Deans

Portrait of man with beard

Michael Young is an architect and educator practicing in New York City where he is a founding partner of the architectural design studio Young & Ayata. Young & Ayata have received the Progressive Architecture award, the Design Vanguard Award, the Young Architects Prize, and a first-place prize for the design of the Bauhaus Museum in Dessau, Germany. Their work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art-New York, the Istanbul Modern, the Graham Foundation, SCI-Arc and Princeton University. Michael has published numerous essays and the books The Estranged Object (Graham Foundation, 2015) and Reality Modeled After Images (Routledge, 2021). He was the 2019-20 Rome Prize Fellow at the American Academy in Rome.

Michael earned his MArch II degree from Princeton University and his BArch from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. He is a registered architect in the State of New York.

View Michael Young's CV here.

Grace worked for ten years at the Pratt Institute where she most recently served as Pratt's Title IX Coordinator and Director of Special Projects. At Pratt Grace was responsible for the oversight and administration of their Title IX and Sexual Misconduct policy including policy updates, faculty, staff, and student training, and Title IX complaint processing and adjudication. Grace also served as the coordinator of the Diversity Advocates program at Pratt which provides training to volunteer students, faculty, and staff who wanted to serve as advocates within the institution regarding issues of equity and diversity. 

Grace has a Master of Education degree from the College of Education at the University of Maryland, College Park with a specialization in College Student Personnel and a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and Psychology from Smith College.  Grace has also completed certified training through the Association of Title IX Administrators as both a Title IX Coordinator and as a Level I Investigator.

Grace's office is located on the 3rd floor of the Student Residence Hall within the Office of Student Affairs. 
About

Ph.D., Chemistry 2005
Yale University
Research Advisors: Prof. David J. Austin and Prof. Donald M. Crothers
Dissertation: “Synthetic and Biophysical Efforts Toward an Understanding of RNA Structure”

M.S., Chemistry 2000
Yale University

B.E., Chemical Engineering 1998
The Cooper Union
Summa Cum Laude Graduate

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  • 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.