For nearly a decade, Ubell headed Tandon Online, ranked No. 2 by US News & World Report of the nation’s Computer Information Technology online graduate programs. He is Vice Dean Emeritus of Online Learning at NYU’s Tandon School of Engineering and Senior Editor of CHLOE, an annual survey of higher ed online officers, sponsored by Quality Matters. Ubell consults for universities and edtech companies, including Coursera, NYU and The New School, among others. Over his career, Ubell’s online programs have enrolled more than 30,000 students.
Recipient of the highest honor given for individual achievement in digital education, the A. Frank Mayadas Leadership Award, Ubell is a Fellow of the Online Learning Consortium (OLC) and a member of the Advisory Board of Online Learning, the journal of OLC, where he served on the organization’s board for a number of years. Until recently, he was a member of McGraw-Hill Education’s Learning Science Research Advisory Board.
Abroad, Ubell has been active across the globe. In China, he headed three blended online master’s at Central University of Finance and Economics and Beijing Institute of Technology. A member of the board of the Lianyungang Universal Vehicle Manufacturing Company, he was honored as a Council Member of the Chongqing International Exchange Association. Ubell consults for Beacon Education, a Beijing company that serves Chinese students enrolled in US online graduate programs. In London, he served as American Publisher of Nature, the prominent science weekly, and launched the journal, Nature Biotechnology.
A columnist for EdSurge and contributor to Inside Higher Ed and other leading publications, Ubell has contributed more than 100 articles to scholarly and general periodicals and is the author or editor of 20 books, with the most recent being Going Online, published in 2017, and its companion volume, Staying Online, published in 2021 — both from Routledge. Ubell has taught and lectured at leading colleges and universities, including Columbia, MIT, The New School, NYU, University of Rochester, and Stevens Institute of Technology, among others.