Happy 2021 and welcome to the second School of Engineering Newsletter. I want to begin by sharing that we finished fall semester strong. The initial preparations and continuous refinement and evolution of pedagogy and delivery by our faculty and staff paid off. In the Fall 2020 Semester, the Albert Nerken School of Engineering delivered 100 unique courses with 164 sections across seven academic departments. Of these courses, all lecture courses were online with 10 having an in-person component. The in-person courses were predominately laboratory and capstone courses. In addition, nine project-based courses integrated CU@Home kits that were shipped to each student to build and test the project and thereby retain the rigor and authenticity of Cooper. Throughout the semester, we progressively increased student access to our shops and maker spaces for course, project and extracurricular activity fabrication. The Spring 2021 Semester will look very similar to Fall 2020, a hybrid modality with 93 unique courses and 161 sections. I invite you to join me on Shoop’s Stoop as I share some of the highlights of the great things that are happening in the School of Engineering.

During the fall semester, in addition to executing our primary teaching mission, we continued to innovate, improve and progress. Throughout the semester, we continued the bi-weekly faculty pedagogy workshops as well as the monthly diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) townhalls that we began in the summer of 2020. We experimented with several different formats for the townhalls including open forums, student-led focused topical discussions and we even expanded several to the entire Cooper community including one led by Adrianna Farmiga, Associate Dean for the School or Art, who introduced a racial equity definition project and our final townhall which was a distinguished lecture by Lynn Conway, an advocate for transgender rights who led a revolution in microchip design. You can find details of these DEI town halls in one of the articles in this newsletter. Early in the semester, we expanded our partnerships by formalizing a collaborative agreement with Memorial Sloan Kettering (MSK) Cancer Center to provide practical experience and joint research projects for Cooper students. MSK recently established a computational oncology group providing rich opportunities for applications of machine learning and artificial intelligence. Additionally, in November, the full-time faculty unanimously approved the strategic plan assessment plan which provides measures of performance by which we will assess our strategic plan. In December, we had nine students successfully complete our graduate program and receive Master of Engineering degrees. Finally, this semester saw an increase in the number of alumni and children and grandchildren of Cooper alumni who are inspired to financially support the exciting renaissance that is occurring in the School of Engineering. Looking ahead, I’d like to give a shout-out and foreshadow several engineering alumni who will be recognized at the CUAA Founder’s Day Award Ceremony on February 10, 2021 – Jennifer Fenton Weishaupt ChE’95 will receive the Peter Cooper Public Service Award, Stephen P. Welby ChE’87 will receive the Gano Dunn Award, and Anna Brook BSE’04 will receive the Young Alumna of the Year Award. Please join me in congratulating these engineering alumni!

In late October, after over a year long process, the Albert Nerken School of Engineering received a nearly $1.6M grant from a foundation that wishes to remain anonymous to unify and raise awareness of bioengineering and biomedical education, research, and project activities. This three-year grant provides funding for a Distinguished Professor of Bioengineering, summer salaries and research expenses for five faculty researchers, five Graduate Research Fellowships, and five undergraduate research assistants. I led the development, submission and presentation of the proposal with the support of Professors Ben Davis, Eric Lima, Oliver Medvedik, Ruben Savizky, Neveen Shlayan, Jennifer Weiser, and David Wootton.

In our October newsletter, I reported that we have four tenure-track faculty searches being conducted this academic year with one in Physics, one in Math, and two in Mechanical Engineering. I am pleased to report yet another first for Cooper Union – we have entered into an agreement with the Center for Computational Astrophysics (CCA) of the Simons Foundation’s Flatiron Institute for a joint faculty position. The Simons Foundation is a private foundation established in 1994 in New York City by Jim and Marilyn Simons. With an annual grants and programs budget of $300 million, the foundation’s mission is to advance the frontiers of research in mathematics and the basic sciences. The foundation pursues its mission through its grant-making division, comprising programs in Mathematics & Physical Sciences, Life Sciences, Education & Outreach and autism research, and through its internal research division, the Flatiron Institute. The position is generally a 50-50 joint appointment between The Cooper Union and CCA, with the appointee spending half of their effort in each place. The appointment at CCA will last for the duration of three years; afterwards, the joint appointment will end and the person in this position will continue with their faculty appointment at The Cooper Union. We are excited about this joint faculty position and the research collaboration with the Simons Foundation.

Thank you for spending some of your valuable time with me! You should know that these are just a few of the highlights – the tips of the waves. There are many more great things happening in the Albert Nerken School of Engineering. I look forward to sharing additional updates in future editions of Shoop’s Stoop!

Barry L. Shoop, Ph.D., P.E.

Dean of Engineering

Albert Nerken School of Engineering