Transcript: President Schmidt Spring 2025 interview

The following is a transcript of our March 31, 2025 interview with President Martin A. Schmidt ’81. The transcript has been cleaned up for clarity.

The Poly: I guess first off, how are you doing?

Schmidt: Well, it's an interesting time. Yes. So there's a lot going on, but I'm doing fine. Thanks for asking.

How would you categorize the, I guess the last, I think when you say interesting time, you're probably referring to, you know, new federal administration as part of it.

That's part of it, yeah. Also, we've now wrapped up this strategic plan and now we're sort of really getting focused on what we need to do in the short run. But yeah, the dynamics in Washington are something where you feel like you're constantly needing to check the news to see what's happening and what that might mean to RPI.

What are the major things that you're seeing so far, at the federal level?

Well, a couple things I would say. One is obviously some concern about a slowdown in federal support for research. And I say slowdown as opposed to stop because I think it's interesting Senator Todd Young just published an opinion piece in the Washington Post advocating for expanding this research at universities. But that said, it is also clear that the government is focusing on certain types of research that they don't want to support, some of it more in the social sciences arena, so concerned about that. But overall, I feel as though the commitment to basic scientific research in engineering is there. And there's been some concern about the government's commitment to the CHIPS and Science Act, but all the indications are it's full speed ahead there. So it's a mixed message on the research, I would say. The deportations are deeply troubling and I know it's a concern for a lot of our community members. The student life staff have been very good at keeping the students, particularly our international students, and so on and so forth. But I think there's just general anxiety about, you know, what does this mean for RPIs. So far, it hasn't meant much other than just we're concerned. And I would say, and I think I said this at town hall, I just don't really think we're very much on Washington's radar compared to some of the other schools that they're focused on. So I'd say those are the principal things. The impact of the tariffs on us is hard to predict. I mean, inflation. A lot of people feel it's going to drive up inflation. And so obviously we buy things here to run the university. And so that's a concern. So it's just the dynamic nature of it. And I think you could also say, well, what will it mean for our investments, our endowment if the markets go down and so on? So just all of those things.

I guess I want to start with the deportations a little bit, briefly. You mentioned in the town hall that you're monitoring the situation in Columbia, at least briefly. Since then, several graduate students, specifically foreign graduate students, have been basically taken by ICE, essentially, or detained by ICE, and are flown to Louisiana. Should RPI students be concerned about that? You obviously mentioned RPI is not necessarily on the federal radar, at least to any major degree. But how should, specifically, international students navigate this time?

Well, what we've done is we've had several sessions. We had a session where we brought in an immigration lawyer to help make sure all the students are aware of what their rights are and what paperwork they should or shouldn't have with them at all times. So we're trying to make sure everybody's informed. We spent a lot of time with public safety, with the student life staff to make sure everybody knows what we would do should someone show up on campus. Obviously the situation with the graduate student at Tufts was very concerning in terms of how that all transpired. But like I said, all of our contacts suggest that the capital region higher ed institutions just simply aren't really area focused. So I think we're just making sure we're prepared, should something like that happen. But I do want to stress that I think, I know it's a lot of anxiety, especially when you watch some of these things that are transpiring. I think for now we're not concerned about something like that happening here.

And also part of that, you know, back to Columbia, the Trump Administration, they, you know, they pulled $400 million in funding for the school and as sort of to get that money back, they made various policy changes. Obviously, I assume you don't see that happening to RPI anytime soon.

I don't. We've had one grant cancelled.

What was it for?

It was a COVID vaccine. We were a subcontractor on the grant. And so it's a small amount of money in the scheme of things. But that's the only thing we've seen in terms of that. We have seen NIH has not restarted their study sessions and so on. So we're kind of feeling maybe we'll see a little bit of a slowdown in the pace of funding. But I think right now I'd say we're not, you know, we're just cautious I'd say, yeah.

And the NIH thing, the 15 percent indirect cost cap that's going through the courts, but you could just like explain, you know, what those are, what the cap is for.

Well, thanks for asking that. So, what happens is, you know, when anybody funds research they want to pay the true cost of doing the research so some of the costs are very easy and direct, right, so a research assistant salary, a piece of equipment, some laboratory fees to use a piece of equipment, things like that. And so those you direct charge to the grant. But there are other things, like the utility bill for the building where the work is being done, the libraries to the extent to which they're supporting research through journal subscriptions and things like that, administrative costs. Those are what are classically referred to as indirect costs. And what is done in that case is, every university negotiates with a federal entity. In our case, I think it's the Navy. To determine how much of, say, how much of the libraries at RPI are supporting research, and if it's 50%, then if it’s 50%, 50% of the money you spend in the libraries goes into the indirect cost base. You know, how much of the senior administration's time is spent supporting research. So then those costs, you tally those up and it's a negotiation with the government.

So what was the rate?

Our rate is north of 60 percent, I want to say, but I think it's important that not everything gets the indirect cost coverage. So, for example, tuition that might be in a research grant doesn't pay indirect costs. So an easier way to think about it is if you bring in a dollar or a sponsored research, how much of that dollar goes to indirects and how much goes to directs. And in RPIs, about 23 cents goes to the indirect costs. So the 60% number is a little bit misleading and sometimes gets misinterpreted. And what the administration has proposed is doing what a lot of foundations do, which a lot of foundations will say no more than 15 % of total cost. So that would mean the foundations are saying you can have 15 cents on every dollar for indirect. So that difference between R23 and 15 from the foundations is really what's at play here. I mean, said all of that, I'd be surprised if this approach to indirect costs that they want to do actually gets through because depending on how it's implemented it could be sort of anywhere between a couple million dollars to maybe ten million dollars hit to RPI. For a research university or a research hospital, it could be existential because you don't have other revenue sources per se, because you're not necessarily doing education so you don't have tuition and things like that. And that's what we're seeing, that's what I'm seeing. I still read the Boston Globe daily and you're seeing a lot of research hospitals in Boston laying people off and so on and so forth. And so I think most of that right now is just because of grant cancellation. But if what they want to do with indirect costs went through that could be really serious.

And the 10 million or so roughly that could affect RPI, how detrimental would that be?

It's a pretty serious hit. I mean we're about, our annual operating budget is 450 million in round numbers. So, you know, it would hurt and in particular because it's one of the few places where you can get the funds to pay for libraries or to pay for repairs of buildings and things like that.

So I guess kind of it's a decent segue to renovations. Obviously you're doing a capital raise or at least you're renewing the old capital raise from 2017. So you said that right now you raised about half, is that correct? So like 750 million of that 1.5 billion goal?

Oh, you're talking about the campaign?

Yes.

Yeah. So the campaign that was launched in 2017 was a billion dollar campaign. What we decided to do was to recast it, set it to 1.5 billion. Best practice is you have half of that amount raised already before you go sort of public with the campaign. So we crossed that threshold sometime in the spring.

Last spring or this spring?

This spring. And so we're now, you know, I was in Florida last week and so we're starting to go to major cities and share with the alumni our aspirations for the campaign.

What are the main things? I assume you're looking to renovate buildings.

Yeah, so there'll be money allocated for capital projects. The other thing you try and raise money for is fellowships and scholarship money, faculty chairs. And then a certain amount of money for other sorts of things that are important like things to support student life or things to support the research. So there's about five or six categories and we're still finalizing what our targets are for each of those. And then what you do is you then sort of prioritize, okay, so what are the things you were gonna really try and put in front of donors. But at the end of the day, what it's really about is creating enough opportunity for a donor to say, yeah, that would be personally meaningful for me to give money towards that because that's something that maybe helped me when I was a student here or maybe just it sort of appeals to my sense of what is important.

Do you have at least a short list of like the big ticket items that you're going to be focusing on?

You mean for capital projects?

Yes.

So we want to get started renovating one of the original 1900 buildings and Ricketts is the best target for that. We want to fundraise for the child care facility, which we're still trying to sort out exactly where we can put it. There's a pretty important need for addressing some maintenance issues in the Houston Field House. And then there'll be a number of other projects that are not sort of, you know, those three would probably consume, you know, maybe half of what we think we can raise from facilities and then there'll be other projects that will fill in, but we'll do kind of a campus-wide assessment to figure out where we go.

And the Ricketts renovation, I believe you were presented with a plan at one point, but you wanted to keep the exterior, like that was the main thing. You didn’t want to change the exterior, you wanted to keep the brick.

Yeah, you know, one of the things we're also working on is sort of an overall master plan for the campus. And one of the things is that if we want to get going on Ricketts, you know, I don't want to alter the appearance of the building significantly from the ’86 field, because I think that's sort of, you know, without a sense of what we would do with all of the buildings, I think it's gonna be a little hard to say, well, let's put a glass box on it or something like that. Because a lot of times in the architecture space, the general view is if you renovated an original iconic building, that you don't try and mimic it, but you create something that is a modern extension of it. And you'll see this a lot. If you've been to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the extension there is a modern extension on an original building. So that's in some respects what you would ideally do with some of these buildings, but again, I think preserving the appearance from the ’86 field is gonna be important. We could conceivably do things on the street side that maybe alter the appearance from that side.

Extend it closer to the street?

Either that or yeah, guess, yeah, extended. But then you can start thinking about that. Create more of a glass facade, maybe bring some more natural light into some of the spaces you create.

I believe you want to turn that, you know, that after the renovation, want to turn to the sort of CS or computational science building. Is that the plan?

Yeah, the idea would be to use that for computation activities writ large that would allow us to empty Lally and then we can think about, maybe that's the next building. So the key thing is we wanted to start with a building that isn't as packed with activity so that it's easier to address, because you have to move the things that are in there somewhere. So Ricketts is a good example where there are a lot of spaces in there that aren't very heavily utilized, so it's easier to decamp that. And the whole goal really is these buildings were all built about 100 years ago. And so one of the things, and this was my experience when I was at MIT when we started renovating the 1916 campus buildings, is you learn things about how those buildings were built. A hundred years ago, we don't necessarily have the blueprints from them. And so you kind of learn about, you know, how are the windows done and everything. Those things, learning that on one building then allows you to think about, how do I do it for the next ones? Because I think the goal will be to basically systematically go across the campus and renovate buildings one by one.

So is the goal sort of kind of like shuffling around? You're going to take the CS faculty from that, like put them in Ricketts and then renovate Ricketts and then kind of move everyone around?

That could be one, or we could maybe say, well, let's put somebody else in Lally temporarily and get them out of another building. So I don't know what the priorities would be, but the idea is to create that first vacancy, right? It's a little bit like that puzzle piece where you have to have one empty thing to move anything.

And actually, you mentioned when you were renovating at MIT, I think you told me about this last time we spoke. That one thing you did was at MIT, they created their own school of computing. The Schwarzman College. Is RPI heading in that direction any time soon?

No, I don't think so. I mean, the thing about computing at RPI is that, especially with the fact that we have a high-performance computer and now a quantum computer, what happens here pretty naturally is that computing capability is used pretty broadly across the campus. So we have sort of a virtual college computing by virtue of the fact that computing is really broadly used on campus.

And beyond Ricketts –Ricketts and Lally you mentioned– what are the other buildings that have top of priority?

All. I mean, well, you know, Troy building is relatively recently renovated. The Walker Laboratory’s relatively recently renovated, the Pittsburgh building. So you have to go and look at Amos Eaton. You look at Lally and look at the ’87 gym, I think those are the obvious ones. But then we have to look across to the science complex that was built in the 50s and 60s. Yeah, think about what we want to do with those. And like I said, I don't know where – we have to do sort of a prioritization based on, know, what is the most acute need. And that's a process that will launch as well.

I see your academic part of the renovation, also the student part of that, is dorms and partially the Union, but that is under their purview. I guess we'll start with the dorms. Any plans to renovate the dorms?

Yeah, I think RPI had been doing sort of, systematically going through the dorms on Freshman Hill and renovating them. So we want to pick that back up and just sort of say what's the next one to really fix up. And part of the goal is with the campaign and everything is really to get us to a posture where we have allocated sufficient funds annually to have a constant renewal of the campus.

And then part of that was also the Playhouse and also the Players, which was somewhat recent. Last week, a GoFundMe was created, I'm not sure if you're aware of this, to basically raise funds, roughly $750,000 that was quoted, to repair the Playhouse after the flood. I think it raised about $22,000 in a 48-hour time frame, and then it was shut down by the E-Board and they said because clubs can't fundraise for that mechanism through a GoFundMe or something like that. Would any funds from the capillaries be used for the playhouse repairs?

Yeah, I mean I think we would put any of the acute needs in that list. Because again, it's all about aligning donor interest around projects where you have the need. So if there's substantial donor interest in that, yeah, why not?

And also for mentioning is that the Playhouse itself is owned by the, or its budget is controlled by RPI, whereas the Players, their budget is controlled by the Union. Is that correct?

I think that historically, my understanding, historically the union has sort of owned renovations and repairs and so on of the Union. I think the Institute, I presume we pay the utility bills and maybe routine maintenance, but I think the renovations for example that they've done in the lower floor of the Union, that's all funded out of the Union budget. So the Union in essence makes those decisions as to what to fix up and things like that. So I think that's just how I understand it.

Ok. I want to move a little bit to enrollment because part of the current freshman class being a bit smaller than you were at least anticipating this. You slowed down the growth plans. So actually I'll do the growth plans first. The initial goal was 350 tenure and tenure-track faculty to about 1270 something like that staff.

Yeah, I think that's–I forget the original numbers– the 280 was approximately 280 faculty when I arrived and the staff numbers, I forget the exact number.

1081.

Okay. Yeah. So, and what you can do is that if you go back a decade from when I arrived, the historic size had been 20 percent more than what so we're down to 80 % of what our historic size had been, both in faculty and staff. So that's the plan we put in front of the board that, you know, over some period of time to kind of restore ourselves to that size.

And I believe the tenure track is, the last number I heard from you was like 325-ish?

We're, yeah, we're about 320-ish. The reason why we're a little fishy on this one is everybody counts a little bit differently, because if we have a faculty member that's accepted the offer, but isn't on campus, then we may say they're coming, so we count them. So, and then you have retirement. So the number fluctuates a little bit.

And the staffing, the goal was 1279. Where is that staffing focus? Is it like administrative, mainly facilities?

Initially, we asked all the units to basically say what are the priorities for hiring and then they're pretty uniformly distributed across all parts, with, I would say, a couple exceptions. One is we’ve invested a lot of staff in alumni relations and Institute advancement.

Where was it? Before you got here, where was it that the staff count for alumni relations?

36 people.

And now it's?

I think we’re up to 80. And to put it into perspective, that function at any other University for comparable size to RPI and comparable size alumni, probably over 200 people.

Are you planning to get to that size?

What we're doing is making the investments and then seeing if we're realizing return on investment. For example, I think I mentioned this in the town hall, but we have seen a substantial uptick in giving to the university and so that's sort of that flywheel is working in terms of having out of the people that help fundraise.

Getting back to the enrollment question. So obviously, the freshman class resulted in $10 million roughly in less revenue. For the current class that you're accepting right now, so Class of 2029, did you ask admissions to increase the number of students they accept to offset that, or are you still sticking with that 1650 target that you normally stay with?

Our hope is to hit around 1,500. That would put us in a good spot, I think. And a lot of work has been going into really changing the way in which, particularly the way in which we engage with students after they're accepted for admission. So the admitted student day two weekends ago, a lot of work was done to really revamp that and refresh it. And a lot of really great engagement from everybody, you know, the departments, the staff, students that were tabling the events and it didn't hurt that the weather was nice. So, you know, the numbers that we're seeing right now are looking pretty positive, but you know, a lot can happen between now and May 1.

And so what are you seeing so far? Are you on track to hit that 1500?

It's hard to say because it depends on what you want or what you would assume the yield will be and so when you look at what happened last year, the yield historically had been 15, 16, 17 percent and it went to 13 percent last year. Hard to say how much of that was the FAFSA, because we certainly saw that, whereas a lot of private universities saw a decline in enrollment, a lot of the public institutions saw big numbers grow. And some feel that maybe the cost of attendance and the uncertainty about financial aid left people thinking, well, I'm just gonna either not go to school or I'm going to go to a public school where I know with certainty what its costs are going to be. So to your question, it's really hard to say, you know, what do we think is going to be? 17%, 15 % or whatever. But as I said, the numbers that we've got right now are better than they were last year in terms of numbers of people that are deposited and so on. So we're feeling cautiously optimistic.

And that yield rate, that 13 % from last year and then the average of 15 to 17, I believe that's still pretty low for university. I think when I looked at it, the schools that RPI compares itself to. Like the peer schools, I believe is what they're called, 43 % was the average yield rate. So how do you increase that yield rate to more consistently getting when you accept someone that they're more likely to actually apply or enroll?

You admit fewer.

I see.

It seems counter-intuitive, right? But, you know, right now it's a mouse click to apply to school. And so what we need to do is understand what types of students that are applying are likely to want to come to RPI that fit RPI, rather than just they said, oh, well, why not?

And how do you sort of determine that?

Analytics.

What are you looking for?

We're still looking. But I mean, I think you look for a couple of things. The other thing is that we have not in the past done enough engagement at the sophomore and junior level.

In high school?

Yeah. So you look for signals, you know. Does this person come and look at our website? Do they open emails from us? Do they visit? So you can track a lot of information and say, these people really have seemed to show sincere interest in this Institution. Because then what happens is that if you admit fewer, and it's not so much about because I'm trying to play a number with the yield, but then I can spend time with less people and really get them across the finish line.

So I think last year, I believe the semester was like 50, 40, 50 something percent for the number of times I had to, for this year, did you ask them to admit fewer?

No, no, not this year, because I mean, we're just starting. Yeah, but I think going forward, you know, the other thing we're going to focus on is transfer students, which will be really helpful. But I think there's a whole set of things that we're working on.

So for this site, or so sorry, 20, for the class of 2030, that one you'll be more likely to.

Yeah, I think by the time we get to the 2030 class, we'll be doing a lot more of the stuff that I've been describing. But also, as I said, once we get, we're starting to ramp up the transfer cycle as well so we can add students to the current class of 2028. And is there a target for the number or percentage roughly that you want it to be, at least in the long run? I think the ideal would be a couple hundred. Because if you think about it, if we admitted 1,310 or whatever, if we added 200 more transfer students, then that class size is a backup.

I'm saying more for first year. What is the ideal sort of acceptance rate and number of admins?

I think 15 % would be good.

I see. That's why you get the acceptance rate down too.

But it's, you know, we're throwing darts, right?

And part of that is also, you mentioned that, you can apply with a click now. I think part of that is also, you're not required to submit an SAT or ACT score. Last time we spoke at MIT, they reinstated their requirement for tests. You said it was based on the data they received. In the year, as you transpired, since we last spoke, have you received more data about whether or not to make an information of what your run-ins are required to submit a test to apply?

Yeah, so the provost is looking into that. We haven't reached any conclusions one way or the other. It is interesting. I saw that, I forget what school came out with the information recently that their applicants are down since they reinstated the SAT requirement, but overall from four or five years ago.

There's a story I read recently on Harvard. They added a supplemental math class for first years who were struggling with their basic math. Do you think the SAT or ACT, that exam at least, provides a sort of floor for seeing how well they understand math, especially since we're a STEM school? Yeah, I think we know a lot about the high schools. We can calibrate, especially when you have certain schools where we tend to receive a lot of applicants for those schools year on year. So we tend to know the strength of the curriculum at the high school. And so when a student has a particular grade in, say, AP calculus class, we know whether or not that means they're going to be able to be successful here. So I think you gather information through a lot of different ways. And so I think all indications are that the classes we've admitted since not requiring the SAT have done well in terms of retention and so on. So I think it's just gonna be a question of does the SAT give us more confidence in our decision making in terms of who to admit.

And when do you expect you'll have a decision for that?

I don’t know. I mean, I would think we'd have to decide if we wanted to implement it for next year, we'd have to decide pretty soon.

So it's unlikely at this point that?

Yeah. We can ask the provost.

The other part of enrollment is obviously grad students and PhD students. Your role is you want to increase the graduate population. Is it more co-term students or is it more like straight grad students?

Well, so we anticipate as part of our plans to grow sponsored research and so that the growth in graduate students will be predominantly through the PhD students.

And that growth is you want extra $100 million a year.

That would be the goal. Right now we have $100 million. If we could go to $200 million, that gives us a really nice balance of sources of funding.

And how long do you think it'll take to get that?

Five to six years.

Even with a slowdown potentially?

Well, that throws a monkey wrench, so that's hard to.

And that also leads into the Rensselaer Forward Plan that you sent out. I think I think the day before break a few weeks ago, so I sort of read through it and at least personally, I think there's certain elements that are kind of vague as to like what exactly, you have to the certain tasks that want this to be done in two years, but it doesn't really clarify like what exactly is being done. One of the good examples is redesigning the core curriculum for deeper integration between schools. What does that look like exactly?

Yeah, so what I would say right now, there's the 10-year plan and then there's a five-year set of goals. As you go, the 10-year plan is sort of an aspiration. Five-year gets a little bit more specific, has a lot of ideas in it. But then those ideas need to be converted into something specific. But right now what we're focused really on is the three things. One is stabilizing enrollment management. And then we want to look at some of these, what I call, extending educational reach, which is, are there ways we can provide an RPI education without requiring people to be residential in Troy, New York.

Rensselaer at work.

Rensselaer at work, which we had in Hartford Diller a long time, and thinking about how do we expand that activity. So expanding our educational offerings, but off the campus. The second thing is sponsored research. Are we supporting faculty enough so that they can pursue larger grants, more grants and so on. And then the third is what I call strengthening alumni relations. So when you look at RPI today, the percent of our alumni that contribute back to the university regularly is very low by industry standards. And a lot of it comes back to what we talked about earlier when you only have 36 people in an office that's supposed to fundraise and have a relationship with the alumni and other institutions of comparable size might have more than 200 people. You don't have much of a relationship with the alumni because you're just one of the people to kind of cultivate that relationship. So that is the other goal is really to say, how do we build a better relationship with our alumni? I think it's a really interesting example. R.J. Scringes was here back in October for reunion and when we did a fireside chat with him, one of the things he talked about was he raised his first money for Rivian from an MIT alum who he found through a searchable database that the alumni have access to. So that's something we should do, right? So that if you're-

Is that being worked on right now?

Yeah. you know if you're-

Is there a timeline for when that comes out?

Better be soon.

I don't want to put the guys on the spot, we're working on it. But you know, mean, if you're graduating or thinking about graduating and you want to go work for Apple, well, we actually have a lot of alumni there in fairly senior positions at Apple. And I remember having a conversation with RJ when I went out to see him in Palo Alto late in the fall. And he said to me, if somebody sends me an email and they're an RPI student, my likelihood of responding to that goes up exponentially. You know, so that's the kind of thing we can do, which is build these relationships between the alumni and our current students, and it creates that sense of a community. And, you know, I talked to an alum a couple weeks ago, and he had just gotten a call from a student at RPI calling for fundraising purposes. And I was thinking, oh gosh, he's probably gonna say something like they just, you know, asked me for money and everything. But he said, no, the student talked to me for like half an hour. We talked about a bunch of different stuff. And then he said, aren't you gonna ask me for money? And then the student said, well, yeah. So, I mean, our alumni love to connect, you know, would love to connect. We just have to make it easier for them. And vice versa. I think you all would benefit tremendously by being able to tap into that alumni network. So if we build those relationships, the funding will flow.

So that's sort of the key to everything else.

So to your point, that's really, those are the three things we're focused on right now for the next year or two. Those are the things that we need to focus on and get right. And then we move on to some of the other things in the plan.

I see. Okay. And just things that sort of remind me of having RPI alum in high positions, Apple or these companies, sometimes you'll see job postings. I've seen this on Handshake sometimes, where it would be a job posting for a company, and it'll say you have to be of this specific school to apply. I don't think RPI has that to any real degree, any sort of relationship with the company saying we will specifically go out and hire X amount of RPI students for internship or full time or whatever. Is that something we're working on?

It is, so that's a conversation both with Arch but also just full-time employment saying, know, why don't you target to get a certain number of our students in? A lot of companies are reluctant to be held to a particular number because they worry, well, what if it's a slow economy and we can't hire that much? But we want to make sure that RPI is on these companies' radar. Particularly in companies where we have substantial alumni engagement, making sure that those alumni are talking to the HR function at the university or at the company and say, hey, you know. And a lot of times it's interesting. Boeing is an interesting example. I visited Boeing my first year here and they have systematized it. So they have a hierarchy that if you just come into Boeing from RPI, then you're put in this team and you have a role in cultivating the relationship between RPI and Boeing. And it goes all the way up to there's a senior officer inside Boeing who manages that whole team, whose sort of side hustle-

So all the RPI alum-?

Yeah, yeah, and everyone has a specific task. So you folks, you're the ones that go out to campus and do the interviews. So there's a whole hierarchy that Boeing has for how they take the alumni from institutions that they'd like to recruit from and have them manage the relationship.

And there's specific companies that you're like in those talks for, for those like, I'd say specific positions, like, one of those companies.

Well, so one of the things we've done is, you know, we created the Office of Strategic Alliances and Translation and part of that is we've created a program where companies will make a modest contribution to RPI so that we can get them to come to campus and then it's a conversation about, well, do you want to sponsor research? Are you looking for interns? Are you interviewing full time? So we’re doing things like that.

And then the other bit that was in the five-year plan that came to me was improving technology. I think despite being a sort of STEM school, some of the technological aspects are very updated. I think SIS is probably the biggest, almost student-facing one that you have to deal with. Are there any sort of short-term long-term plans to upgrade the tech that we're using, what are they?

Yeah, so one of the things we're doing is, the way things have been organized to this point, we had what's called .cio. And what we did is we moved research computing into one of the research centers, into the Future Computing Institute. So we're taking the supercomputer, the quantum computer, and the people that are supporting that and putting that in a research center. That leaves behind basically what I call enterprise computing. And so, John Kolb, who had headed .cio, has agreed to help build up the focus, the fture computing institute, so we have a vacancy. Andrew White's assuming the interim role, but we brought in a consultant and we're going to do a mapping of what enterprise software do we need to bring in to, know, whether or not it's a CRM, whether or not it's a new learning management system and so on and prioritize those.

So there's no plans right now to replace SIS or LMS or anything like that?

No, but there's plans to look at – we're building a plan. I mean you have to figure out how you want to prioritize this and everything. So that's where the consultant's going to be very helpful for us in terms of showing what path we should take and how to do it.

Going back to Rensselaer at Work, because I think part of why you're pushing for it is to at least diversify RPI’s revenue stream at least a little bit. So you sold off the Hartford campus actually, sort of quietly I guess. I found out about it in the audit that gets released. So I guess what was the reason for getting rid of the campus entirely?

Nobody's using it. I mean it was an eight-story building in downtown Hartford that in the peak of Rensselaer work which was probably around 2000, interestingly enough there were about 2000 people that would go into that building every night and weekend. If you went in, it's eight stories, some large lecture halls, some smaller lecture halls. It was a very vibrant campus. Not anymore, because all that stuff's gone online. So the physical presence wasn't really that critical, and there was really no need to hold onto a building that was empty. And in the meantime, Hartford had built a minor league baseball park across the street. So that section of downtown Hartford was going through a revitalization. So the timing to sell it made sense as well.

And the plans for Rensselaer at Work, obviously it's digital. When you sold the Hartford campus, did you have to lay off any staff because of that?

No.

Because it's all virtual, you could retain most of the staff.

Yeah.

How many staff run?

I'm not going to hazard a guess. We have some core staff and then a lot of the lecturing and teaching is done by sort of adjunct people. Often we like to hire people who are practicing the discipline that they're teaching and so it's a mix of part-time people that help with the teaching and then there's the core staff. I can't say that I know the exact head count, but it's not 100, and it's not two.

And how many students are in the program right now?

I think we’re enrolling about 400, maybe 400 a year or something.

And what's the target at least in next three four years?

Too early to tell.

So you're just kind of seeing how things go?

Yeah we're scaling up. We're doing something with Westchester County to try and offer courses that students that complete an associate's degree in community college can continue their education and doing it in almost like a certificate model so you can get supply chain or data analytics or whatever. And so we're working, our intention is to work with the community colleges to say, you know, we can provide a path to further education for students that get the associate, associate degree in engineering science.

I guess more general stuff. The fiscal year ends July 1st, or June 30th, technically. Anything major happening between now and then? Beyond commencement.

Yeah. Well, no, I mean, I think it's obviously a lot of focus on the three things I just talked about, right? So with respect to alumni engagement, we're spending a lot of time, I'll be spending a lot of time on the road, working with alumni but also will be doing a bunch of cities where we're talking about the campaign. Obviously the enrollment management is going to be a big focus because as soon as we figure out where we're at on May 1 with admits, we're working the transfers, we're working on 2030s class, so a lot of intention going around there. And then on the sponsored research front, going to be trying to push a lot of proposals out to the government and then also look for some opportunities from industry.

And then end of year, what are the main goals beyond what you've already said? Or is that just the main thing you're focusing on?

End of calendar year?

Yeah.

Just focus on those three priorities.

And then I guess one of the other sort of major parts that our colleges are having to deal with is AI and how to use that. Another professor has been working on this AI policy for some, a very long time, and her general guidance to professors was, you know, put it in the syllabus and you figure out the best way that you think it should be used. I think, I guess, what is the RPS sort of broad view of AI and how it should be used, like, specifically?

Yeah, well, mean, there's one question you could ask, which is what's the policy around AI and coursework? I think that's, I'll let the provost weigh in on that. But I think the general point is, and I just was in a meeting this morning with a bunch of university presidents about this topic, which is that I think actually we all need to be thinking about how can we use AI to make our job better?Or to make our work easier. I think it requires kind of an intention to it, right, which is to actually sit there and say, you know, how can I use AI? And then we start trying a few things. But I think every job done here at the university can be enhanced through the use of AI. And so that's what we have to do. But, you know, I learned of something that's called a 30- day sprint where you can take 15 minutes of every day and do an AI exercise and sort of start thinking, how can I do this task using AI as an assistant. And I think by the end of the 30 days, the people that I was talking to this morning said, you know, I'm now doing it quite routinely. But I think it's also developing a mindset that says can AI help me do this job? Do you use AI yourself?

I have started using it more for talking –I liked it when I give speeches. Most of the time I just do talking points. And I have someone who really helps me with speech writing, but I've also started to use ChatGPT where I'll just give it a bunch of information and say, give me a five minute speech about this and then I'll edit it heavily, but it helps.

And beyond speech writing, like the other employees in the President’s office, how have they been using it?

I don't know.

You don't know?

Yeah, we're just getting started.

Cost is obviously the big, specifically tuition costs, obviously a problem. Is there a meaningful way in which you can see that base tuition price actually go down?

Fundraising. Yeah, I think this is what we have to get to. The kind of education we deliver is expensive. It's high touch in terms of the faculty-staff ratio to students, the equipment, the labs, things like that. So it's hard to work the expense side. So if we can temper the growth by bringing in more support, and that's why that'll be a big priority for the campaign.

The other question is actually, I was looking back at our previously asked question list that we asked last year. And one of the things there was the library being open for 24 hours. Will that ever happen or will we have extended library hours? Because the only time we get extended hours is during the final season. Like will we see that more throughout the semester like 2 a.m. or something like that?

Yeah, I don't know what the plans are right now. We definitely do what we did in the past in terms of opening up around the final exam period. But this came up in the meetings I've had with student leaders in the past, the desirability of keeping the libraries open longer. So it's definitely something I'd like to see us do. I don't know what the financials look like in terms of what we had to do to make that happen.

GM Week happened two weeks ago. Have you met with the new Grand Marshal?

Yeah. Okay. Well, I saw him during the student day, but I'd met him before.

I believe that you meet with student leaders somewhat regularly. Have you had that meeting with him running it?

So last week was when we do the monthly meetings. It's the student leadership at the undergraduate level and then the graduate level. Last week I had to go out of town early so I wasn't in the meeting but the provost was.

I think that's it.

Okay. Yeah.

Thank you so much.