BY President G. Wayne Clough
In another time, universities were referred to as "ivory towers," a phrase that implied they were insulated from the swirling affairs of the world and nations, and faculty and students focused on issues of little relevance to society. Events have changed this circumstance, and today universities exist in a time when they are expected to be engaged in the currents and events that are important to life and well being.
Those universities that learn how to deal with these countervailing roles, and even turn them to an advantage, will have the edge going forward in possibilities for innovation, intellectual growth and knowledge creation. I believe Georgia Tech is becoming such a university and this is creating a new value proposition for our students, staff, faculty and our stakeholders.
Georgia Tech's mission statement from our 2002 strategic plan calls for us to "define the technological university of the 21st century." This is a bold assertion, and we have been working steadily toward this goal over the past several years. We are going to help define the path forward by being at the forefront ourselves. Few institutions have taken on this high purpose. Few have had this opportunity.
Our plans are being launched just as education, research and innovation have become the pillars of prosperity and productivity. At the same time, our world faces growing global problems from clean water to greenhouse gases that cry out for technological solutions, and society is increasingly looking to us to help face the challenges and maintain a positive standard of living. We undertake our vision within a context of high expectations, and we owe it to those who depend on us to achieve our mission well.
The U.S. Competitiveness Initiative calls for increased support for engineering and physical science research as well as for the study of these fields by our country's young people. In concert with this initiative, a range of federal agencies have placed a strong emphasis on new research in areas like energy, nanotechnology, nanomedicine, materials and disaster recovery by a range of federal agencies. Beyond the federal government in the business sector, we see a rapid growth in interest in areas like sustainability, water and photonics. Consistently, all of these show a strong overlap with the choices we have made for our investments.
Many of the opportunities for exploration lie in the cracks between the traditional academic disciplines, and this is a space in which Georgia Tech excels. As new fields emerge in these spaces, Georgia Tech is able to run out on the cusp of their development.
Jeff Skolnick, who is a world-renowned scientist, came to Georgia Tech and brought 19 colleagues with him to start the Center for the Study of Systems Biology. Their goal is to develop novel approaches to the development of drugs and pathway engineering for their delivery. The outcome of their work will be new approaches to the diagnosis and treatment of diseases like cancer.
The Center for Biologically Inspired Design was begun on the premise that the evolution of every living thing is nature's solution to a particular problem set, and the direction and patterns of that evolution can provide clues to the solution of complex engineering problems. Nature's designs tend to be efficient, practical and sustainable, and those are characteristics that are worth emulating.
The music department represents another space in which Georgia Tech is much edgier than the typical college program. The robotic drummer is more sophisticated than a human drummer because its computerized brain enables it to play a different complex rhythm with each hand. Artificial intelligence allows it to recognize the patterns of others' rhythms in real time, adjust to them and elaborate on them. And pretty soon it starts leading the music in new directions. It is a force to reckon with in any jam session.
Similarly, the School of Literature, Culture and Communication in the Ivan Allen College has joined forces with the College of Computing to move out on the edge of digital media, with the result that Georgia Tech was just named one of the top 10 digital gaming institutions in the nation.
Being creative about forming partnerships is one of the keys to success in the new environment. Our most significant partnership with another institution is with Emory University. Begun through informal research relationships between faculty more than 20 years ago, the Georgia Tech-Emory partnership has grown into one of the leading bioengineering and biomedical programs in the nation.
Georgia Tech and Emory have also emerged as national leaders in the application of nanotechnology to medicine. We are now among the top institutions in attracting nanomedicine funding from the National Institutes of Health, and we have secured three national centers of excellence in nanomedicine. A decade ago the idea of Georgia Tech leading the way in anything to do with medicine would have been unimaginable, but through innovative partnerships we have shifted the paradigm.
Georgia Tech is also developing strong, well-grounded global partnerships. Georgia Tech Lorraine is our oldest and most well developed international platform. Begun as a graduate education program more than 15 years ago, it is now expanding into undergraduate education and a residence hall is being built. The research program has also grown, developing partnerships with other European universities and research institutions. The most recent of these is our second partnership with the French National Center for Scientific Research. Directed by a Georgia Tech faculty member at GT Lorraine, this center is focused on telecommunications and new materials.
The Georgia Tech Research Institute is also extending its reach. GTRI, which already has research centers in a dozen locations around the United States, opened its first international center in Ireland in June. Working in collaboration with the Irish Industrial Development Agency, GT Ireland will focus on digital media, radio frequency identification, biotechnology and energy. The center expects to build a research staff of 50 and a portfolio of about $25 million over the next five years.
Robotics is a field in which the considerable expertise Georgia Tech has developed puts us in a position of leadership just as the field is set for strong growth in a wide range of practical applications. The Robotics and Intelligent Machines Center was created to promote collaboration across the various faculty and academic units that work in robotics — from the College of Computing to the Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering — and speed the transfer of new technology to industry.
When I was a student here, back when the Earth was still cooling, undergraduate education was a cookie-cutter operation. Each discipline had a fixed body of knowledge that was not necessarily connected to what was going on in the outside world. And the goal was to impart that fixed body of knowledge to students in a process that resembled pouring water into a cup. There was no interest in any deviation from the cookie-cutter model, and there was little recognition of the educational value of the larger university experience.
I am pleased to say that education at Georgia Tech today is dramatically different than that model, largely because we have worked hard to change it over the course of the past decade. Today, undergraduate education is broader, deeper and richer. It is more flexible and interdisciplinary.
We have developed a number of innovative new programs, including problem-based learning in the Coulter School of Biomedical Engineering, interdisciplinary degrees at all levels in digital media, interdisciplinary professional master's degrees based in the College of Sciences and the TI:GER Program in the College of Management, which involves graduate students in hands-on learning about the commercialization of new technology.
Last year the College of Computing took a creative approach to redefining its undergraduate program. Students choose two of eight different threads, each of which is focused on an area that engages computing. This approach enables students to both broaden and tailor their education, rather than simply learning standardized, siloed programming skills.
At the same time, they imagine their future careers and slant their educational program in the direction of a particular role — whether an entrepreneur or an innovator or a master practitioner. The goal is to put things together horizontally in ways that make sense and produce graduates who are more than the basic, standard programmers who are available at lower cost in India.
If we are to think boldly, we can only do so if we build our plans around excellent people — faculty and staff, as well as outstanding students who then graduate and become outstanding alumni. Outstanding people not only bring wide-ranging intellect to the task of defining the technological university of the 21st century, they also bring discipline and drive, creativity and curiosity. And we believe that the technological university of the 21st century is a community of learners, all engaged in the process of discovery at some point on the spectrum.
When all results are in, I believe we can conclude that we are off to a good start toward our goal of defining the technological university of the 21st century.
A complete text of the State of the Institute address and an audiocast of the speech are available at www.gatech.edu/president/soi.
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