Nov. 04, 2008 

U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings Visits NYIT's Abu Dhabi Campus

MEDIA ALERT: Photos and video of the event are available at www.nyit.edu/spellings

New York, N.Y., Nov. 4, 2008: Citing New York Institute of Technology as a "trailblazer" in higher education, U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings toured the NYIT-Abu Dhabi (U.A.E.) campus yesterday with NYIT President Edward Guiliano, and spoke to a group of 170 NYIT-Abu Dhabi students, faculty, and staff, as well as invited guests from the business, educational, and government sectors. Spellings told the audience that NYIT-Abu Dhabi students "are blessed with enormous opportunities: a world of information at your fingertips; an economy that moves as fast as you can think; a society that increasingly rewards effort and merit, and shuns discrimination and corruption …and an education that gives you the tools to improve your circumstances and the lives of those around you-a wonderful gift, a treasure." She encouraged the students to use their education to tackle environmental, medical, and economic challenges by "improving what exists-and creating what has never existed before."

Secretary Spellings, the first speaker in NYIT's ongoing Presidential Lecture Series to present at a venue outside of the United States, shared her views on how collaborative efforts among nations can improve education at all levels.

"The Secretary's plan of action for higher education targets improving educational accessibility, affordability, and accountability throughout the world. As part of this, she sees global collaboration and the utilization of technology as key to empowering students everywhere," said President Guiliano. "This is a vision that we at NYIT fully appreciate as we harness technology and our global reach to provide access to education here at our three campuses in the Middle East as well as our campuses in New York, Canada, and China." During her visit, Secretary Spellings was the guest of honor at a dinner hosted by President Guiliano and His Excellency Sheikh Nahayan Mabarak Al Nahayan, the Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research in the United Arab Emirates. Over the past decade, NYIT has expanded its degree-granting academic offerings outside the United States to provide opportunities for high-quality undergraduate and graduate education to students around the world and is acknowledged as a "leading globalizer" among American colleges and universities. Past Presidential Lecture Series participants include Microsoft's Bill Gates and AOL's Jonathan Miller.

About NYIT-Abu Dhabi
Since 2005, NYIT has been offering degree programs in the emirate of Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates. Just five minutes from the center of the capital and accessed easily from Dubai and Al Ain by road, the NYIT campus is located in the Center of Excellence for Applied Research and Training (CERT) Industrial Park. In 2007, NYIT became the first American university in the UAE licensed by the Ministry of Education and Scientific Research (it had previously secured operating approval from the Abu Dhabi Education Council). NYIT awards the same degree to students at the Abu Dhabi campus as its flagship campuses in New York. All classes are taught in English and are co-educational. NYIT's current offerings at its Abu Dhabi campus include undergraduate and graduate programs in business, interior design, fine arts, and computer science. With constant collaboration among continents, NYIT courses in Abu Dhabi are taught by New York faculty or full-time NYIT local professors who meet the same stringent standards of NYIT as those in the United States. NYIT also sponsors a faculty and staff speaker series at the Abu Dhabi campus. Recent presentations have focused on the topics of academic integrity, strategic planning, and global medical issues.

About NYIT
New York Institute of Technology (NYIT) offers undergraduate, graduate, and professional degrees in more than 100 fields of study, including architecture and interior design; arts and sciences; education; engineering and computing sciences; health professions, behavioral, and life sciences; management; and osteopathic medicine. A non-profit independent, private institution of higher education, NYIT has more than 15,000 students attending campuses in Long Island and Manhattan, online, and at campuses in the Middle East (Abu Dhabi, UAE; Amman, Jordan; Manama, Bahrain), China, and Canada. For more than 50 years, NYIT has been guided by its mission to provide career-oriented professional education, offer access to opportunity to all qualified students, and support applications-oriented research that benefits the larger world. To date, 77,000 students have graduated from NYIT.

Contact:
Marc Warner, Vice President, Communications and Marketing, NYIT, 212.261.1734 or marcw@nyit.edu