Becoming an ombuds at MIT

• Published date: 01 May 2023
• Author: Mary Rowe
• Date: 01 May 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/crq.21384

FEATURE ARTICLE

Becoming an ombuds at MIT

Mary Rowe

MIT Sloan School of Management, MIT Institute for Work and Employment Research (IWER), Cambridge,

Massachusetts, USA

Correspondence

Mary Rowe, MIT Sloan School of Management, MIT Institute for Work and Employment Research (IWER),

100 Main Street, Cambridge, MA 02142, USA.

Email: mrowe@mit.edu

1|COMING TO MIT

Realistic souls might have hesitated to take a job they knew so little about. And they might have

hesitated to throw their hearts and souls into an organization they knew so little about. Also, it

was winter—hardly the season to throw heart and soul into anything. This was 5 years before

the Great Blizzard of 1978 but still, it was mid-winter and a very gloomy February day in 1973

when I started my new job at MIT.

I was the new Special Assistant to the President and Chancellor for Women and Work. I

would report only to MIT President Jerome Wiesner and Chancellor Paul Gray, as an indepen-

dent resource for the Institute available to anyone in the MIT community.

I climbed snowy, unwelcoming concrete steps between great forbidding columns and shivered

into a slippery, gloomy, medieval hall, the entrance lobby of MIT. “Entrance lobby”was hardly

the word. It seemed to me like the Lincoln Memorial—high ceilings, very high ceilings—and side

halls. I was to be met by a student. Should I have come in earlier and found my office, gotten out

of my thick winter coat, brushed my hair, and changed out of my snowy boots?

As I now try to recall the details, a young woman immediately came up to see me, calling my

name. No escape—a bright, lively person ready to welcome me. And her manner was professional.

“What are you planning to do at MIT?”She did not intend a long interview. She was just collecting

my “first thoughts.”I was relieved that she did not have a camera. I had no idea what to answer.

I had the first of many moments of speechless uncertainty that could have blossomed into a

bit of panic; moments which were to characterize my first year at the job. I had no plans for

what I was going to do. What do you say when you have no answers in your first interview? In

a moment of clarity, I thought wryly, “Tell the truth.”As I remember, I smiled and said, “Ido

not know the Institute at all. Perhaps you could just tell people that if anyone has any ideas

how to improve the quality of life at MIT they might please call or come see me?”

Received: 10 April 2023 Accepted: 11 April 2023

DOI: 10.1002/crq.21384

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distrib ution and

reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

© 2023 The Author. Conflict Resolution Quarterly published by Wiley Periodicals LLC.

Conflict Resolution Quarterly. 2023;40:497–504. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/crq 497