Welcoming Our New Vice President of Academic Affairs

Dear Cooper Union, 

I hope you are enjoying these summer months, finding opportunities to pursue your projects and passions while also taking time to relax and recuperate. The upcoming academic year at The Cooper Union holds much promise, including the excitement of welcoming new people to our community. This week, I am pleased to welcome Dr. Demetrius L. Eudell as he officially steps into the role of Cooper’s inaugural Vice President of Academic Affairs (VPAA). Dr. Eudell comes to Cooper from Wesleyan University, where he served as the Dean of Social Sciences, and brings with him a wealth of scholarly experience as a historian and a deep educational commitment to the critical work at the core of our disciplines and practices. 

As shared previously, Dr. Eudell’s appointment to this newly established academic leadership position followed a national search process guided by the recommendations of an external Visiting Committee and involving a cross-section of Cooper Union faculty, students, and staff.  The charge of the VPAA role, identified in the Committee’s report as an essential area of focus, is to coordinate cross-disciplinary learning opportunities, pedagogical collaboration, and global, civically engaged perspectives across HSS, architecture, art, and engineering. 

Dr. Eudell’s arrival marks a historic moment for The Cooper Union. As the first person to lead in this new administrative capacity, he will be working closely with the deans and faculty over the coming weeks and months to get to know Cooper a little better and begin engaging with the academic programs, supporting the work of providing rigorous, supportive, and dynamic student experiences while fostering a collaborative, interdisciplinary academic culture. The work of the VPAA will continue to build on the substantial progress we’ve made in recent years toward our institutional goals and strategic priorities, and I am so thrilled that our community felt Dr. Eudell is the right person to help steward The Cooper Union’s next evolution as a model for humanistic, creative, inquiry-based education at the intersection of disciplines. 

To support Dr. Eudell in getting to know The Cooper Union, we have developed a two-phase onboarding plan. The first phase, prior to the beginning of the school year, will consist of a series of meetings and conversations to introduce Dr. Eudell to key colleagues, Trustees, our rich institutional history, and our dynamic current context. The second phase of onboarding will begin with the start of the school year and the return of faculty and students. During this phase, Dr. Eudell will meet with faculty and students across The Cooper Union to become further acquainted with our academic offerings and institutional priorities. He will participate in several community events with internal and external stakeholders. The Cabinet will provide support and assistance throughout the onboarding phase to ensure Dr. Eudell has all of the information and resources needed to be effective and to assist him in forging relationships that will provide a range of perspectives on the opportunities ahead.  

It is an honor to have Dr. Eudell become part of our close-knit Cooper community. I know he is looking forward to our annual welcome back celebrations in late August and is excited to start collaborating with students, faculty, and staff. We will have details in August about the opportunities to meet and welcome Dr. Eudell, and, in the meantime, you can read a brief interview with him on our website.  

Please join me in extending Dr. Eudell a warm welcome! 

Laura

  • Founded by inventor, industrialist and philanthropist Peter Cooper in 1859, The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art offers education in art, architecture and engineering, as well as courses in the humanities and social sciences.

  • “My feelings, my desires, my hopes, embrace humanity throughout the world,” Peter Cooper proclaimed in a speech in 1853. He looked forward to a time when, “knowledge shall cover the earth as waters cover the great deep.”

  • From its beginnings, Cooper Union was a unique institution, dedicated to founder Peter Cooper's proposition that education is the key not only to personal prosperity but to civic virtue and harmony.

  • Peter Cooper wanted his graduates to acquire the technical mastery and entrepreneurial skills, enrich their intellects and spark their creativity, and develop a sense of social justice that would translate into action.