THANK YOU TO OUR SUPPORTERS!

Welcome back to Shoop’s Stoop! The start of a new academic year marks a renewal, a continuation of a journey of learning, exploration, and growth. I want to share some of the things that happened over the summer in the Albert Nerken School of Engineering since our last update in June.

On Monday, September 5, I had the sad duty to inform our engineering faculty, staff, and students that Professor Vito Guido had suddenly passed away. Vito was a larger-than-life presence in the School of Engineering since joining Cooper as an assistant professor in 1979. In addition to his research and teaching, most recently, he served as the George Fox Chair of Civil Engineering leading the Department of Civil Engineering. This past year, he was instrumental in re-imagining course scheduling to allow for block scheduling which has facilitated more interdisciplinary learning. For the first time last year, one of the Civil Engineering capstone projects included students from The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture. Vito was respected by colleagues and revered by his students. He was a gentle giant – his stature equally matched by the size of his heart. While an exceptional Civil Engineer by discipline and training, he was truly a “civil” engineer in every sense of the word. He was a staunch advocate for students, a valued colleague to faculty and staff across The Cooper Union, and a friend. He will be deeply missed.

Our Summer Study Abroad Program continues to grow. This summer we sent 12 engineering students to five different countries including Guatemala, Singapore, Germany, Iceland, and Spain.

An important focus for Academic Year 2023 is on student success and support. The week of August 15th was the inaugural launch of Cooper’s Help for Engineering Student Success (CHESS). This was a week-long, online course taught by Cooper Engineering tutors covering foundational disciplinary topics in math, chemistry, physics, and computer science. CHESS also included course topics such as study skills, time management, and mental health. This journey began in the fall semester of 2021 during a faculty open forum, Nathaniel Kingsbury EE’22, a math tutor, asked if there could be more done to support students struggling in math. His comment was insightful, “It isn’t that they don’t understand calculus, it’s that they don’t have the necessary foundational skills in algebra, geometry, and trigonometry that they should have gotten in high school.” In March of the spring semester, Associate Dean Savizky, Associate Dean Shay, and I assembled a group of our best tutors including Nathaniel Kingsbury EE’22, Sanjna Rao ChE ’22, Brandon Ho EE ’22, and Jonathan Lam EE ’22, and began meeting regularly to discuss challenges that the tutors had identified in foundational high school preparation and developed topical coverage and a curriculum for this summer course. The final lineup of instructors included Nathaniel Kingsbury EE’22 and Catherine Van West EE’24 reviewing math, Nada Shetewi ChE’24 reviewing chemistry, Abduhla Ali EE’25 and Emma Cohen BSE ’24 reviewing physics, and Catherine Van West EE’24 and Jacob Koziej EE’25 reviewing computer science. With 52 first-year registrants (42% of the incoming class), the students were assigned to one of two groups. The schedule for the course is shown here.
 
In preparation for teaching, each of the facilitators taught a class that was observed and critiqued by their peers and deans. We conducted a pre-CHESS survey that asked the students to self-assess their familiarity and preparedness with topics covered in the course and followed with a post-CHESS survey to solicit feedback on the content and conduct of the course. We will also be following-up with these students later in the fall semester after they have had some actual experience with the rigors of the Cooper curriculum to ask if they have any additional insights or thoughts on the CHESS Program.

In late June, we had five faculty members attend the 2022 Institute on Project-Based Learning at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. The Cooper Union team comprised of Professors David Wootton, Michelle Rosen, J.B. Koo, Sven Haverkamp, and Michael Giglia. I will note that this is the first time we have included adjunct faculty in our summer professional development.

In addition, this summer we had seven full-time faculty members representing each of our four ABET degree-granting majors collaborate on a project to reimage the interdisciplinary capstone experience. This group investigated the possibility of developing interdisciplinary capstone projects that incorporate students and faculty from more than one engineering discipline. This approach more closely models industry where engineers are expected to work collaboratively with experts in several different technical and non-technical domains. Topics addressed during this summer effort included benchmarking of best practices of multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary capstone design and implementation; the practical extent of the interdisciplinarity; faculty participation model that ensures faculty engagement from the multiple disciplines participating; integration of project management, ethics, teamwork, group dynamics, and other professional skills; course objectives; course scheduling; assessment; and possible industry engagement. The faculty team developed a prototype for an interdisciplinary capstone course that is being piloted this academic year. Early indicators are promising – in the mechanical engineering capstone course, there are a total of 13 project teams of which 9 are interdisciplinary and include students and faculty from electrical engineering, civil engineering, and architecture.

We also have some changes in departmental leadership this academic year. Professor Mili Shah is now Professor and Chair of the Department of Mathematics, Professor Ben Davis is Professor and Ensinger Chair of the Department of Chemical Engineering, and Professor Cosmas Tzavelis is now Professor and George Fox Chair of Civil Engineering.

At the start of the Fall Semester, Brittany Corn-Agostini joined the Department of Physics as a tenure-track Assistant Professor. She holds a Ph.D. in physics from Stevens Institute of Technology, has 10 years of industry experience in the financial sector and her area of specialization is in quantum mechanics. With Brittany’s addition, we will have now added eight new tenure-track faculty members to the full-time faculty in the School of Engineering. In 2018, our tenure-track faculty was 18% female and, with the addition of Brittany, our on-hand tenure-track faculty is now 38% female. We are now gearing up to conduct a search for two civil engineering tenure-track faculty members.

On September 12, the 2022-2023 U.S. News & World Report rankings were released. The school has sustained its overall ranking of #9 in Best Undergraduate Engineering Programs where a doctorate is not offered. In the Regional Colleges North category, Cooper continues to be #1 Best Value Schools, #2 in Regional Colleges North, tied for #1 Most Innovative Schools, tied #6 for Best Undergraduate Teaching. To identify colleges where students are most likely to encounter undergraduates from racial or ethnic groups different from their own, U.S. News also conducts demographic analysis to produce a diversity index ranging from 0 to 1. The closer a school's number is to 1, the more diverse the student population. Among Regional Colleges North, Cooper Union’s index was 0.68 placing it in a tie for #5 where the top score was 0.74.

In other exciting news, Professor JB Koo, our newest Electrical Engineering faculty member who joined us in August 2021 from Intel Corporation, has negotiated with NYDesign. The facility supports microelectronic circuit fabrication for universities through industry partners like Google, IBM, SkyWater and efabless, among others. NYDesign has agreed to provide three tape-outs of 130 nm CMOS technology, one each in January, February, and April of 2023. Each of these individually would cost roughly $10k so this amounts to nearly $30k worth of industry-based microelectronic circuit fabrication experience for our electrical engineering students.

Recently, I have focused on securing the necessary funding to launch the new Computer Science Program and several months ago, with the help of Lou Manzione one of our trustees, I began an engagement with Bell Labs. Part of that engagement resulted in their donation of a stereo microscope, several high-performance oscilloscopes, a spectrum analyzer, and a function generator. In addition, the President of Bell Labs, Peter Vetter, will come to Cooper Union on October 27th to engage with faculty and students and give a lecture to the IEEE Student Branch. Additionally, I have had very promising meetings with the Director of the Simons Foundation Flatiron Institute Center for Computational Mathematics and the new head of the machine learning group to discuss the possibility of a joint Computer Science faculty appointment, similar to the one Professor Alice Pisani holds with the Center for Computational Astrophysics at Flatiron.

Finally, I encourage you to take some time to read the articles included in this newsletter. This is by far the largest newsletter to date, an indication of the vibrancy of all that is going on in the School of Engineering.

Thank you again for sharing your valuable time with me on Shoop’s Stoop! It’s an exciting time to be part of the Albert Nerken School of Engineering. I look forward to sharing additional updates in future editions.

Barry L. Shoop, Ph.D., P.E.  |  Dean of Engineering  |  Albert Nerken School of Engineering