Tag Archive for: Columbia Engineering

Logos President Helio Fred Garcia Promoted to Adjunct Professor at Columbia Engineering

Logos Consulting Group is pleased to announce that Logos President Helio Fred Garcia, a member of the Columbia University Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Sciences faculty, has been promoted from Adjunct Associate Professor to Adjunct (full) Professor of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research.

Garcia is in his sixth year teaching in the school’s Professional Development and Leadership program. He teaches the required course on Ethics and Integrity for Engineers to all incoming M.S. and PhD students. He also participates in the required first-year undergraduate Art of Engineering course to  provide an introduction to ethical decision-making for undergraduate engineering students.

In the M.S. and PhD programs, Garcia teaches a number of electives, including Crisis Management for Engineers, Crisis Prevention for Engineers, Advanced Ethical Decision-Making, and Advanced Leadership Communication for Engineers. He also teaches once-per-semester workshops on Lessons for Leaders from the COVID-19 Pandemic. Garcia also mentors PhD students.

Additionally, Garcia partners with his fellow Adjunct Professor (and brother) Chuck Garcia to team-teach an online course on Leadership, Followership, and Teamwork. The two brothers also co-lead the school’s PDL Fellows program, where a select number of M.S. students participate in a multi-dimensional enhanced leadership opportunity.

Columbia Engineering’s Professional Development and Leadership (PDL) program was launched in the school’s Department of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research, and has since expanded school-wide for all degree programs. The program’s goal is to enhance the Columbia Engineering education by providing enrichment and development opportunities. The program assists students with in a number of ways, including:

  1. Obtaining skills to find and keep a role
  2. Learning how to grow and cultivate a career
  3. Recognizing effective leadership
  4. Learning to become an effective team player and follower
  5. Cultivating ethical behavior and values

… and striving to have fun while doing these things!

Garcia did his graduate studies at Columbia University in the late 1970s and early 1980s, where he studied ancient Greek philosophy, ethics, and political philosophy. His studies included advanced ethics.

In addition to his faculty position at Columbia University, Garcia has been on the New York University faculty since 1988, where, among other things, he has designed and taught courses on business and communication ethics. He is the author of five books on leadership, trust, and related topics.

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Logos President Delivers Columbia Engineering Alumni Lecture on U.S. COVID Response

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On Friday, June 10, 2022, Logos president Helio Fred Garcia delivered a Columbia Engineering Alumni Day lecture on the US response to COVID-19 at the first in-person reunion of graduates of Columbia University’s Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science.

Garcia is an adjunct associate professor of professional development and leadership in the Professional Development and Leadership program at Columbia Engineering. He delivered one of three lectures in the school’s alumni association REUNION 22 LECTURES on-campus event.

In his lecture, Garcia focused on the intersection of crisis response and ethics, and demonstrated how COVID-19 – as a crisis that simultaneously affected every institution and every individual on the planet – provides a useful case study to see the patterns of effective and ineffective crisis response and ethical decision-making. Garcia quoted the Greek philosopher Plato, who noted: “To understand something difficult, study the biggest instance of it that we can. That’s because the patterns are easier to see. And the pattern is then laid up on heaven for anyone who wishes to contemplate it.”

Garcia began his lecture by laying out the foundational principles of effective crisis response:

  1. Show you care.
  2. Take risks seriously.
  3. Work to mitigate those risks early.

He then contrasted the U.S. response to COVID-19, the worst in the industrialized world, and the Republic of Korea response, among the best. Both nations had their first confirmed case of COVID-19 on the same day, January 20, 2020. South Korea followed the principles of effective response and U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines; the United States did not. After one year, the South Korean death rate was 1 fatality for every 39,000 South Koreans; the U.S. death rate was 1 fatality for every 809, or a fatality rate 49 times Korea’s.

Garcia also highlighted the ways that misinformation and the modeling of unsafe practices led to hundreds of thousands of preventable COVID deaths. He quoted the head of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, who in May 2022 called misinformation the leading cause of death in the U.S.

You can watch the full lecture here:

At Columbia Engineering, Garcia teaches ethics and integrity for engineers for all incoming undergraduate, MS, and PhD students. He also teaches graduate electives in advanced ethical decision-making, crisis prevention, crisis response, and leadership communication. Garcia is the author of five books, most recently Words on Fire: The Power of Incendiary Language and How to Confront It. His next book is The Trump Contagion: How Incompetence, Dishonesty, and Neglect Led to the Worst-Handled Crisis in American History.

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