass; as well as a Compass pilot for the Sloan Fellows program.

In addition, she has been recognized with the Office of Graduate Education’s Committed to Caring Award for Graduate Student Mentoring and SHASS’s James A. and Ruth Levitan Award for Teaching Excellence for her undergraduate teaching.

Finally, SHASS Dean Agustin Rayo has been a fantastic partner throughout this entire process, and we look forward to future efforts in the support of Concourse. Please join us in congratulating and welcoming Lily and, once again, thanking Anne. Our thanks also to the search committee (see below), in particular chair Heather Paxson, William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Anthropology, Associate Dean for Faculty, SHASS.

Sincerely,
DaveDavid L. Darmofal
Vice Chancellor for Graduate and Undergraduate Education
Jerome B. Wiesner Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics
Head of House, The Warehouse

–

Concourse Director Search Committee membership:

  • Chair, Heather Paxson, William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Anthropology, Associate Dean for Faculty, SHASS
  • Elizabeth Cogliano Young, Director of Office of First Year
  • Kristin McCoy, GUE, Director of Human Resources
  • Siddhu Pachipala, Political Science/Economics ‘27, Debate Fellow, TA
  • Linda Rabieh, Concourse, Senior lecturer
  • Krishna Rajagopal, William A. M. Burden Professor of Physics
  • Janet Rankin, Director of Teaching and Learning Laboratory
  • Sasha Rickard, Concourse, Assistant Director, Computer Science and Ancient and Medieval Studies ‘19
  • Michael Sipser, Donner Professor of Mathematics