We mourn the recent loss of Meredith Blaustein, a student in the Albert Nerken School of Engineering, originally a member of the class of 2004. An exceptionally talented and courageous young woman, Meredith had been battling, since her sophomore year, a relatively rare bone cancer called Ewing’s Sarcoma. Despite the rigors of her treatment, she persisted in engineering with an outstanding academic record. The engineering faculty voted to award her an honorary degree along with a certificate naming Meredith "Scholar of the Year." At Commencement last year, we cited Meredith for her perseverance, for her courage and for the inspiration she provided for all those who knew her. A scholarship fund has been established at Cooper Union in her memory.

Top of the News

The Cooper Union announced Ronald W. Drucker’s (CE’62) election as chair of the institution’s Board of Trustees in December. Dr. Drucker will lead The Cooper Union’s Board as it implements its master plan to revitalize its academic facilities and secure its policy of full-tuition scholarships for all accepted students. (Read full press release)

Dean of Admissions & Records Richard Bory will be retiring as of July 31, 2005 after 17 years of exceptional service to The Cooper Union. His commitment, knowledge and expertise will be sorely missed. A celebration is being planned to commemorate the extraordinary contribution he has made to the institution.

A survey conducted by the Key Centre for Architectural Sociology ranks the Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture at The Cooper Union as one of the top four research cultures in architecture in the United States, and third in the nineteen top research cultures world-wide.

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Congratulations

Awards

  • Architecture Professor Diane Lewis (AR’76) has been awarded the Simpson Chair by the Architecture School at Edinburgh University, Scotland, where she will lecture and conduct a design seminar during Cooper Union’s spring break this March. This is the second time she has been awarded the Simpson Chair, after having been invited to be Forbes Chair in 1993.

  • Brian Swann, Professor of Humanities, has won the Lena-Miles Wever Todd Poetry Award for his book Snow House, which will be published by Pleiades Press, Louisiana State University Press.

  • The Art Directors Club presented scholarships to six Cooper Union School of Art seniors for outstanding work in Graphic Design. Congratulations to Julian Gatto, NiQui Salgado, Allan Cole, Dimitri Scheblanov, Eri Hamaji and Aleks Zelenina.

  • The National Arts Club presented awards to School of Art seniors Natalie Shook and Lea Cetera on February 11th. The 29th Annual National Arts Club Awards ceremony honored 50 students from 25 schools. Congratulations to Lea who received an award for Mixed Media and Natalie who received an award for Painting.

  • Special Congratulations to this year’s honorees named for Cooper Union Alumni Association Awards to be presented on April 8 at the annual Founder’s Day Dinner Dance:

    2005 Augustus Saint Gaudens Awardees
    Lois Dodd     (A’48)
    For over 50 years Lois Dodd has been a nationally recognized painter and teacher. Her work has been seen and admired in more than 50 solo exhibitions. Her paintings are included in the National Academy of Design, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Farnsworth Art Museum and the Cooper Hewitt Museum.

    Martin Charnin (A’55)
    Martin Charnin has been the director, lyricist, composer, librettist or producer of more than 85 theatrical productions, often serving in more than one role. He was the lyricist and director of the international musical smash hit and Tony Award-winning Annie, the thirteenth longest-running American musical in Broadway history.

    Al Blaustein (A’47)- Posthumous
    Al Blaustein was a celebrated artist and teacher who held teaching and administrative positions at Pratt Institute for 36 years. His work is represented in prominent collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Boston Museum and the Whitney. His many awards include the Rome Prize and Guggenheim Fellowships for painting and printmaking. Blaustein passed away in July.

    2005 Gano Dunn Awardee
    Dr. Kenneth Bridbord     (ChE'64)
    For the past 20 years, Dr. Kenneth Bridbord has worked for John E. Fogarty International Center for the Advanced Study in Health Sciences, a component of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, MD. In 2002 he won the American Association for the Advancement of Science Award for International Scientific Cooperation for his tireless efforts to establish a medical protocol for combating AIDS in developing countries.

    2005 John Hejduk Awardee
    Diane Lewis     (AR’76)
    As the Rome Prize winning protégé who John Hejduk selected to be his colleague of twenty years, Diane Lewis has maintained a key role in the Cooper Union community as a tenured Professor since 1982. She is an internationally recognized, award-winning practitioner and has developed an important platform on the architecture of the city through her work and her teaching of architectural urbanism, architectonics, architectural theory, history and drawing.

    2005 Alumnus of the Year Awardee
    William H. Sandholm Jr.     (CE’63)
    Bill Sandholm joined The Cooper Union Board of Trustees in 1994, originally as an Alumni Trustee and then as Board Member. Since then he has served the College with great distinction, most recently with his work as Chair of the Master Planning Committee. An exceptionally valuable member of the Architect Selection Committee and now the Steering Committee for the new academic building, Bill brings a wealth of knowledge to Cooper Union, developed while working for Rose Associates since 1963, first as Assistant Superintendent of Construction, and now as Chief Operating Officer.

    2005 Honorary Alumnus of the Year Awardee
    Robert Arthur Bernhard
    For over 25 years, Bobby Bernhard has served on The Cooper Union Board of Trustees, as Trustee, Chairman, and now as Chairman Emeritus. His crowning achievement has been the development of the College’s Master Plan that will yield a new academic building and the financial infrastructure to secure the full-tuition scholarship in perpetuity. He is President of Munn, Bernhard and Associates, and has been extremely generous with his time, energy and commitment to the CUAA.

Publications

Faculty of Albert Nerken School of Engineering

  • Professor Constantine Yapijakis of Civil Engineering was co-editor and co-author of the Handbook of Industrial and Hazardous Waste Treatment published in summer 2004 by Marcel Dekker, Inc.

  • Engineering Professor John Bové , along with Joyce Fung (ChE’05) and Min Kuo (ChE’05), presented a paper at The Eastern Analytical Symposium on November 17, 2004 on "A Novel Determination of Fatty Acids Using a New Computer-Aided Algorithm and ATR-RTIR."

Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences

  • Jessica Brent, Assistant Professor, Adjunct, of English, has published "Haunting Pictures, Missing Letters: Visual Displacement and Narrative Elision in Villette" in the latest volume of the journal Novel.

  • Gail Buckland, Professor, Adjunct, of Art History, with Harold Evans and David Lefer; They Made America: From the Steam Engine to the Search Engine: Two Centuries of Innovators (New York: Little, Brown & Company). The book received a favorable notice in the January 23, 2005 issue of The New York Times Book Review.

  • Gerardo del Cerro, Assistant Professor, Adjunct, of Social Sciences and Director of Assessment at The Cooper Union, published an article entitled "Ciudades y globalización: un enfoque teórico" (Cities and Globalization: A Theoretical Approach") in Revista Española de Sociología, the main social science journal in Spain, in September 2004. He is also publishing his doctoral dissertation under the title Bilbao on the World Map. The Basque Pathways to Globalization. The book is a political economy analysis of globalization processes in the Basque region of Spain and a detailed reconstruction of the main challenges facing this region in our global era. It will be published by Elsevier in July 2005.

  • J. Hoberman, Professor, Adjunct, of Cinema Studies; a review of Mark Freeney’s Nixon at the Movies in the February 17, 2005 issue of the London Review of Books.

  • James Kim, Instructor, Adjunct, of Political Science, recently co-authored with Christopher Paul; Reporters on the Battlefield: The Embedded Press System in Historical Context (RAND Corporation, 2004). Last September he presented a paper, "Revisiting Executive Decree," at the American Political Science Association meeting in Chicago.

  • Gail Satler, Professor, Adjunct, of Sociology; "Blurring Boundaries, Defining Place: The New Hybrid Spaces of Dining" in the July 2005 issue of Architectural Design: Food and the City. Her book on Chicago architecture and sociology will be out later this year. She has also been promoted to full Professor at Hofstra University.

  • Kirsten Schultz, Associate Professor, Adjunct, of History; "The Crisis of Empire and the Problem of Slavery: Portugal and Brazil, ca.1700-1820," in the spring 2005 issue of Common Knowledge. She also has an article in the spring 2005 issue of the Journal of Urban History, titled "Baroque and Beyond: the City and Urban Experience in Colonial Brazil."

recognition

  • President George Campbell Jr. was selected along with group of world leaders from business, academia, government and other areas to participate in IBM's first Global Innovation Outlook (GIO). IBM's objective is to understand the changing nature of innovation by capturing new insights and an understanding about the forces that will shape and change business and society in the coming decade -- exploring the impact of innovation on three dimensions of the human experience: healthcare, government and the relationship between work and life. Click here for more information about the findings of this initiative (launches a PDF file).

  • Mitchell Lipton, Associate Dean of Admissions and Records, was appointed by The College Board to co-chair the local arrangements for the 2005 National Forum. This event, to be held in New York City October 29-November 1, brings several thousand professionals together to exchange current information and knowledge relevant to educating the K-16 population.

  • Longtime School of Art Professor Robert Breer’s film Recreations was featured in Repetition at Maya Stendhal Gallery January 27 through February 21.

  • Mary Stieber, Assistant Professor of Art History (Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences), was invited to lecture on "Painted Spaces in Euripides" at Lincoln College, University of Oxford, February 7, 2005.

  • Architecture Professor Diane Lewis (AR’76, FAAR’76) in her professional practice as principal of Diane Lewis Architects, where alumni Yael Erel and Paul Granger work has just completed two major design projects:

The STUX Gallery, a street level two story art gallery whose facade slides away to create a sculpture court.

A dance studio/residence for the Choreography director of the Bill T. Jones Dance Company.

Also recently, the office won a competition for a 100,000 square foot Charter School for grades 1-12. Her studio’s collaborative work in making the 25 foot long drawing for Alexis Rockman’s painting, MANIFEST DESTINY, which was centerpiece to the re-opening of the Brooklyn Museum, was covered in the Sunday New York Times.

  • Toshiko Mori (AR’76), Chair of the Department of Architecture, Harvard Graduate School of Design, was included in Design Intelligence magazine’s "Honor Roll: 30 Leaders Who Bridge Practice, Education," its list of educators who are notable in bridging the practice of architecture with higher education.

  • Engineering Professor John Bové reported that a patent has been issued for "System and Method for identifying Unknown Compounds Using Spectra Pattern Recognition." The patent has been issued to Bové and Shabsi Walfish (EE’01) and assigned to The Cooper Union.

  • Mechanical Engineering Professor Marca Lam has been invited to be a panel member for the National Science Foundation’s Educational Dissemination in Washington, D.C.

  • Mechanical Engineering Adjunct Professor Adrianne Wortzel will be interviewed by a science writer for the National Science Foundation regarding the "unconventional nature" of her work. Wortzel received NSF funding for robotics at Cooper Union.

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Welcome

  • The Office of Admissions and Records is pleased to welcome John Falls as the new Associate Director of Admissions effective March 1. John brings a wealth of admissions experience, working at Hunter College, St. Francis College, NYIT, Polytechnic University and, most recently, SUNY Downstate Medical Center.

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COOPER UNION RAISES FUNDS

  • The Surdna Foundation Inc. has provided a generous grant to support the Saturday Outreach Program.

  • Art student, Matthew Steinberg (A’06), was recently selected for a grant by Random Acts of Public Art, a non-profit organization that funds start up grants and resources to young people (ages 12-20) to launch non-profit organizations, clubs or groups that address a community need in a creative way.

  • Time to hit the phones! Phonathon 2005 is scheduled for March 14, 15, 16, 17 and 21, 6-9 pm in the Wollman Lounge. All students, faculty, staff, parents and alumni are invited to come for a fun-filled night of catching up with classmates and raising funds for The Cooper Union Annual Fund. Our goal is to break last year’s $300,000 record. Please contact Stacy Taniguchi at 212-353-4164 or alumni@cooper.edu to volunteer.

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Don't Miss

General Interest

  • On March 8, President George Campbell Jr. and CUAA Vice President - Membership Rebecca Uss (AR’90) will host an Albany, NY Alumni and Parents Reception at the State Capitol Building. A tour of the historic landmark will commence at 5:30 pm, followed by a cocktail reception and presentation of Cooper Union Builds. For more information, please call 212-353-4164 or e-mail alumni@cooper.edu.

  • On March 10, President George Campbell Jr. and CUAA President Carl Selinger (CE’67) will host a reception honoring members of The Society of 1859 and their generous support of The Cooper Union. A special tribute will be made to Jack Gould (ME’27), one of the founders of the united Cooper Union Alumni Association, for his long-standing commitment and support of the College. Named in commemoration of the year of The Cooper Union's founding, The Society of 1859’s purpose is to recognize loyal and generous supporters who have made planned gifts, bequest intentions, and gifts for endowment purposes. 

  • The Cooper Union Student Ambassadors’ next student/alumni networking event is the Ice Cream Social on March 28, from 5-8 pm in the Wollman Lounge. Alumni are invited to come back to get to know current students and let them know what it’s like in the real world of art, architecture and engineering. All students and alumni are invited to come get a scoop!

  • Save the date of April 8 for The Cooper Union’s Founder’s Day Dinner Dance 2005, celebrating Peter Cooper’s 214th birthday and honoring alumni for their achievements. RSVP at www.cualumni.com. If you have any questions, please contact the Office of Alumni Relations at 212-353-4164 or alumni@cooper.edu.

  • The Cooper Union Spring Internship Career Fair 2005 will be March 1 from 12-3 pm in the Wollman Lounge. Representatives from engineering and architecture firms will attend. Questions? E-mail benca@cooper.edu or thill@cooper.edu.

  • Landing in the city of Accra, Toby Cumberbatch, Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering, will lead Cooper Union students to the north of Ghana, marking the institution’s third annual trip to Africa. Young engineers and artists will work in the countryside on an array of pioneering projects ranging from developing fluoride filters to collaborating with the local cultural officer and curating an exhibition of local artifacts. The interdisciplinary trip, which is still open to participants, is scheduled to depart in mid-May.

  • Now is the time for graduating seniors to bring their Senior Class gifts to the Office of Student Services. The suggested donation is $185.90. Donate by May 6 and have your name included as a donor in the Commencement Program.

  • The Senior Speech Contest to become this year’s Commencement orator will be held on March 1 from 12-2 in the Great Hall.

  • Engineering Faculty Yearbook Portraits
    March 1 and 2, 10 am – 2 pm
    Engineering Faculty Lounge
    Call 212-353-4130 to make a ten-minute appointment.

  • Joint Student Council meeting
    March 22,12-2 pm
    207 Hewitt

  • Students who wish to serve as Orientation advisors, please e-mail Dean Lemiesz at lemiesz@cooper.edu by April 9.

  • For students who wish to run for Joint Student Council or Senior Council 2005-6, applications are available in Student Services and due on March 22.

  • The Engineering Advisory Board meeting will take place in the Peter Cooper Suite on March 3, from 2-5 pm featuring a roundtable discussion on: "The Business of Engineering – What Skills and Courses would be Necessary for Engineering Students"

  • The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture will sponsor three upcoming lectures open to the internal Cooper Union community:

Kyong Park, "Urban Ecology: Detroit and Beyond"
6 pm, March 3, Room 315F

Andreas Huyssen, Villard Professor of German and Comparative Literature and Director of Columbia University's Center for Comparative Literature and Society
6pm, March 10, Room 315F

Ernie Gehr, filmmaker
6pm, March 24, Room 315F

Exhibitions

  • Come to the School of Art Student Shows. Opening Receptions are on Tuesday evenings from 6-8 pm unless announced otherwise. Please contact artschool@cooper.edu for more information.

  • A Revolution in Orange is an exhibition of color photography by Alexander Khantaev documenting the demonstrations in Kiev that led up to the election of Ukraine’s new President, Victor Yushchenko. Displayed in the Humanities Gallery on the 1st Floor of the Engineering Building, the exhibition is open and free to the public and will be on display from February 28- March 10.

  • Dennis Adams, Acting Dean of the School of Art, is part of a momentous exhibition at the KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin titled Regarding Terror: The RAF-Exhibition. More than 100 works from 50 international artists from three generations are exhibited through May 16. For more information, visit www.kw-berlin.de.

  • Josephine Halvorson (A‘03) has a solo show, Still Lifes, at RKL Gallery through March 7. For more information, visit www.rklgallery.com.

  • Francesca Di Mattio (A‘03) and School of Art faculty member Jutta Koether are in a group show, Paradise Lost, at Marvelli Gallery through March 19. For more information, please visit www.marvelligallery.com.

  • School of Art staff member Nicholas Herman has two works on view at the Sculpture Center as part of its special projects series In Practice, now through April 10. For more information, please visit www.sculpture-center.org

  • On March 6, School of Art faculty member Jacob Burckhardt will be showing his short film Roma at Galapagos for Six in Italy, part of the Ocularis film series. For more information visit www.galapagosartpace.com. On April 1st he will be showing Roma at Millennium Gallery. For more information, visit www.millenniumfilm.org.

  • Professors Lorenzo Clayton (A’77) (Art) and George Sidebotham (Mechanical Engineering) had an art installation in the Jersey City Museum entitled "Inner Equations" that opened on January 2, 2005.

Lectures and Public Programs

  • March 3 –The Eighth Annual Jack & Lewis Rudin – Charles E. Schaffner Lecture - "Sports Medicine: Implications of New Technologies" a lecture by former New York Jets physician Dr. Stephen J. Nicholas, an orthopedic surgeon from Lenox Hill Hospital, 6:00 pm, Wollman Auditorium. (More information)

  • March 8 - 2004 Nobel Peace Prize Winner Wangari Maathai will speak at 6:30 pm in The Great Hall. (More information)

  • Upcoming School of Art lectures for Doug Ashford’s Intra-Disciplinary Seminar are free and open to the public.  All lectures are in Hewitt Room 207 at 7:00 p.m.  Please contact artschool@cooper.edu for more information.

March 7 - Romy Golan is Professor of Contemporary European Art and Theory at The Graduate Center, CUNY. She has curated exhibitions of contemporary art in the US, France and Canada. Golan’s essays have appeared in Modernity and Nostalgia: Art and Politics in France between the Wars and The Circle of Montparnasse: Jewish Artists in Paris 1905-1945.

March 21 - Kellie Jones is Assistant Professor in both the History of Art and the African American Studies Departments at Yale University. Dr. Jones’ recent publications include "Tracey Rose: Post-Apartheid Playground," in FRESH: 7 Young South African Artists at the South African National Gallery; and "Black West: thoughts on art in Los Angeles," in New Thoughts on the Black Arts Movement. Her writings have also appeared in NKA, Artforum, Flash Art, Atlantica and Third Text among others.

March 28 - Allan De Souza is an artist whose photographs and installations have been exhibited internationally at The Photographers Gallery in London, the Whitney Museum in New York City, and the Third Havana Biennale in Cuba. He is also a Contributing Editor to Fuse Magazine and his fiction and critical writings have appeared in XTra, Third Text, Tracing Culture and Crossing Black Waters.

  • The School of Art Student Lecture Series presents Jeff Koons, March 12, 8-10 pm, Hewitt Room 207. Please contact artschool@cooper.edu for more information.

  • Mapping Sitting: On Portraiture and Photography, A Project by Walid Raad, Assistant Professor of Art at Cooper Union, and Akram Zaatari will be on view from January 11 to April 2, at NYU's Grey Art Gallery. Visit www.nyu.edu/greyart for more information on related lectures and programs during the month of March.

Keep up to date with the latest Public Programs, Exhibitions and Events at This Month At Cooper.

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Did You Know?

  • The winner of this year's Annual Egg Drop Competition is Mechanical Engineering student David Hamaoui, one of the first freshmen--if not the only--to win the egg toss. Using a boot, rubber bands, his brother's toy football and a plastic bag, the apparatus exemplified the utmost in creativity while landing closest to the target tarmac without breaking the egg. Second place went to the team of Julia Szprengiel with Peter Andruskiewicz; third place was awarded to Anya Chernyshenko. The event was covered on WABC, WNYC, NY1 Noticias and The Epoch Times.

  • Under the direction of Mechanical Engineering Professor Stan Wei, along with Mechanical Engineering Adjunct Professor Adrianne Wortzel, Cooper's telerobotic theater is gearing up for Fall 2005 by relocating the Robotic Theater—a permanent telerobotic virtual and physical performance space at Cooper Union—to a larger space in the Engineering Building. Their interdisciplinary course offers students from all three schools the opportunity to push their creative and technical skills to the limit by developing and fabricating robotic characters as well as writing original theatrical scenarios. For more information, visit www.artnetweb.com/wortzel/robotic.html.

  • Over 700 students are taking Continuing Education courses at Cooper Union this term. Popular courses range from Pinhole Photography to Photoshop, and from Creative Writing to Future Modern Architecture.

  • The North American Amateur Muay Thai (Kickboxing) Championships were held in The Great Hall on February 4 to a sellout crowd. There were 10 bouts – five men's and five women's. Team USA defeated Team Canada 8 matches to 2.

  • Another full house assembled in The Great Hall on February 8 for the Benjamin Menschel Distinguished Lecture Series - a discussion of the new science of happiness. British economist Richard Layard shared the platform with Paul Krugman of The New York Times and Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman.

  • The Continuing Education Department in partnership with the Albert Nerken School of Engineering is conducting a course for the NYPD on The Security Enhancement of Urban Infrastructure to Protect Against Terrorism. The course, which has been designed and will be taught by Engineering Professor Jameel Ahmad, will take place at the headquarters of the Counter-Terrorism Division.

  • On February 15, students, faculty, staff and alumni from the classes of 1932 to 2004 stood in Peter Cooper Park as President George Campbell Jr., Chairman Ron Drucker (CE’62) and CUAA President Carl Selinger (CE’67) performed the annual Wreath Laying Ceremony in honor of Peter Cooper’s 214th birthday. Engineering Senior Bijun Tan led a rousing rendition of the school song and the CU Step Team gave a fantastic performance.

  • The Cooper Union Student Ambassadors hosted a great week of fun for students and alumni from February 15-17, featuring a campus-wide scavenger hunt, a cake decorating contest and a Peter Cooper Birthday Party.

  • On February 13, 40 alumni gathered in Fort Lauderdale, FL to celebrate Peter Cooper’s 214th birthday. Chairman Ron Drucker CE’62 welcomed Dean Eleanor Baum as the guest speaker for this annual luncheon of the Florida Chapter of the CUAA.

  • On February 21, 50 alumni returned from plenty of snow and races at Mount Sutton. Jane Shen (ME'99) won first place in women's skiing, Megan Neal (CE'02) and Diana Rea (CE'00) tied for first place in women's snowboarding. Mark Irwin won first place in men's skiing; Mike Ahn (ME'04) won first place in men's snowboarding. Mike Sheehan beat out Jim Manchisi (EE’79) to win the experienced men's division. Matt Manchisi (CE’05), John Manchisi, Dennis Miller (EE’98) and Mike Manchisi were the top four snowbladers. Michael Sheehan and James Simmina tied for first place in the youth division. Chi Chan (CE'91) missed the trip after 32 consecutive January and February trips.

  • The Cooper Union Varsity Basketball team remains undefeated, with a 16-0 record. At a recent game against Pratt, Bob Kolb (ME’53), captain of 1953 team, spoke with the players and 150 fans cheered the team to victory and were also treated to a performance by the Cooper Union STEP Team. Cooper Union Varsity Basketball has two remaining games, one at RISD on March 4 and final home game against the Culinary Institute of America at 3 pm on March 5 at Simon Baruch JHS 104, 330 East 21st Street. For more information, contact Dean Baker at 212-353-4131 or baker@cooper.edu.

  • Vicky Lay (EE'07) has been selected as captain of the Women's Varsity Tennis team. The women will join the men's team on a spring break trip to Litchfield Beach, SC from March 10-17. The men's team, led by Daren Rogers (AR'05), will have an exciting schedule, featuring matches against NYU and Princeton.

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End Notes

Paul Laux (AR’53), who was the senior detailer for 55 years and, in his early years, master model maker at the New York architectural firm of Gruzen Samton Architects, Planners and Interior Designers, recently passed away at the age of 75. Laux detailed some of the firm’s most distinguished buildings. Thrilled that Gruzen Samton was chosen as Associate Architects for Cooper Union’s new academic building, Paul Laux expressed his belief in The Cooper Union’s mission with a generous bequest to the College.

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