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President Pistillo Invites You to Find Your Fit at UAT

On Finding Your Affinity at UAT With President Pistillo

The University of Advancing Technology (UAT) is a place for anyone who loves technology. From students to staff, everyone at the University (UAT) has a passion for technology, including President Jason Pistillo. As a techie himself, he invites fellow tech-lovers to join the UAT community:

“I'm Jason Pistillo. I'm the president and CEO of the University of Advancing Technology. I've been working at UAT for twenty-two years (27 years as of 2022) and I do it because it's honorable work. However, there’s more to it. What’s really cool is that I’m a techie. I was a network engineer before I came here. So, I get to stick around and be with an affinity of people that are my kind of people.

In 1983, the local industry was implementing technology that no one knew how to use. That was a great opportunity for the University of Advancing Technologies to start training the local industry on how to use the new tools that were emerging.

"You're going to go nights without sleep because you're so excited to build something to launch into the app store by Sunday morning."

If you're a young technologist, maybe even somebody interested in technology, you're going to find a place where you finally have an affinity. Everybody here is gonna be like you. It's going to be a safe place where you can finally express the ideas that you want. You're going to create things. You're going to go nights without sleep because you're so excited to build something to launch into the app store by Sunday morning. That's the kind of environment UAT is.

“As you go through your curriculum here, you'll have to make hard choices because you'll want to take so many courses. We have an open curriculum, meaning you can choose courses outside your major to complete your degree. Students get to live and learn. It's a living-learning environment, they spend twenty-four hours a day on campus, and they're going to spend a lot of those hours outside of class still playing with technology. This creates an ecosystem for innovation.

Students have to innovate to graduate, they have to invent something that's never been done before and get out in the real world. They'll have to pitch it before they graduate, they have to walk across the stage and say "This is my idea and I've done it." They have to execute it, they have to create it and they have to build a prototype on it. They'll use 3D printers and print something amazing, they'll write their own lines of code, they'll build software and they'll launch on an app store.

Students graduate and they'll already have an idea in place, they can already have their idea ready to take to market. They don't have to wait years to find partners and learn how to do it. They'll have learned the business skills, they'll have already invented something, they'll have already put a team together, and they can just accelerate right out of UAT at graduation, creating new technology companies." - UAT President, Jason Pistillo. 

Watch President Pistillo's full staff session video, here: 

 

 

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