Suzanne Ishee, the director of the NJIT Hub for Creative Placemaking and Film/TV
Workforce Development, remembers the reaction she got the first time she told school
President Teik Lim that NJIT is a film school.
“He said, ‘We’re a tech school,’” she said with a laugh.
Ishee quickly showed Lim why his answer was incomplete.
To be sure, NJIT is not producing the next great directors, but it is producing the people
— and the products — that those directors will rely on to succeed in the growing film
industry in New Jersey.
“We’re going to do all of the things on the technology side of the industry,” she said.
“We’re going to produce the people listed at the end of the film, not the beginning.”
Ishee was right. It’s a reason NJIT had a booth at the overwhelmingly attended 2026
N.J. Film Expo last week at the old Meadowlands Arena.
It’s why Ishee came with a sense of purpose.
“We have identified what we have in place,” she told BINJE. “We’ve got great resources for filmmakers that pretty much nobody else is doing in higher education.”
Ishee rattled off the syllabus for success in the industry.
“Engineering, construction, technology, FinTech, animation — you name it, we do it,”
she said. “And we can create it, too.
“Remember, we have the largest Makerspace in the state. We’re making new
technologies on our campus.”
Directors, of course, are familiar with the NJIT landscape. It already has been used in
many motion pictures, including Disclosure Day — the latest film by Steven Spielberg.
“We can’t keep up with the demand to shoot here,” Ishee said.
Or the ways NJIT is connected to the industry.
“Yes, we are very, very focused on the polytechnic part of our mission,” she said. “But
think of how that connects to film. People don’t realize all the jobs that are around the
camera.”
Or in the studio offices.
“I was just talking to a student in our MBA program about new approaches to financial
technology through machine learning,” she said. “I said to her, ‘How would that help
somebody who wants to finance a film?’”
The student got it. She’s not the only one.
“I was meeting with President Lim just a few weeks ago, talking about all that we have
going on,” she said. “He stopped me and said, ‘We are a film school.’”
