Biography

Jerry MacArthur Hultin is the 10th president in the 157-year history of Polytechnic Institute of New York University (NYU-Poly). Appointed on July 1, 2005, Hultin has overseen substantial growth and financial stability at the institution. He championed an affiliation with NYU, which was formalized in July 2008 and gave Poly a global platform while adding engineering to NYU’s diverse list of subject disciplines. 

From 1997 to 2000, Hultin served as under secretary of the U.S. Navy, the department’s number two civilian leader. In that role, he was instrumental in a number of innovations that modernized the Navy and Marine Corps. Combining that experience with his years as an entrepreneur, one of Hultin’s first steps as the new president of NYU-Poly was to embrace an academic focus on Invention, Innovation and Entrepreneurship – i2e – to encourage educated risk-taking among faculty and students as they pursue technical advances that can change lives. The school initiated the nation’s first course that introduces every freshman to great innovators and to communication skills that students need to champion their own inventions. Under Hultin and i2e, NYU-Poly has collaborated with city and state governments as well as private industry to launch three business incubators where student interns and faculty work side-by-side with entrepreneurs and commercialize research. 

During Hultin’s tenure, NYU-Poly has experienced growth in a number of significant ways. Enrollment increased by 57 percent. A faculty expansion made possible by the NYU affiliation is increasing the number of academic positions. The Institute is financially sound, and its credit rating was recently upgraded. A $65 million capital plan is refreshing and expanding the Brooklyn campus on MetroTech Center and will support a biomedical research center with NYU in Manhattan.

Before joining what was then Polytechnic University, Hultin was the dean of the Wesley J. Howe School of Technology Management and professor of management at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey. As dean, he was responsible for the leadership of the institute’s newest academic school.

As under secretary of the U.S. Navy, he led numerous programs that supported innovation in strategic vision, war fighting and business operations of the Navy and Marine Corps. Hultin’s major accomplishments included taking a leadership role in the Department of the Navy’s Revolution in Business Affairs, which brought private-sector business acumen to the Navy and Marine Corps. He was one of the creators of the Navy-Marine Corps corporate intranet and introduced a major program of Enterprise Resource Planning systems into the Navy acquisition commands. He also led a study of the impact of globalization on national security and naval forces conducted by the National Defense University. The results were published in a two-volume report, The Global Century: Globalization and National Security. 

Over the course of his career, Hultin helped create and support a number of national, non-profit programs that provide leadership, community development and job skills to young people from all walks of life. A 1964 graduate of Ohio State University and a 1972 graduate of Yale University Law School, he spent more than 25 years in the private sector in Ohio and Washington, D.C. His work included the practice of law, management of small businesses and business consulting in areas including technology, defense, health care, finance and the environment.

Hultin is a board director of the National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering, BritishAmerican Business, Inc. (BABi), the New York City Building Congress, the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership, the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce and is a director of the New York Council of the Navy League of the United States. He is an honorary fellow of the Foreign Policy Association, the founding chairman of the Technology Management Education Association and an advisor to senior military and defense leaders. The National Ethnic Coalition of Organizations awarded him the Ellis Island Medal of Honor in 2010.

For more information: http://www.poly.edu/about/president