Evan Dong, a first-year student in the Albert Nerken School of Engineering, came to Cooper through the STEM Outreach program, which he joined the summer between his junior and senior years of high school in Kingston, NY. We recently asked him about his experience studying STEM at Cooper as a high school student, what he gained from the program, and what he hopes to accomplish as an undergraduate and beyond.

What class did you take in the STEM Outreach@Cooper program?
The class I participated in was Linear Algebra for engineering. It was an online course that I took in the summer after my junior year (2024), where we learned about matrices and how they can be manipulated to accomplish tasks needed in the field of engineering.

What was the best part of the class for you?
The highlight of my experience was working in the small breakout groups throughout the program. Even though the course was online, working in these small groups made it feel personal and collaborative. This collaborative environment, where we met everybody on at least a surface level and worked alongside them, made it especially easy to collaborate
when we were put into groups for our final projects. I enjoyed every time we met to solve problems, plan our presentation, and create the presentation. I especially appreciated the dedication of the TAs who weren't just helpful academically. They were open to sharing their experiences on their academic journeys. This conversation that they were able to share, even sometimes held outside of class, helped me create a better picture of what engineering looks like, which helped me become certain that engineering is what I wanted to pursue. The assistance of my mentors, both open to helping inside and outside of classes, combined with the intimate working environment, made me feel like I was a part of a close community of learners and future engineers.

What do you want to study as a Cooper Union undergraduate?
At The Cooper Union, I intend to study electrical engineering, which I was at first very shaky about. However, after talking to my TAs from the Cooper Summer STEM and learning more about the field, I became more confident that this is the direction I want to pursue.

What do you hope to accomplish after earning your degree in electrical engineering?
While I don’t have a specific career path locked in yet, I have plenty of ideas of things I would like to make into my life work. For example, I really want to tackle technological sustainability issues in the world. Through electrical engineering, I want to explore this issue and provide sets of solutions, whether through chip design, hardware optimization, or algorithmic improvements. I believe that, addressing a problem this broad, we must rethink how energy is used at the level of a system, improving it repeatedly to mitigate the environmental footprint of today’s technology and paving the way for even more complex systems in the future.