The evoLLLution: Truly Networked for Life: Expanding a Local University Nationally

Boston-based Northeastern University is establishing its national brand by setting up satellite campuses in Seattle and Charlotte, North Carolina. To do this, it has partnered with local industries to provide professional development opportunities for students in all three cities.

By Angela Walmsley / Associate Dean, Northeastern University – Seattle 

Northeastern University is a top-tier, global, research university, recognized as a leader in experiential learning. While our undergraduate programs remain on the home campus in Boston, we have recently opened campuses focused on professional graduate programs in two strategic locations domestically: Charlotte, North Carolina and Seattle.

The Northeastern University-Seattle campus opened in January 2013 in the South Lake Union area of Seattle. After years of extensive research, Seattle was chosen because Northeastern felt it could contribute to the community by offering programs aligned with local industry needs. The campus offers 28 graduate degree programs — four doctorate and 24 master degree programs — designed for working professionals in high-demand areas such as science and technology, healthcare and leadership and management. All programs are offered in either an online or a hybrid format (a mixture of online and on-ground programming). In addition, in-class sessions are held in the evenings and on weekends to accommodate a working professional’s schedule. Stu­dents also ben­efit from the men­toring and exper­tise of Northeastern’s world-class faculty.

The experiential learning elements Northeastern University is known for have been integrated into Northeastern University-Seattle’s programming as well. This learning integrates theory with practice; connecting course content directly to a problem-solving environment in the workplace. Students are encouraged to choose projects in their workplace that can be studied and discussed in their professional graduate degree program. Students also have the option to participate in the cooperative education options, providing them a chance to work during their course of study if they are not already employed.

Northeastern University is excited to be the first private research university in Seattle and is excited to offer some of the leading-edge degree programs to the Seattle community. Being Northeastern in the Northwest has created some geographical questions and jokes, but Northeastern University–Seattle has been successful in establishing its brand as a top-tier institution in the region in a very short time. The staff and team were hired last summer and fall, and marketing began in August 2012. Our opening celebration in January 2013 was attended by more than 500 Seattleites! Northeastern University–Seattle is forging research partnerships with local industries and developing more cooperative education work placement opportunities with local employers, while offering graduate degrees that local professionals are seeking.

All North­eastern Uni­ver­sity stu­dents and alumni truly are “Networked for Life” as they have access to the same global net­work of resources, whether they are enrolled at the Seattle or Char­lotte grad­uate cam­puses or at the university’s main campus in Boston.

Event Recap: “Xconomy Forum: Biotech in the Belt-Tightening Era”

On Tuesday, April 9th the Seattle graduate campus hosted the “Xconomy Forum: Biotech in the Belt-Tightening Era.”  There were over 150 people in attendance with backgrounds from many sectors of business, technology, and healthcare. 

The National Biotechnology Editor at Xconomy, Luke Timmerman, moderated the discussion.  Dean Tayloe Washburn gave opening remarks before scheduled speakers took the stage to discuss topics in healthcare and biotechnology.  Some notable trends in these industries were emerging focus on value, novel financing models, and the use of Big Data.

Speakers included:

Mitch Gold, Founder and Chairman, Alpine Biosciences
Mark Litton, Co-founder and Chief Business Officer, Alder Biopharma
Al Luderer, CEO, Integrated Diagnostics
Kim Popovits, CEO, Genomic Health
Scott Ramsey, Director, ICORE/Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center
Chad Robins, CEO, Adaptive Biotechnologies
Clay Siegall, CEO, Seattle Genetics
Risa Stack, General Manager, GE Healthymagination
Robert Nelsen, Managing Director, Arch Venture Partners

See Xconomy’s recap here.

Open House Video

Northeastern University Seattle Explores Global Health

Northeastern University – Seattle moved into the global health area last week, connecting Ghana, Kenya, and the Boston and Seattle campuses. One of Northeastern’s Global Health leaders, Professor Richard Ellis, who has worked extensively on health issues in Kenya and other African countries was connected via videoconference to the Seattle campus, where Dr.  Ellis Owusu-Dabo, M.D., Ph.D., Scientific Director of  Ghana’s Kumasi Center for Collaborative Research in Tropical Medicine (KCCR) met with Professor Richard Wamai. Richard G. Wamai, Ph.D., is the Assistant Professor of Public Health of Northeastern’s Department of African-American Studies and Northeastern’s Integrated Initiative for Global Health.

The discussions confirmed the overlap between the pioneering work in Ghana of KCCR with global health research and student exchanges in Ghana and throughout Africa.  Based on this meeting, KCCR and Northeastern are now considering a draft Memorandum of Understanding which could cover student exchanges, research and other forms of collaboration.

The development of Northeastern’s Integrated Initiative for Global Health is perfectly timed with the commencement of the Seattle Graduate Campus; the campus is located in the heart of South Lake Union, in close proximity to The Gates Foundation and many other institutions which make up the world’s No. 1 global health cluster.  See Washington State Global Health Alliance’s website for more information.

A message from President Aoun

President Aoun sent a letter to the university community, stating the increasing impact of Northeastern’s research.  He writes:  

In this time of transformative change in higher education, it’s more vital than ever for universities to demonstrate their value through the impact they have on the world.  At Northeastern, the path we’ve forged these past several years has achieved this – rapidly and powerfully.

Together, we’ve extended Northeastern’s leadership in undergraduate education and strengthened our unique experiential learning model, grounded in co-op.  We’ve built the faculty, deepened the university’s global perspective, developed best-in-class leadership in online and hybrid professional masters education – and much more.

Now, it’s time to increase Northeastern’s impact even further by accelerating and expanding the impressive gains of our research enterprise.  By underscoring our distinctive strengths – our concentration on the global imperatives of health, security and sustainability, and our unique focus on interdisciplinary and use-inspired research – we aim to make Northeastern the “go-to” place for game-changing research that responds to the world’s most pressing problems.

Professor Steve Vollmer Hosts Bioinformatics Info Session

On Thursday March 28th, Professor Steve Vollmer took time out of his program in Friday Harbor on the San Juan Islands to visit the Seattle campus! During his visit he met and answered questions for prospective students about the Professional Science Master in Bioinformatics.

During his trip, Professor Vollmer also met with the Beneroya Research Institute and the Children’s Hospital Research Institute. His bio is below:

Prof. Vollmer studies the evolutionary ecology of marine organisms. Research in his laboratory focuses primarily on the reef-corals, and specifically, how evolution shapes the genetic architecture of coral populations and species. His primarily studies organisms are the Caribbean Acropora corals [common name, Staghorn and Elkhorn coral], which have been decimated by White Band Disease (WBD) over the past thirty years and are now listed as threatened on the US Endangered Species Act. His lab has shown that 6 percent or more of staghorn corals are naturally resistant to WBD. This first evidence of disease resistance in tropical reef corals demonstrates that corals may be more resilient than thought to rising disease epidemics and other stressors brought on by global climate change. Current research in the lab is focused on identifying the genetic bases of coral innate immunity, pathogen recognition, and host resistance, and furthering our knowledge about the WBD pathogen and the ecological factors driving WBD outbreaks.

March 22 Local Leaders Global Impact Speaker Series Recap

On Friday, March 22, Northeastern University Seattle held the first event in their “Local Leaders. Global Impact.” Speaker Series.  The topic discussed was P4 medicine: a predictive, preventive, personalized, and participatory approach to medicine and how it can transform our healthcare system. Over 50 attendees gathered to listen to the panel and enjoy the Seattle campus.  This session on P4 will be the first in a series of regional efforts to develop and move this transformational approach forward. 

Speakers included Dr. Lee Hood, President of the Institute for Systems Biology; Dr. Terry Fulmer, Dean of the Bouve College of Health Sciences at Northeastern University; Anthony Blau, Co-Director, Institute for Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine, University of Washington; and Clayton Lewis, Partner at Maveron.

The next event of the “Local Leaders. Global Impact.” Speaker Series will be held on April 17th, 2013 at noon. The topic is: “Games for Good: Developing a Viable Industry Business Model,” and will bring together experts from the gaming industry.  Click here for more information.   This session will focus on how our region can play a global leadership role on building on the phenomenal success of Gaming companies globally and in this region (350 companies and rapidly growing in our region ) to materially advance education efforts in health care and community.

March 22 Speaker Series Recording

Thank you to the Seattle Channel for recording this event!

Read our recap on this event here.

Personal note from Dean & CEO Tayloe Washburn on his recent trip to the Boston campus:

Reverse Innovation

Watch this video of President Aoun putting “everything in reverse” inspired by the work of Vijay Govindarajan.

Vijay Govindarajan, known as VG, is one of the world’s leading strategy and innovation experts.

A distinguished international business professor at Dartmouth College’s Tuck School of Business, VG is a co-pioneer of the concept of reverse innovation—when an innovation is adopted first in the developing world.Harvard Business Review deemed the breakthrough one of the “great moments in management in the last century,” and the topic inspired VG’s New York Times bestseller Reverse Innovation, as well as his acclaimed TEDx talk last year.