Oct. 31, 2008 

U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings to Speak at NYIT's Abu Dhabi Campus

New York, N.Y., Oct. 31, 2008: New York Institute of Technology (NYIT) has announced that U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings will visit its Abu Dhabi (U.A.E.) campus on Monday, Nov. 3 at 3 p.m. (6 a.m. EST). During her visit, Secretary Spellings will speak to NYIT-Abu Dhabi students, faculty, and staff, as well as invited guests from the business, educational, and government sectors.

Secretary Spellings is the first speaker in NYIT's ongoing Presidential Lecture Series to present at a venue outside of the United States. She joins a roster of distinguished leaders from business, government, and academic communities who have participated in the NYIT series. Past speakers have included Microsoft's Bill Gates and AOL's former CEO Jonathan Miller.

"We are honored to welcome Secretary Spellings to our campus to share her views about the global knowledge economy," said NYIT President Edward Guiliano. "She has spoken passionately about the importance of delivering higher education around the world, and NYIT's global programs are helping to fulfill that need as we set new standards and erase borders."

During her tenure, Secretary Spellings has spearheaded efforts to make education more innovative and responsive and has advocated improving accessibility, affordability, and accountability. Focusing on global collaboration and the utilization of technology to empower students, Spellings told attendees at the UNESCO Education Leaders Forum in July: "It's time to get out of comfort zone, to throw open the gates of academia and start collaborating with others to make things better."

"Schools like NYIT provide opportunities for greater access to higher education via its worldwide campuses," Secretary Spellings said. "I look forward to meeting the faculty and students at NYIT-Abu Dhabi, and seeing firsthand how these efforts are flourishing."

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.

The Secretary's visit will include a campus tour and a dinner with President Guiliano and His Excellency Sheikh Nahayan Mabarak Al Nahayan, the Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research in the United Arab Emirates.

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 at 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. For more information, visit www.nyit.edu.

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