From Campus to Chain: Universities & Talent

All right. All right. I'll let the uh let my panelists come up on stage, but it's nice to be back up here for folks that remember me from the day before yesterday. All right. We awake.

Everyone's ready to rock. Let's get some of those straggly. Yeah. All right. There we go.

There we go.

There you go, Jack. All right. Uh welcome from campus to chain universities and talent. Um my name is Jan Jamali. I'm very happy to be back here at Boston Blockchain Week with Cubic Labs moderating this panel.

Uh once again, I had the pleasure of doing this last year. Just to give you a little bit of a a background on me and why education is so important, uh American Crypto Academy focuses on education and adoption in the blockchain space. We originally grew out of Sarsson funds which was a digital asset wealth manager that I was that I was able to found with my co-founder John Sarsson who spoke earlier today and one of the things that we had discovered that um in the course of uh building Sarsson funds is that there was just as much a need of education uh in blockchain uh as as any type of emerging technology particularly amongst wealth managers and we took that um took that experience of building educational programs for wealth managers and expanded that and built our own uh separate company focused on education which became American Crypto Academy and we had the pleasure of working with places like the University of Wyoming and building a blockchain 101 curriculum. But for the last several years and I know this is sort of everybody's um you know big hurdle is education in the space, right? It's it's less less a sales pitch and more uh education.

So I'm very thrilled to be joined u by three distinct panelists today. uh Len Evanchek, uh Vladimir Villn, and Jack Sheen. Uh what I'm going to do is I'm going to give each one of them a chance to introduce themselves, give a little bit of information on their background and what they're doing currently in the blockchain education space. And then we're going to have a panel discussion because I want to talk about a few highle topics, right? What's happening on campus right now?

What's missing? What needs to happen? Where is the learning happening? And what this all looks like in a few years. So without further ado, and I'll just start here right off to my right um with with Jack.

So Jack, you want to take a moment to introduce yourself and give a little bit of a background on uh education in the space and what you've been up to.

Okay. Hi everyone. Uh thank you for having me. Glad to be first. Uh my name is uh uh Jack Shan from uh Nor Eastern uh assistant professor.

It's actually my third year. Uh for me um I'm I'm research faculty. Uh my research interest is around AI and blockchain. Um actually you know several years ago I designed a permission list blockchain myself uh to detect fake news uh the paper was published. So uh talking about the educational space actually in my own teaching I um try to bring the blockchain as one of the um case study in my uh courses I teach because I'm a a business faculty.

So maybe today I will bring a little bit more from the business side.

All right. Fantastic. Uh Len,

good afternoon everyone. My name is Len Evanchek. It's a pleasure to be here. Uh let's see. Uh I have a background just a little bit before BC in both engineering and in finance.

And at Boston College, uh for the last 10 plus years, I've been teaching courses in analytics. And about three or four maybe five years ago now, we've been offering courses on blockchain and crypto. uh in blockchain and finance uh really two different styles of courses. one where the focus is on the financial uh uses of blockchain obviously very interesting and then the second course which is the one I focus on is the course on the business applications of blockchain and how as an underlying technology infrastructure tool whatever terminology you want to use there um how this is for grad mostly grad students how blockchain can either you know improve the operations of an organization or much more exciting perhaps um is how this technology and the infrastructure can be used to develop new markets and services and so that's what I'll be focusing on this afternoon.

Fantastic Vladimir.

Hi everyone, my name is Vladimir. I'm a cyber security student at Bridge State University and I also led the development of Haiti initiated a decentralized protocol focus on transparency and anti-corruption infrastructure. Um my background is heavily focused on transparency and um zero trust frameworks architecture. For me the bridge between campus and chain isn't just about learning how to write code. It's about teaching teaching student builders how to um secure systems.

All right. Fantastic. Um thrilled to have all three of you here. So I fig let let's kick it off. We're going to talk about some high level things and if we have a few minutes towards the end, I'd love to be able to take some questions from the audience too.

So if you guys do have questions that come up during the session, keep them in the back of your mind and we're going to try to get to them towards the end. But what I would like to know um because this is such a transformative technology is I'd like to get a good understanding of what's happening on campus now in terms of blockchain education and gaining access to um blockchain educational resources and I'd like to have it specifically from your viewpoint uh based on what you're working on whether it's as a professor or whether it's as a student or whether it's in your research. So why don't we start uh you know we'll start the same. So Jack tell me what what's happening uh right now at Northeastern in terms of blockchain education.

Okay feel honored again to be the first to answer this question. So in terms of blockchain happening in the north system uh what I see what I observed um you know from many student they are on my class and also they work with me. What I see is that there are many activities like hexam like some workshops like a student leader clubs they attending those kind of clubs attending some kind of uh hexam to uh understand better about the technology because you know it's very important they know that they they learn learn a lot and also uh from uh teaching focus because you say from our activity as well so I I saw you know many of them um um many of the stu students They come from computer science major. They shared they take a lot of uh cryptocurrency related courses seem like a professor they in computer science they treat this as one of the major uh courses. They want student to understand better about the technology.

But again from business side we are a little bit slow I would say in um um um compared with AI right u um a bit slow in um um teaching educated student by the technology I would say maybe some fin um finance management u um their department they have some particular elective courses but for me I come from supply chain information management we don't have particular course we only have some uh particular topics and case studies in our own own courses. That's what I observe.

Um, this actually probably will dovtail nicely over to you, Len. Um, because I I'd love to hear what's happening at BC, but particularly I found it interesting uh with Jack talking about a lot of the exposure coming from the computer science side. I'd be curious to see what's happening on the business application side and why that gap exists. But, uh, tell us what what's happening in at BC and from your point of view and and your and your work.

I'll say so very good. As I had mentioned just a moment ago, we sort of have blockchain courses and have had them for now a number of years related in both sort of two tracks. One is one that's really much more focused on pure finance in the sense of you know developing new financial systems and or uh cryptocurrency issues you know but they will delve very much into a combination of what let's say the derivative markets are for the blockchain for crypto um and or how you might hedge in that sort of situation. So those are the one set of courses. Um and then the other set of courses are the ones that I teach more directly which are the ones related to assuming that we all believe that blockchain is a transformative technology.

How can that be used within an organization again to improve the operations of the organization be that related to supply chain and or how you can develop new markets. If we want to think about, let's say, in real estate, the issue of tokenization in real estate. Now, the courses themselves, they're full semester courses. They're really focused in the grad school uh at the Carol School of Management here at at Boston College, but they're open to others within the university. So I have a number of always have had as I've been teaching computer science students who come in because they want to learn around you know some of the cryptographic issues that we delve delve into or uh students from uh uh the school of education because they're interested in how applications can be used to create credentials or have transform transferable credentials.

So we draw mostly from the grad school students though because of the way we structure our courses. You can cross-register from computer science and then you can crossregister from the school of education and others. As far as how we teach the courses very briefly, uh there's a good component of underlying tools, techniques, theories. We can go into that perhaps if you have questions there. But also we bring in external speakers.

Number of folks uh Ian perhaps has come in not perhaps he's come in a number of times. And then our students also have the opportunities to do internships and uh happy to say that a couple of them this uh just this past this past summer uh did some internships with cubic with the cubic labs. So we try to do both practical but also as we all know excuse me as we all know this technology will change dramatically continue to change dramatically in the coming years. So we try to stress both the fundamentals so that they can learn what's going to happen tomorrow. If you teach only what's being done today, we know it doesn't really help us that much when we know things are going to change tomorrow.

So thank you.

Well, thank you very much. Yeah, Vladimir, you're coming at it from a a very unique perspective. You're going to be coming at it from not only as a student perspective, but as an international student perspective. um what's happening that you see on campus and in your journey and experience with blockchain so far especially after hearing from sort of the the professor side.

Thank you.

Um for me what is actually working is when we stop treating um decentralized system and blockchain as a purely theoretical computer science elective and start treating them as engineering stuff. Um in campus you learn basic um cryptography and system architecture but the real shift happens when you uh to take those concepts out of the textbooks and putting them on a public test net.

Absolutely. So, you know, I think this sort of then can open up the the conversation into the into the other side of this, right? We've got a good feel sort of what's happening on campus now based on your experiences, but this is a fastmoving technology. Um, you know, higher education, just like industry, just like and even worse with policy, uh, doesn't always keep up so much with with innovation, but is trying. um where can higher education do better or what's missing that you see so far and how uh universities and higher ed is approaching this.

So Jack if you want to go ahead and start.

Sure. So uh what I see as a I'm educator right um lecture um what I say is that um the missing part is about we treat this technology as a kind of technology but it should also be um interdisciplinary disciplinary um uh stuff means aside from we learn the technology itself the student they they should be trained they should be understand how to leverage the technology better where the uh for example where the company need it whether some regulation related whether some economic background should be involved um educational wise I I think we should enhance um in in this perspective.

Yeah. of course um this is the inevitable question that comes up which is what are we missing and I sort of always frame that in where's the time okay we have 15 weeks in the semester we have students who take multiple courses so you always have to make the trade-off of what's important today what do we want to make sure that we teach them tomorrow if I'm thinking about what we want to do tomorrow one of the things that we've we have in the course but perhaps Perhaps definitely not enough and that is the issue of inter is to make sure that we don't want to have what we're teaching be parochial to the US to the US market because internationally I have had numbers a good percentage of my students are international students and they always have a different perspective and we want to make sure we think about when we think about let's say uh money transfer just as a simple example or related to the tokenization of real estate. We make certain assumptions here about how real estate is managed, recorded, documented, uh, managed, transferred from place to place. Um, I always include in the lecture the issue of in your country where you're from, how is real estate managed? And managed is not the right word there, but it's the simplest one to use.

And we learned very much that there's opportunities there that we would not think were opportunities because because of the difference in the global scale. So it's the issue of trying to make sure that we're not thinking just very parochial uh and real estate a registry of deeds here is not the way it's done in many many other places around the world. So that would be one thing we want to expand upon.

Of course the trade-off is what do we then not do

right? I mean um the internet itself is becoming its own place right? So when you say brought into international markets, we're also talking to the digital plane uh in addition to that. So I think that's a real fascinating uh topic and definitely something that I think should be leaned into a bit more some of these other you know use cases beyond just the American or Western capital markets perspective. Um you know Vladimir, I'm interested to hear your take too.

What what's missing do you think from blockchain education um on the campus experience?

That's a good question. I would say um what's missing is like institutional lag where um some school need to have like um labs and hosting hackathons stuff like that.

Yeah. these like like events. Well, let me ask this to to the group like who's teaching who? Are you like I I mean that in a very sincere way like where's the learning happening? Is is the learning hap with blockchain?

Is it happening on campus or is the learning happening in Telegram groups? Right? And like who's leading whom? Or does it go back and forth? Is it symbiotic?

Is is it like how is this evolving technology resting here in in in the in in the balance between um you know where's the forum to to get information on this? Is the form going to be in the camp on campus or is the forum going to be in a chat group? I'll I'll open that up to any of you that want to maybe go find.

Allow me to sort of jump in there. Um, when thinking about who's teaching whom, having had the opportunity to teach for many years now, the one thing I've learned is that if I look out at an a group of students, uh, I realize that in combination, if not actually individually, they know a heck of a lot more about this stuff than I do. Okay? In combination, especially given the different perspectives and given their different backgrounds. And you know I had a student this year who had started a small crypto firm which was now managing hundreds of millions of dollars at which point I paused and handed them you know and said let's let's talk okay uh and so the idea there is we all today it's always the case that the audience and I look here as well knows more than I do individually.

My the reason I'm at behind the lectern or in my case I always teach in front of the lectern uh is that my approach is here I'm help I'm here to help you guide your to guide you through the process of learning about this underlying technology. Uh I'll pull your examples in. We'll use some examples that we know. will use whatever means be it Telegram, Discord, whatever it happens to be at that moment, Tik Tok uh for crypto today. U the idea is though I'm the guide and that's the way I approach it.

Not that I'm the in the old days um not that long ago I was involved in a lot of the online education uh and the terminology we used when online education became really available the professor went from being the sage on the stage no pun intended here versus the guide on the side. And I know that sounds trit, but the idea is really you do want to as an instructor today guide your students through the process of learning about a certain technology and I apologize that's probably more longer than

No, no, no, not at all. I think that hits the nail on the head. I mean that goes back to Vladimir. Does that kind of hit home with what you were saying on having these types of in real life events, these hackathons, this type of collaborative nature and collaborative approach to learning about this technology? Does that sort of go back to what you were talking about?

Biz.

All right. Fantastic. Well, let me ask. So, I know this is kind of hard to tell because this technology does move so fast, but let me ask each one of you, if there was a skill, a blockchainoriented skill that would be most valuable five years from now to maybe an employer, what do you think that would be? one particular skill that might be the most valuable skill to have five years from now in this technology.

Whichever one has an whichever one of you guys has an answer first, please chime in, but I don't want to put you quite on the spot, but or else I'll Jack.

Yeah, I would say uh in my opinion should be something more than technology itself. Maybe it's more about um how this technology can help means more about adaptive uh perspective because uh you know building the techn uh blockchain system you know nowadays uh AI right I one of my research interest about AI I know um generating the platform the system the web3 uh design is very quick very fast but then it tends to I mean talking about the company side when they hide this kind of technical uh some some talents there in that area. Then the thing I think they think is about how those kind of um um I mean those uh student or graduates their skills can really help can really um um can really um um assess where this technology can help in in a particular uh context. For example, finance for financial area, they find a job in that area. Then with that job uh really needs that kind of um uh needs blockchain how to can help.

I would say that that that kind of skill is really uh important.

So the ability to see it from the business perspective, right? Or the problem solving.

Yeah. Yes. Yes.

When

let's see um I'll probably just being a professor, I'll say there are two things. You ask for one, I'll give you two. Okay. U the if you think about it blockchain in particular you can think about there's underlying tools there's underlying theory and then thinking about those for a moment the underlying theory is really important that's just a given the tools are going to change over time if not from day to day definitely from month to month the one thing that I would want to focus on though is the third there which is the tradeoffs that have to be made in technology today blockchain in particular. One of the good questions I always get from students when we're going through this is how many blockchains are there?

And then you have to spend time ex well that that really brings out the issue of trade-offs. Why are why are there many many pick a number blockchains today uh it's all about trade-offs. So if you can teach about tradeoffs, then you can teach what's going to be going forward or how things change going forward. I'll add to that though, technology is just one thing. The focus of the business school of course is realizing very much how you pull how you use technology in business to improve business operations or create new markets.

And that's just something you want in every course, not just the blockchain course,

right?

Totally, Vladimir.

Yeah. Um I I discovered blockchain like one years ago and I always say why I didn't know it like 15 years ago because I'm from Haiti and I I feel like blockchain technology could really help on transparency that we have in Haiti. um just trying to see problem that we have in Haiti. And I think and I cannot wait to see like how we can have blockchain education in French that we can learn about it and try to use it in Haiti to improve our system.

Awesome. Excellent. Um we've got a couple minutes left and I did want to leave at least a bit of room for any questions that the audience might have. So if you do have a question, I'd be more than happy to come on over with the mic. John

uh yeah, a question for the professor from BC. uh curious if you could comment on corporate influence on the school itself in relation to the different uh conversations around decentralized blockchain and kind of where the industry is headed with some of its most recent corporate initiatives. Thank you.

Okay. So, um I obviously can't speak for all of BC, nor would I try. I'm smart enough as a professor not to try to do that. [clears throat] Can we edit that out by the way? Um, [laughter] but that said, uh, within the course, it's a matter of understanding the trade-offs of centralization versus decentralization.

Uh, one of the things we teach about, of course, in blockchain is, you know, the immutability of the chain. Well, if we think about industry today with stable coins and everything else that's happening in this industry or just last week or last day, last few days, the ability of being able to roll back a blockchain, which was done, I'm trying to think of the details, but it was done just in the last week or so. Um, the idea is to make sure that students understand the tradeoffs that need to be made there. And we bring in a number of guest speakers. I know for my course and in the finance course as well, they bring in a number of guest speakers to make sure to give that perspective.

And uh by the way, we're always interested in good speakers. So let me know. And also good real world examples of blockchain implementation in industry. And so uh please include that in the video as well.

All right. Thank you very much. Um I'll leave room for one more if we have it. If not, we're going to wrap it up. All right.

Thank you very much everybody. Ian, thank you so much to my panelists. Thank you very much.