A Very Unique Entity

This week’s Washington Business Journal has an interesting interview with Stew Edelstein, the Executive Director of the Universities of Shady Grove. Mr. Edelstein is a member of our ‘Montgomery County Business Roundtable for Education (MCBRE),' as well as co-chair of the Montgomery County Chamber of Commerce Education and Work Force Committee. And here’s what he had to say about our schools, below, in an interesting interview by Sarah Krouse.  Thanks Sarah! I have read discussions of universities contemplating privatization. Is this what is being discussed here in MoCo too?

"USG is expanding. Can you grow on-site?  We now have 3,600 students. Next year we will have 4,000, and we will ultimately reach our capacity of 5,000, so we are starting to look into the next building. We actually have the ability to build four more buildings and a couple of additional parking garages on our site. Our next building will have an anchor tenant that is a dentistry program. We are talking about three engineering disciplines: mechanical, electrical and bioengineering. We will probably have a biomedical specialization in the bioengineering program. We are also looking into health informatics and — working with the University of Maryland, College Park — starting a degree in public health. The last part of our short-term vision is education.

What do you have planned for that? We are looking at a very unique entity: a public high school focused on STEM [science, technology, engineering, and mathematics]. We have suggested a curricular focus in biomedical sciences and are looking at a concept called middle college."