Glossary - S

Click on letter to jump to the list of terms starting with that letter. Click on a term to jump to the full definition. The excerpts on this page show the first line of each definition.

• S.B. — Bachelor of Science (degree)
• S.E. — Sanitary Engineer (degree)
• S.M. — Master of Science (degree)
• S.M.Arch.S. — Master of Science in Architectural Studies (degree)
• S.M.T. — Master of Science in Transportation (degree)
• S.M.Vis.S. — Master of Science in Visual Studies (degree)
• SA — Standard journal voucher (G/L accounts documents)
• SAA — Student Art Association
• SAAS — South Asian American Students
• SACC — Student Action Coordinating Committee (old)
• SAE — Sigma Alpha Epsilon
• SAFO — Student Activities Finance Office (part of Student Life Programs)
• SAIS — Student and Administrative Information Services, a directorate within IS&T
• SALA — La Sala de Puerto Rico, a large, all-purpose room in the Student Center
• SANDI — Staff Appointments and Distribution (staff and exempt payroll account sheets)
• SAO — Student Activities Office
• SAP — MIT's major financial/business management application.
• SAP (school) — School of Architecture and Planning
• SARA — Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act
• SAS — Student Assistance Services
• SAS (software) — Statistical Analysis Software
• SBIR — Small Business Innovation Research program
• SBM — Society for Biomaterials
• SC — Sigma Chi
• Sc.D. — Doctor of Science (degree)
• SCC — Student Center Committee
• SCEP — School of Chemical Engineering Practice
• SCEP (old) — Student Committee on Educational Policy
• SCFG — Science Club for Girls
• SCOUTs — Surface Crafts for Oceanographic and Undersea Testing
• SDM — System Design and Management (Program)
• SEBC — Science and Engineering Business Club
• SEBL — Scanning-Electron-Beam Lithography (a facility in the Nanostructures Laboratory)
• SEDS — Students for the Exploration and Development of Space
• SEED — Saturday Engineering Enrichment and Discovery (Academy)
• SEIP — Student Extended (Medical) Insurance Plan
• SEM — Undergraduate Seminar (subject designation)
• SEMS — Student Emergency Medical Services (also known simply as Emergency Medical Services)
• SEO — Student Employment Office
• SEPT — Science and Engineering Program for Teachers
• Server — A host that provides a network accessible service.
• SEVIS — Student Exchange Visitor Information System (of the US Immigration and Naturalization Service)
• SEVT — Solar Electric Vehicle Team
• SFS — Student Financial Services
• SH — Student House
• SHAC — Student Health Advisory Committee
• SHASS — School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences
• SHBT — Speech and Hearing Bioscience and Technology
• Shibboleth — A package for web single sign-on.
• SHPE — Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers
• SIA — Signals Information and Algorithms (a group in the Research Laboratory of Electronics)
• SI at MIT — Sports Innovation at MIT
• Sig Ep — Sigma Phi Epsilon
• SIGUS — Special Interest Group in Urban Settlements
• SIM — Subscriber Identity Module, also called a "SIM card"
• SIP — Sloan Innovation Period
• SIP (industry term) — Session Initiation Protocol
• SIPB — Student Information Processing Board
• SIS — Student Information System
• SK — Sigma Kappa
• SL — Sloan Laboratory
• SL (Service Learning) — Service learning is a pedagogy that involves the integration of academically relevant service projects into the academic context.
• SLA — Service Level Agreement
• S-LAB — Laboratory for Sustainable Business
• SloanSpace — The MIT Sloan School instance of Space and Reservations systems (EMS)
• SLP — Student Life Programs
• SLS — Spoken Language Systems, a group in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
• SMA — Singapore-MIT Alliance
• SMART — Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (Center)
• SMBT — Master of Science in Building Technology (degree)
• SmL — Servomechanisms Laboratory
• Smoot — Unit of measurement of Harvard Bridge that used an MIT student named Smoot
• SMR — Sloan Management Review
• SMS — Short Message Service, commonly known as a text message
• SMTP — SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) is a standard set of rules that define an email message format, and the message transfer agent (MTA), which stores and forwards email.
• SNC — Sensor Network Consortium. (MIT is one of the academic members.)
• SOCR — CUP's (Committee on the Undergraduate Program)Subcommittee on the Communication Requirement
• SoE — School of Engineering
• Softphone — A software program for making VoIP telephone calls over the internet using internet connected devices of your choosing.
• SOHO — Solar and Heliospheric Observatory
• SOP — Standard Operating Procedure
• SoS — School of Science
• SP (Service Provider) — Shibboleth term for an application server that has been integrated with Shibboleth.
• Space — a term used in Confluence (which powers The Knowledge Base) to indicate a collection of pages with their own access control and look-and-feel settings.
• SPE — Sigma Phi Epsilon
• SpecLab — (George Russell Harrison) Spectroscopy Laboratory
• SPHERES — Synchronized Position Hold Engage Re-orient Experimental Satellites (at MIT Aero-Astro)
• SPHR — Senior Professional in Human Resources - level of certification by SHRM
• Spirion (formerly Identity Finder) — Software to assist with finding PIRN on laptops/desktops.
• Split Mailbox — A method of forwarding your @mit.edu email to another email account while having a copy still sent to your MIT (Athena) account.
• SPS — Special Studies (subject designation)
• SPURS — Special Program for Urban and Regional Studies
• SRE — Study and Research in Education
• SSC — Student Services Center
• SSG — Stochastic Systems Group (in Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems)
• SSIT — Student Services Information Technology (formerly ODSUE-IT); part of IS&T as of 2005
• SSL — Space Systems Laboratory
• SSL (internet security protocol) — Secure Socket Layer
• SSM — Sloan School of Management
• SSP — Security Studies Program
• SSPCC — Student Systems and Policies Coordinating Committee
• SSPR — Support Staff Peer Resources
• Star table Group — Data Warehouse term: The tables in the Data Warehouse are designed to be grouped together in certain ways - these groupings are referred to as Stars because diagrams of these groupings resemble star patterns.
• STC — Student Technology Consultants
• Stellar — Stellar is MIT's course management system. It is a platform for learning, course management and collaboration, serving the entire MIT community.
• STEM — Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math. May also refer to the program at MIT for 6th, 7th, and 8th graders from Boston Public Schools
• STEP — Secondary Technical Education Project (also called Project STEP)
• STIR — Signal Transformation and Information Representation (a group in the Research Laboratory of Electronics)
• STOP — Security Tracking of Office Property (in Campus Police)
• Stopit — MIT-wide process to report cases of misuse of MIT's computer systems
• STS — (Program in) Science, Technology, and Society
• STS (Sloan) — Sloan Technology Services
• SWE — Society of Women Engineers