IBL News | Boston
Sanjay Sarma, Vice President for MIT Open Learning and the Office of Digital Learning, will step down at the end of June.
President L. Rafael Reif broke the news in an email to the MIT community on Wednesday, praising Sarma’s work but without providing an explanation for the move.
Sources at MIT told IBL News that Sarma might take a sabbatical year before being appointed President at MIT.
The Institute has started to look for the next director of MIT Open Learning.
“Now that we are emerging out of the pandemic and after nearly ten years at Open Learning, it seemed a natural time to transition the leadership,” explained Sanjay Sarma.
Sarma also said that he expects to work with a few tech startups during the coming years.
Sanjay Sarma, Professor of Mechanical Engineering, has been running MIT’s digital learning platforms and education initiatives since 2012, first as director, then as Dean, and finally as Vice President for Open Learning.
Sarma launched MIT Bootcamps, which offers blended learning experiences for entrepreneurs; MIT xPRO, offering online professional education courses; MIT Horizon, a content library to help professionals keep pace with the latest advances in technology; and the Digital Credentials Consortium — where MIT has convened a global group of universities to design standards and infrastructure for tamperproof, verifiable, digital academic credentials — MIT Open Courseware, and MITx Online, which hosts many of MIT’s online courses.
Currently, the MIT Open Learning includes the Office of Digital Learning, the MIT Integrated Learning Initiative (MITili), the Center for Advanced Virtuality, and the Abdul Latif Jameel World Education Lab (J-WEL).
