Summer STEM Symposium

Students in the Summer STEM program, a six-week intensive that immerses current high school sophomores and juniors in hands-on engineering design and problem-solving, spent their morning in the Great Hall on Thursday, July 26, hearing from a range of students and practitioners in various STEM fields. The symposium was organized by Elizabeth Waters, associate director of STEM outreach, and featured rising senior in Cooper’s mechanical engineering department Amanda Lombardo; recent architecture graduate Yaoyi Fan; School of Art alumna and design lead of interactive experiences at IBM Watson Jenny Woo; and Ari Melenciano, candidate in New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Graduate Program. Each guest presented her experience arriving into STEM fields from different paths and answered questions for high school students interested in pursuing degrees in the fields.

Photos by Randy Hilston ME'20

  • Founded by inventor, industrialist and philanthropist Peter Cooper in 1859, The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art offers education in art, architecture and engineering, as well as courses in the humanities and social sciences.

  • “My feelings, my desires, my hopes, embrace humanity throughout the world,” Peter Cooper proclaimed in a speech in 1853. He looked forward to a time when, “knowledge shall cover the earth as waters cover the great deep.”

  • From its beginnings, Cooper Union was a unique institution, dedicated to founder Peter Cooper's proposition that education is the key not only to personal prosperity but to civic virtue and harmony.

  • Peter Cooper wanted his graduates to acquire the technical mastery and entrepreneurial skills, enrich their intellects and spark their creativity, and develop a sense of social justice that would translate into action.