It’s that time again when I usher you back to New York City and the East Village for a chat about the Albert Nerken School of Engineering on Shoop’s Stoop! The start of a new academic year marks a renewal, a continuation of a journey of learning, exploration and growth. On the first day of Fall Semester, at our Convocation in a packed Great Hall, outgoing President Laura Sparks surprised the community with the news that, for the next four years, all graduating seniors will be tuition free! It was truly an electrifying moment and start to the academic year!

The first-year class is yet another amazing group of talented individuals who will bring diverse lived experiences, contribute to the richness of our learning environment, and add to the vibrancy of our community. We had 112 entering engineering first-year students join our ranks with 18 ChE, 29 CE, 30 EE, 24 ME, and 11 BSE. Women comprise 44% of this class, 10% identify as underrepresented minorities, 21% self-identify as the first in their family to attend college and 10% are international.  Additionally, even though our admissions process is test-optional, over 80% submitted SAT scores, with an average SAT score of nearly 1500/1600 and average Math SAT score of 770/800. Qualitatively, the class includes individuals who have already conducted research in a diverse range of fields, from developing cancer-fighting nanoparticles to investigating the effects of sleep deprivation on therapy and replicating the energy efficiency of penguins in robotic designs. Among them are also accomplished artists in piano, ballet, ceramics, jazz, sculpture, and painting.

From September 29 through October 1, we hosted an onsite visit of a five-member ABET Team to complete our reaccreditation process. The team toured our lab facilities, spoke with the administration, faculty, students, alumni, and members of our Engineering Advisory Council (EAC), and reviewed student work. Although the visit ended on October 1, ABET has a lengthy review process, culminating in their annual meeting in mid-July. We are confident that we will receive notification of reaccreditation in August 2025. It has been over a year-and-a-half of heavy work, and I want to publicly acknowledge the team effort that made this reaccreditation a success. Associate Dean Lisa Shay led the effort and applied her expertise of the ABET reaccreditation process from years of being an ABET Program Evaluator (PEV). Our ABET Department Chairs deserve special recognition for leading the development of their individual self-studies and answering individual PEV questions – Ben Davis for ChE, Cosmas Tzavelis for CE, Fred Fontaine for EE, and Melody Baglione for ME.  

The ABET Team was impressed by how strongly the Albert Nerken School of Engineering supports undergraduate research. It is well known that undergraduate research is a high-impact practice that has been demonstrated to benefit student learning, persistence, and career preparation. As part of my overview presentation to the ABET Team, we collected some data that identified our commitment to undergraduate research and academic excellence. The average number of students taking a research independent study course averages 60/semester – this is 12% of the engineering student body! Additionally, in 2019 when I arrived at Cooper Union, the amount of funding allocated to student travel to conferences was less than $5,000. In 2024, that number rose to nearly $50,000!  

At the start of Fall Semester, we welcomed Abhishek Sharma to the Albert Nerken School of Engineering and the Department of Chemical Engineering. Abhishek received his Ph.D. from Cornell University in 2021 and since that time 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 now hired 11 new tenure-track faculty, nearly one-third 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 is 42% women! This academic year we will be hiring five new full-time faculty members – two in electrical engineering, one in civil engineering, and two in computer science.

Finally, I encourage you to take some time to read the articles included in this newsletter. You will find inspiring articles highlighting the accomplishments of students, faculty and staff, and a sampling of the vibrancy of all that is going on in the School of Engineering.

Thank you for sharing a seat and some 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 

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 one-third 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

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.

At the beginning of this academic year, we advertised for a tenure-track faculty position in the Department of Chemical Engineering. I am pleased to announce that we have successfully hired Abhishek Sharma to fill this position. Abhishek received his Ph.D. from Cornell University in 2021, and since that time, 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. We very much look forward to having Abhishek join us in August!

Earlier this year, Nori Perez, the Dean’s Office Manager, and Elizabeth Waters, our Director of STEM Outreach, were both offered amazing opportunities elsewhere that allowed them to further their professional careers. So, in a relatively short time we were able to hire replacements that allowed continuity of operations. On April 1, Lizbeth (Liz) Soto joined our team as the new Dean’s Office Manager. Liz was previously the Administrative Coordinator at Columbia University Medical Center and most recently the Senior Administrative Manager at Weill Cornell Medicine. On March 18, Yvonne Thevenot joined our team as the new Director of STEM Outreach. She is a Ph.D. candidate in Mathematics, Science, & Technology, at the Teachers College at Columbia University and is the Founder of STEM Kids NYC. She focuses on curriculum and instruction design with culturally responsive pedagogy and approaches. We welcome these two amazing individuals and look forward in anticipation to the great things they will do for Cooper!

Our faculty continue to do amazing things. Professor Jennifer Weiser, Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering, received a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program award in biomedical sciences from the U.S. Department of State and the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board. She will join the faculty of Graz Technical University (TU Graz) in Austria. She will be a Visiting Professor in the Institute of Chemistry and Technology of Biobased Systems (IBioSys) during the spring semester of Academic Year 2025.

Our students also continue to do amazing things. Ubaidullah Hassan ChE'25 was named a Goldwater Scholar. Hassan is working with Professor Robert Topper in the Department of Chemistry on research that applies computational chemistry methods to the area of atmospheric chemistry. Our Solar Decathlon Team secured a place as a finalist under the Multifamily Building Division. Among twenty teams competing in the multifamily division, only ten advanced to compete in the finals that will be held at the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) in Golden, CO. We also had seven other students receive scholarships from the American Council of Engineering Companies (ACEC), the American Society for Health Care Engineering (ASHE), and the American Society for Civil Engineers (ASCE) Metropolitan Section. I encourage you to read about these amazing student achievements in this newsletter.

Our Summer Study Abroad Program continues to thrive. This summer we will send 11 engineering students abroad. This includes Technische Universitat Dresden and Karlsruhe University of Applied Sciences, both in Germany, Reykjavik University in Iceland, the National University of Singapore, Universidad Pontificia Comillas, Madrid in Spain, the Barbara Ford Peace Building Center in Guatemala, Universidad de Burgos in Spain, and Bar-Ilan University in Israel.  

Finally, on March 29, we notified next year’s first-year applicants of our admissions decisions. This year’s applications were very strong. Including early decision, regular decision, and deferrals, we have admitted a total of 254 students to the School of Engineering. Even though we continue to be test optional, 84% of the admitted class submitted standardized test scores, and the average SAT score for Math is 770 and 730 Verbal. 76% of this admitted class will graduate with Calculus B/C, multivariate calculus, or linear algebra and 74% will graduate with AP Physics. Of this year’s admitted students, the total number of women was 40% and the percentage of first-generation is 15%. 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 

Given the tumultuous state of our world today, I thought it would be appropriate for us to begin by reflecting on the original vision of Peter Cooper during a similarly divisive period in American history. In a letter to the Cooper Union Trustees in 1859, Peter Cooper shared the following:

“I trust that the students of this institution will do something to bear back the mighty torrent of evils now pressing on the world. I trust that here they will learn to overcome the evils of life with kindness and affection.”

Since its founding over 164 years ago, The Cooper Union has risen to make hugely positive impacts that have shaped our city and nation. We collectively have the privilege and the responsibility of sustaining Peter Cooper’s founding vision, and I am confident that we will continue this impactful legacy.  

As we quickly approach the end of fall semester and anticipate a much-needed winter break, I wanted to provide an update of the activities in the Albert Nerken School of Engineering since our last newsletter in October.

Our students continue to knock it out of the park. This semester we have had a total of 58 engineering students attend conferences around the country. This represents over 10% of the students in the School of Engineering! Of this total, 36 presented research results in the form of posters or oral presentations. As is our tradition, our chemical engineering students walked away with a number of awards for the Undergraduate Research Poster Competition at the 2023 AIChE Annual Student Conference. Emma Cohen BSE’24 took 1st Place in the Material Science Division, Caitlin Noonan ChE’25 took 1st Place Overall Environmental Division Award and 1st Place Award in Environmental Division I, and our Cooper Brue Team took 1st Place for Best Beer Label and 3rd Place Overall in the Annual Beer Brewing Competition. I encourage you to read the articles in this newsletter about some of the students and conferences. These student professional development experiences are made possible through the generous donations of Alan Fortier ChE’79 and Gerry Posner EE’69.

Since my last Shoop’s Stoop, we have added two staff members to the School of Engineering Dean’s Team. Earlier in the semester, we welcomed Jake Zweiback as a part time Student Accommodations and Proctoring Scheduler and toward the end of the semester we expanded his role to include student payroll and a full-time position. On November 27, Ms. Blair Ribeiro joined as our new Research Grants Administrator for the School of Engineering. With our new faculty hires, we are seeing increased research productivity and needed a full-time grant manager to support our faculty pre- and post-grant award needs. Blair comes to us with years of experience in grant management. Previously, she was Grant and Contract Officer at Cornell University and most recently the Senior Grants and Contracts Administrator at Georgetown University. She has tremendous experience with federal funding agencies, New York State grants, and foundations. She also has paralegal experience. We look forward with anticipation to this new role and Blair’s contributions!

We continue to innovate and improve our curriculum and improve our students’ experience. On November 14, the Engineering Curriculum Committee met to consider several curricular changes including the addition of several courses. The Department of Mechanical Engineering proposed the addition of two new cross-registered interdisciplinary courses: EID233 Environmental Technologies for the Built Environment: Fundamentals and EID234 Environmental Technologies for the Built Environment: Materials and Systems. These two engineering courses will be cross registered with ARCH134A Environmental Technologies EVT Fundamentals and ARCH134B Environmental Technologies: Matter, Materials, and Making allowing engineering students to enroll in these two required architecture courses. Additionally, a new chemistry elective was introduced: Ch381 Environmental Chemistry and Climate Change. This course will develop and consider important aspects of environmental science within the context of global climate change. It will introduce and apply the core ideas of green chemistry, an international environmental movement. And finally, last year’s successful interdisciplinary capstone pilot was formalized and improved further this year. On December 5, we hosted an Interdisciplinary Capstone Showcase where students presented and celebrated their fall semester achievements.

And for an update on one of our new superstar faculty, Alice Pisani. You may recall that Alice is the first Cooper faculty member to hold a joint appointment as an Assistant Professor of Physics at Cooper Union and as an Associate Research Scientist at the Center for Computational Astrophysics of the Simons Foundation’s Flatiron Institute. In 2019, Alice applied for a prestigious European grant and earlier this semester she was notified that she has been awarded a $1.4M euro grant to support her research on cosmic voids. She will be taking a leave of absence beginning in February to move to Europe to work on this research. She must reside in Europe between 18-months and 2-years before she meets a residency requirement and could return to the US and potentially Cooper. During the first year, she will make the decision on whether she will return to Cooper because she misses teaching or will stay in Europe focused solely on research. If she decides that research is her passion, we have a commitment from the Director of the Center for Computational Astrophysics at the Flatiron Institute to hire another faculty member into this joint appointment position. I tell people I have three emotions associated with these developments: first, I am thrilled that she was able to secure such an important scientific position and funding that will drive this important research field forward; second, I am sad that she will be leaving Cooper Union – but hopefully only for a short time; and third, I am grateful that our students had the opportunity to engage with and benefit from a faculty member the caliber of Alice.

Finally, in our quest to better engage with industry, on December 7 we hosted several senior leaders from Nokia Bell Labs and Intel Corporation here at Cooper Union. Part of their agenda was the collaboration between Nokia and Intel, but we also introduced Cooper Engineering to Intel Corporation in an effort to add this company to our growing list of collaborators.

Thank you again for sharing your valuable time with me on Shoop’s Stoop! You should know that these are just a few of the highlights – the tips of the waves. There are many more great things happening in the Albert Nerken School of Engineering. I look forward to sharing additional updates in future editions of Shoop’s Stoop!

On behalf of the entire faculty and staff of the Albert Nerken School of Engineering, we wish for you a joyous holiday season and a peaceful and prosperous New Year! 

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