In 1990, David Weber must have been in charge of making what is now known as the “Don call,” because I vividly remember receiving the call from Dave while sitting at work one Friday afternoon. He congratulated me and said I had been accepted to Sloan and the Leaders for Manufacturing Program (LFM), and that they had sent my letter and information via FedEx. The next morning, I received a large overstuffed envelope with my acceptance letter to the Sloan School and the Materials Science Department. The only catch was that I had applied to Sloan and the Mechanical Engineering Department. The envelope was filled with brochures about studying diamonds and carbon and I remember thinking that this was all well and good, but I had absolutely no interest in studying this. I looked through the degree requirements, read and re-read the letters, and hoped upon hope that there had just been a mix-up in the mailing. On the other hand, I was concerned that maybe if there had been a mix-up, I hadn’t really been accepted to the LFM program at all. I couldn’t imagine that I had been accepted to a different department by mistake.
Because it was Saturday, I had to wait until Monday until I could reach anyone at MIT; that was a long weekend. Monday morning, I called Don and explained that I had been accepted to a department to which I hadn’t applied and that I thought there had been a mistake. I remember Don kind of laughing and saying that there had not been a mistake… Unfortunately, I had been rejected from the Mechanical Engineering Department. BUT, he had thought I would be a good addition to the LFM program and that my application might be interesting to Materials Science. So, he had taken it upon himself to ask Materials Science if he could send my application to them. They had agreed to accept me, and he thought I should come to MIT and LFM. He suggested I speak with Prof. Tom Eager, Chair of Materials Science. Prof. Eager was fabulous and encouraged me to enroll and join LFM. And, while he loved Materials Science, explained that if I wanted to transfer once I was at MIT, if my grades were good enough, I could do so.
I decided to take everyone’s advice and began at MIT as a Materials Science student. Eventually, I transferred to Mechanical Engineering, and ironically and in large part because of those initial conversations, ended up working with Prof. Eager on my thesis. In the end, I graduated with a Mechanical Engineering degree and a Materials Science advisor. If it were not for Don and his enthusiasm for the program and students like me, I don’t think I would ever have gotten into MIT, and definitely not into Mechanical Engineering! Don and I laughed about this for a long time.