Dr. Bloom started his career in industry working as an economist. He subsequently became an educator and administrator for the New York City public schools. Given his background in economics and education, he later joined Teachers College, Columbia University as a research director. He led a federally funded project focused on answering the question: does increased funding improve the outcomes of urban education? From 1983 through 1990, he was a member of the administration of New Jersey’s Governor Thomas Kean serving as an assistant commissioner in the Department of Education. He was responsible for managing many of the department’s initiatives and achieved the following outcomes: changed state-wide competency testing from minimum basic skills to higher order skills; established the first statewide curriculum content standards; initiated statewide pre-school programs; established over 20 model urban effective schools; and, initiated the first high school academies for science and technology.

In July 1990, Dr. Bloom began his 28-year career at NJIT as a Vice President. NJIT is the state’s poly-technical university, baccalaureate through PhD. In 1998, Dr. Bloom was appointed as the founding Dean of the Albert Dorman Honors College, in addition to his vice president responsibilities. The Honors College currently enrolls over 750 scholars who come from 15 states and several foreign countries. The combined average SAT score (math and reading) is over 1525, and these honors STEM students are in the top 7 percent of high school graduates. Today, it is ranked among the nation’s top 10 honors colleges.

As President, since 2011, using “Vision 2020,” an aggressive strategic plan, he was responsible for growing the STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) enrollments because the demand for these students exceeds the supply. In 1990 the enrollment was about 5,000 students, today it is over 11,500 students. To prepare students for the rigors of the STEM disciplines, particularly students from lower socio-economic households, Dr. Bloom established a pipeline of precollege programs, grades 4-12. These programs and other initiatives have resulted in NJIT being recognized as among the top 20 national universities for graduating minority engineers. Dr. Bloom and his team have completed a $200 million fundraising campaign, added a million square feet of teaching and research facilities at over $400 million, appointed 130 new faculty, grown the research expenditures from less than $80 million to over $160 million, 215 patents and 70 pending, and created an NJIT corporation, the New Jersey Innovation Institute to partner with companies, government and other universities for the purpose of economic development. NJIT’s annual economic impact for the state of New Jersey is over $2 billion, annually.

Most recently, NJIT was named in the New York Times report and Forbes Magazine as the #1 university in the nation for alumni economic mobility, moving students from the lowest quintiles of family income to among the highest quintiles of earnings. Under Dr. Bloom’s leadership, a similar accolade was achieved in 2016 when NJIT was reported by PayScale as being #1 in the nation for its alumni ROI, return on investments, when comparing the low cost of education to their high starting and mid-career salaries.

Dr. Bloom is presently Board Chair of the University Heights Science and Technology Park; and, serves as a board member of the Governor’s Commission for Science, Innovation and Technology, the Philadelphia Alliance for Minority Participation, the US Air Force Civilian Leadership Program, and La Casa don Pedro. Dr. Bloom has most recently been named “Educator of the Year” by the New Jersey R&D Council, and been the recipient of other national and state education awards, as well as federal, foundation and corporation grants.

Dr. Bloom holds a master’s degree and a doctorate from Teachers College, Columbia University. He also earned masters and bachelor’s degrees from Hunter College of the City University, New York City.