Welcome Back Highlanders: A Message from President Joel Bloom

Written by: Deric Raymond
Published: Thursday, August 30, 2018

NJIT Community Members,

Welcome back to another new academic year! This always is a time filled with anticipation and excitement. It’s also a time for connecting with new additions to our community and reconnecting with those who may have been away for the summer months.

For those of you who are new to NJIT or who are just returning to campus, much has happened while you were gone. Our university received numerous accolades; we launched new academic programs; an array of physical plant improvements were completed during the last three months; and we hosted our first major tech conference, made possible by NJIT’s new Wellness and Events Center.

Some of our external validations included:

  • MONEY Magazine named NJIT as one of the best colleges in America. In building the rankings, MONEY focused on quality of education, affordability and alumni outcomes. The rankings analyzed data points such as graduation rates, tuition charges, family borrowing and alumni earnings, among others. One key data point considered was the socio-economic mobility index, which reveals the percentage of students from each institution who move from low-income backgrounds to upper-middle-income jobs by the time the student reaches his or her mid-30s. NJIT ranks #1 nationally in this category.
  • NJIT was named by The Princeton Review among “The Best 384 Colleges” and also received honors as a top college in the Northeast region.
  • We were dubbed a best and most interesting school by the Fiske Guide to Colleges.
  • Our online master’s program in electrical engineering was ranked 14th in the nation, according to BestColleges.com

There were several developments on the academic front as well. We held our 11th International Undergraduate Summer Research Symposium, recognizing the work of more than 130 students who participated in research projects. Our pre-college programs, again, served thousands of students from the greater-Newark area and provided them with critical preparation for STEM learning. We also announced two new and important initiatives--the first Forensic Science Bachelor of Science degree program in the New York metropolitan region and a partnership with technology-based education start-up Woz U. NJIT will offer Woz U’s refined cyber security and software developer programs to companies so they can upskill their workforces and remain up-to-date with the latest computer programs, practices and procedures.

Our facilities team has been hard at work supporting summer activities and getting the campus ready for a busy fall semester. Projects worth note include completion of the Tiernan Lecture Hall 1 renovation, demolition of Fleisher Athletic Center, replacement of the Mechanical Engineering Center roof, and relocation of The Learning Center from Kupfrian Hall to the Central King Building. Other initiatives to be completed in the fall include the new athletic field, renovation of the former bookstore in the Campus Center for SGA/GSA offices, and Faculty Memorial Hall 2nd floor infrastructure work.

NJIT also hosted the 2018 VOICE Summit, sponsored by Amazon Alexa. This was the year’s largest, most-high profile voice technology conference, and it was a tremendous success for NJIT. The Summit drew nearly 3,000 industry leaders and developers at the forefront of both natural language processing and technologies that are revolutionizing user engagement by leveraging voice. The conference featured more than 150 speakers, including thought-leaders from eight different countries as well as NJIT alumnus David Isbitski ‘98, who is Amazon's chief evangelist for Alexa and Echo. In hosting this event, we succeeded in shining a spotlight on NJIT’s growing prominence in the technology economy, in addition to our capabilities as both a top polytechnic university and a destination for conferences and other professional gatherings. Media coverage of the VOICE Summit and NJIT’s role as the conference host exceeded more than $1.1 million in advertising value, according to Meltwater Media Services, and we seized upon this opportunity to create new connections between a plethora of well-established and rising tech companies and NJIT, its students, and its faculty.

 

As you can see from the happenings of the summer, NJIT has continued its progress on a decidedly upward trajectory. That pattern will be enhanced as we welcome many new and talented individuals to our campus community. NJIT has bucked an undergraduate admissions trend that has seen many universities fail to hit recruitment targets and/or reduce their standards for admission due to sharp regional and national declines in the traditional college-aged population. NJIT, conversely, has seen a 12% increase in applications over last year and is welcoming a 2018 freshman cohort with an average high school GPA of 3.58 and an average SAT score of 1288. For the incoming freshmen in the Albert Dorman Honors College, the average high school GPA is 3.9 and the average SAT is 1475. In addition, NJIT has hired 33 new faculty members, bringing our total to nearly 130 faculty hires during the last seven years. We also welcomed Dr. Learie Nurse as Associate Dean of Students. Learie came to us from Naropa University in Colorado. On September 4, Simon Nynens will join NJIT as Vice President of Business Incubation and Executive Director of Commercialization. Simon will be charged with developing and expanding our Enterprise Development Center and a suite of programs that spur innovation commercialization services and entrepreneurship at NJIT, statewide, and globally. He brings decades of international senior management experience to NJIT and has a proven track record of building strong company cultures and managing growth. Prior to NJIT, Simon spent 12 years as Chairman, President and CEO of Wayside Technology Group, a leading value-added IT Technology provider. During his tenure there, revenue increased from $180 million to $450 million. Simon is a graduate of Tilburg University in the Netherlands, completed the Harvard Business School's Advanced Management Program, served as the chair of the New Jersey Technology Council from 2007 through 2015 and remains an active member, and is a member of the New Jersey chapter of the Young Presidents Organization. Please join me in welcoming all these outstanding additions to the NJIT community.

This is an exciting time for our university, and I am deeply appreciative of all our community members do to enable our collective and shared success. I hope to see you on campus soon and encourage you to join us for Convocation on September 12 and Homecoming Weekend from October 12-14. I wish you all a productive and successful semester. Welcome back!

Joel S. Bloom

President

New Jersey Institute of Technology