Dear Cooper Union, 

Congratulations to students, faculty, and staff! You have made this semester at The Cooper Union extraordinary. Students’ dedication and passion have been on display this fall as your willingness to tackle challenges and put in the hard work was realized in the high caliber crits, reviews, and exam results over these last few weeks. The deep commitment of our faculty and staff has contributed to impressive institutional accomplishments and enriching experiences beyond the classroom. 

In The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture, second-year students immersed themselves in the city blocks of Toronto this fall when they visited to study architectural scale and relationships with tours led by their faculty. The academic experience this semester also included more than 20 lectures and events, with a Great Hall talk in September by alumnus Shigeru Ban and student-organized programming for The Diane Lewis Student Lecture Series; a new public programming collaboration with the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, titled The Making Home With and featuring the work of several faculty; as well as four exhibitions at Cooper. To ensure an ever-evolving, forward-looking vision for the school, an advisory council formed and is engaging distinguished scholars and practitioners in Design, History/Theory, and Environmental Technologies. Current members of the advisory council represent Harvard, MIT, and Cornell. In November, the school was awarded a $10,000 grant from the New York State Council on the Arts (NYCSA) to expand public access to The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture Archive of student work dating to 1970. 

Typographics, an annual festival organized by Type@Cooper and hosted on campus, also received a $10,000 NYCSA award. 

In the School of Art, students continue to mount remarkable shows and exhibitions across campus and have access to contemporary artists and practices through our continued programming relationship with the Public Art Fund. The Cooper Union Archives & Special Collections staff opened The Deborah Remington Years celebrating the work of the late School of Art faculty member. The work of Paul Gardère A’67 is on view in the Stuyvesant-Fish House, which, for the first time, offers public viewing hours. Over the course of the semester, administrators and faculty also updated the school’s entire course catalog, finalized an exchange program with La Esmeralda: The National School of Art in Mexico, and approved a shared faculty model of advising, which will begin next year. 

In the Albert Nerken School of Engineering, the semester began with the exciting launch of the Computer Science Program, the school’s first new academic department in 100 years and the newest degree in nearly 50 years. Our chemical engineering students and faculty attended the 2024 AIChE Annual Meeting in San Diego, CA, presenting research and winning awards. A Cooper Union team of students placed second at Pfizer’s first digital hackathon. Fourteen of 26 proposals submitted by faculty, staff, and students received more than $42,000 in funding as part of the 2024 Dean’s Innovation Grants, advancing the school’s strategic plan, new interdisciplinary courses, student success, and professional development for faculty. The IDC Foundation awarded a new three-year grant to The Cooper Union for nearly $1 million, supporting work at the intersection of engineering and architecture focused on the built environment. Additionally, a five-member ABET team completed its campus visit this fall, a central component of the school’s reaccreditation process. 

Our Humanities and Social Sciences team secured an important grant from the Teagle Foundation to continue the work of reimagining our HSS core curriculum. This fall was also rich with HSS programs exploring wide-ranging subjects in both the American Democracy lecture series and the HSS Faculty Focus series. Twelve new part-time professors joined HSS, and the faculty continue to regularly publish in peer-reviewed journals and in university presses. 

This semester, we have also focused on the important work of evolving our community in ways that bring us together to find commonalities and to respectfully recognize our differences. A few weeks ago, I shared that we will publish the Anti-Bias and Anti-Discrimination Task Force report, the result of a significant amount of work by the Task Force members, at the start of the next semester. We will have community conversations to discuss the content early in the semester and will move forward with selected report recommendations throughout the spring. I have also had conversations with students and faculty, both one-on-one and in groups. I look forward to continuing these in the new year. 

This semester began with incredibly positive energy around the announcement that our graduating seniors for the next four years will be 100% tuition free. Already, the Class of 2025 is at the halfway point of those scholarships! Now with the close of the fall semester, I wish you a wonderful holiday season – one that fills you up and gives you room for gratitude and restoration. I look forward to seeing you back on campus in January! 

Malcolm King