By Dr. Joan Baum
Concluding a heady interview about technology, including algorithmic thinking, blockchain" transactions, cybersecurity and new chip embedding, NYIT President Hank Foley, who assumed office this past June, instinctively volunteers, "I want NYIT to be the coolest, hippest school in the New York region." He means it, he repeats it. He'd like to see the institute be even more The Place students select first because they know it's where "they can make and do things and learn the theory behind them." And, needless to say, have their education translate into rewarding careers.
President Foley, who has a Ph.D. in physical and inorganic chemistry and holds 16 patents, is already proud of the jobs record at NYIT, but he wants to advance it, and, he hopes, down the line, to build programs that can bring together the arts and technology (NYIT already has a theatre program and the president would like to see fashion addressed as well). In the meantime, he's pleased with the numbers: "over 93% of NYIT graduates find employment or go on to graduate school in tech areas, such as coding or working on web design, an amazing statistic, especially for "one of the most diverse student bodies of any institution" he's known - most first-generation, 40% female).That diversity, he says, was one of the main reasons he applied to NYIT to become its fourth president.
The president is frank about how graduate study for some tech fields may not be as necessary as it is for many physical sciences. He's also mindful about how "technology" has changed over the last 20 years, challenging faculty and students to keep current with the latest research. He cites, for example a piece he's just read in The Wall Street Journal about hackable cars (hello Jeep Cherokee) and home appliances (is your toaster connected to the Internet? ) Advances in tech have been "incredible." It's like we're in "the third chapter of Artificial Intelligence."
NYIT will continue to invest in faculty who are researchers as well as good teachers, he says. By that he means men and women who not only learn the latest applications but appreciate the cognitive principles that underlie those applications, such as "algorithmic thinking," the ability to reduce problems to a process or set of rules that constitutes the heart of problem solving operations and their variations. Deep Blue played chess differently from the way Kasparov did, he points out. The president is aware, however, of the "worrisome," even "embarrassing" trend to hire more adjuncts than tenure-track professors. Although NYIT has an approximate 50 /50 ratio, he does not hesitate to note the "exploitation" inherent in a "gig" academic economy that forces part-timers to scatter to make ends meet.
President Foley has also thought about the kinds of courses that lend themselves to online teaching and which do not. In engineering curricula, for example, a certain amount of "knowledge transfer" can be expedited online, but for the analysis of principles, hybrid courses would better suit. Put factual material online and then generate class discussion. He appreciates the need to start in on critical thinking in the freshman year, the importance of "foundation" coursers that teach or enhance listening and writing skills. His overarching concern, however, is technology. His training and professional life outside academia have been in nanotechnology research and related high-level systems, and he is pleased to note, by the way, that he has always credited graduate students who have worked with him.
Before coming to NYIT, President Foley held top administrative posts where he concentrated attention on strategic planning, economic development and advanced collaborative program development. He served as Interim Chancellor of the University of Missouri-Columbia and before that as Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs at MU. Prior to those positions, he was vice president for research and dean of the graduate school at The Pennsylvania State University.
Yes, he's focused on technology, but in an April interview President Foley gave to The Box, an NYIT blog, he is quoted as saying "Never attribute to malice that which may simply be a matter of ignorance, a lack of knowledge, or under-developed social skills." The question of hacking inevitably comes up. The president is well aware of both its "white and black hat" aspects - hackers who work to secure data for the common good and those who work as wild cards out of peeve or malice. And thus, though his "first love as an educator is in science, engineering, technology, and business," he values the humanities and the fine arts for, among other considerations, the degree to which they can infuse ethical considerations into a tech curricula. #
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