Greetings from the East Village and welcome to the latest Shoop’s Stoop!

Our students and faculty continue to do amazing things! I encourage you to take the time to read all the articles in this newsletter. They include student activities and successes, faculty contributions and accomplishments, curricular initiatives, and alumni activities.

Our Summer Study Abroad Program has returned to pre-COVID levels. This summer we will send 11 engineering students abroad. This includes: Technische Universitat Dresden and Karlsruhe University of Applied Sciences, both in Germany, LaTrobe University in Australia with applications in Bosnia, Reykjavik University in Iceland, the National University of Singapore, Universidad Pontificia Comillas, Madrid in Spain, the Barbara Ford Peace Building Center in Guatemala, and the Monteverdi Field School in Italy. Additionally, we recently hosted Professor Saurabh Sinha, Deputy Vice Chancellor of Research and Internationalization at the University of Johannesburg in South Africa and we are in negotiations to add South Africa to our Summer Study Abroad portfolio!

Through the very generous donation of John Manuck ChE’69, we are excited to announce a new endowed distinguished professor: the John and Mary Manuck Distinguished Professor of Design. The John Manuck Distinguished Professor of Design will raise the visibility of design as a unifying element in interdisciplinary approaches at the intersection of art, architecture, engineering, and the humanities and social sciences, and collaborate across disciplinary boundaries to create innovative solutions to societal challenges. This newly created faculty endowment will catalyze pioneering work in engineering, art, architecture, and related fields by supporting a distinguished faculty member to pursue interdisciplinary design and innovation in their teaching, research, creative practice, and most importantly, student engagement. In doing so, it will help deepen approaches to innovation and utilization of design principles to generate breakthrough ideas, practices, and outcomes. Through a competitive selection process, the John and Mary Manuck Distinguished Professor of Design will complete a three-year tenure that will rotate among the three professional schools at The Cooper Union.

Finally, on Tuesday, March 28, we notified next year’s first-year applicants of our admissions decisions. This year’s applications were very strong. We had a 20% year-over-year increase in the total number of applicants with a 32% increase in female applications and a 15% increase in underrepresented minorities. Including early decision, regular decision, and deferrals, we have admitted a total of 245 students to the School of Engineering. Even though we continue to be test optional, 70% of the admitted class submitted standardized test scores, and the average SAT score for Math is 766 and 728 for Reading. Of this year’s admitted students, we held the total number of women at 44% and slightly increased the number of underrepresented minorities to 16%. By all accounts, this admitted student class is very strong!

Thank you again for sharing your valuable time with me on Shoop’s Stoop! It continues to be 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