Andrea Goldsmith - President of State University of New York at Stony Brook

Andrea Goldsmith - President of State University of New York at Stony Brook

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, everyone.

Speaker 2 (00:00):
This is Steve D'Alessandro. Welcome to this week's edition of
CEO's You Should Know. I'm thrilled to be joined by
Andrea Goldsmith, the president of State University of New York
at Stony Brook.

Speaker 1 (00:09):
Andrea, thanks for being here today. Delighted to be here.
Thanks so much for having me.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
We're excited to jump in to learn more about you
and learn more about Stony Brook as well. So why
don't we kick it off for our listeners that might
be meeting you for the first time. Can you share
your career story? I know that you've been an engineer, researcher,
an entrepreneur, and now president of the university.

Speaker 1 (00:28):
Absolutely. It's been a long and winding journey, very fulfilling.
So I did all my degrees at UC Berkeley, a
great public university on the other coast. Wasn't sure I
was going to be an engineer, kind of ended up
there because I thought it'd be a good foundation for
whatever I did next. I finished my undergraduate degree in

(00:49):
1986 and worked in Silicon Valley at a startup in
wireless communication in the mid 80s. This was a very
different time in Silicon Valley than Many companies were going under.
There wasn't a lot of funding. So I saw Silicon
Valley not during the boom times but during the bust times,
decided I fell in love with wireless communication, wanted to
learn more, went back for a master's, ultimately a PhD.

(01:12):
And then I had a choice of going into industry
at a very booming time for wireless communication in 1994.
I had job offers from Qualcomm and other big companies,
AT & T Bell Laboratories. and academic jobs. And I
ended up deciding my heart was in the university. So
I went and started my career at Caltech, moved from
Caltech to Stanford during the height of the bubble. So

(01:35):
I arrived at Stanford in 1999. Crazy times when, you know,
companies that had no ideas and nothing valuable were getting,
you know, massive valuations. I didn't think it made any sense.
And then everything crashed two years later in 2002. So
I was in Silicon Valley during the boom and the
bust of the dot-com. Stayed at Stanford for 21 magical years.

(01:58):
I started two companies while I was at Stanford. One,
Quantana Communication, which went public on the NASDAQ. I got
to ring the bell on the NASDAQ. And the second
company is still private, both in wireless communication. Chip Company
was the first one, and the second one was software
in the cloud to manage Wi-Fi access points. And then

(02:18):
after 21 years at Stanford, I retired, but didn't really retire.
I became dean of engineering at Princeton University. So that's
what brought me east. And I moved from being a
faculty member, researcher, teacher, which I loved, to academic leadership
because I thought I could have a bigger impact in

(02:38):
that role. So I was at Princeton for five years.
And then I had the incredible opportunity to join Stony
Brook as its seventh president. And that's where I am now. Congratulations.

Speaker 2 (02:50):
What an impressive journey and background. So I have to ask,
what influenced the decision of sort of staying in that
innovative technology space to take that leap into the academia space?
And what were some of the lessons you learned during
that transition?

Speaker 1 (03:04):
Because I made that jump many times. I did it
from undergraduate going into a startup and then back to academia.
That time I did it Because I realized I didn't
know enough to have the impact on the wireless communication
revolution that I saw coming. I was working with people

(03:26):
that had doctoral degrees and they approached problems differently. So
I went back to the university to learn more. When
I started my company, which was 2005, so just a
couple years after the bust of the dot-com, a fabulous
chip company, we needed millions and millions of dollars to
build our first chip. very risky endeavor. And I did

(03:47):
that because I wanted to see if the 20 years
that I had spent doing research in wireless communication actually
mattered in practice. Could I take the ideas that I
built up through my research and build a chip that
would be better than any other chip because of the research?
And that's what my company, Quantena, did. We had the

(04:08):
highest performing Wi-Fi for over a decade based on the
research that I'd done. So that's why I went off
to do the startups But my heart was always in
the university. So I went back to the university. And
now at Stony Brook, we have the opportunity to turn
Long Island into Silicon Island to make it a catalyst
for entrepreneurship and innovation, similar to what I saw at Stanford.

(04:32):
So that's one of the things about Stony Brook University
that attracted me as an entrepreneur.

Speaker 2 (04:38):
I know we just talked about this a little bit,
but obviously you started your career turning research into real-world impact,
like you fostered. How have you taken that same mindset
of culture, of innovation and entrepreneurship now to Stony Brook?

Speaker 1 (04:51):
So one of the things that I love about Stony
Brook that I've been really inspired by is it's a
very young university. Many universities, I mean, I was at Princeton,
which is one of the oldest ones in the country.
Stanford and Berkeley started around the time California started. Stony
Brook University and the State University of New York system

(05:13):
is one of the youngest public universities university systems in
the country. Stony Brook is only 70 years old and
the system is only 80 years old. So as startups go,
I would say that the State University of New York
system is a startup public education system and Stony Brook
is a startup university. We have a relatively short history

(05:34):
and we're also very entrepreneurial and bold and ambitious because
we're young and We've come a long way. We have
tremendous momentum over the 70 years. We're the number one
public university in the state. My goal is to make
us the number one public university in the country. We
have every opportunity to do that through a bold, ambitious,
and entrepreneurial approach to public higher education. At this time

(05:59):
of disruption in higher education, one of the things I've
learned as an entrepreneur is, is that times of disruption
are times of opportunity.

Speaker 2 (06:07):
Absolutely.

Speaker 1 (06:07):
This disruption in higher education is Stony Brook's opportunity to
be bold and leapfrog other universities that are not quite
as bold as us, not quite as young and ambitious
as we are. So Stony Brook really has the entrepreneurial mindset,
which is a lot of what attracted me to lead it.
I love that.

Speaker 2 (06:24):
And speaking of being bold, I know Stony Brook has
world-class research. They have a high academic medical center. They
have partnerships with different laboratories and more. How do those
unique strengths really help create opportunities for students that they
wouldn't get at another university?

Speaker 1 (06:40):
We are, of all the universities that I've been part of,
Stony Brook is the only one that is way better
than its reputation. And I think all of the things
that you listed are things that many people around the
country don't know about. So our hospital is one of
the top 50 in the country. It is one of
the top 10 in the state of New York. Our

(07:02):
children's hospital is the number one pediatric care hospital in
the state. People don't know that. Our faculty discovered the
hole in the ozone, discovered MRI, discovered the origin of
the human species in our center in Turkana Basin in Kenya.
So we have so much excellence spanning health care, education.

(07:26):
Our tuition is $ 7, 000 a year for in-state students. That's incredible.
We're one of the best universities in the country for
upward mobility. 40% of our students are the first in
their family to go to college. And when they graduate
from Stony Brook, they have the opportunity to be in
the top 20% of income earners. So we have excellence
across the board. And I think what's unusual about that,

(07:50):
not so many universities have both an outstanding medical center,
medical school, outstanding engineering, outstanding science. And so bringing those
together is a unique opportunity that we have at Stony Brook,
which I saw the same thing at Stanford. Stanford had
the medical school right across the street from engineering. And
we know that the intersection of technology and medicine is

(08:10):
really growing. So that's one area of excellence for us.
On the research side, the governor, great Kathy Hochul, just
invested $ 300 million in Stony Brook University because of our
leadership in quantum communication. We built the first Quantum Information Network.
It's spanning Long Island, running into New York City to

(08:31):
send quantum bits. So these are just some examples of
our excellence across all of these areas. And what that
offers to students and our faculty and our staff is
a unique combination of excellence that spans different disciplines that
you can bring together to expand the boundaries of knowledge

(08:52):
at the intersection of disciplines and also an amazing culture.
that is warm and supportive and inspirational because of our students.
I just find Stony Brook to be the most special
university that I've been part of because of all those ingredients.
Excellence at scale, significant impact, and a culture where our

(09:15):
students are grateful to be there, our faculty are grateful
to be there, and we feel like a family that's
working together to propel the university forward. Sounds like a
great place to be.

Speaker 2 (09:25):
It is.

Speaker 1 (09:26):
It's wonderful.

Speaker 2 (09:26):
So I know that we chatted through some of the
advantages of Stony Brook, right, and the long-term goal. What
does success really look like for you in the next
five years, though?

Speaker 1 (09:35):
So I have a bold strategic vision for Stony Brook
that we developed together collectively. in a very collaborative process
over the last year that I've been president. Success in
five years looks like hitting many milestones towards reaching that
North Star for Stony Brook University. So the aspirational goals

(09:56):
fall under the acronym ASPIRE. So A is accelerating our
excellence and impact in the research that we do, expanding
the frontiers of knowledge with Stony Brook at the center.
S is setting the standard for higher education. We are
already an outstanding education university, but how do we reach
more students? How do we have more students graduate on

(10:16):
time and without debt How do we educate them in
an era of AI and other disruption to be not
only citizens of the world, but also contribute maximally to
the organizations that they're part of? P is propelling Stony
Brook to global recognition. I want the world to look

(10:36):
to Stony Brook to solve the most important challenges facing humanity.
So I want us to be in the same conversation
as Harvard and Stanford and MIT and other top universities.
I is igniting Long Island, which I call Silicon Island,
through regional prosperity, which includes innovation, entrepreneurship, but also building
a new hospital in our Southampton campus, creating prosperity and

(11:01):
workforce development and great jobs for people across Long Island.
R is reimagining healthcare, medicine, and wellness so that you
don't just go to a doctor when you're sick. You
stay healthy through the healthcare that we provide. And we
also want to make sure that everyone in our region
can navigate the challenges of getting health care. We go

(11:23):
to them. We actually have a mobile dental clinic, a
mobile stroke unit, so that you don't even need to
leave your home when you're having a medical emergency or
just to get standard care. And then E is really
enabling the foundations of our success through our people, our policies,
our programs, and also raising the funding that we need
to achieve this incredibly bold and exciting vision.

Speaker 2 (11:46):
I have no doubt you'll exceed that. One of the
probably the most important things students look for in a
university is a place that helps them prepare for the
workforce and makes them career ready. What does Stony Brook
really do to help prepare students for careers and industries
that are rapidly changing? We talked a lot about innovation
and technology and AI. So how is Stony Brook really

(12:09):
getting these students ready for the job placements?

Speaker 1 (12:12):
It's a very interesting time in higher education for many reasons.
I mentioned there's disruption. There's questions about what is the
value of higher education? Why should anybody go to college?
Does a college degree give you a job that pays
better than a high school degree? How should we be
thinking about teaching our students in an era of AI?

(12:32):
So these are all things that we're thinking about, and
they go back to that setting the standard for higher
education today. When I think about how AI can influence
the way we educate our students, there's two sides to
it in my mind. The first one is every one
of our students, regardless of what they major in, needs

(12:53):
to understand how to use AI as a tool, not
a crutch. There's a lot of hype about AI and
is it going to replace all jobs and human beings
in general? I don't believe that. I'm a technologist. I've
written books on AI in my field, so I understand
AI well enough to know it's a very powerful tool.
It will be transformative in the same way and maybe

(13:14):
even more so than the Internet was transformative and my
field of wireless was transformative. But the way it's going
to be transformative is coupling it with human knowledge and
uniquely human skills like creativity and collaboration and innovation and
domain knowledge to be able to ask the right questions
and understand if the answers are the right answers. We

(13:35):
need to train every single one of our students in
every major to know how to use A.I., so that
they will be the most valuable workers in the workforce.
The other way that we can use AI in education
is to enhance the way we educate our students. How
do we understand which students are kind of falling off track?
What knowledge do they lack? I mean, many of our

(13:56):
students come in, they don't go to the best high schools,
and so they have gaps in their knowledge. They're very capable.
They're first gen, so they don't have family members that
can help them fill in those gaps. AI can help
us figure out Is this student struggling? What are they
struggling with? What resources do they need, whether they're AI
resources or human resources? There's no replacement for human intervention

(14:19):
and interaction. So I think that that is the way
for us to use AI. I love it.

Speaker 2 (14:24):
Speaking of you, obviously we started off the interview talking
about your career and your background. And I know that
throughout your career, you've broken different barriers, including becoming one
of the first women to receive the Marconi Prize.

Speaker 1 (14:36):
The first woman.

Speaker 2 (14:36):
First woman.

Speaker 1 (14:37):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (14:37):
Congrats.

Speaker 1 (14:38):
Thank you.

Speaker 2 (14:38):
What advice would you have for young people, especially women
or underserved students that are tuning in that want to
get a career in STEM or they want to get
a career in a leadership position?

Speaker 1 (14:50):
It's a really great question. And I reflect back on
my first year at Berkeley. when I wanted to study engineering,
but I was unprepared because I'd left high school early.
I didn't have any of the background classes. I was
also working full-time because I wanted to pay my own
way through college so my parents would not influence what
I could do. And I really struggled that first year.

(15:10):
And as one of the only women in my engineering classes,
nobody thought I belonged there, except my dad, who was
a professor of mechanical engineering. He thought I belonged. And
I realized through that year that, It was really hard,
but I wasn't going to listen to what anybody else thought.
I was going to persevere and decide on my own

(15:32):
if I should stay in engineering. And of course I did,
and I've had an amazing career. But when I reflect
back on that and I think about diverse people coming
into STEM or other fields where they're underrepresented, they face, sadly,
the same struggles that I did in the early 80s
of if they're struggling, people think they don't belong. If
you're not diverse and you're struggling, and I've seen this

(15:52):
as a professor for decades— They don't worry about the
fact that they're struggling. They think the teacher's bad or
the material's stupid. But it's the diverse people because you
don't see people that look like you. You wonder, do
I belong here? And so my message to young people,
especially diverse people and women who think they want a
STEM career, is that diversity is about excellence. And what

(16:14):
I've seen in my universities, in my startups, and I
sit on several corporate boards, is that Having diverse people
with diverse ideas and diverse experiences around the table to
solve problems, whether it's an engineering problem or a financial
problem or another problem, is about excellence. It leads to
better outcomes. It leads to better satisfaction. And so for

(16:36):
those young people, I would say STEM needs you. We
need your ideas. We need your experiences. Don't worry if
you struggle. We all struggle. I've overcome struggles. I got
an F in calculus and in physics, and I've taught
at great universities, and I'm the leader of a great university.
I was rejected from Stanford for graduate school, and then

(16:57):
I ended up teaching there several years later. And so
if you encounter barriers, especially as a diverse STEM aspirational student,
know that everybody struggles. Find mentors, find supporters, and just
know that the profession needs your experiences and your diverse perspectives,

(17:17):
and you will be in a profession that's incredibly rewarding
if you stick with it.

Speaker 2 (17:22):
I love that.

Speaker 1 (17:22):
Great advice.

Speaker 2 (17:24):
If you could leave listeners with one message about the
value of higher education and why institutions like Stony Brook
matter to our communities and their future, what would that be?

Speaker 1 (17:33):
Public universities, universities in general, but public universities especially, are
all about educating the whole person, and preparing them not
just for their first job, but for their personal and
professional success over the course of their lives. So the
notion that you look at education, especially undergraduate education, as

(17:57):
a ticket to a job is really missing, whether you're
in the university or outside the university, what universities are
all about on the education side, which is really preparing
young people for their professional interactions, their personal interactions, to
be open to lifelong learning, to have the resilience and
the human skills to thrive in whatever job they do.

(18:21):
On the research front, public and private universities have maintained
American leadership in science and technology and the humanities and
the arts since the foundation of this country. There is
no substitute for the research that happens in universities in
this country. It is why we have the national prosperity

(18:43):
and security that we have enjoyed since our founding. On
the healthcare side, for universities that contribute to healthcare and
have medical schools and medical research, the breakthroughs in cancer,
in healthy aging of the brain, in every disease, so
many of those have happened through universities. So universities, I believe,

(19:04):
and the reason I've stayed in universities my whole career
is because we are educating people the future leaders and
citizens of this country. We are keeping our country at
the forefront of innovation in every area. And we create
the fabric that has made America special throughout its last
250 years.

Speaker 2 (19:26):
As students are deciding what college or university to attend,
why should they choose Stony Brook?

Speaker 1 (19:31):
Stony Brook offers an incredible education, but also an incredible
culture and experience. I'm out there talking to our students
all the time, and I ask them, you know, what
could we do better? What should Stony Brook do to
make your experience better? And you know young people. are honest, right?
And they tell me nothing. I love it here. I

(19:55):
found my place here. I found my people here. My
faculty care deeply about me. I have research opportunities. So
for all the young people listening to this program and
their parents, just take a look at Stony Brook. It's
the best university that nobody's heard of. And it doesn't
take much to apply. And you might find that of

(20:16):
all the universities that you get into or that your
child gets into, Stony Brook is the best one. So
just take a look at us. I love that.

Speaker 2 (20:25):
Well, we covered a lot. Yes. But if there was
one last message you want our listeners to know about
your mission, what would that be?

Speaker 1 (20:34):
Stony Brook University is the most inspirational university I've seen
around the country. Please find out more about us and
tell our story because we will be one of the
top universities in the country in about 10 years.

Speaker 2 (20:50):
So you should know about Stony Brook University. And if
someone wanted to learn more, what should they do?

Speaker 1 (20:54):
Just go to the website. We have so much exciting
information on our website. They can reach out to me directly,
president at stonybrook.edu.

Speaker 2 (21:03):
Amazing. Well, I've heard nothing but great things. One of
my friend's son is going to be going there. So
she's thrilled that he chose Stony Brook.

Speaker 1 (21:10):
That's great. I should give you a pen also.

Speaker 2 (21:12):
But we are excited to have you here to have
all of our listeners learn more about Stony Brook and
more about you. So, Andrea, thank you so much for
sharing your story, inspiration and teaching our listeners more.

Speaker 1 (21:22):
Thank you so much.