Gerardo del Cerro Santamaria

Director of Institutional Assessment and Innovation and Adjunct Professor of Social Sciences

Professor Gerardo del Cerro Santamaría (Catedrático Adjunto de Ciencia Social) has taught at Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Skidmore College, The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In an effort to address some of the key research questions of our time, Gerardo has contributed several books, book chapters, encyclopedia entries and journal articles to the fields of globalized urbanization, megaprojects and globalization, architecture and social science, science and technology studies, innovation research, urban environmental engineering and program and organizational evaluation.

Among other publications, Dr del Cerro Santamaría is the author of Engineering Meaning. Evaluation Research at a World-Class Institution (Aracne, 2009) and Of Athena and Hermes. Essays in Social Science (Lambert, 2011), as well as three entries (Global City, Bilbao, Growth Machine) to the SAGE Encyclopedia of Urban Studies (2009). Del Cerro Santamaría is also co-author and translator of Hymns from the Rig Veda (Jain, 2004) and the editor of, and contributor to, Urban Megaprojects. A Worldwide View (Emerald, 2013), a volume that includes contributions from researchers in top universities in the USA, Europe and Asia and praised as “essential reading for students of urban politics, planning, sociology, and geography” by Susan Fainstein (Harvard Graduate School of Design).

Professor del Cerro Santamaría’s Bilbao. Basque Pathways to Globalization (Elsevier, 2007) is regarded as a seminal contribution to the field of globalized urbanization and “one of the more sophisticated studies of globalization available today” (Diane Davis, Harvard Graduate School of Design). This book generated worldwide interest and interviews for Dr del Cerro Santamaría in architecture, planning and social science periodicals.

Del Cerro Santamaría is currently working on a book manuscript about the urban experience in New York City tentatively titled Ten New York Memos for the 21st Century. He is also preparing a textbook about the “urbanism and globalization” research field and sketching notes for a project on Transdisciplinary Urbanism for the ISA World Congress in Japan (2014). In addition, he is at work on what will become his first two books in Spanish, Reflexiones sobre urbanismo, política y sociedad (Reflections on Urbanism, Politics and Society) and Urbanismo, arquitectura y globalización (Urbanism, Architecture and Globalization). Gerardo is also developing protocols for ethnographic research in Art, Architecture and Engineering education for a research proposal to the NSF. Lastly, he is the Guest Editor and contributor to a Special Issue on Technological Futures, to be published in 2014 in the international journal Technology in Society.

As a Visiting Professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Gerardo taught a Ph.D. seminar on “Cities, Regional Restructuring and Globalization” to students from MIT and Harvard. He was invited to teach this MIT seminar at Universidade Nova de Lisboa (Portugal). From 2008-11, Gerardo was affiliated with the International Development Group in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT and also participated in the design of an Urban Practice curriculum for the newly created Indian Institute for Human Settlements, a planning school in India. Gerardo continues to be involved with MIT, currently as a member of the Global MIT Program (Global MIT. Cities and Globalization. Dr. del Cerro Santamaría).

Dr del Cerro Santamaría has been since 2008 an op-ed columnist for the Spanish daily DEIA, where he writes articles about social-scientific themes for the educated public. Many of his articles have been reproduced and disseminated on the Internet and by international institutions such as The Club of Rome, the Association for the Taxation of Financial Transactions and Aid to Citizens (ATTAC) and the Said Business School at the University of Oxford. Gerardo is a member of the Scientific Advisory Council for the journal “Puente Atlِántico” (Spanish Professionals in America), and a member of RC 21, the Research Committee on Urban and Regional Development of the International Sociological Association. He is also a member of the American Academy of Political and Social Science and the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics.

Gerardo has been invited to speak about his research work by institutions in several countries and has been a reviewer of the work of others for journals such as Public Understanding of Science, Journal of Engineering Education, Political Power and Social Theory, International Sociology Review of Books, Political Geography, International Conference on Knowledge Generation, Communication and Management, The Gender and Science Digital Library, ASEE Annual Conferences, IEEE Transactions in Engineering, Frontiers in Education Conferences and many others.

In addition to his scholarly expertise and activities, Dr del Cerro Santamaría is a recognized specialist in the area of assessment and evaluation in higher education, with several publications in this field, and serves as Founding Director of Institutional Assessment and Innovation at The Cooper Union. In this position, he leads and coordinates all accreditation activities as well as all institutional and program evaluation and innovation initiatives taking place at the University, and works closely with faculty from all Departments in the design and implementation of evaluation plans for faculty research projects. In addition, Dr del Cerro Santamaría is a member of Cooper’s institution-wide Planning and Assessment Council since its inception.

A graduate of Harvard Business School's Executive Program on Performance Measurement for Effective Management of Non-Profit Organizations, Gerardo was Program Area Leader for the U.S. National Science Foundation’s Gateway Engineering Program (1997-2002) and advised organizations in Russia, Japan, and South Korea on social science methods for program and organizational planning and evaluation. Since 2007, Gerardo has served as Evaluator for the Middle States Commission on Higher Education. He is a Member of the American Evaluation Association.

Since 2005, Gerardo has worked as a consultant for corporations, government agencies and higher education institutions in the area of planning and evaluation. A systems thinker and transnational cultural broker, Gerardo’s expertise and insightful observations have contributed to important strategic innovations in organizations such as London Metropolitan University (United Kingdom), Mitshubishi Research Institute (Japan), Tomsk Technological University (Russia), Basque Government (Spain), Indian Institute for Human Settlements (India) and Myong Ji University (Korea).

Educated in the Sciences, the Arts, Philosophy and the Social Sciences in Spain, Germany and the United States, Gerardo holds a High School Diploma in Science (Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Biology), summa cum laude (Matrícula de Honor), Bachelor’s Degrees with honors in Logic and Philosophy of Science and Music Theory, Master’s Degrees in Sociology and Classical Piano and Doctorates in Political Economy (New School for Social Research) and Economic Sociology (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid), summa cum laude.

At age 23, Gerardo was selected from among a large pool of candidates to be a Visiting Scholar and Director of the Spanish House at Skidmore College (Saratoga Springs, New York). He later obtained a full-tuition scholarship (the prestigious University Fellowship) for graduate study at the New School for Social Research in New York City. During his Ph.D. Candidate years at the New School, Gerardo was elected Student Representative to the Institution-wide Search Committee for Director of the Center on Ethnicity, Migration and Citizenship. Back in Spain, Dr del Cerro Santamaría was awarded the Doctoral Medal of the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and the Alumni Association Award of the Colegio Mayor Ximénez de Cisneros.

A citizen of Spain, Gerardo obtained Permanent Residence in the USA. under the USCIS “Outstanding Researchers and Professors” program, which requires demonstrated evidence of international recognition of the candidate’s professional career. On October 11th, 2011, he became a citizen of the United States of America.

  • 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.