Meet Georgia Tech's Provost
By: Jennifer Herseim | Categories: Alumni Association News
“When I talk to alumni, they have this love for Georgia Tech, but it’s true of faculty, too,” McLaughlin says. “Georgia Tech has done for me what it does for students, and what it’s done for alums. It’s provided this incredible experience.”
Below, the Alumni Magazine spoke with McLaughlin about his plans as provost.
A: The problems we’re working on solving, we’ve never had to face before. We don’t know where the pandemic is going and we don’t know what the reactions of parents, students, and faculty will be. I’m an engineer, so I see all those as variables. The reassuring thing is we’re doing all that problem-solving in teams.
In terms of opportunities, I look at what we’ve done as an institution in the last nine months. We took 8,000 courses and moved them online. We built surveillance testing and created a rapid response program that resulted in more than 2 million face shields deployed. It really feels like we can accomplish anything we put our minds to. From a budget standpoint, you hear about big layoffs and challenges that other schools are facing. We’re in a difficult budget situation, but we are stable. We had the highest enrollment we’ve ever had. We’re going to come out of this really strong.
Q: What solutions do you expect will stick around after the pandemic?
A: One is the rapid response system that we developed to build face shields, respirators, and intubation boxes. That’s not traditional research nor education, but there’s this space where we have tons of wherewithal and do-with all. We’re talking about what it would look like in the future to have this type of rapid response available to meet community needs. The other aspect is online learning. I think we will be seeing more hybrid models of online and in-person in the future.
Q: This past year, we’ve seen renewed conversations around social injustice and racial inequalities. What are your plans to expand diversity, inclusion, and equity?
A: I was privileged to co-lead the steering committee for the new strategic plan. One of our six themes is around expanding access, and a component to that is having our student population look more like the community that we serve. Certainly, there will be priorities around continuing to grow our population of minority students and being able to fully support any student who can succeed at Tech.
Q: Where do you see Georgia Tech’s approach to academics heading?
A: Driven by our strategic planning and aligned with Creating The Next in Education, an effort started by my predecessor Dr. Rafael L. Bras, we’re certainly going to talk about experiential education. In disciplines like engineering and computing, that’s already embedded in what we do with hands-on projects, internships, coops, and makerspaces. A goal will be to make all academic programs incorporate experiential components. The other thing is around evidenced-based methods for education. Some of that will be problem-based learning and having much more engaging problem based methods for educating.
Q: During your time at Tech, you launched the Create-X Program. What does the next evolution of entrepreneurship look like at Georgia Tech?
A: What we’re doing at CREATE-X touches on the experiential education that we want. Daniel Pink talks about the three elements students need to feel motivated: They need to feel like they have a superpower or expertise, they need to feel purpose-driven, and they need independence. When you have those three, magic happens. That’s really the heart and soul of why so many students gravitate toward the CREATE-X program.
When people talk about CREATE-X, they tend to shine a light on the startups, but it’s really about problem-finders. We have these amazing students who will do fantastic things in their careers. As long as they work on the right problems, we know we’ll give them the tools to solve them. It’s finding the right problems to solve that’s the piece we need to work on. CREATE-X is helping students do that.
We have plans to touch every Georgia Tech student in some kind of entrepreneurial program like this.
Q: What examples of fierce collaboration have you experienced at Tech?
A: People tend to think professors have elbow patches and sit at their desks thinking great thoughts. No way. It’s super competitive. You are making mistakes. You are making advancements. For students, it’s our programs such as InVenture Prize, CREATE-X, our senior design capstone experiences— that’s the collaboration and competition that is so embedded in our curriculum and that produces these amazing ideas from students.
