Interview: Ali Houshmand

Ali Houshmand

President Rowan University

What has been the major focus for Rowan University over the past year?

Our academic environment, infrastructure plans, financials, technology, and equity efforts are all undergoing immense transformation. We are changing in so many ways, pivoting to pursue and implement new opportunities while also dealing with a variety of challenges the pandemic has presented or accelerated. We are rethinking nearly $300 million of infrastructure projects, two of which are major housing projects consisting of a total of 1,400 beds. We have frozen those projects to restrategize. Technology has become the frontrunner, and we are investing millions of dollars into cloud computing and technological capabilities.

We’re also investing heavily in our efforts to level the playing field for disadvantaged students. Starting this fall, any student who comes to Rowan University and has a family income of less than $45,000 will attend for free, for all four years. Starting next in fall 2022, anyone who is up to $65,000 in family income will get two years of their education at Rowan University paid for by the state and Rowan University.

What will be the role of physical campuses?

For a 17- or 18-year-old leaving the safety of home and their parents, the college campus serves as a safe environment to grow and learn to make decisions. That’s the role of a college campus and it’s one thing that should remain unchanged and never go away. There is no way you can replace that with virtual environments because at some point you have to get out into the world. Now the question is, what does the campus of the future look like? There are 34 universities in Downtown Philadelphia. Almost all of them have dorms, and right now students are concerned about going to the cities. What if technology advances so much that there is a massive dorm or campus on the edge of the city where people from every university can live and grow and make decisions. Universities could pull these things together, and why shouldn’t they with their current costs being unsustainable?

The new Institute for Future Technologies aims to become one of the region’s tech hubs, emphasizing STEM

online and in a hybrid format, saw Rowan hiring adjunct faculty from community colleges and the course itself has proved popular with interested middle managers, just the type of professionals who are drawn to remote education because it is more accommodating of their busy lives. This story brings together many of the threads of where higher education will go in the region: not only hybrid learning, but also bringing together community colleges and research institutions in an effort to stave off declines in enrollment.

Technology is rightly seen as the driving force of tomorrow and there has been a renewed interest on the part of New Jersey institutions. Recently, Murphy announced a new Institute for Future Technologies, a combined effort from the New Jersey Institute of Technology and Israel’s Ben-Gurion University, that aims to become one of the region’s technology hubs, with an emphasis placed on STEM education.

Looking ahead These are exciting times to be in the education sector in South Jersey. There is a renewed interest on the part of the government and on institutions to make education more inclusive and accessible. The growing fields of tech, and the new industries of AI and automation that are set to alter the world in the coming decades, are spurring much of this enthusiasm. Add to these trends the cataclysm of the pandemic, which in going digital has changed the consumer experience of education, and the next five to 10 years are certain to usher in changes and new dynamics.

Access is also expected to grow as education becomes more digital and costs become less prohibitive. This is all good news, especially in a landscape like that in South Jersey that is preparing for a post-pandemic boom and is hungry for skilled workers.