Raheem Beyah grew up in Atlanta with no engineers in his life. He didn’t even know what an engineer did. And yet, four decades later, he has what he calls the “best job on campus” — dean of Georgia Tech’s College of Engineering.
aheem Beyah grew up in Atlanta with no engineers in his life. He didn’t even know what an engineer did. And yet, four decades later, he has what he calls the “best job on campus” — dean of Georgia Tech’s College of Engineering.
Where did the 44-year-old, who would later get his master’s and doctoral degrees from Georgia Tech’s School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), discover the passion that would allow him to lead the nation’s largest engineering college? The same place many other kids of the 1980s looked: video games.
“My grandmother bought me an Atari 2600, and it changed my life,” Beyah said. “As I played, I would question, ‘Why can’t I do this? Why can’t I drive this vehicle?’ That later got me interested in programming and computing, because that’s how you change the game itself.”
Beyah recently sat down with Georgia Tech President Ángel Cabrera for the latest edition of “Conversations with Cabrera.” The two leaders — and Georgia Tech alumni — talked about Beyah’s goals as dean, the threats of cybersecurity, and accessibility in higher education.