NJIT President Teik Lim Earns 'Power 100' Status

Teik C. Lim, president of New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT), was named to the NJBIZ “Power 100” list of business and economic influencers throughout New Jersey.

The publication’s annual series is compiled by the NJBIZ editorial staff based on their reporting throughout the past year, with input from experts in a variety of fields and recommendations from their readership.

Lim’s inclusion underscores NJIT’s status as an economic engine in the region, with a $2.8 billion economic impact on the state. Recent partnerships, such as the one between the energy development firm Ørsted and the partnership with Israel’s Ben Gurion University, highlight the global draw of NJIT, strengthening New Jersey’s commercial and academic domains.

In addition, NJIT is at the forefront of growing the state’s next generation of entrepreneurs. VentureLink@NJIT is New Jersey’s largest startup incubator with more than 50 established businesses and a variety of programs that facilitate business development. Entrepreneurship proliferates throughout the university, with Entrepreneur Magazine and The Princeton Review ranking NJIT as a top school for entrepreneurship.

President Lim’s feature in the publication is below:

The first member of his family to earn a college degree, Lim took over as the ninth president of New Jersey Institute of Technology this past summer. Ahead of beginning his tenure, he told NJBIZ that NJIT is a natural destination for someone with his background. 

“The most attractive feature is the diversity of the campus,” Lim, the first person of color to hold the post at the school, said. “I think we can make full use of the diversity here to really strengthen NJIT’s academic and research enterprises and then use that diversity to make NJIT a supercharged engine.” 

And he isn’t wasting any time digging into that work. In the fall, NJIT said it welcomed its most diverse first-year class ever. That group was 31% women, another record-high, and half of the school’s newly hired professors for that semester were also women.

In another high mark for admissions, in October, S&P Global Ratings upped NJIT’s credit rating to stable, reflecting “a firmer enrollment trend and expectations of improved financial operating performance.” A proponent of the benefits of private-public partnerships, NJIT’s collaboration with Ørsted was expanded this fall with a new scholarship and career development opportunities, allowing the school to get a foothold in one of the state’s burgeoning new industries. 

And NJIT is also making moves to preserve established sectors: the school will receive $1.3 million in federal funding to support initiatives to bolster engineering education in addition to manufacturing and mechatronics apprenticeship training.