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Congratulations

  • Cooper Union has been awarded $45,000 from the National Endowment for the Art's Learning in the Arts for Children and Youth Program to support the Saturday Outreach Program and the Outreach Track. The projects will provide underserved New York City high school students with free studio visual arts education in the subjects of drawing, basic design, sculpture, and graphic design.
  • Two Cooper Union alumni, Shigeru Ban (AR'84) and Toshiko Mori (AR'76), were named to the Pritzker Prize jury for 2007.
  • Architecture student Lis Cena (AR'08) won the prestigous AIA-affliliated Center for Architecture Foundation's Eleanor Allwork Grant.
  • Adjunct professor Robert Dell has been appointed director of the Cooper Union Laboratory for Energy Reclamation and Innovation in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. He has also been appointed honorary research associate by the New York Botanical Society. In addition, Dell received the Lindbergh Foundation Award for "Environmental Alchemy: Creating Super Productive Urban Gardens using Waste Steam Heat."
  • Susan M. Dorsey, associate director of the Summer Research Internship Program, has been promoted to director, Engineering Outreach Programs.
  • Professor Mike Essl has been elected vice president of the New York chapter of AIGA, the professional association for design.
  • Gina Pollara (AR'91), former associate director of the School of Architecture Archive, has joined the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute (FERI) as the executive director for the Franklin D. Roosevelt Monument Park designed by Louis Kahn for the southern tip of Roosevelt Island in New York City.

Publications and papers

  • Electrical engineering professor Toby Cumberbatch presented a paper entitled "Funding for Engineering Research at the End of the Dirt Road" at the annual Engineers for a Sustainable World conference held at University of Iowa, Iowa City 9/27 - 9/30.
  • Gerardo del Cerro, adjunct professor of urbanism and political economy and director of institutional research and assessment at Cooper Union, presented a paper entitled "Urban Megaprojects, Architecture and Globalization in Bilbao" at the World Congress of Social Sciences organized by the International Sociological Association in Durban (South Africa).
  • The Gorlin is one of three apartment towers at Aqua, a Miami Beach development on Allison Island designed by architect Alexander Gorlin (AR'78). Gorlin's home, on the sixth floor of this 11-story apartment building, was featured in Architectural Digest, September 2006.
  • The work of Professor Emerita Sue Ferguson Gussow (A'56) is included in Professor Cynthia Maris Dantzic's 100 New York Painters, 224 pages of information and images featuring works by well-known and lesser-known artists of the city.
  • "Build a Nice House and Mom Wants In", an article in The New York Times Home & Garden section on August 31, tells the story of the house that architect Dan Hoffman (AR'76) designed for his brother.
  • Adjunct professor Sarah Lowengard has just published The Creation of Color in Eighteenth-Century Europe (Columbia University Press) under the Gutenberg-e project, a Mellon foundation collaboration between Columbia's Electronic Publishing Initiative (EPIC) and the American Historical Association.
  • Thomas Micchelli (A'75) of Cooper Union's Visual Resources Collection wrote the introductory essay for Things Got Legs, an exhibition by the installation artists Jesse Bercowetz and Matt Bua at the Derek Eller Gallery (September 7 - October 14, 2006), as well as a review of the exhibition "Into Me/Out of Me" at P.S.1 for the September issue of The Brooklyn Rail.
  • Tales of a City: Rebuilding Chicago's Architectural and Social Landscape, 1986-2005, written by Gail Satler, adjunct professor of sociology at Cooper Union, was recently published.
  • Adjunct civil engineering professor (and Cooper Union Alumni Association past president) Carl Selinger's (CE'67) book, Stuff You Don't Learn in Engineering School: Skills for Success in the Real World (Wiley-IEEE Press, 2004), has just been translated into Chinese and published in China by Science Press. Selinger will give "Stuff" talks this fall and winter in Rhode Island, Philadelphia, Denver and Montana. More information is on his web site www.carlselinger.com.

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giving to cooper union

  • The newest members of The Abram S. Hewitt Society, whose lifetime giving to the College has surpassed $250,000, are: Susan and Jack Rudin, who have made many generous contributions to the school; and Elinor and Leonard Goldman (ME'46), who have established a $250,000 Charitable Gift Annuity. Their remarkable gift planning also makes them the newest members of The Society of 1859.
  • With the theme "I am The Cooper Union's Foundation," the Annual Fund has gotten off to a great start this year. More than 500 alumni, parents and friends have already contributed, a 32 percent increase in participation over this time last year.
  • The Cooper Union's tribute to Lou Dorfsman (A'39) held at the French Culinary Institute on September 25th raised more than $100,000 for the new academic building. Combined with a $1.0 million contribution from legendary CBS president Frank Stanton in honor of Lou and his wife Ann (A'39), the funding will name the Dorfsman Design Studio in the new building.

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Don't Miss

General Interest

  • The next Engineering Advisory Board meeting will take place on October 17 in the Houghton Gallery from 2:00 to 5:00pm.
  • Each month, President Campbell hosts the President's Roundtable to give Cooper Union students the opportunity to engage in an informal dialogue over lunch with distinguished alumni or friends of the institution. The Roundtable series has been enormously successful in providing a platform for the exchange of ideas, giving students a chance to hear the success stories from individuals they admire. Recent guests have included Trustee and CEO Jeffrey Gural, President Emerita of MoMA Agnes Gund, real estate developer Jack Rudin, Dr. Stephen Nicholas and Chuck Hoberman (A'79).

    On October 10th, Stanley Lapidus (EE'70) will join Dr. Campbell for the Student Roundtable discussion scheduled at noon. Students interested in participating should contact the student ad-chairs in their respective schools to sign up.

    Mr. Lapidus, a member of The Cooper Union Board since 2002, is CEO of Helicos BioSciences Corp. of Cambridge, MA, and has worked for more than 25 years as an engineer, inventor and entrepreneur on methods for more accurate, early detection and diagnosis of cancer. Mr. Lapidus holds 27 issued U.S. patents primarily in the field of cancer detection.

    In 1995 he founded EXACT Sciences Corp. to develop genomic technology for the early detection of colorectal cancer, and is currently chairman of EXACT's board of directors. In 1987 he founded Cytyc Corp. and served as its first president through 1994. Cytyc's improved Pap test is now used for more than 80 percent of U.S. women.

    Mr. Lapidus serves on the board of directors of a number of companies in the cancer detection field. He holds academic appointments at Tufts University School of Medicine and MIT’s Sloan School of Management. He is a founding faculty member of the Harvard/MIT Biomedical Enterprise Program. In 1998, he was awarded the prestigious Gano Dunn Award for Professional Achievement in Science and Engineering.

Alumni Events

Exhibitions

  • Augusto Arbizo (A'95) has a solo exhibition at Roebling Hall through October 14th.
  • Ernesto Caivano (A'99) has a solo exhibition, Floral Veins, at Richard Heller Gallery in Los Angeles through October 7th.
  • Benjamin Degen (A'98) and Ernesto Caivano (A'99) are in a group show at Mary Boone Gallery opening October 5th. Upstate will be on view through October 28th.
  • Julian Gatto (A'06) had work shown at Little Cakes Little Gallery in September.
  • Adjunct instructor Nicola Lopez's exhibition OverGrowth will be on view at Caren Golden Fine Art through October 14th.
  • The work of students and graduates of the Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture is included in "arch schools-public view(ing)" at the Center for Architecture, which features the work of 13 schools of architecture in the metropolitan area. The exhibition was designed by Gia Mainiero (AR'06) and Edwin Rodriguez.
  • LightShowers is an installation by Morris Sato Studio with Paul Ryan at the Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts. Michael Morris (AR'89) and Yoshiko Sato (AR'89) worked with video artist Paul Ryan to explore light and water as sustainable and conceptual resources. This exhibition, along with many of Morris Sato's architectural projects, was featured in Bob 024, an international magazine of space design published in Korean and English.
  • Sara VanDerBeek (A'98) has a solo exhibition titled Mirror in the Sky, which can be seen at D'Amelio Terras through October 14th.
  • Garth Weiser (A'03) is in a group show at Zieher Smith. The Difficult Shapes of Possible Images is on view through October 14th.

Upcoming Lectures and Public Programs

  • FAIR 20th Anniversary Celebration
    October 12, 6:30pm, The Great Hall
    Since 1986, the national media watch group Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) has been offering well-documented criticism of media bias and censorship. The organization monitors mainstream media to document corporate bias, government influence and skewed reporting, while championing the efforts of independent journalism. FAIR founder Jeff Cohen, author Barbara Ehrenreich and other special guests will serve on the panel addressing the current state of media coverage and report in the U.S. Ticket information is available at www.fair.org. Net proceeds to benefit FAIR.
  • Yuri Masnyj (A'98) will be talking at MoMA on October 13th as part of the museum's Conversations with Contemporary Artists series. The talk will be at 6:30 pm in the Founders Room.
  • Intelligent Thought: A Panel Discussion on Intelligent Design
    Ninth annual Rudin Schaffner Lecture
    Tuesday, October 17, 6:30 pm, The Great Hall, free panel discussion
    A discussion on intelligent design will feature thought leaders in the field such as Mark Hauser (professor of psychology, organismic & evolutionary biology and biological anthropology at Harvard), Seth Lloyd (professor of engineering at MIT and author of Programming the Universe) and Lisa Randall (professor of physics at Harvard and author of Warped Passages: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe's Hidden Dimensions).
  • The Black Panthers: The Photographs of Stephen Shames
    Wednesday, October 18, 6:30 pm, The Great Hall, $12 general public, $9 for students and seniors
    Released to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the founding of the Black Panther Party, The Black Panthers is an astonishing collection of never-before-published images taken by renowned photographer Stephen Shames from 1967 to 1973. To commemorate one of America's most important and controversial social movements, Shames as well as Black Panther Founding Chairman Bobby Seale will discuss the legacy of the Party that was vilified by some, revered by others, and was once described by FBI head J. Edgar Hoover as "the country's greatest threat to internal security." Associate professor and founding chair of the department of African-American studies at Georgia State University Charles E. Jones will moderate.
  • Marlene Dumas
    Alex Katz Lecture
    Monday, October 23, 6:30 pm, The Great Hall, free lecture
    Internationally renowned painter Marlene Dumas, Alex Katz Chair in Painting at Cooper Union for fall 2006, was born in South Africa and resides in Amsterdam. Dumas, who has worked with Dean Saskia Bos, will present a public lecture in The Great Hall on her work.
  • Lincoln's Melancholy: How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled His Greatness
    Joshua Wolf Shenk
    Wednesday, October 25, 6:30 pm, The Great Hall, free panel discussion
    Lincoln's Melancholy: How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled His Greatness reveals how the 16th president harnessed his depression to fuel his astonishing achievements. Drawing on seven years of his own research and the work of other Lincoln scholars, Shenk joins Andrew Solomon (author of The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression) and Harold Holzer (author of The Lincoln Family Album, Lincoln at Cooper Union and many other books about Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War) in a panel discussion examining Lincoln's depressive symptoms, which included mood swings and at least two major breakdowns, and how he found the solace he needed to deal with the nation's worst crisis.

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Did You Know?

  • Elizabeth Diller (AR'79) participated in "Capital Projects at Cultural Institutions: City Funding Process and Economic Impact," a panel discussion at the Center for Architecture on August 3.
  • Alexander Gorlin Architects (Alexander Gorlin [AR'78], principal) broke ground on Phase One of the Nehemiah Spring Creek Houses at Gateway Estates in the East New York section of Brooklyn, which is part of a mixed-use affordable housing program.

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