A New University New Age - Polytechnic University

A New
University
for a
New Age
Inaugural Address by
Jerry MacArthur Hultin
10th President of Polytechnic University
Howard Gilman Opera House
Brooklyn Academy of Music
September 29, 2005

1 ✯ Jerry MacArthur Hultin, Polytechnic University
This is exciting! To stand here before
you is exhilarating! I am thrilled about
harnessing your energy and your talent
to grow this gem of a school into an even
more vibrant university. I feel privileged
to have been chosen to be your president.
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Today, we have celebrated our past.
Now, let us chart the course for our future.
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This new age is a product of new technologies:
radar, the microchip, the satellite and
the laser. The power of these technologies
is evident all around us…in our cell phones, the
Internet, our global positioning system, precision
warfare, new medical cures, the global economy —
and our iPods.
Our new age is also a product of big ideas:
democracy and free markets. We saw the force of
these two ideas in the end of the Cold War, when
Inaugural Address ✯ September 29, 2005 ✯ 2
the innovative power of the western world toppled
the centralized Soviet state and unleashed new
energy and opportunity not only in the United
States, but around the world. Nearly 3 billion new
workers joined the global marketplace. Information,
capital, goods — even terror — now move easily
across borders into all corners of the earth. This is
the world that Tom Friedman declared “flat!”
Not only is the new world flat, but the global
economy’s business model is deeply flawed. For
China and India to make and finance the goods and
services the United States and Europe consumes is
lethal, not just to the United States, but to India
and China. In this new age, we must help create a
thriving middle class in India and China that consumes
the goods and services it produces. To do this,
we must not only educate our own country’s workforce,
we must educate workers and build innovative
enterprises throughout the world.
As this new era develops, the people of the world
are flocking to cities; over one million new urban
dwellers arrive every week, demanding new roads,
houses, schools, factories and offices. As this happens,
the consumption of resources escalates and our
effluence and waste begin to overwhelm the earth’s
resilience. We must expand the value of resources
and tame the impact of waste. The scale of this
assignment is daunting, since the earth’s population
will swell to over 8 billion people by 2030. Unless
we think anew, more than half of these people will
live on less than $2 a day.
In this new age, advances in science and technology
seem to threaten the moral and ethical
foundations of the world’s religions. The concerns
raised by genomics and evolution are visceral. We—
especially the humanities and social sciences—must
address these issues; otherwise, we will be denied
the benefits of science and technology in this new age.
President Jerry MacArthur Hultin
Our new age is a product
of big ideas: democracy
and free markets.

3 ✯ Jerry MacArthur Hultin, Polytechnic University
Aerial view of
Polytechnic’s campus
Already, our young
graduates are pursuing
this new era’s opportunities.
Last week, two
recent graduates of
Polytechnic visited with
me to discuss their ambitions.
One graduate has
the rights to an engineered-housing
product
designed for developing
countries, such as Latin America. On the heels of
the recent hurricanes, he is gauging his capacity to
supply housing to the Gulf Coast.
With him came a second Poly graduate who
has raised $2M of venture capital and is about to
return to the capital markets for more. He has
invented a new product. The product will be
branded by a powerful European corporation,
manufactured in China, and marketed to customers
in the United States. Neither of these new
age graduates has a traditional job, or depends on
traditional skills, yet both are making a living —
and both are excited about their future!
[You] Our current undergraduates see this not as
a “new era,” but the only era you have known. You
were born after 1984. The Soviet Union disappeared
before you graduated from grade school. Cell phones
and the Intranet appeared during middle school.
Before you finished high school, the human genome
was decoded, the World Trade Centers fell and
China and India arose.
Young or old, we are in a new age with new
demands. Our students and the world are calling
on us to invent a new university that meets the
needs of this new age.
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What are the qualities of a new university?
In the tradition of great universities, I propose
we enter into a dialogue of ideas about this new
university. To begin this exchange, here are my
thoughts. I am sure you will add others.
Inaugural Address ✯ September 29, 2005 ✯ 4
First, the new university should be the home of
academic entrepreneurs, to borrow a term from my
friend, Erich Kunhardt, who once roamed Poly’s halls
as a faculty member. This new university should be
composed of bright faculty who have the capacity
and desire to invent and apply new science and technology
to our most significant problems. Its fields
and disciplines for research should be redefined:
• computer science and biology are becoming
bioinformatics,
• energy requires chemistry and nano-physics,
• management and computer science are creating
something new called service innovation.
Our goal should be to collaboratively advance
science, math, engineering, management, the
humanities and social sciences to help people at
home and abroad.
Second, the new university should open doors.
As David Brooks wrote last Sunday in the New York
Times: “…in an information society, college is the
gateway to opportunity.” At Polytechnic, nearly 30
percent of our students come from families with
annual incomes below $20,000, a higher percentage
of low-income families than either the State or City
Universities of New York. Our role in creating
opportunity in the “land of opportunity” sets us
apart from private schools of privilege and to a
surprising extent, the public schools around us.
Now this distinction has gained Polytechnic new
fame. This month, we were ranked by Washington
Monthly as second in the nation for “social mobility”
surpassed only by UCLA. On the east coast, not Yale,
Harvard, Columbia, or NYU, but Polytechnic
University is at the top of the charts for making the
American Dream. And why not, Poly alumnus and
Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, James Truslow
…the new university
should be the home of
academic entrepreneurs…

5 ✯ Jerry MacArthur Hultin, Polytechnic University
Adams, coined the expression, ‘the American Dream.’
Third, the new university must be a global
gateway to urban centers, both here and abroad,
not an enclave, but a hub of collaboration and
alliances with links around the world.
To teach in this new age, we can use the urban
landscape that surrounds us. Where better than the
hurly-burly, rough and tumble boroughs of New
York to comprehend and design urban security,
communications, transportation and quality of life.
Internships with companies, governments and nonprofits
will expand our students’ skills and enhance
our communities. As Bob Kerrey, president of the
New School, notes: one of the best places to hold a
fruitful dialogue about the problems of Kashmir is
not India or Pakistan, but rather Brooklyn or Queens.
Think of a today’s young science or engineering
student, fluent in English and also totally at ease
in his or her family’s Chinese, Russian, Spanish or
Farsi. Throughout life, he or she will have a special
advantage whether doing research, starting a new
business, or building a new city.
For him or her, the American Dream will be
the “Urban Dream” and the “Global Dream.”
Fourth, as the new university grows, it will
need to rethink vestiges of the current model. For
instance,
• How will we curb the price of tuition at this new
university?
• How will we give undergraduates an exciting
role in research?
• How will we re-engineer research so that the
artificially linear funding categories — basic,
applied, development — are fused into a more
holistic, creative and entrepreneurial approach?
A university can transform
itself if…it is small enough to
be agile and smart enough to
think innovatively…
Inaugural Address ✯ September 29, 2005 ✯ 6
The Brooklyn Bridge
• How will we integrate management, the humanities
and social sciences more fully into our
technical education?
• How will we bring new faces to the governing
boards of the new university? For the new university
I have in mind will need a fresh contingent of
trustees who know the entrepreneurial character
of large urban centers around the world.
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How do we create such a university?
One could, of course, repeat history in the manner
of Johns Hopkins in 1876 and create it from whole
cloth. Indeed, the recently opened Olin College of
Engineering near Boston hopes to do just this.
But one can also transform an existing university
to meet these challenges. Such a transformation is
unlikely at the most eminent of our great universities.
They are, in the words of Clay Christensen, caught
in the innovators dilemma with ‘rules’ that prevent
them from seeing and responding to the perils of
obsolescence.
However, a university can transform itself if
it has less at stake and more to gain; if it is small
enough to be agile and smart enough to think
innovatively; if it has diversity within its faculty
and students; and if it has friends and supporters
who will provide resources.
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7 ✯ Jerry MacArthur Hultin, Polytechnic University
Inaugural Address ✯ September 29, 2005 ✯ 8
Can Polytechnic be a new university?
I spent this summer listening and learning from
you in 100 personal discussions, in groups of 10
and 20, and in a university-wide workshop.
Here is what you taught me.
Polytechnic is a university eager to change and
grow. A renewal of Polytechnic has been underway
for nearly 50 years. First, a renewal in moving
from Livingston Street to Jay
Street under Presidents Rogers
and Weber. Then, a renewal in
the creation of MetroTech…
President Emeritus George
Bugliarello’s dream, developed
by Bruce Ratner! Most recently,
a renewal…with the new dorm,
the Jacobs Academic Building,
the refurbished Rogers Hall,
made possible by the beneficence
of the Othmers and the
Donald F. and
Mildred Topp Othmer Jacobses under the presidency
Residence Hall
of Chancellor David Chang.
Polytechnic is a university with an approach to
teaching that encourages “first to college” undergraduates.
We teach tough, technical subjects with
compassion.
Polytechnic is a university filled with exciting
research expertise:
• urban technologies,
• information systems and secure networks,
• wireless communications,
• super-computer design,
• cyber security,
• convex geometry,
• engineered materials,
• polymers and bio-medical engineering,
• new energy,
• the science of services,
• complex decision
making,
• financial engineering
• and more.
Our faculty and students embrace a richer range of
talents and cultures than perhaps any private university
in the United States.
Polytechnic has been tested in the Big Apple.
You know the words: “If I can make it here, I’ll make
it anywhere!”
Polytechnic has great supporters. Look around
this historic opera house, we are surrounded by
leaders, trustees, alumni, friends and family. Ours is
a task which is going to need a great deal of help
from others. Many are here on this stage and in this
audience. Let’s give them a rousing thank you for
being with us today!
• Mayor Bloomberg — a believer in technology
and education — and all the officials of Brooklyn,
New York City, the state and our federal government.
With your support, Polytechnic is ready
to build a better society.
• Craig Matthews, chairperson of the Board—
and all the trustees. Each one cares deeply
about our success.
• Charles Camarda —
who followed his
dreams into space—
and all the great
PolyThinkers and honorary
degree recipients
here today. You make
us proud by your
achievements.
One of Polytechnic’s state-
-of-the-art computer labs
WHO WILL SEE THE
WORLD FROM
AN ENTIRELY
DIFFERENT
PERSPECTIVE?
WE WILL.
CHARLES J. CAMARDA
Space Shuttle Astronaut
Class of ’74
PolyThinking branding
campaign poster
• All our alumni, our
guests from universities and colleges across the
nation, and our friends and families. Your pres-

9 ✯ Jerry MacArthur Hultin, Polytechnic University
ence here shows how much you care about
Polytechnic.
This summer, you were clear: We are eager to grow;
we excel at “social mobility;” we are agile, smart and
innovative; our diversity mirrors the world; we are
urban and global. We have powerful friends and
supporters who care deeply about us.
We have what it takes to create a new university.
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For an institution such as Polytechnic to survive
and thrive for 150 years is a remarkable feat. Ours
has been a celebrated history — with life-changing
education and world-changing research. For a
century and a half, Polytechnic has offered the
world the American Dream. In social mobility, we
are—like New York City—“king of the hill, head of
the list, cream of the crop, top of the heap!”
So now is hardly the time to hold back. In the
words of a contemporary playwright, it is the time
for “boldness, a willingness to imagine the future
not purely as a continuation of the past.”
Early in life, I learned the hardest part is when
the bullets and the bombs stop flying, and you try
to build something fresh and new.
Working together and supporting each other,
we can expand education and research…in the
sciences, math, engineering, management, the
humanities and social sciences…and meet the
opportunities and challenges before us.
I will need your help in this noble effort!!
Will you join me…in making Polytechnic a
university that thrives in New York City and
around the world? Intensify our education, expand
our research, raise resources and create a compelling
brand. If we focus on our core mission and
pay attention to basics day-to-day, we will create
the proficiency, leadership and resources required
to build a new university.
Will you join me…in building a new university
for a new age? Join me…in making Polytechnic a
university that offers the scientific knowledge,
technical skills, wisdom and courage that we all
need to compete and succeed.
Join me…in making Polytechnic a university that
serves our community, the nation and the world.
I am counting on you.
Thank you!
Inaugural Address ✯ September 29, 2005 ✯ 10
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Recommended Reading
1. The Creation of the Future: The Role of the
American University, Frank H.T. Rhodes
2. Shakespeare, Einstein and the Bottom Line: The
Marketing of Higher Education, David Kirp
3. What the Best College Teachers Do, Ken Bain
4. Necessity as the Mother of Tenure? Erich E. Kunhardt,
New York Times OpEd, December 14, 2004
5. The Next Fifty Years: Science in the First Half of
the Twenty-First Century, John Brockman
6. Linked: The New Science of Networks,
Albert-Laszlo Barabasi
7. Open Innovation: The New Imperative for Creating
and Profiting from Technology, Henry Chesbrough
8. The Ten Faces of Innovation: IDEO’s Strategies for
Beating the Devil’s Advocate and Driving Creativity
Throughout Your Organization, Tom Kelly
9. Jamming: The Art and Discipline of Business
Creativity, John Kao
10. The Rise of the Creative Class…and how it’s transforming
work, leisure, community & everyday life,
Richard Florida
11. The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid:
Eradicating Poverty Through Profits, C.K. Prahalad
12. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience,
Mihaly Csykszentmihalyi
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