With the new undergraduate program in mechanical engineering at SUNY New Paltz attracting an enrollment of 69 majors last fall and 84 in the spring semester of the current academic year, the local college continues to accelerate its efforts to strengthen its science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) competencies. The numbers of students in mechanical engineering are in addition to the 179 other enrolled undergraduate engineering students (107 in electrical engineering, 57 in computer engineering and 15 undeclared students in pre-engineering). The 2016 total more than triples the 81 undergraduate engineering majors enrolled only eight years ago.
Undergraduate students in kindred majors such as computer science (140), mathematics (65) and physics (51) are also increasing in number. The other physical sciences — biology (324), geology (73) and chemistry, biochemistry and geochemistry (116) — also add substantially to total growth.
Between spring of last year and this spring, the total number of graduate and undergraduate students in the School of Science and Engineering increased by 75. In that academic year, enrollment in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences went up by six, in the School of Business by twelve, and in the School of Fine & Performing Arts by a single student. The School of Education lost 57 students.
The total number of undergraduates at New Paltz has remained fairly stable. According to the SUNY website, it is 6501 in the current spring semester.
With more undergraduates declaring majors than did so eight years ago, enrollments in the liberal arts and business programs have also been increasing, though less dramatically than those in the natural sciences. The number of students in the fine and performing arts has declined slightly in that period, and enrollment of undergraduates in education has been dropping sharply in recent years.
Despite a large number of other important changes on the New Paltz campus, the recent focus on scientific subjects may prove the most important development of the past decade for this public university. Beyond bricks and mortar, it may become a major influence on the growth of the stock of human capital in the mid-Hudson region.
It’s a big bet. Is it a good one?
Aspirations for the School of Science and Engineering go beyond the modest. “We aspire to become the best school of science and engineering at a comprehensive college in the United States,” declares its website.
“That is our aspiration, but it’s important to recognize what it means to be a science and engineering school at a comprehensive college,” says science and engineering dean Dan Freedman. “We view our main role as service in terms of educating undergraduate students and providing expertise and equipment to businesses in the region, as we have done with 3D printing.”
Such an aspiration costs big money. The new science building at the corner of Route 32 and Mohonk Avenue on the northeast part of the campus, expected to be completed prior to its scheduled January 2017 date, is budgeted to cost $48 million. There is no final cost estimate or final design yet for the new Engineering Innovation Hub near the Resnick Building, scheduled optimistically for completion in the fall of 2019. That structure, which will “address a critical shortage in engineers needed to serve advanced manufacturing interests in the region,” will include a 20,000-square-foot building to house state-of-the-art 3-D printing equipment.
Renovations at the Wooster Science Building, just completed, were scheduled to cost $37 million. The only science and engineering part of it, according to Freedman, is the 5000 square feet of “amazing undergraduate teaching labs.” The investment in science and engineering, the dean contends, is on about the same scale as recent renovations in other buildings for other subjects.
In welcoming the upstate venture capital group UVANY last Thursday evening, SUNY New Paltz president Donald Christian, himself a scientist by background but a staunch supporter of the liberal arts, talked of the importance of events of “community engagement” for the college. He is hoping an improved connection among various support elements in the Hudson Valley will boost innovation. The most recent generation of New Paltz college students have included relatively few future entrepreneurs. Will a greater STEM bent on the part of the school produce more?
Dan Freedman cautions against unrealistic expectations. Most New Paltz engineering graduates will be happy to find work in the new manufacturing sector or in software or consulting, he says, where digital technologies and transformational systems require a highly trained and knowledgeable workforce.
At their age and training, few of this generation’s grads are instinctual entrepreneurs, though Freedman credits them with more “entrepreneurial spirit” than their predecessors might have had. Very few will use their skills to invent disruptive new apps, the unconditional pursuit of which will put their devisers’ futures at risk.
Just back from a conference on the West Coast, Freedman cited figures of what a venture-capital firm was investing in. The vast majority of entrepreneurs, the Silicon Valley veteran told his audience, were experienced engineers at large companies, repeat entrepreneurs, etc. Fewer than 20 percent were in their twenties, the venture-firm manager said, and that number was falling as the social-media boom seems to be past its peak. A successful business in a tech area generally requires some experience.
Freedman says that the count of manufacturers, inventors and schemers who have come to his school for solutions to fabrication, design and art problems now exceeds 150. It wouldn’t be entirely surprising if some of these ideas turned out to have merit, and a subset of those would lead to the formation of value-creating new enterprises.
“The manufacturing companies that I’m familiar with in the Hudson Valley that seem healthy specialize in making hard-to-manufacture, semi-custom products,” explained the science dean. “To stay successful in this space requires an entrepreneurial mindset. For New Paltz to be a driver in the local economy, we need to be able to graduate students who think this way.”
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