It’s apropos that a large issue of NYIT Magazine coincides with a focus on one of our university’s grandest success stories: the students, alumni, faculty, and staff of NYIT’s College of Osteopathic Medicine (NYCOM). Founded in 1977 under the leadership of NYIT President Alexander Schure, Stanley Schiowitz, David G. Salten, and W. Kenneth Riland (with help from U.S. Vice President and New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller), NYCOM has grown from a college with an inaugural class of 36 to an institution with more than 1,100 students and 5,948 alumni who use hands-on medicine and the latest technology to treat patients worldwide. 

This edition of NYIT Magazine is not just about NYCOM. It’s also about our colleagues and community members who work at all of NYIT’s schools and colleges—from arts and sciences, education, engineering and computing sciences, architecture and design, management, and health professions—who contribute to our goal of nurturing achievement through interdisciplinary efforts. You’ll read about our communication arts students designing a website for a Haitian hospital, physical therapy and engineering students working with doctors to create an advanced walker to help Parkinson’s disease patients, our Center for Global Health coordinating with engineers and physicians to create clean, potable sources of water in developing regions of the world, teachers creating a unique educational model to educate families in Africa about malaria, and others.

It is not enough that we have a great medical college (or other schools) at NYIT—we must find ways to create new opportunities for growth and unique learning paradigms through multidisciplinary efforts among doctors and other physicians, engineers and programmers, architects and designers, writers and website creators, and teachers and entrepreneurs. We recognize that collaboration among these fields leads to solutions for today’s most pressing challenges.

The fuel that powers these interconnected streams of innovation is technology blended with human capital. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg once compared educational software with the enterprise and consumer technology markets. Specifically, he cited their collective emphasis on making software rich on features but low on offering solutions customized to individual users. Steve Jobs, too, believed machines do not incite and feed curiosity the way real people can. 

Both are correct in that technology alone cannot be the agent of teaching. At NYIT, we have always believed that our campus technology—whether it’s online discussion groups, smartphone apps, robotic patients, 3-D motion capture studios, streaming lectures, or distance learning labs—is the thread that reinforces and expands (but does not replace) the instructional channel between professor and student. 

Technology also enables multiple disciplines to engage thinkers and creators, and empower them to act and collaborate in ways never before possible—across nations, cultures, villages, and NYIT classrooms. Our students, alumni, professors, and many partners bring their ideas and skills to the forefront, and the best way for our world to evolve is to ensure that these individuals connect with others in ways that foster unique solutions.

The major issues of our century, which include finding sources of clean water, environmental sustainability, education, health care, and beyond, can only be solved through collaborative and interdisciplinary efforts. Most diseases, treatments, and health care concerns, for example, impact citizens worldwide. And most solutions involve or will involve coordinated efforts by government, universities, and business.

As I’ve noted, education is the currency that drives our 21st-century global economy. NYIT is proud to be among those minting this worldwide standard. And we are an institution that values medicine as part of our overall vision. Whether it’s unearthing fragments of prehistory or using osteopathic techniques and the latest medical technology to teach students and serve communities around the world, NYCOM is central to NYIT’s interdisciplinary and career-oriented professional mission, which also includes our commitment to applied research that benefits our global society. Enjoy reading our many proof points and take pride in the interconnected university that is NYIT. 

Sincerely,

Edward Guiliano, Ph.D.
President

Vol. 10 No. 2 Table of Contents