Peña-Mora returns to New York's acropolis, desires communication

In coming to Morningside Heights, Feniosky Peña-Mora returns to his roots.

“When I was growing up, Columbia—you thought about it as the pinnacle. To use an analogy from the Greeks, it was the king of the Parthenon, the whole campus. You see it looking up.”

A fast-talking Dominican Republic native, Peña-Mora described growing up with his family in Washington Heights for certain parts of the year.

“I have benefited from some of the services that Columbia provides to the community in the surrounding area,” he said. Peña-Mora studied English as a Second Language in Teachers College, and took the GRE in Riverside Church. “Without those two, I wouldn’t have been able to get here. It’s a great feeling coming back.”

Though he noted, “It’s a totally different context, of course.”

This time around, Peña-Mora, now associate provost of the University of Illinois, will sit close to the top of the hill. Close to Low Parthenon, the new dean of the Fu Foundation School of Engineering & Applied Science will bring a fresh approach to the long-term “Vision 2020,” a plan formulated in 2007 under Dean Zvi Galil to bolster SEAS’s reputation. He said he hopes to carry the plan out to “continue the excellence of the school, enhancing the international footprint of the school, and fostering better interaction with industry.”

Peña-Mora earned his Ph.D. at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and first developed notions of the importance of interdisciplinary research studying civil engineering and disaster recovery. Over the years, he said, as he took on administrative responsibilities, he developed a sensibility for bringing different spheres together. “I believe firmly that it’s not just SEAS, but it’s Columbia, and engineering is part of Columbia University as a whole,” he said. "The worst problems today require thinking from every walk of life, every school of thought, area of knowledge,” he said.

As associate vice provost, he has overseen institutional programming and built the ‘Dormcubator,’ an equivalent of the Living Learning Center at Columbia. “Visualize a beehive in which students have come together and explore different ideas,” he explained. Peña-Mora also helped revamp the tenure process, stressing interdisciplinary learning, and he is a point person on diversity.

His transition from hard engineer to broader academic figure, Peña-Mora said, particularly prepared him to work at Columbia’s engineering school, in which students have to take Core classes.

“If someone would have asked me about this five years ago, it would have been hard for me to comprehend, since I was just an engineer then,” he said. “Now I work with all the deans, and it gave me a broad perspective of the synergy of various parts of the University. It’s not a notion of us vs. them, engineering vs. the humanities.”

He added, “My own research in engineering today is more within a social context. I’ve learned that one needs to understand an individual as a whole person, not just a technical or managerial aspect. The approach at Columbia allows students to see all components.”

Peter Valeiras, SEAS ’09, Engineering Student Council president and a member of the committee that selected Peña-Mora, said he hopes to see the new dean link various parts of SEAS, including its graduate students. “I hope that he shakes things up and brings changes,” Valeiras said. “I’d love to see more interaction between the different groups, all of those are housed in one school in SEAS. It’s nice to have that environment, but we don’t take advantage of it.”

Though Columbia lost money during the economic crisis, SEAS has fared relatively well. Still, Peña-Mora will step into a school for which fundraising is crucial. “Here in Illinois we have changed the name from alumni foundation to advancement. I like that word,” he said. “It’s not only going and talking to alumni community about placing funds, but also how to engage with the institution, providing feedback, helping us to achieve our goals.”

Peña-Mora’s demeanor—his accent, verbosity, and gregariousness—is reminiscent of Galil, who was known for attending student events and sending quirky late-night e-mails.

Peña-Mora said he believes in personal interaction. “So one of the things that I’m known for, is that I say hi to everybody. I’m walking in the quad, I see all the students, I say hi,” he said.

“Sometimes it looks weird, but they learn that I’m just being friendly, having an open door.”

Joy Resmovits can be reached at joy.resmovits@columbiaspectator.com.