‘This university is in your hands.’ President Joseph Aoun welcomes new faculty
Dozens of new faculty members gathered to mingle, exchange ideas and break the ice with their deans, university leadership and colleagues.
Northeastern University President Joseph E. Aoun welcomed new faculty members, who have joined the university to make their mark in areas such as artificial intelligence, quantum physics, nursing and finance.
The Tuesday afternoon event brought together outstanding researchers and scholars who were enthusiastic about joining Northeastern’s teaching and research enterprise.
They were greeted by Aoun and other university leaders atop the EXP research complex on the Boston campus. Aoun addressed the crowd at the start of what he promised to be a busy semester.
“You are joining a university that is extremely differentiated,” Aoun said. “At its core is a global university system; we are also leaders in experiential education, which is essential.”
Faculty at Northeastern University tend to stay for many years — often as long as 18 to 20, Aoun said.
Tuesday’s mixer saw both new and returning faces. Some of the newly appointed faculty members had held short-term posts at the university previously, before accepting full-time appointments.
Jennifer Prisco, who began last month, is among the new faces. She is the assistant dean of clinical skills and simulation education — a new position at the Bouvé College of Health Sciences that provides added support for the various projects at the Arnold S. Goldstein Simulation Laboratory Suite.
How does Prisco view Northeastern as different from her previous teaching posts?
“Here, I love the emphasis on AI and on student-facing excellence,” Prisco said. “I can definitely see that in pretty much every meeting I’ve been in so far and any interactions. It’s really about how do you improve the experiences for students; how do you get in touch with the latest technologies, like AI and virtual reality?”
Jose Luis Garcia del Castillo y Lopez, is a full professor of computational design in the College of Arts, Media and Design. He was previously an adjunct professor for three years at Northeastern.
Jose Luis joins Northeastern after having mentored graduate students at Harvard University for six years. He said he relishes the opportunity to teach undergraduates again — and to do so in a collaborative, interdisciplinary environment.
“I feel like schools and departments are so connected here,” Jose Luis said, “the fact that many professors have multiple appointments in different departments.”
“Northeastern is gigantic … and very international, which I like as an international professor myself,” he said.
Alp Akcay, from the Netherlands, already has eight months under his belt. So does Seth Hutchinson, who joined Northeastern from Georgia Institute of Technology.
“I really enjoy it so far,” Akcay said. “I’m teaching a course on supply chain management, which is related to my research.”
Akcay teaches in the mechanical and industrial engineering department. His research focuses on the optimization of manufacturing systems and supply chains.
Hutchinson, a self-described “robotics person,” has been in professor roles since 1990.
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“The opportunity to join Northeastern came along about a year ago,” he said.
Hutchinson said he looks forward to working closely with the university’s tight-knit group of roboticists at the Institute for Experiential Robotics.
Speaking to the faculty, Aoun emphasized that “we’ve built a global university system” — one that allows both students and faculty to “roam,” gaining new experiences across a vast network of campuses and partnerships on multiple continents.
“That is allowing the faculty to be mobile,” Aoun said.
Attendees had high praise for the institution they now call home.
“When I look at the students, I see that they really value the process of applying what they learn to the real world,” Akcay said.
“It’s basically like a learning playground here,” Prisco said.
The opportunity to innovate in their teaching and research has attracted many of those who gathered for the event — a sentiment widely shared at Northeastern.
“If you want to shape change: you’re welcome here,” Aoun said. “This university is in your hands.”
