UPCEA Updates

Gale Tenen Spak, Ph.D., Associate Vice President of Continuing and Distance Education at the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) retired on January 1, 2019. Dr. Spak served as Associate Vice President for 26 years. Located in Newark, New Jersey, NJIT is the science and technology public research university of the State of New Jersey. Through her oversight of NJIT’s Division of Continuing Professional Education, she has had extensive experience in the area of professional workforce development and continuing education programming which are subjects about which she writes and presents broadly. Her experiences include managing, developing, marketing, proposal writing, evaluating and implementing programs for working professionals and job seekers who require new education and training to keep their skill sets at the cutting edge. The programs she designs involve collaborations among academe, industry, and government; and utilize, as appropriate, online instruction.

Recent awards include: “Made in NJ Honor Roll” conferred by the NJ Manufacturing Extension Program on National Manufacturing Day, 2018; Leading Women Intrapreneur, conferred by NJ Leading Women Entrepreneurs, 2018; and Best 50 Women in Business, conferred by NJ Biz, 2016. In 2018, she was the Principal Investigator of three NJ Department of Labor and Workforce Development (LWD) grants: (1) Construction & Utilities Talent Development Center, (2) Construction & Utilities Talent Network, and (3) Technology Advisory Network (TAN). Among her numerous publications her co-authored paper, “m-Outreach for Engineering Continuing Education: A Model for University-Company Collaboration,” was selected to receive one of five Best Paper awards out of 1700 submissions presented at the American Society for Engineering Education’s 118^th Annual Conference. 

Before joining NJIT in 1992, Dr. Spak was Dean of the School of Professional and Continuing Education at New York Institute of Technology, Old Westbury, New York, and, during America’s first energy crisis, served as the Director of the Center for Energy Policy and Research and authored “how-to” reports which were sent to every American Governor.  

She earned her Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science and Master of Arts from Yale University, and her Bachelor of Arts, magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, in Political Science from Brooklyn College of the City University of New York.