Allan B. Goldstein

Allan B. Goldstein, NYU Tandon School of Engineering Senior Lecturer, is a winner of the 2018-2019 NYU Distinguished Teaching Award, the 2016-2017 NYU Martin Luther King, Jr. Faculty Award and the 2012 Tandon Jacobs Excellence in Education Award. In 2017, WPIX featured him as a Changemaker and the Chronicle of Higher Education highlighted his work on its inaugural list of Teaching Innovators.

Since 2013, Goldstein’s Disability Studies course, now a core component of the cross-school Disability Studies minor, teams student innovators, inventors and entrepreneurs with community members living with impairments to create person-centered digital stories and discuss disability readings. Goldstein says, “We learn best about people by working with them.”

The older sibling and guardian of a survivor of the notorious Willowbrook State School, Goldstein’s personal experience writing, published in their memoir Fred and Me, a Willowbrook Survivor's Story, in numerous e-zines and anthologized in two collections, explores the social barriers impeding an inclusive society. A former professional actor, Allan serves on the Pace University Disability Film Festival screening committee, which features films by and about people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. His Disability Studies graduate work was done at the CUNY School of Professional Studies.

As a member of NYU’s Ability Project, Goldstein’s research interests involve Experiential Learning: establishing ties with community members, not-for-profits, BIDs, and government leaders to match their needs with NYU-Tandon's capabilities for professor developed, project-based courses.