Friedman

Thomas L. Friedman, the Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist, showcases Georgia Tech in the newly released expanded edition of his best-selling book "The World Is Flat."

More than 100 pages have been added to the book, originally published last year. Georgia Tech's approach to education in the 21st century is featured prominently in a chapter titled "The Right Stuff."

"What the Georgia Tech model recognizes is that the world is increasingly going to be operating off the flat-world platform, with its tools for all kinds of horizontal collaboration," writes Friedman.

He extensively quotes President Wayne Clough and describes how Tech has worked over the last decade to attract and retain students with more wide-ranging interests such as music and film with the thought that these students are more flexible and able to adapt and work across disciplines.

"Very few presidents of premier technology universities boast about their tubas as much as their test tubes. But Clough has reason to boast, because my guess is that by making Georgia Tech sing — and by making other user-friendly additions to the undergraduate teaching system, and by making education overseas easily available for Georgia Tech students — he is producing not just more engineers, but the right kind of engineers," the book says.

Clough said Friedman "understands like few others how the world is changing around us and how important technologically savvy graduates have become to our nation. Georgia Tech shares his conviction and appreciates the validation he has given to our efforts to create an educational experience that prepares our students for success in an era that demands flexibility, creativity, experimentation and teamwork across traditional boundaries."

The book also features Friedman's conversations with Rich DeMillo, dean of the College of Computing, and Merrick Furst, associate dean of the College of Computing, and highlights the redesign of the computer science major.

The new curriculum features nine "threads" that combine computing with another field such as media or information to produce graduates with broader knowledge and experiences than the traditional fixed set of computer science skills.

During a visit to Tech in November, Friedman told students, "You're at a school that gets a lot of what's going on and that really excites me."

Friedman has won the Pulitzer Prize three times for his work at The New York Times, where he serves as the foreign affairs columnist. He is the author of three previous books, all of them best-sellers: "From Beirut to Jerusalem," winner of the National Book Award for nonfiction; "The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization"; and "Longitudes and Attitudes: Exploring the World After September 11."

In mid-April, Friedman promoted the release of the new edition of the book on "Imus in the Morning" on MSNBC.

Friedman explained that the book was updated to illustrate how to educate workers for a flat world and said he looked at Georgia Tech in particular. He credited the Institute's "wonderful president" for boosting graduation rates and producing engineers skilled in music as well as research.

"That's pretty hip thinking," host Don Imus responded.

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