The University of Miami College of Engineering and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have forged a partnership of sorts in the person of Dr. James M. Tien, a soft-spoken scholar whose mission as dean at UM engineering is loud and clear: take UM to the next level.
“The school to me was just ready to go to the next level,” said Mr. Tien, who received his doctoral degree from the prestigious Massachusetts school. And that next level is the American Association of Universities.
“They tend to be the top colleges, research universities in the nation,” he said. “We’ve kind of impacted the culture here. Our whole focus now is on research at the PhD level, so this is value added knowledge rather than just an avocation of knowledge.”
Into the future, “My vision is more of the same, focus, focus, focus and collaborate,” Mr. Tien said. “We’re too small not to collaborate and that’s where I think our bio-medical has grown because we have close collaboration with the medical school and now we’re starting to collaborate also with RSMA, which is the Rosenstiel Marine and Atmospheric Science.”
Dr. Tien talked about the College of Engineering and his tenure at the school at the UM campus with Miami Today reporter Lou Ortiz.