Robert Nesmith
Institute Communications and Public Affairs
Georgia Tech continues its sojourn into the 21st century
as a university that is actively breaking down the barriers
usually associated with educational institutions, said
President Wayne Clough as he delivered his State of
the Institute address to faculty and staff last week.
Cooperation among its member schools and colleges,
along with local and foreign governments and leaders,
serve to make Tech’s students better prepared
to undertake their studies in a broader context, both
interdisciplinary and international, due in part to
a university that is “collaborative in its nature.”
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President
Wayne Clough addresses faculty and staff members
Oct. 16 as he delivers his State of the Institute
address. Previously given to students, the address
was presented to alumni Oct. 19. |
“As the 21st century unfolds around us, the future
shape of that new technological research university
is becoming clear,” Clough said. “It is
innovative, continually reshaping its educational experience
and refocusing its research thrusts to produce the talent
and the discoveries the future demands. It embraces
the challenge of creating solutions to the world’s
seemingly intractable problems and shaping the way in
which technology is used.”
No limits
Themed “Vanishing Boundaries,” the address
used everyday examples on how Tech is successfully extending
beyond established boundaries and limitations of education,
from location to the melding of traditional courses
of study. He highlighted the Horizon Wimba Live Classroom—from
Tech’s Center for the Enhancement of Teaching
and Learning—and the
“Halo” high-definition virtual classroom
developed by Arbutus Learning Center researchers and
HP engineers as examples of physical location no longer
being an impediment to delivering a course of study.
“Originally developed for high-end, corporate
video conferencing, the Arbutus systems will cost much
less and work for large-sized classrooms. We are hoping
to begin using it soon for classes that have students
in Atlanta and Savannah, and we will demonstrate it
for the Board of Regents in a few weeks,” Clough
said.
Diversity of students
Programs such as the Georgia Tech Promise program were
touted as providing more economic diversity on campus.
Students from Georgia in families earning less than
$30,000 a year can receive help from the endowment,
along with work/study programs and additional grants.
And for the last three years, Tech has produced 10
percent of the nation’s African-American doctoral
degrees in engineering—even with 320 other accredited
engineering programs across the country. While saying
no one person can receive credit for this, Clough singled
out Gary May, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering
chair, who received the 2006 Mentor Award from the American
Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
The International House on East Campus, created to
be a mix of students from many cultures and nationalities,
houses 48 students. Through an Institute program, they
are aided in their efforts to share their cultures with
each other and the campus.
Clough also lauded students’ volunteer efforts
to reach out to communities, both locally and globally.
Members of Tech’s student body have helped Gulf
Coast communities in the wake of Katrina and enhance
Atlanta through TEAM Buzz.
“We seek to achieve both [economic and cultural
diversity], and use them to create a vibrant community
of learners,” Clough said. “In short, we
hope our graduates are educated for life, not just a
job.”
Interdepartmental collaboration
Clough illustrated how the barriers are breached beyond
what one may think of as “technology” disciplines.
While Tech is not typically thought of as a medical
school, recent partnerships with Emory University and
the Medical College of Georgia have led to new areas
of nanomedical research, resulting from the marriage
of computing, engineering and the sciences. No less
than 125 interdisciplinary centers exist on campus,
from nanomedicine to digital media.
“Each year my wife, Anne, and I host the new
faculty at the President’s House, and I ask many
of them what attracted them to Georgia Tech. The most
common response is the opportunity to work in a genuinely
interdisciplinary environment,” Clough said. “Research
is ongoing on our campus that will allow DNA to be repaired,
that will allow nanoparticles to detect and destroy
cancer cells before they spread and that will create
diagnostic techniques for ovarian cancer.”
Efforts by the music department and the growing arena
of video games were cited as how technology and the
liberal arts were encouraged to commingle, in an attempt
to end centuries of separation.
“We are deliberately encouraging our campus to
be a place where the arts and technology interact. The
by-product is enormous, as it helps humanize and inform
the end result,” Clough said. “Our poet-in-residence,
Tom Lux, is fond of saying that writing a great poem
is not just an act of pure impulse, but is founded on
structure as much as is the design of a bridge.”
As a marker for the university’s progress in
this area, Clough pointed to the student-organized career
fair held in September, where more than 400 companies
(a new record) came to recruit. While he pointed out
the “usual” companies—Boeing, Ford,
Cisco Systems, IBM—others were new, including
Medtronic, Goldman Sachs, Bloomberg and even Chick-fil-A,
Wal-Mart and Walgreen’s, reflecting the university’s
growing prominence not only in healthcare, but on Wall
Street, in logistics and in marketing.
“We cannot assume we have completed the task
of the lowering of our disciplinary boundaries, but
I believe our culture is no longer tolerant of them,”
he said.
Energy awareness
Addressing another cross-disciplinary subject, Clough
outlined Tech’s research on the issues of energy
and climate change with the university’s partnerships
with Oak Ridge National Lab in a new, $125 million biofuels
research center and a $12 million partnership with Chevron
to help develop alternative fuels for transportation.
He lauded the efforts of Peter Webster and Judy Curry
in Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Strategic Energy
Institute researchers Bill Koros and Ron Chance, and
Public Policy professor Marilyn Brown.
Again showcasing the university’s interdisciplinary
nature, he also touted the team of faculty and students
from the College of Architecture who were competing
in the national Solar Decathlon, where colleges submit
a full-scale, solar-powered house for competition.
A global perspective
While other institutions actively seek to send their
students abroad, Tech seeks also to establish degree
programs and campuses overseas, with initial efforts
exploring new doctoral programs in Hyderabad, India,
as the latest example. Other programs, such as the engineering
program in Metz, France, allow Tech students to study
abroad without “missing a beat” in their
curriculum, as well as learn a broad range of other
subjects.
Established cooperative programs, as well as economic
development activities, are in place in Ireland, France,
Singapore and Shanghai, all used as examples of broadening
the university’s reach beyond our national borders.
As a result, relationships with business and government
leaders are strengthened, cementing Tech’s efforts
to help shape the global economy.
This has led to unprecedented access to leaders in
the highest levels of government internationally, as
the campus has welcomed the president of Ireland, the
president of Liberia and even a high-level official
from North Korea.
“Georgia Tech is working hard to become a genuinely
global university, and as I talk about the opportunities
that are presented to us by vanishing boundaries, you
are hearing these characteristics of a global university
interwoven in all aspects of our efforts,” Clough
said.
These efforts also extend closer to home. The “natural”
boundaries that have surrounded the campus in recent
years have given way to business ventures and increased
cooperation with area businesses, the city of Atlanta
and the state of Georgia.
After years of becoming what Clough described as “an
island-state,” now the university works in tandem
with the city to bring development and business opportunities
to areas that once were in the midst of deterioration
and blight. Technology Square on Fifth Street, as well
as the North Avenue Research Area and Technology Enterprise
Park, were cited as examples of Tech’s continual
eradication of the boundaries between campus and downtown.
“The new Georgia Tech is at once local, and also
global, with 1,000 students on other campuses around
the world or online,” Clough said. “Taken
together, [the programs and activities offered] are
the building blocks in the process of defining the technological
research university of the 21st century—also known
as Georgia Tech.”
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