The Office of the Vice Chancellor (OVC) works with students, faculty, and staff from across the Institute to enhance the undergraduate and graduate student academic experience.
Educating The Whole Student
OVC is a critical part of the Office of the Chancellor, helping to provide the opportunities, services, and support that empower MIT students to be happier, healthier, and more successful—from the admissions process to commencement, and through every challenge and triumph of their undergraduate and graduate studies.
Likewise, the OVC team is part of a collaborative effort focused on educating the whole student across every aspect of their MIT experience: supporting academic success, fostering community and wellbeing, and cultivating personal and intellectual growth. Together, we are creating engaged, global citizens who are well-prepared to live lives of meaning and impact.
Who We Are
OVC consists of 20 offices and programs, which provide a broad range of academic programming and services for students and faculty. By partnering with community members, OVC aims to make improvements for all students in areas such as the first-year undergraduate experience, advising and mentoring, professional and career development, and diversity, equity, and inclusion. This includes serving as the primary educational point of contact for key student organizations, such as the Undergraduate Association and the Graduate Student Council, and working closely with faculty governance and departmental and school administrators to implement and administer policies and procedures related to undergraduate and graduate education.
Reporting to the chancellor, OVC also works closely with offices and programs across the Institute, including the Division of Student Life, the Open Learning, IS&T, and school and department leadership.
What We Do
As part of the Chancellor’s Office, we enable the incredible and unique experiences that help make MIT, MIT. We encourage students to ask themselves, “What do I want to do with my time at MIT?” Just about any experience they have outside the classroom, the lab, or their research group, the Office of the Chancellor helps to make it possible. Specifically, this means …
- Supporting academic success.
Our students are going to do incredible things, both at MIT and beyond. But incredible things aren’t easy. We’re here to help them embrace every moment of their graduate or undergraduate journey with patience, resilience, and a mindset of continuous growth. So that, however they define success, and wherever their path might lead, they have the tools not only to overcome the challenges ahead, but to thrive in the process.
- Fostering community and wellbeing.
Few things shape students’ MIT experience like the unique communities they find on our campus, and we work hard to ensure that every community has what it needs to thrive. Assembling incredible cohorts of students who connect in classes, clubs, organizations, labs, and research groups—and become lifelong friends and peers in the process. Through Housing and Dining experiences, we help them find homes and discover community. Through SOLE, DAPER, and beyond, they can work out, unplug, explore campus, explore Cambridge, explore the world. We help students find a sense of belonging they’ll carry forward into lives of impact, engagement, and purposeful connection.
- Cultivating personal and intellectual growth.
We want our students to have every opportunity to continue the personal and intellectual growth that led them here—and find a deeper understanding of themselves and the world around them. To uncover new passions and embrace new experiences—all while learning how to take care of themselves, physically, mentally, spiritually, and emotionally. Along the way, they often realize that they’re capable of even more than they may have imagined.