Conversation with Teik C. Lim
Teik C. Lim, a mechanical engineer, inventor, prolific scholar and exuberant academic administrator who recently steered the University of Texas at Arlington (UTA) through the COVID-19 pandemic as interim president, notching a milestone in student graduation rates and research acclaim along the way, became NJIT’s ninth president on July 1.
Lim takes an innovator’s approach to education. He vows to strengthen student success with more experiential, problem-focused academic programming, a heightened emphasis on power skills such as communication and collaboration on extended, multidisciplinary projects, and new opportunities to work directly with businesses via co-ops, internships and through the use of shared resources. He is committed to expanding and diversifying digital teaching methods and other effective modes of delivery developed during the pandemic, in part to free up time and space for more hands-on learning and research. He has championed system-wide tools, such predictive analytics, time-management coaching, peer and other free tutoring, and supplemental instruction in classrooms to keep students on track to graduation.
A researcher who has devised novel methods to control sound and vibrations in vehicles, beginning in private industry after earning his Ph.D. at The Ohio State University, Lim holds numerous patents and is a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI). UTA, an R1 research university under the Carnegie Classification® with the greatest number of NAI fellows in the state, received yet another accolade during the pandemic: the coveted “Texas Tier One” designation for learning and research that is held by just three other universities in the state.
Throughout his academic career, Lim has forged powerful relationships with regional companies that provide students with the chance to conduct applied research and on-the-job work training. The campus-based simulation center he created in 2008 as Dean of the College of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Cincinnati in partnership with Procter & Gamble grew into one of the largest interdisciplinary university-industry research centers on campus, and has been replicated several times around the world. In the following interview, Lim discusses his career, his plans for NJIT and his thoughts about the future of higher education.
Q: What sparked your interest in engineering?
A: Growing up in Malaysia, I attended a science school and many of my peers aspired to be either a doctor or an engineer. I wanted to be a pilot. I was told that one must first enlist in the Air Force, so I wanted to skip college and join the military to be a pilot. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, because it would have changed the trajectory of my life, I did not have 20-20 eyesight, which was the requirement back then to be a military pilot. I was very good at math and science, and I thought perhaps, as an engineer, I could design an airplane for others to pilot.
Q: What area of engineering did you pursue?
A: I was always fascinated with machines, such as automobiles and aircrafts. While pursuing my undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering at Michigan Tech, I met several excellent professors who got me really interested in structural acoustics and vibrations. My doctoral dissertation, funded by NASA, was a fundamental study about the vibratory behaviors of rotorcraft gearboxes. My first engineering job combined my interest in vibro-acoustics and motor vehicles, and I got to work on making automobiles more pleasant and joyful to ride in from a vibration and sound quality perspective.
Q: What invention are you most proud of?
A: My students and I developed a patented active noise control algorithm that can perform spectral shaping to achieve a desired sound quality outcome. This algorithm is being applied in automobiles to enhance the interior sound quality. This research went on for nearly two decades involving many graduate students before it became feasible for use in real-world applications. The concept we invented now is used in some shape or form in many automobiles sold around the world.
Q: After a stint in industry, what drew you to higher education?
A: Public institutions like NJIT are a tremendous engine for social mobility and a beacon of life-changing opportunities. I experienced it firsthand. I grew up with limited means, supported myself through college and became the first member in my family to earn a college degree. This country took me in, accepted me and gave me a great public education, as well as a wonderful career and life. My way of giving back is to be involved in the higher education of young minds. That is why I became a professor. In fact, throughout my academic career, I put in a lot of effort into bridging student success and academic excellence. I help students use education as a pathway to personal success, and I teach students to understand that helping others succeed will in turn help them succeed.
Q: As a university leader, how do you assess students’ success?
A: NJIT is fundamentally a polytechnic public research university. Hence, our bread-and-butter programs are always going to be STEM-based, like engineering, science, computing and data analytics. However, we also want to provide a holistic education of the mind and heart so that we can equip students with both power and marketable skills, like the ability to communicate, articulate ideas, collaborate, to have empathy and grit — all great ingredients for success post-graduation. We want each student leaving here as the best version of herself or himself. Because students are our business, the most important metric is the impact of our graduates in their communities.
Q: How should NJIT prepare students to have a meaningful impact on their world?
A: We need to look at what the National Academy of Science, the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Medicine name as grand challenges, such as the environment, sustainable energy, the food supply and, following the pandemic, mental health, and push the curriculum to match up with them. I’d like to see courses that equip our students with the knowledge, the empathy and the skills to solve these grand challenges. They must equip students not just with technical skills, but with the understanding, for example, that they need to protect the environment so the environment can protect them.
Q: How do you support students’ success?
A: When I first arrived at UTA as the provost, one of my first initiatives was to form the Division of Student Success, which is now the largest unit under the Office of the Provost. This division’s sole goal is to ensure that the progression of each and every student toward graduation is as efficient as possible. The division runs the freshman student success course to equip students with effective learning skills, like time management, and offers free tutoring, supplemental instruction, holistic advising, academic coaching and many, many more support services. I believe, because of the efforts of this division, graduation rates and the conferral of degrees climbed to record levels. We also were able to attract more students from diverse backgrounds. To build upon this success, more recently, I created a new Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion to ensure that every student at UTA is welcomed, treated well and feels they belong, because those factors play a key role in student success.
Q: What role does research play in an NJIT education?
A: Research is the heartbeat of a vibrant, living and learning campus, and it should be ubiquitous and incorporated into every facet of students’ education. Research experience builds strong fundamentals of inquiry, discovery and scholarship necessary for effective lifelong learning habits. When I teach a class, I often challenge students with open-ended problems, so that they can think more creatively. That mind exercise can really sharpen one’s intellectual capacity. In fact, at every new faculty orientation, I reminded the faculty that they do scholarly research as part of their work on campus, first and foremost to educate students and secondarily to create new knowledge and publications. I’ll add that our research agenda must be responsive to the needs of the citizens of New Jersey and the nation. Not only do we need to support the goals of state and federal funding agencies, like the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, but we also need to listen to businesses and develop mutually beneficial private/public partnerships.
Q: How should NJIT amplify its research impact?
A: In the old days, innovation and entrepreneurship occurred almost by chance among university students and faculty. That limits equity, impact and opportunity. Today, we must make available opportunities with excellent, effective and deliberate programs that enhance individuals’ ability to innovate and invent, and then to be entrepreneurial about bringing the idea to market for the benefit of humanity.
Q: How has the pandemic changed our thinking about teaching and learning?
A: The pandemic did not change the course of higher education, but rather accelerated us into the future. The institution that embraces digital learning and teaching and research will flourish and those that don’t will be left behind. We need to invest in digital and physical infrastructure to support a continuous spectrum from 100% in-person learning to 100% online, with every modality in between. What we’re thinking about is a revolution similar to 3D printing, which would allow mass customization, though we haven’t arrived there yet. Like buying clothes measured for you in just your size, we could educate a lot of people with a customizable curriculum, because people learn differently and at a different pace. Once you do that, learning isn’t limited to just that 18-year-old coming to college, but it becomes accessible to professionals, grandparents or anybody who wants to learn, anywhere and anyplace, unconfined by space or time.
Q: How might new digital capabilities transform the curriculum?
A: Let’s take a straightforward three credit-hour course taught entirely in the classroom. In the future, I predict — and this will take some time to evolve — that course would become a combination of classroom learning and experiential learning opportunities. For example, students can spend 15 minutes below an oak tree listening to a lecture that is pre-recorded on the internet, and then maybe a half-hour in the classroom collaborating with their classmates — with a laptop in front of them, all hooked up — discussing course materials in person and in the digital world. Then they might spend another hour in the community collecting and analyzing data, and using their remaining time in the course to develop tangible solutions and apply what they just learned. The course would still amount to a three-credit-hour effort as before, but the modality would be very different from what it is today. Those rows of chairs and desks that you sit at in the lecture halls are going to be the chalk board, a thing of the past, eventually.
Q: What role should businesses play in an NJIT education?
A: In the old days, the college education of a student was mostly the responsibility of the faculty. Today, college education is becoming more holistic, complex and experiential, which requires stronger partnerships between institutions and industries to ensure student learning is more complete and effective. When I proposed working with Procter & Gamble to establish the University of Cincinnati Simulation Center, a college administrator said, “They only make diapers, nothing fancy.” When I talked to P&G, they said, “The university is not practical enough.” There are a lot of misconceptions on both sides. I discovered that making diapers is one of the most complex processes in the world and, at the same time, I also was able to convince P&G to recognize that universities have things they can use — we are innovative and we have intellectual capacity. One of the first collaborative projects in the Center was a mechanism intended to enhance the production line P&G had been working on for two years without much success. We put a student team together and within six months formulated a novel solution. These students had never seen the problem and were thinking outside of the box. That is innovation! I see corporations collaborating and engaging on the NJIT campus, which is great because not every university is willing to partner with industry and move at the speed of business. We need to do more of it, and having an entity like NJII is a difference-maker here that enables NJIT to be a better valued-added member of the business community. This is why I say NJIT is one of the most innovative and entrepreneurial institutions in the country.
Q: Besides providing real-world opportunities, how else can businesses enhance an NJIT education?
A: Here are two more ideas. One is sharing resources. A lot of companies have state-of-the-art experimental or production capability that they sometimes don’t use. Let’s say a student wants to perform a unique chemical analysis critical for a class research project. What if we don’t have that equipment or capability on campus? We can still teach the student with a computer program that simulates the lab, but the actual experiment is being done somewhere in Newark, for example, at a company that loaned time on that equipment to the university. We call that a digital twin. With digital learning, many things are possible. Second is encouraging relevant corporate employees to serve as mentors for our students. They can share their professional experience, lessons learned or simply give encouraging support. These simple acts can go a long way toward keeping students excited about staying in school and focused on finishing their studies. Also, these students are often better prepared for the workplace.
Q: What role do you see NJIT playing in the community?
A: As soon as I start at NJIT, I will focus on getting to know our external stakeholders. I want to connect with local, state and federal legislators, as well as civic leaders of Newark and New Jersey. I plan to meet with key corporate executives of companies that hire NJIT students and engage with NJIT in various projects. I will reach out to high schools and community colleges that feed students to NJIT and meet with presidents of other institutions in this region to introduce myself and set the stage for further collaborations in the future. It is important to me, and to NJIT, that we be at the table each and every time there is a discussion about education, the workforce and economic development, and that we be in the position to lead or contribute to major initiatives in this region.
Q: How can NJIT attract more women to fields such as engineering and computer science?
A: There are at least three things we need to do better, but this is a marathon, so it will take time. We need to explain better that engineering is not just about building vehicles or planes, but also about coming up with ideas where engineers and scientists can design, construct and implement systems that bring joy to living for humanity. I think the curriculum also needs to be enhanced to include more open-ended problem-solving exercises and then teach students the skills needed to find practical solutions. The second way is hiring more female professors, because women students need to see that there are trailblazers they can emulate. The third is more collaboration with middle and high schools. If you look at the outcomes data for being able to do an engineering curriculum successfully, it’s the same for males and females, but we need to begin outreach at a very early age to encourage female students to see themselves as a successful engineer or scientist when they grow up.
Q: Could NJIT be more diverse?
A: I am a strong believer that diversity is the hallmark of a successful and vibrant institution. We should intensify efforts to achieve the designation of being a Hispanic-serving institution, as well as an Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander-serving institution. We are close, but still need to attract higher percentages of under-represented minority students, including African American students. We must also recruit more excellent and diverse faculty and staff to work at NJIT so that our campus workforce better mirrors the diversity of our student body. As the first president of color at NJIT, it gives me a platform to further enhance NJIT’s diversity, equity and inclusion plans so that we make NJIT a truly welcoming and inclusive teaching and learning environment for all.
