Nariman Farvardin (Stevens Institute of Technology) on Rewiring Higher Education for a Flexible, Future-Ready Experience

On today’s episode of the Illumination by Modern Campus podcast, podcast host Shauna Cox was joined by Nariman Farvardin to discuss the transformative role of technology in reshaping educational delivery and the critical need to be aligned with workforce demands. 

Transcript

Shauna Cox (00:02):Nariman, welcome to the Illumination Podcast. I'm so glad you could join me today.

Nariman Farvardin (00:07):Good morning, Shauna. Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be with you.

Shauna Cox (00:10):Now we are here to discuss the rethinking of education models in Higher Ed, which is known to be traditional and have a lot of well established, well established structures and policies behind it. So I just want to kick off our conversation and ask, what do you see as the biggest forces driving the need to rethink traditional education models in higher ed today?

Nariman Farvardin (00:34):Shauna, as you know, I've had the honor of sitting at the helm of Stevens Institute of Technology for quite a number of years. This is my 14th year, and therefore this technology theme is going to be a recurrent theme in what I will be telling you. So first of all, let me start by saying that we at Stevens and I as president of Stevens, are strong believers that technology is the key driver of human progress. Technology has been a major force in changing the way we live. We do business, we interact with each other, we communicate, and we believe strongly that in the coming years, the role of technology in our lives will be even more important than ever before. So with that as the backdrop, I personally believe technological changes that are likely to happen in the relatively near future or likely to append higher education or education maybe in general.

(01:51):I personally believe that many professions that require physically or cognitively repetitive, or maybe I should say not so demanding tasks, will not need human beings in the future. They will be done very well, very efficiently, very inexpensively by machines. So what does this mean? It means that the education system, certainly the higher education system needs to prepare itself for a rather significant shift from certain set of majors and disciplines to some other majors and disciplines, those that will prepare or workforce for things that are certainly cognitively intellectually more demanding because technology is going to do a lot of things that are less demanding. Therefore, I think higher education will have to think very seriously about reconfiguring its programs, its curricula in order to accommodate this change that is likely to happen and it'll happen very fast and it'll have a profound impact on higher education.

Shauna Cox (03:26):And I want to dovetail off of that because you mentioned a couple of points here. Now it's moving very fast, the huge technology component and this overall major shift that's happening along with this shift where you're noticing students' expectations shifting honestly almost every single year, and their needs are constantly evolving. So how must higher ed institutions evolve to better serve that modern learner who's expecting flexibility, personalization, and more career connected pathways?

Nariman Farvardin (04:02):Well, lots of very good points in your question. In general, it is definitely true that the expectation of students is changing very rapidly, almost as rapidly as our world is changing. Students would like to have opportunities to get much better integration of technology into the educational experience, into the educational journey that they experience in the university. Students would like to have a lot more flexibility and students they would like as much as possible to have an opportunity for personalized learning. Our traditional learning mechanisms have been very conservative, and quite frankly, they haven't changed in many decades. Typically, the way we are structured, there's a classroom, there's a certain number of students in the classroom, there's a professor in the classroom, the professor lectures and the students listen and take notes. And then there are some homeworks and some exams. So in other words, we treat all students the same way as if they all learn at the same pace. They all learn in the same manner, but that is not really the case. In reality, we all know that we have very different learning abilities and disabilities and preferences.

(05:40):So how beautiful would it be if universities could introduce technology in order to enable the students to learn in their own manner, at their own pace, in their own style? I think this is something that is likely to happen sooner rather than later. But there are some universities that will do a much better job of incorporating this approach into their programs and probably other universities will be slower and they may actually fall behind. The other thing that I would like to add is that going back to the recurrent theme of technology, I think universities have an opportunity and perhaps an obligation to integrate technology into some of the traditional disciplines that we consider. I mean, I can give you an example. Once upon a time, accounting was not considered a technology discipline,

(06:54):But we as a society need accountants. We need finance majors, we need marketing people, we need people who are conversant with the history of the world or philosophy majors. We do need these disciplines, but all of these disciplines are being influenced in a significant way by the advancements in technology. So I think there's going to be an increasing demand for things on the boundary between these disciplines that traditionally are considered non-technology and technology related fields. So for example, I would not be surprised if in the future there will be more demand for finance and AI as opposed to finance alone or accounting and computing as opposed to accounting alone or marketing and data science as opposed to marketing alone. And I think that's another dimension that universities need to be cognizant of.

Shauna Cox (08:06):Absolutely. And I'm going to kind of go out of order here in terms of my questions because I think this component of technology is so important to focus on. So how can technology be leveraged to create a seamless student-centered experience that it's going to help improve the engagement, retention, and then overall enrollment outcomes?

Nariman Farvardin (08:28):Well, as you probably know, and as I alluded to it earlier, technology has already impacted our lives in a very profound way. But in the coming years, the impact of technology in how we live, in how we learn, in how we interact with our university professor and the support staff on the campuses of universities will change. So I'll give you a few examples in response to your question. Already, staff members and faculty members who are involved with the process of student admission are incorporating technology in the admission process. How can we use technology to cast a wider net for students who apply to our university? How do we deploy technology in order to better understand whether an applicant is a good fit for our university or not? How do we deploy technology in order to optimize the amount of financial aid that we give an incoming student in order to make sure that we do our best to meet their financial needs?

(09:46):And yet at the same time, in order to ensure that we don't waste our resources on one student and give less to another student another. So this is all related to admissions. There's also a lot of work on utilizing technology to ensure student success. When the student comes to your university, you want to make sure that they get integrated to the community, they build a bond with other students and faculty and students, and you want to make sure that they make good progress toward their degree. And ultimately, graduate technology is already offering tools that would allow you to monitor the progress of the students and intervene should the student need any help. So I think the answer to your question is technology can be used in so many ways to enhance the quality of interaction between the student, the effectiveness of the interaction between the student and the rest of the university, and of course ultimately student success.

Shauna Cox (10:51):Absolutely. And what I love to see you highlight here is not just the student perspective and the student experience, but it sounds like you're also alluding to the staff experience to be able to acknowledge anything that's happening with the student to intervene when needed. So I'm just going to ask a follow up question here. Totally welcome to not answer it if you are uncomfortable with it, but how do you see technology reshaping the way that faculty and staff are operating when it comes to delivering on that student experience?

Nariman Farvardin (11:22):Yeah, that's a very good question and I'm actually happy to answer it because I consider the university environment a system

(11:31):For this system to work well. For this system to be effective, all components of the system need to work together in harmony, in sync with each other. So if you want to do a good job of providing an unparalleled best in class experience to your students, you should provide a best in class experience for your staff members, a best in class experience for your faculty members so that all these pieces together make your university function well. And so when I was talking about the role of technology in student success, I am emphasizing the role of technology in the success and effectiveness of the faculty members and staff members. One thing that I should mention that I'm particularly proud of over the course of my tenure at Stevens, we have deployed absolutely state-of-the-art technology in order order to enhance the experience of our faculty and our staff members in serving our students.

(12:52):Because ultimately that's the goal. But when it comes to admissions, when it comes to payroll, when it comes to human resources management, when it comes to instructional capabilities, we are using state-of-the-art technology everywhere. I'm particularly proud to tell you that all of our required calculus courses are almost entirely taught by technology and professors at Stevens assist technology in order to enhance the student experience. It's not the other way around. It's not that technology assists professors. And just last week we launched an AI in mathematics laboratory. It's a laboratory in which we're unleashing the power of artificial intelligence in order to enhance teaching and learning of mathematics.

Shauna Cox (13:57):Amazing. I love that you guys are embracing ai. I know some higher ed leaders are kind of resilient to it or a little bit hesitant around it, but I love to see that you're embracing it. I'm also a big fan of ai, so it's great to see. And now I want to shift gears towards more of the workforce career side of things and ask, what role does workforce alignment play in shaping academic programs? And then how can institutions ensure that they're remaining competitive in preparing students for those in-demand careers?

Nariman Farvardin (14:27):Well, Shauna, you're asking a fundamentally important question, and before I answer your question, let me kind of set the stage for why this is fundamentally important. You seem to be too young to remember, but 30, 40 years ago, the cost of higher education was nowhere close to where it is today.

(14:50):Higher education has become exceedingly expensive, and therefore, unlike 40 years ago when people went to college to receive a well-rounded education, to become a better citizen, today when people go to college, they have to ask themselves a fundamentally important question, what is the return on this investment I'm making? And by and large, the answer to the return on investment question resides on that education's ability to launch the students into a successful career. Therefore, the question that you ask is very, very important because if you go to college and incur expenses that are getting close to, I don't know, 50, 60, 70, 80, $90,000 a year, and you do that for four years, you should legitimately ask yourself, what am I going to do with this degree that I have obtained and all this investment of time and money? Therefore, in my opinion, universities have a significant responsibility to keep in the back of their mind how they're preparing their students to launch a successful career. The answer to that question, of course, is it's done differently by different universities, but there are some commonly used approaches that tend to be more successful. First of all, in my opinion, the rigor of the educational experience goes a long way.

(16:38):Students, when they go to college, they want to learn something that they can use for the rest of their life. And those are not specific disciplinary skills because we live in a world where things are moving so fast that literally by the time you graduate, some of the stuff you've learned might be obsolete. Okay? The thing that will never be obsolete, the thing that is not perishable is your ability to continue to learn for life on your own. So I think that's the most important thing that a good educational experience can give to our students. That's number one. Number two, because of all the things that I mentioned to you, it is extremely important that technology be thoughtfully and deliberately integrated into the educational experience of students. There are a couple of things that Stevens that we do that I'm very, very, very proud of now at Stevens for all students, regardless of their major, whether the major is computer science or electrical engineering or finance or music or philosophy, it is required for all students at Stevens to take a course in coding in computer programming.

(18:06):That's rather unusual. I see the expression on your face. And in addition to that, there is a course called Frontiers in Technology that is required of all students in this course, students get exposure to artificial intelligence, they get exposure to data science, they get exposure to quantum computing, they get exposure to biotechnology. These are the kinds of things that they need to have at least some level of literacy in order to join the workforce in the 21st century. And if we don't provide that to the students, we just don't make it easy for them to have that pathway to successful careers. But in addition to that, providing students an internship opportunity while they're a student to work at a company or well-structured co-op programs that help them establish a relationship with companies that will be their future employer. These are all very successful approaches, and we use them quite successfully.

Shauna Cox (19:16):Absolutely. It is certainly something I have not heard before that hence my expression, but I think that's amazing that you have even just a baseline for students because they may or may not realize how critical those elements are that they need to have in their lives, especially today. And I think that dovetails great into the next question. You mentioned your program and AI that you recently launched, so matched with these components that you have just mentioned. How can institutions modernize their program delivery and credentialing to meet those growing demands for that flexible skills-based learning?

Nariman Farvardin (19:54):Well, the answer is it's not easy. Even for a university like Stevens, which is very much a technology oriented university, it is not easy. These disciplines incorporating these disciplines, technology, ai, cybersecurity, data science into the curriculum requires a whole bunch of things. First of all, and most importantly, it requires access to the right faculty

(20:24):And faculty with this type of expertise is hard to find and extremely expensive to find. So that's one thing. In addition to that, you need to have the facilities. Some of these require appropriate facilities, computing capabilities, data centers, high performance computing clusters, and the like. And third thing, which is probably the toughest one for higher education, is to have the wherewithal to change the curriculum. In other words, if you want to have a forward looking curriculum, if you want to say, all students from my university need to take a course in AI or quantum computing or data science, then you have to take something out of your curriculum. And as we all know, higher education tends to be relatively slow in making these types of changes.

Shauna Cox (21:28):Absolutely. And I want to expand on the idea of being forward thinking, future thinking, and ask this crystal ball type question of what changes should institutions embrace in order to stay ahead of the shifting learner expectations that we may or may not see coming and then higher ed evolving competitive landscape?

Nariman Farvardin (21:49):Well, I go back to my recurrent theme. I think universities should be open-minded about incorporating technology into their programs in a variety of ways, both integrating technology into the curriculum and integrating technology in the delivery of education. I personally think that what I call technology assisted delivery, which today we call online education, is likely to play a much more important role in the future. I mean, online education obviously is technology assisted, but it's only one aspect of a technology assisted education. You just do things online, maybe from your office or from your home as opposed to being in the classroom. But I think the assistance of technology could manifest itself in so many other forms, in particular in the form of offering a personalized education. So I think this is something that universities should consider very, very seriously going forward. Also related to your question, I think universities have to learn how to offer more flexibility in their offerings.

(23:05):Not everybody is necessarily interested in getting a four year undergraduate degree or maybe a two or three year master's degree. I think there's a lot of growing interest in microcredentials. People might be interested in learning something very specific today. They don't have four years to invest on it. They'd like to learn that in one year, but they may want to come back a year later and they may want to learn something else to supplement what they've already learned. So, and what is referred to as stackable credentials so that you can build on these credentials and maybe ultimately get a degree is another thing that universities should embrace and promote in the coming years.

Shauna Cox (23:58):Absolutely. I love that. Well, Norman, that's all the questions that I have for you, but before I let you go, we're going to throw in a non higher ed related question. Now you are of course, based in Hoboken, New Jersey. If someone's coming to town to eat, where do they need to go?

Nariman Farvardin (24:14):Well, that's the toughest question because there is no shortage of restaurants and places to eat in Hoboken. I tell you what I do. There is a place not too far from our campus, it's within a short walk. It's a family run restaurant and it's called 10th Street Pizza and Pasta. And I just love their pizzas. They are large and they are scrumptious. They are just fantastic, and so are their pastas. And I also love the ambiance. It's a very friendly place. There's always a buzz there, no matter what time you go, the place. It's packed with people and I enjoy everything about it.

Shauna Cox (25:03):Amazing. That's always a good sign when it's packed. And pizza and pasta, you cannot go wrong.

Nariman Farvardin (25:08):You're absolutely right. Next time you're in Hoboken, we'll take you there.

Shauna Cox (25:12):Amazing. I love it. Darin, thank you so much for joining me. It was great chatting with you.

Nariman Farvardin (25:17):Thank you so much. Take care, Shauna.