A Chat With
Professor Matt Malisiewicz
Lecturer + Researcher
Where is this one of a kind school for Maritime Officers?
The New York Maritime Academy (also known as SUNY Maritime College) is a nautical school like no other. Nestled on a beautiful campus right on New York City’s waterfront in the storied Bronx borough, surrounded by water, and overlooking the Manhattan skyline, it has quite a character that dates back to 1874.
What makes it so uniquely different?
It is not its modern ship simulators, nor its tech-enabled classrooms, or even its excellent faculty that makes the NY Maritime College one of a kind. What makes it so unique and strategically equipped for the future is its diversity and caliber of students; with their multinational perspectives, unique backgrounds, and a myriad of strengths that mirrors the vibrant diversity of the city which it calls home, New York.
What makes it so relevant, especially today?
As the shipping industry continues to evolve and face challenges that grow both in size and scope, the future of the maritime sector will continue to have a bigger and a wider impact on the daily lives of modern consumers and citizens. This reality has become increasingly clear to everyone in recent months, as maritime shipping took center stage, with containerization and logistics issues becoming hot topics and front page news. Hence, any company, startup, project team, or consultancy will require access to not only a more skilled and uniquely educated talent pool within the maritime industry, but also one with diverse backgrounds needed to truly understand the complex multinational problems that the shipping sector touches across all its modes, regions, and cultures.
The unique blend and diversity of thoughts, perspectives, and leadership that true innovation really requires is the key to being and staying relevant in today’s changing economy. New York City is unequivocally known for this, and so is its unique Maritime College.
What can the graduates of this school offer potential employers?
The hallmark of the program is built on core values of leadership, accountability, responsibility, respect, and resilience. The main program focuses on educating and developing officers in the merchant marine for unlimited tonnage (world’s largest) ships that traverse the globe. Other excellent programs in the school focus on shipping management, oceanic studies, engineering, naval architecture, logistics, and more.
The exclusive graduate programs attract students with existing industry expertise and help them leverage their know-how into the maritime sector in truly profound ways. Nevertheless, when these strong skills are combined with new and novel perspectives, interwoven across multinational languages that the students often already speak, and are then exported across various shipping hubs in the USA as well as to every continent that the shipping industry touches, the alumni network and maritime community that the New York Maritime Academy is known for is truly unprecedented.
Can the essence of the NY Maritime Academy be summed up in one or two sentences?
In short, the New York Maritime Academy, with roots dating back to 1874, is a school with a very unique tradition of producing not just superbly qualified officers, professionals, and leaders, but a place where captains are made, regardless of the fact whether our students realize it or not upon graduation.
They don’t only learn this from their teachers, but from each other, in a uniquely global New York way; a smartly diverse and deeply powerful way that brings shipping closer together.
