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Engineering Students' Middle School Outreach Featured on NY1

POSTED ON: February 25, 2014

NY1, Time Warner Cable's New York news channel, has aired a spot featuring the middle school outreach program at The Albert Nerken School of Engineering. As part of what has been an annual event since 2010, students from the Metropolitan Expeditionary Learning School (MELS) in Queens, NY visit the labs in the Albert Nerken School of Engineering in January. The outreach initiative is led by members of the Formula SAE Team (Cooper’s racecar club) and Cooper Union’s chapter of Pi Tau Sigma (the Mechanical Engineering Honor Society). Cooper students return the visit, heading out to Jamaica, Queens every March.

The spot was produced as part of It Ain't Rocket Science, a series dedicated to exploring issues of STEM education. Steven Lee, a mechanical engineering senior, is interviewed on camera. "We are passionate about what we do, and we never really had these experiences when we were in middle school," Lee says. "So we hope to be able to instill some of that passion within them. Hopefully they will be able to pursue careers and majors later on that relate to STEM."

More News from The Cooper Union

  • 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.