First NYIT Faculty Fellowship Awarded to Jonathan Goldman

Jonathan Goldman, Ph.D., associate professor of English in the College of Arts and Sciences is the recipient of NYIT’s first faculty fellowship.

The Faculty Fellows Program, introduced in 2018 by Junius Gonzales, M.D., M.B.A., provost and vice president for academic affairs, is designed to provide full-time tenured and tenure-track faculty members with new leadership and administrative opportunities. Fellows will work on a special project that aligns with NYIT’s strategic goals in collaboration with a mentor in the Office of Academic Affairs. 

“Higher education is changing at a rapid pace, and the competitive landscape is fierce,” said Gonzales. “This is an opportunity for a faculty member to contribute significantly to the NYIT community, receive mentorship, and gain a view of higher education across the country to contextualize our local experience and make positive change happen. One hopes that the faculty member will be inspired by what they learn, their project, and the chance to make a difference to our unique, diverse, and worthy student body.”

Goldman’s proposal, which calls for the development of a series of high-profile interdisciplinary events, was one of more than a dozen reviewed by external and internal reviewers. “Dr. Goldman’s proposal was uniformly considered exceptional,” said Gonzales.

Goldman plans to develop a series of high profile interdisciplinary events. NYIT Live! Humanities to STEM aims to bring together multiple speakers including NYIT faculty, students, and speakers outside the NYIT community as well as presentations that incorporate videos and music, for example. “Think of NYIT Live! as taking the idea of TED Talks and adapting it to a more dynamic and interdisciplinary approach,” he said. “Topics will vary; one of the many examples discussed is a possible event about Columbus Circle [near the New York City campus], including presentations addressing architecture and air quality/environment, and a panel about civic engagement and public space—the activist-fueled re-evaluation of NYC statues (such as that of Christopher Columbus). Students could design alternative monuments. Themes of this sort will generate interdisciplinary events that would, ideally, take advantage of NYIT’s New York location.”

Developing events like this have been a longtime goal for Goldman, whose research and teaching focuses on literature and its relationship to the mass, technological society from roughly 1850 to the present. “The series contributes to my goal of bringing academic scholarship to wider audiences. In my own work, I have done this through public lectures, non-academic publishing, and through performing and recording music. Now, my role will be to facilitate as other NYIT scholars introduce their work to our neighbors and to an online audience as well. I have always believed that universities should prioritize community engagement, should tell the community what they’re doing and why it matters. This is especially important now, when anti-academic sentiment has become a powerful political force. Community engagement is needed more than ever.” Goldman is also a musician and a member of the band Spanglish Fly. In 2018, he organized and moderated a screening and discussion of We Like It Like That: The Story of Latin Boogaloo at NYIT Auditorium on Broadway.

“As a fellow overseeing this program, I would fulfill my professional goal of bringing scholarly and cultural work to audiences beyond academia,” said Goldman.

Stay tuned for more updates and details regarding the faculty fellowship initiative.