Vice President of Academic Affairs

Demetrius Eudell

Photo by Leo Sorel

Dr. Demetrius L. Eudell is The Cooper Union’s first Vice President of Academic Affairs (VPAA). Dr. Eudell assumed his new role in July 2023, bringing to Cooper a wealth of scholarly experience as a historian and a deep educational commitment to the critical work at the core of Cooper’s disciplines and practices. Dr. Eudell was previously Dean of Social Sciences at Wesleyan University. 

Dr. Eudell’s appointment as Vice President of Academic Affairs 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 the schools of architecture, art, engineering, and the faculty of the humanities and social sciences. 

Messages from the VPAA 

 

  • 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.