Cynthia Barnhart SM ’86, PhD ’88 will resign from her position as MIT’s provost, starting July 1, as announced today by President Sally Kornbluth. Barnhart, who held the position of chancellor for over seven years before becoming provost in 2022, will return to the faculty following a sabbatical.
During her time as provost, Barnhart spearheaded various initiatives aimed at enhancing the academic and research landscape at the Institute, which spanned a transition between two MIT presidents. She leveraged her extensive experience within the MIT community, beginning as a graduate student and then serving as a faculty member for more than 30 years in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the MIT Sloan School of Management, with connections to the Operations Research Center and the Center for Transportation and Logistics.
Barnhart is only the second MIT administrator, after Julius Stratton, to have held both the roles of chancellor and provost. She is also the first female to occupy each of these positions.
“It has been a great honor to serve and to assist our community in its endeavors in education, research, and influence globally,” Barnhart states.
The provost of MIT serves as the Institute’s primary academic and budget officer, accountable for leading initiatives to determine academic priorities, overseeing financial planning and research funding, and managing MIT’s international collaborations. The provost collaborates closely with the president, deans of schools and colleges, vice provosts, executive vice president and treasurer (EVPT), faculty leaders, and many other prominent figures to attract and maintain top talent and then, as Barnhart expresses, “create favorable conditions for them to flourish and excel in their work at MIT.”
“Cindy has been an outstanding partner in both thought and action, and I will be eternally thankful for having had the opportunity to rely on her understanding of the Institute’s individuals, culture, procedures, and organizational frameworks,” Kornbluth wrote in a message to the MIT community.
The forthcoming chapter
L. Rafael Reif appointed Barnhart as provost as he was concluding his term as MIT’s 17th president, recognizing her “values, expertise, vision, and cooperative nature.” Her appointment provided stability to the Institute and helped maintain momentum throughout the transition and initial years of Kornbluth’s presidency.
“An effective provost is perpetually resolving issues across a broad spectrum, contemplating at the systems and structures level while also diving deep when necessary. Cindy has brought discipline, dedication, and compassion to this position, and it has been a privilege to collaborate with her,” says Faculty Chair Mary Fuller.
As she embarks on a long-planned sabbatical, Barnhart will channel her focus toward a project she has been developing as provost. This effort aims at cultivating a flexible and cost-effective educational experience and curriculum to substantially enlarge the nation’s workforce in science and technology.
Fostering an environment for faculty to succeed
As chief budget officer, Barnhart collaborated closely with EVPT Glen Shor, Vice President for Finance Katie Hammer, and associates throughout the Institute to secure vital resources for the Institute’s education and research initiatives. She cites establishing new central support for MIT’s under-recovery system, addressing the tuition and stipend gaps of NASA and U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) fellowships, and increasing the Office of the Provost professorship chairs to 230, representing a growth of more than 20 percent, as particularly notable achievements.
“The reassessment of the Institute’s budgeting process that we initiated last year is essential for the Institute’s adept response to emerging financial challenges,” Barnhart notes.
“It involves equipping our community with access to the tools necessary to devise strategic and innovative approaches for utilizing our resources so that, even amid fiscal challenges, we can assist individuals in accomplishing their goals — discovering, inventing, innovating, and solving problems, all in service to the nation and the globe,” she explains.
In response to requests for increased faculty participation in searches for faculty leaders within the Office of the Provost, Barnhart implemented best practices for search advisory committees. Throughout her tenure, these faculty-led groups played pivotal roles in the appointments of Vice Provost for Faculty Paula Hammond, Vice Provost for Open Learning Dimitris Bertsimas, Vice Provost for International Activities Duane Boning, MIT Sloan School of Management Dean Rick Locke, and Interim CEO and Director of the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART) Bruce Tidor. Moreover, Barnhart convened a search committee to identify a new leader to oversee MIT’s research initiatives, which informed President Kornbluth’s selection of Vice President for Research Ian A. Waitz last year.
“MIT’s forthcoming provost will be collaborating with a remarkable team,” affirms Barnhart. “The Provost’s Office is strategically positioned to ensure that faculty have the resources they require to make significant impacts in research and education.”
Barnhart took various measures to provide her leadership team and faculty more broadly with opportunities for professional growth and career progression. She standardized the terms for appointments and reappointments, developed 360-degree feedback systems, and formalized processes for reappointment reviews for deans and vice provosts. In collaboration with Hammond, new initiatives were launched to foster positive departmental climates, facilitate impactful research funding proposals, and enhance effective mentorship for graduate students.
“Cindy has consistently shown a genuine concern for the faculty experience, and this profound regard is reflected in all her efforts,” Hammond remarks. “She has sought to comprehend how we can better cultivate a supportive atmosphere that promotes faculty success and has committed resources towards meaningful programs and policies that address faculty needs while equipping them with tools to achieve their professional and leadership ambitions.”
Barnhart and Hammond also collaborated with Fuller, the MIT Institutional Research team, and other colleagues to evaluate MIT’s progress in addressing the findings of two pivotal reports: the 1999 Study on the Status of Women Faculty in Science at MIT and the 2010 Report on the Initiative for Faculty Race and Diversity.
Barnhart shared the group’s findings and accompanying response strategy with the entire faculty. In her communication, Barnhart emphasized how “the potent influence of the original reports originated from the thorough analysis conducted by the authors and from the open reflection of our community regarding the challenges identified. For MIT to nurture the diverse spectrum of faculty excellence that is vitalto our mission, we require that same unified acceptance of data and transparency, conversation and action once more.”
Fostering 21st-century education and inquiry
Barnhart is devoted to ensuring that MIT’s education is accessible and affordable to a significantly wider array of learners. Alongside Bertsimas, Barnhart initiated the subsequent phase of MIT Open Learning, which comprises ambitious plans to enhance MIT’s commitment to offering global access to the Institute’s distinctive educational model.
“With her excellent judgement, open-mindedness, dedication to quality education globally, and profound appreciation and understanding of MIT, Cindy has been an exceptional collaborator in reimagining the strategy for open learning,” Bertsimas states. “I eagerly anticipate continuing our collaboration in the future.”
As computing has become ever more essential across various fields, the establishment of interdisciplinary computing courses via The Common Ground, degrees that integrate computing with another discipline, and interdisciplinary computing faculty appointments have broadened the horizon of MIT education and research. With Barnhart as a robust advocate, the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing has been pivotal in these endeavors.
“Supporting the college’s initiatives to expand and deepen MIT’s unmatched strengths in interdisciplinary education and inquiry is, quite simply, embedded in Barnhart’s essence,” notes Dan Huttenlocher, dean of the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing.
Intentionally, the Institute’s strategic initiatives in climate, humanities, and life sciences also embrace this interdisciplinary perspective. Barnhart collaborated with Kornbluth, Chief Innovation and Strategy Officer Anantha Chandrakasan, and numerous other faculty on the advancement of these initiatives throughout her tenure.
“It has been an honor working with Provost Barnhart and President Kornbluth to propel the Institute’s diverse array of strategic initiatives,” remarks Chandrakasan. “With the urgency that these initiatives require, Provost Barnhart played a crucial role in articulating the vision for these missions, fostering extensive engagement from the MIT community and beyond while creating vital pathways for seed funding and fundraising. It would have been unfeasible to launch these initiatives without her motivating ideas, innovative solutions, and remarkable support.”
A systems thinker
After obtaining her PhD in transportation systems in 1988 at MIT, Barnhart joined the operations research faculty at the School of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Georgia Tech. She returned to MIT four years later in 1992 and has remained at the Institute ever since. Her research, which she has pursued throughout her leadership roles, specializes in the formulation of optimization models and methods for the design, planning, and operation of transportation systems.
“I’m a systems thinker, an optimizer, and a problem solver,” Barnhart states. “That is one of the reasons I have found joy in serving as provost, a position in which there is certainly no lack of opportunities to apply my decision-making and problem-solving approach.”
Barnhart became associate dean of the MIT School of Engineering in 2007 and acted as dean from 2010 to 2011. As chancellor, she oversaw “all matters related to students” at MIT, encompassing student life, undergraduate admissions, graduate student support, the first-year educational experience, and beyond. She also engaged in strategic planning, faculty appointments, resource development, and campus planning as chancellor.
Barnhart has served as an undergraduate adviser and has guided graduate and undergraduate theses for students across the Institute, including in the departments of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Aeronautics and Astronautics, Mechanical Engineering, and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science; in the Engineering Systems Division; in the MIT Sloan School of Management; in the Operations Research Center; and in the Center for Transportation and Logistics. She has taught subjects jointly listed in these departments focusing on optimization and operations research, with applications to transportation operations, planning, and control.
Kornbluth will collaborate with a group of faculty members selected from each school and the college to assist her in choosing the next provost.