Welcome back to the East Village, 41 Cooper Square, and Shoop’s Stoop! We successfully completed yet another academic year and I want to share just a few of the exciting things that happened in the Albert Nerken School of Engineering since my last update.

Late in the semester, we learned the sad news of the passing of Lincoln Williams, a class of 2027 mechanical engineering student. On May 2, we held a very touching celebration of his life on the Alumni Terrace with his family, faculty, staff, classmates, and friends. To commemorate and honor his life, his friends and family are establishing a fund in his name. If you would like to contribute, please do so via this link: https://cooper.edu/giving/lincoln-williams-memorial-fund and designate the gift in memory of Lincoln. His parents, Susan Scandrett and Michael Williams, will be notified of your contribution. If you have any questions, you can reach out directly to Terri Coopersmith/VP of Development at Cooper Union at 212-353-4136.

The Cooper Union’s 164th Commencement on May 22, 2024, was a wonderful celebration of our amazing graduates. This year we had a total of 122 undergraduate students and 26 graduate students graduate from the School of Engineering. For our undergraduates, this included 17 Chemical Engineers, 27 Civil Engineers, 32 Electrical Engineers, 21 Mechanical Engineers, and 5 General Engineers. In addition to the undergraduate degrees, members of this graduating class were awarded 60 minors: 7 Mathematics Minors, 32 Computer Science Minors, 9 Bioengineering Minors, 5 Chemistry Minors, and 5 HSS Minors.

Our fall 2024 incoming first-year class is again very strong. We admitted 114 students into the Class of 2027. There will be 22 students majoring in Chemical Engineering, 28 in Civil, 29 in Electrical, 30 in Mechanical, and 5 in General Engineering. Women comprise 44% of this class. Additionally, 10% of this class identify as underrepresented minorities, 21% self-identified as the first in their family to attend college and 9% of the class is international. This year we have 43 entering Master of Engineering students. 81% of these admitted students submitted standardized test scores with an average SAT score of 1478 and an average Math SAT score of 765.  By all measures, this is yet another very strong entering class!

This fall, we will add a new tenure-track faculty to our Chemical Engineering Department ranks. Abhishek Sharma received his Ph.D. from Cornell University in 2021 and since then has been a postdoctoral scholar at the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago. His areas of academic interest include thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, molecular simulations, chemical kinetics, and statistical mechanics-derived molecular simulation of phase transitions. Over the past four years, I have hired 11 new tenure-track faculty, nearly 1/3 of the tenured and tenure-track faculty in the School of Engineering. In 2013, the composition of the tenured and tenure-track faculty in the School of Engineering was 6.3% women and in Fall 2024 it will be 42% women!

As you will recall, this academic year is our ABET Record Year. We submitted our request for evaluation to ABET on January 31, 2024, and that initiated our reaccreditation. We are currently in the final stages of completing one Self-Study Report for each of the four ABET accredited programs – think of each being a 300-400-page report – needless to say, a tremendous amount of work! These self-studies will be submitted to ABET by July 1, 2024. The reaccreditation evaluation will be a comprehensive general review with an on-site visit of four Program Evaluators (PEVs) and a Team Chair that will occur on September 29 – October 1, 2024. By all measures, we are in good shape for this reaccreditation.

Our students and faculty continue to do amazing things. I encourage you to read about their accomplishments in this newsletter's articles!

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 of Shoop’s Stoop! From all of us at Cooper, enjoy your summer! 

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