Student Trustee Candidates

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Student Trustee Nominations

2023 – 2025 Candidates

Since 2015, The Cooper Union has two Student Trustee positions on the Board of Trustees. Each year, the Board seeks students who are interested in non-profit governance to serve as a Trustee for a two-year term.

Voting opens on Friday, April 21, 2023 at 8AM and closes on Friday, April 28, 2023 at 5pm. Students must log into Outlook to cast a vote and may only vote once. 

Vote here!

Please remember that while you are voting for your first-choice candidate, you will also be selecting your second and third choice.

Era DoganiEra Dogani

I am sophomore general engineering student, and I am honored to express my interest in serving as The Cooper Union's Student Trustee. Throughout my time at Cooper, I have gained a deep appreciation for our institution's values of academic excellence, community engagement, and personal responsibility. I am confident that I have the ability to contribute to the advancement of these values and be an effective member of the Board of Trustees.

As a full-time student, I have learned the importance of time management, effective prioritization, and perseverance in balancing academic work, extracurricular activities, and personal commitments. This has taught me to be resilient in the face of challenges and to remain focused and committed to my goals. I believe that this focus and dedication will enable me to make valuable contributions to the work of the Board of Trustees.

Moreover, I understand the importance of maintaining confidentiality and respect for privacy in all Board discussions and decision-making. I am committed to upholding these principles and ensuring that sensitive information is handled with utmost care and discretion. I am confident in my ability to make well-informed decisions, based on a thorough analysis of all relevant information and perspectives. With my critical thinking and problem-solving skills honed through my experience as a teaching assistant, I am confident in my capacity to make well-informed decisions by analyzing all relevant information and perspectives. I believe that these skills would prove valuable in the context of Board decision-making.

Additionally, as an ESC member representing the BsE Class of 2025 and co-founder of the ISPE Chapter here at Cooper, I have gained valuable experience in advocating for the needs and concerns of my fellow students. Through these positions, I have organized events and initiatives aimed at promoting community engagement and enhancing the academic experience of our student body. I have learned to listen actively, prioritize effectively, and take action to bring about positive change. These skills will be essential in my role as a Student Trustee, where I will be responsible for the representation of student perspectives in Board discussions and decision-making. Overall, I am confident that the experiences that I have gained so far at Cooper have equipped me with the necessary skills to serve effectively as the Student Trustee. I am deeply committed to the success and advancement of Cooper Union, and I am eager to contribute my skills and experience to this effort. Thank you for your consideration.



Jadyn Hammond  Jadyn Hammond

I am currently a sophomore in the School of Art from Atlanta, Georgia. My educational experiences have been notably unique consisting of small schools that were structured so that students played a major role in the functioning of the school. I have memories from the age of 10 of weekly persuading donors to contribute to my non-profit school to build more classrooms, or for future classes to be able to take trips abroad. My last school, in Vermont, also had students on the board of trustees, and often our homework assignment would rely on attending the open meetings. I have kind of been conditioned to acknowledge my role in an academic institution as an active participant in an ongoing mission. I feel fortunate to have landed at this school where student activism is engrained in its history and has influenced the attitude of being a contributor rather than a bystander which is prevalent throughout the student body. My affinity for these types of schools has given me the privilege to closely observe the intricacies of how student-led environments come to be and I am running for this position for the opportunity to channel my experiences to benefit this community. 

 

Jacob Koziej Jacob Koziej

I'm a second-year electrical engineering student, and I come from a household with parents who came to America with nothing more than their education. As someone who's seen first-hand what opportunities hard work and a good education can provide, I've decided to dedicate my life to educating. What better place to do it than here at Cooper?

I’ve spent more time on campus than I’m willing to admit, but because of this, I’m no stranger to how things run around here. Many of you might know me as that crazy EE always running around the school, and quite frankly, I’ve gotten to know people from all the different years and majors this way. Due to this, I’d like to think that I have a pretty good grasp of how well (or horribly wrong) things are going around here.

What I think sets me aside from my peers are my experiences conversing with past and current faculty about the history and current state of Cooper’s education, along with my fair share of teaching here in CHESS, EID 101, IEEE’s OPS, Cooper IGVC, Summer & Saturday STEM, and tutoring CS on the side. From these experiences, I feel that I have a pretty strong grasp of the state of academics of current and prospective Cooper students.

Beyond academics, I work for microLab, where I collaborate with other students and the EE department to ensure none of our computing resources spontaneously combust. Additionally, I serve as Cooper IGVC's lead of firmware, where I've had quite some time to work through the kinks of running a big project with my peers.

On a final note, I'd like to bring up my most recent venture: working with the EE department to reimage our labs. My primary focus thus far has been trying to get the Embedded Systems Lab off the ground by integrating it into our existing curriculum; and by creating workshops to increase the accessibility of embedded systems for students of all three schools.

I hope it's evident that I truly have a vested interest in making Cooper the best school it can possibly be. Because of this, it'd be my honor to serve the school as a trustee and ensure that we continue maintaining Peter Cooper's legacy.

 

George KwiecinskiGeorge Kwiecinski

My name is George Kwiecinski; I am currently a sophomore studying general engineering at The Cooper Union. I grew up in rural New Hampshire and Pennsylvania and moved to NYC to attend Cooper. Before Cooper, I attended a Ski High School, where I ski raced under the International Ski Federation (FIS), and raced for the country of Poland.

My current interests and extracurriculars range broadly here at Cooper. I enjoy everything from welding to pharmaceuticals and biking. I am the co-founder and interim president of the International Society for Pharmaceutical Engineering chapter, where I will soon lead our chapter on a trip to the Interphex conference with other students interested in biopharmaceuticals. We have had great success with connecting students to opportunities in this space, and we continue to grow month to month. I am heavily involved with The Cooper Union Maroon and Gold grant program and work to help spread startup awareness and foster a community of entrepreneurship here at The Cooper Union. I also love meeting with and talking with alumni and have met with a broad range of alumni from all schools in order to understand and learn about the career paths possible after Cooper.

Apart from these, I founded a quality management company, and I am in the process of training employees and setting up company policies and strategies. I am working with three students as well as industry professionals to revise quality management systems (QMSs) based on ISO (International Standards Organization) and regulatory agency (FDA) requirements for startups.

In my free time, I enjoy the outdoors thoroughly. I recently got my pilot's license, and I love going flying with other students and continue to appreciate the activity more and more as I learn it from an engineering perspective. It is also very enjoyable from a regulatory perspective. I am running for this position as I would like to take the lessons I have learned from this diverse set of experiences and incorporate them into a role as Student Chair, to continue improving the Cooper community and the college as a whole. I hope I can do so with good heart and spirit!

  • 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.