Richard de Neufville Honored

with 2004 Joseph A. Martore Excellence in Teaching Award

By Lois Slavin, ESD Communications Director – October 12, 2004

ESD Director Daniel Hastings has announced that this year’s winner of the Joseph A. Martore Excellence in Teaching Award is Professor Richard de Neufville. The award was established to recognize and honor a full-time ESD faculty member who has made outstanding contributions to one of ESD’s academic programs in the area of education and program development.

In reading from the nomination letters, Hastings noted that de Neufville “was specifically cited for founding MIT’s Technology and Policy Program (TPP) in the mid-1970s, his long-term teaching of systems analysis in ESD, and his current stewardship of the ESD graduate committee.”

Hastings went on to share the nominators’ thoughts in each of these areas.

“TPP, which has been fundamental in the intellectual development of ESD was, at that time, a distinct outlier and risky choice for Richard,” wrote one colleague. “The integration of concepts of advanced technology with policy considerations was hardly on the School of Engineering’s agenda in the 1970’s.

“Even in his home department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, a department that then prided (and now prides) itself on its forward thinking attitudes toward policy issues, Richard’s focus on TPP was treated with skepticism. Now that Engineering Systems is fully on the agenda of MT’s SoE at-large, it is easy to forget the contribution that Richard made over a 25 year period as director of TPP in developing, shaping, and serving as the intellectual lightening rod for this program. He has been successful against all odds…as evidenced by the fact that TPP was recognized with several Sizer awards and over the years has built a substantial cadre of distinguished graduates.

Faculty members and colleagues also noted:

• “Richard’s contributions to educational efforts in the technology and policy regime extend across the Atlantic as well. He helped initiate several TPP-like programs at the Delft Technical University in the Netherlands, the Instituto Superior Tecnico in Portugal, and Cambridge University in the U.K.
• “’Leader, mentor, visionary’ are the words that first come to mind when reflecting on Richard's impact on my personal MIT graduate education, the Technology and Policy Program, and the educational underpinnings of the Engineering Systems Division. Richard's leadership among colleagues to offer an integrative educational program to engineers and scientists who wish to lead technological development by implementing responsible policies has resulted in the world’s leading program in Technology and Policy studies. Richard has individually mentored close to 800 TPP graduates and over 25 ESD students with lessons of compassion, scholarship, wisdom, and guidance - quite an accomplishment indeed! Richard's vision for enhanced education and scholarship within MIT and at the global level, his contagious energy, and his standards of excellence are unequalled among his peers.”
• “….I can proudly point to my association with Richard and to my association with the astoundingly successful students that the program has produced over the years. There can be no question that honoring Richard de Neufville with the ESD Education Award is appropriate and timely and I support it wholeheartedly.”
• “….Richard has taught engineering systems analysis in the School of Engineering over a period of three decades. His subject 1.146 was among the first engineering school wide electives in the late 1970s…. now this subject is a core requirement in TPP and is taken by students all over MIT, with enrollments often topping 100. This is remarkable for a non-computer subject. His text in support of this subject is a standard in the field and, during this very year, Richard announced a substantial renovation of book, reflecting the emerging field of real options as a way to measure the value of flexibility in engineering design and indicative of his continued interest in keeping this material fresh and vital.”
• Last year Richard took over the chairmanship of the ESD education committee and has shepherded the committee through an extraordinary set of tasks dealing with the intellectual development and the administrative rationalization of the ESD Ph.D. program…. We now have a well-structured doctoral program in place with strong intellectual content and a clear roadmap for students and faculty to follow as they go through the various steps in applying, formulating a program, taking general exams, and ultimately completing a dissertation. This is no small feat. Starting any program, essentially from scratch is difficult - doctoral programs are especially so, since faculty feel so strongly about content given their signature nature for academic units. However, Richard persevered and he has performed a critical service for ESD in accomplishing this task.”

De Neufville received a plaque of appreciation and a cash award of $1000.