New Jersey Institute of Technology
PRE-2: Points of Distinction

NJIT's 2025 Strategic Plan lists civility, social responsibility, sustainability, and diversity as some of the plan’s core values. It also lists diversity and sustainability as two of its four pillars. NJIT is making sustainability an institutional learning goal. This revision of the learning goal will ensure that every single program at NJIT will have some aspect of sustainability as an assessed student learning outcome, so that our students will graduate as global citizens.

Research is a priority at NJIT. Environment and Sustainability is one of the five research clusters in which various NJIT researchers focus their work.

NJIT’s research enterprise provides undergraduate and graduate students with an outstanding academic and research experience through various externally and internally funded research programs. Students can pursue sustainability projects in a number of programs. NJIT offers several undergraduate research, innovation, and design programs, including the Provost’s Undergraduate Summer Research Program, undergraduate research opportunities, and Innovation Student Seed Grants, as well as New Jersey Innovation Acceleration and several capstone design programs across NJIT’s colleges. Competitions, such as TechQuest, focusing on innovation, research, and design within and across disciplines have been developed and are offered annually to promote undergraduate research and innovation, and to educate our undergraduate students on how to take future leadership roles and be highly competitive in the global market. The incentives for participation include summer support, grants to carry out research, and competitive prizes. Over 600 students have participated in the last few years.

Undergraduate Research and Innovation (URI) programs give students a chance to flourish in various ways. Students learn how to do research, but also how to pick projects that will improve a societal problem and enhance the quality of life for a community of people. These programs are designed to help students develop the vision to contend with global challenges.

In 2020, the City of Newark encountered leaching in lead-based pipes. Environmental engineers in NJIT’s John A. Reif, Jr. Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering worked to determine the effectiveness of new corrosion-control treatments and understand conditions throughout the system. This project was expected to take up to 30 months, so a research team worked with the city to develop and test chemical methods to prevent lead-shedding corrosion in as many as 18,000 service lines that stretch from the water main located under streets into dwellings. This was not the first time NJIT had worked with the city of Newark. NJIT’s civil engineers work on a range of infrastructure projects with the city, from intelligent transportation systems, to dam monitoring and assessment, to water systems.

Jersey Cares, a nonprofit organization established in 1993, has developed a structure for community stewardship among a fully engaged coalition of institutions of higher learning, leading corporate and private citizens, and other stakeholders who care about Essex County’s Branch Brook Park. NJIT students volunteer with Jersey Cares multiple times during the semester to clean and preserve the park's natural beauty. During most months of the year, the student volunteers are deployed throughout the park working on a number of site-specific projects.

The above examples represent a small sample of NJIT’s efforts to build a strong foundation for the future. We hope to reach even further and work beyond our nation in the years ahead. We will continue to address the issues in the world and work to find innovative solutions.

On behalf of NJIT, I thank AASHE for assessing higher education institutions’ sustainability progress. NJIT will continue to strive for greater impact on its campus, its community, and the world.