OVC staff who are fairly new to the Institute may recall how easy it was as a new employee to complete all of their institutional requirements before they even set foot on campus—from submitting forms and completing online training, to getting more info about MIT.

Thanks to a pilot this year, incoming graduate students can now use Atlas for their own onboarding. Atlas for Grads was developed as part of a collaboration between the Office of the Vice Chancellor, IS&T, the Atlas Center, and the Department of Chemistry. In the spring, incoming chemistry graduate students completed many institutional requirements before coming to campus, including applying for their MIT ID cards, completing the Inventions and Proprietary Information Agreement (IPIA) form, signing up for MIT Alerts, and completing their medical forms and the Sexual Misconduct Prevention & Awareness training. The effort was so successful that Atlas for Grads was expanded and rolled out to all graduate departments in June.

Atlas for Grads has significantly enhanced onboarding and is an important step in our plans to implement changes to the graduate student experience, as part of the Graduate Student Roadmap.

—Lauren Pouchak, OVC Special Projects