Welcome to Cooper Union news -- news for the internal Cooper community

Welcome back! We have much exciting news to report as we kick off fall 2006. Let me first offer a hearty welcome to William Germano, our new dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. A leader in academic publications, Dr. Germano previously served as vice president and publishing director at Routledge and editor-in-chief of Columbia University Press. Selected after a nationwide search, Dr. Germano brings broad experience as publisher, writer, teacher and lecturer, along with exceptional leadership skills to The Cooper Union.

Top of the News

The Cooper Union and the Maurice Kanbar Program in Environmental and Transportation Graphics sponsored Driving Forward, an open international juried competition that sought to answer the question, What impact will the technological advances of the last 20 years have on the design of transportation signage? The competition invited candidates to propose traffic signage concepts that promote efficiency, uniformity and safety and that were adaptable to future changes in traffic patterns and able to incorporate technological advances as they develop. Winners will be notified by September 1st, and an exhibition of their work will occur this fall.
The Cooper Union's 147th commencement took place on May 23, 2006. The Honorable William Jefferson Clinton delivered the keynote address to the graduates, citing Abraham Lincoln for inspiration. The commencement speaker was playwright, actor and professor Anna Deavere Smith. Recipient of the prestigious MacArthur Foundation "genius" Fellowship and hailed by Newsweek as "the most exciting individual in American theater," Deavere Smith is recognized for her uncanny ability to examine and redefine race, community and character in America. The ceremony marked the return to Cooper Union's Great Hall of the 42nd president of the United States (1993–2001).
Cooper Union graduates once again received a vastly disproportionate share of prestigious national fellowships and academic awards. Four graduates received Fulbright scholarships, bringing the total to 20 since the year 2000. Members of the class of 2006 will be attending graduate school at Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Cornell, Michigan, Carnegie Mellon, UNC and other top graduate programs.
On July 31, 2006, the Board of Trustees of The Cooper Union affirmed its commitment to the institution's master plan and the goal of constructing a new academic building at 41 Cooper Square. While financing for the project was originally expected to be secured by the planned August 1st start date, the arrangements have taken longer than anticipated to complete. Accordingly, the Board decided to hold off on the start of demolition and construction until the financing is in place. The Cooper Union remains hopeful of securing the financing in the near future and starting construction shortly thereafter.
Once again The Cooper Union was included among the 15 percent of American colleges and universities in The Princeton Review list of America's Best Colleges. The 2007 rankings, published in the US News & World Report annual summary of the best schools and programs in American colleges and universities, also ranked the Nerken School of Engineering third among all undergraduate engineering programs, tied with the United States Military Academy and the United States Naval Academy. Chemical Engineering remains in second place for the third year in a row; Civil Engineering is third place for the third year and Electrical Engineering is in second place for the third consecutive year. Computer Engineering, which has fluctuated between second and third is ranked second for 2007. Mechanical Engineering placed fifth.
We're happy to welcome to the Board of Trustees esteemed architect Charles Gwathmey of Gwathmey Siegel & Associates, who rejoins the Board, having served from 1994 to 2000. Gwathmey designed the 26 Astor Place residence for Cooper Union and has endowed a visiting artist's chair in the name of his father, painter Robert Gwathmey, a longime member of the faculty of the School of Art.

Congratulations

Arup (Consulting Engineers) awarded Cooper Union $8,000 through their Arup Cause Program. The award is for the fluoride removal filter project in Bongo, Northern Ghana.
Joseph C. Cataldo, professor of civil engineering, has received a grant from the National Science Foundation for his project "Acquisition of Two-Dimensional Flowlite Laser Doppler Anemometer."
Professor Mike Essl was elected as a member of the Board of Directors for the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA).
Frank Gerard Godlewski (AR'82) has been appointed museum curator of the Angel Orensanz Foundation Museum on New York City's Lower East Side.
Vito A. Guido, professor of civil engineering, was recently elected to the grade of ASCE Fellow by the American Society of Civil Engineers. Fewer than six percent of the society's membership attains the Fellow grade.
Sean Khorsandi (AR'04) received his M.Arch II from Yale University, served as the banner bearer at their May 2006 commencement ceremony and was recipient of the Carroll L.B. Meeks Memorial Scholarship.
William Cooper Mack (AR'06) received a Burt L. Stern Architectural Award from the Lotos Club Foundation at their annual awards ceremony in May.
This fall, Ibtissem Meliani will join the staff of the Center for Writing and Language Arts as a Fulbright Language Teaching Assistant. A 27-year-old native Tunisian, Meliani is an experienced teacher of languages and linguistics who has worked with high school and college students since 2004. She holds a baccalaureate degree and a master spécialisé in applied linguistics from the University of Manouba in Tunis, and has also studied linguistics and language education at the University of Wales.
The winners of the 2006-07 Alpert Teaching Assistantship in Humanities are Sharon Markowitz and Lauren Myers. The recipient of the 2006-07 Alpert Language Assistantship is Kevin Edwards. These working scholarships have been made possible by the generous gift of Mrs. Corrinne Alpert in memory of her husband John L. Alpert, class of 1941.
Antonina Roll-Mecak (ChE'96) was awarded one of the five L'Oreal 2006 Fellowships for Women in Science. Dr. Roll-Mecak, a cellular and molecular biophysicist, was awarded $20,000 to carry out her research on in vivo functions of the protein spastin, which is affected in the hereditary disease, Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia (HSP). Her research aims to improve the understanding of the cellular consequences incurred when this enzyme fails, leading to disease.
Louise Ma (A'07) won a scholarship awarded to promising students of typography by the Type Director's Club.
Students Christopher Mitchell (Eng'09) and Bryan Reedy (AR'10) tied for first place, winning the Frank Caldiero Humanities Award ($500) for the first-year core curriculum. Nick Parker (A'08) won the Essay Award ($200) for the second-year core curriculum in Humanities, with honorary mention going to Jenna Dublin (A'08).
Reiser+Umemoto RUR Architecture, headed by Jesse Reiser (Ar'81) and Nanako Umemoto (AR'83/Fac spring 2006), was one of three New York-based firms among the six finalists for the design of the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland.
Situ Studio has been honored with a 2005 Art Commission Award for Excellence in Design for its work on the Flight 587 Memorial in Far Rockaway, Queens. The eight projects honored in the 24th Annual Art Commission Awards program were then exhibited at the Van Alen Institute. Situ Studio has also recently received a NYSCA Independent Projects grant for "Mapping Frontiers: The Expanding U.S. Border" a project to explore the space of the U.S. national borders in the post 9/11 world. The firm's founding members are alumni Aleksey Lukyanov (AR'05), Basar Girit (AR'05), Bradley Samuels (AR'05), Sigfus Breidfjord (AR'05) and Westley Rozen (AR'05).

Publications and papers

The work of Stanley Allen (AR'81) was included in Bohemian Modern by Barbara Bestor, which was featured in Vanity Fair, August 2006.
Shigeru Ban by Matilda McQuaid is a monograph on the work of this 1984 architecture graduate, published by Phaidon (reviewed in Array, May/June/July 2006).
Karen Bausman + Associates was covered by the Manhattan Chamber of Commerce's summer 2006 issue of Business Matters. Karen Bausman (AR'82) is the principal of the firm.
The Chanin School of Architecture's ARCH 131 Design III studio spring semester project "Museum on Governors Island" received significant media attention from The New York Times, Contract magazine and eOCULUS. The Design III teaching team consisted of Professors Anthony Candido, Stephen Rustow, Michael Young and Tamar Zinguer (AR'89).
Jana Leo de Blas (Arch Fac) published El viaje sin distancia: perversiones del tiempo, el espacio y el dinero ante el limite en la cultura contemporanea (The Trip without Distance: Perversions of Time, Space and Money at the Limit of Contemporary Culture).
The June 27th issue of eOCULUS featured: Harry Gaveras (AR'93), a member of the Emerging NY Architects committee, which received the 2006 Emerging Professionals Program of the Year Award at the national AIA Convention in Los Angeles; Sam Anderson (AR'82, Arch Fac), speaking at New York Designs 2006: Lean and Green at the Architectural League; and Paul Seletsky (AR'82), who received the Vice Presidential Citation for Professional Development from the New York Chapter/AIA for his work encouraging the understanding of technology as a tool in architecture.
Third-year architecture student Stephen Martin's article "Fenced Out," was published in The Architect's Newspaper, no. 10, June 7, 2006. The article reported on legislation and proposed designs for a physical barrier between the United States and Mexico.
Toshiko Mori (AR'76) was featured in "Renovations to a Study Room by Aalto Splits Harvard Faculty" in the July 10th issue of The New York Times, speaking against Harvard University's planned renovation.
A book launch for Atlas of Novel Tectonics, by Jesse Reiser (AR'81) and Nanako Umemoto (AR'83/Fac spring 2006), published by Princeton Architectural Press, was held at the Storefront for Art and Architecture in April. This book represents a compendium of sources that have informed the work of Reiser Umemoto for the past two decades.
Willy Sclarsic, AIA, (AR'71) wrote "Love and the Machine or, the Importance of Corinthian Leather" for Architecture Boston's May/June issue on the theme UGLY.
Brian Swann's (H&SS Fac) 2005 and 2006 poetry books, Autumn Road and Snow House are reviewed in the fall Notre Dame Review, while the former was also reviewed in the spring Ploughshares. New poetry is in or soon will be in Southwest Review, Yale Review, Iowa Review, Poetry International, Poet Lore, North American Review, Prairie Schooner, The Journal and Hotel Amerika, as well as on the web for National Poetry Month and for Poetry Daily. He is included in the Notre Dame Review anthology due out soon from Notre Dame Press, and many of his translations of Andrea Zanzotto, "Italy's most influential living poet," are included in The Selected Poetry of Andrea Zanzotto, ed. Patrick Barton (University of Chicago Press, 2006). His new manuscript, The Gist, was a finalist in the 2006 National Poetry Series. His translation of Euripides' The Phoenician Women (Oxford University Press) has been used for Jocasta, a performance video produced by Ishtar Lab Recordings (2006). An interview and reading can be heard at NRDC's website.
Birkhauser recently published Claude-Nicolas Ledoux: Architecture and Utopia in the Era of the French Revolution by Dean Anthony Vidler of the School of Architecture.
Associate Professor David Weir's Against the American Grain: Decadent Culture in the United States, has been accepted for publication by the State University of New York (SUNY) Press.
Kinu Yamamoto (AR'09) was featured in "Making the Most of Her Time" in the Staten Island Advance, May 7, 2006, an article about being from Staten Island, attending The Cooper Union, teaching in its Saturday Program and more.

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giving to cooper union

The William Randolph Hearst Foundation has made a wonderfully generous grant of $250,000 to support the new academic building fund. The Cooper Union is pleased to show its gratitude by naming the future office of the Cooper Pioneer for the pioneering Mr. Hearst.
On Monday, September 25, 2006, The Cooper Union will host a special evening honoring Lou Dorfsman (A'39, Trustee Emeritus) for his outstanding commitment to the College and for his pacesetting work in the world of graphic design. The event will take place at The French Culinary Institute (FCI) in New York, generously donated by Dorothy Cann Hamilton and Cooper Trustee Douglas Hamilton, FCI's Founder/CEO and Chairman respectively. The evening will include a cocktail hour "backstage" in one of the school's state-of-the-art prep kitchens, a culinary demonstration given by one of the Institute's renowned chefs, and finally a lavish four-course dinner in FCI's acclaimed restaurant, L'Ecole. The evening's proceeds will support the construction of The Cooper Union's new academic building with a space in the building named in recognition of Lou Dorfsman's enduring loyalty to the College.
Cooper Union has launched two new lifetime giving societies. Established to recognize our most generous benefactors, The Sarah Bedell Cooper Society honoring donors whose lifetime giving has surpassed $500,000 and The Abram S. Hewitt Society honoring those who have contributed $250,000 or more, join The Peter Cooper Heritage Society in celebrating the philanthropic spirit that maintains The Cooper Union. The following benefactors were inducted as inaugural members during the June 2006 Trustee Dinner:
The Sarah Bedell Cooper Society: Judith and Michael Borkowsky (ME'61), Susan and François deMenil (AR'87), Lisa Ware and Ronald Drucker (CE'62), Stanley Ensminger (ChE'46), Cecily and George Fox* (CE'40), Bette-Anne and Charles Gwathmey, Susan and John Michaelson, Peggy and Harry Ploss (PHY'68), René and Rubin Rabinowitz (Eng'42), Patricia and William Sandholm (CE'63) and Ardath and Richard Schwartz (ME'57).

The Abram S. Hewitt Society: Howard Betts (ME'49); Daniel Eisen, Susan and Benjamin Eisenberg (CE'62, ChE'61); Joyce Anderson and Mark Epstein (A'68); Esther and Jack Gould* (ME'27); Ellen and Richard Lincer; Anne and Harold McGraw Jr.; Robert Rogge (ChE'42); and Janet and Dean Seifried (EE'36).

* deceased
Rene and Rubin Rabinowitz (ChE'42) have made a deferred gift of $100,000 to support the George Fox Chair in Urban Infrastructure Design.
Cynthia Hazdi has included Cooper in her estate plans. Her husband Dimitri Hadzi (A'50), died in April 2006 and Ms. Hadzi has planned a $1 million bequest to establish an endowed fund that will support a visiting artist in Dimitri's name.
Corinne B. Coe has contributed $24,000 to establish the Myron Coe Scholarship Fund in memory of her husband and Cooper Union alumnus Myron R. Coe (EE'42).
Family and friends of Stephen J. Milioti (ME'61) have established a Perpetual Annual Giving Endowment (PAGE Fund) in his memory. The Cooper Union's PAGE Funds enable alumni and other friends of the college to establish a permanent named fund, honoring or memorializing a loved one or an organization. Started with a minimum gift of $15,000, each fund's earnings are credited to the Annual Fund, providing vital operating revenue and a perennial tribute to a revered member of the Cooper Union community.
The Cooper Union offers warm thanks to the family and friends of those loyal alumni from whom we've recently received bequests: Anne and Ernest T. Fruhner (Eng'27); George J. Muller (AR'18); George F. Kline (ChE'41); Tom Wesselmann (A'59); and Paul and Frieda Dankwerth (A'25).

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Don't Miss

General Interest

Fall Festival/Constitution Day will be held on September 19 in Peter Cooper Park from 12-2 pm.

Alumni Events

On July 19, 2006, 100 former students, colleagues, family and friends gathered to commemorate the legacy of the former dean of the Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture, John Q. Hejduk (AR'50, Arch Dean and Faculty Emeritus), and celebrated what would have been his 77th birthday. The event was organized by Cooper Union Trustee Carmi Bee (AR'67) and was featured in The New York Sun on July 31st.
On Monday, September 25, the School of Engineering's Mock Interview Night will be held at 6pm in Wollman Lounge. Career Services and Alumni Relations will cosponsor the event, where alumni return to campus for an evening of networking, including a demonstration of an interview that is followed by consecutive rounds of individual interviews to assist students in honing their skills in preparation for on-campus recruiting. Resume feedback is also given.
The Cooper Union Alumni Association's 6th annual Art Auction & Casino Night will be held in the Foundation Building on October 21, 2006 from 8pm until midnight. The silent auction will feature donated artwork by alumni from the classes of 1986–2006 and gift baskets.

Exhibitions

Karen Bausman (AR'82) has donated Turf Towers, a recently completed work of art, to Design Times Square: The Urban Forest Project. The project is an unprecedented presentation of original works of art by many of the world's most celebrated designers and visual artists, and is now on view in New York's Times Square.
Gearoid Dolan (Art Fac) (screaMachine) presented "Separate," a series of performances with installations on the streets and in the parks of the East Village and Lower East Side in August.
Michael Hayden (A'04) has work in Undercurrent, a group show at Frederieke Taylor Gallery. The show will be on view through September 9th.
Jacqueline Humphries' (adjunct instructor) exhibition Seven Sisters, a site-specific installation of new paintings, is on view at Williams College Museum of Art through September 29th.
Nina Katchadourian (visiting artist) has an exhibition at the Tang Museum at Skidmore College. All Forms of Attraction will be on view through December 30th.
Wangechi Mutu (A'96) and Cecily Brown (Alex Katz Chair 2003-4) will have work in the inaugural exhibition at the Metropolitan Opera's new contemporary visual arts gallery, which opens on Friday, September 22nd. The works will be on display through the end of the opera season in May 2007.
Artwork by Wangechi Mutu (A'97), Sol Sax (A'92) and Javaka Steptoe (A'95) was included in the exhibition The Pulse of New Brooklyn: A Review of Contemporary Black Art at the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Art. A DVD catalog, featuring interviews with the artists, accompanied the exhibit.
Laura Napier (A'98, Fac) presented her work in the Bard MFA Thesis Exhibition, which opened on July 16th.
The Atlas Group 1989-2004, a project by Professor Walid Raad, will be on view at Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin from September 29 through January 7, 2007. The project coincides with Art Forum Berlin 2006.
Zak Smith (A'98) has work in the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art's ongoing New Works series, on view through September 5th.
Amy Westpfahl (A'00, Fac) was in a group show at Artists Space that opened on July 11.
Sophie White (A'06) is in a group show, SubDelirous, at the Glassworks Building (141 West 24th Street, Penthouse, buzzer *07).

Upcoming Lectures and Public Programs

Barry Strauss, a history and classics professor at Cornell University and a leading expert on ancient military history, authored The Trojan War: A New History. Strauss will give a free lecture with book signing at The Cooper Union on Tuesday, September 19, at 6:30 pm at the Wollman Lounge.
Andrew Delbanco, a professor of American studies at Columbia, wrote Melville: His World and His Work. He will be giving a free lecture with book signing at The Cooper Union, Thursday, September 21, at 6:30 pm at the Wollman Auditorium.
Anderson Cooper, award-winning reporter and host of CNN's "Anderson Cooper 360°," takes the stage with Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) Executive Director Nicolas de Torrenté, Ph.D., and long-time MSF aid worker Milton Tectonidis, M.D., for a free event on Thursday, September 21, at 6:30 pm in The Great Hall at Cooper Union to discuss the organization's recent humanitarian work around the world, and the challenges it faces delivering medical care in complex crises such as those in Darfur, Sudan, Lebanon and Niger.
At a free lecture with book signing on Tuesday, September 26, at 6:30 pm in The Great Hall, Niall Ferguson, author of The War of the World, will explore the economic reasons leading up to and resulting in World War I.
The Israel Lobby: Does It Have Too Much Influence on U.S. Foreign Policy?, a panel discussion examining the Israeli lobby and its effect on U.S. foreign policy, will be hosted by The Cooper Union on Thursday, September 28, at 6:30 pm in The Great Hall.
A 50th-anniversary celebration of the independence of Morocco will be held in The Great Hall of Cooper Union on Saturday, September 30, at 10:00 pm. The evening will include Andalusian music played by the Orchestra Rais of Fes with director Mohammed Briouel. The event is presented by MENA music. Tickets are $45 at 212-513-1316 or www.menamusic.org.

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Did You Know?

Sugarcubes & Chocolate, a documentary film by Jiří Boudník (AR'97), premiered at the Czech Center in New York on April 28. Celebrating the 60th anniversary of the end of WWII and the liberation of Pilsen, Czech Republic, by American troops, Boudnik assembled archival footage and interviews to mark this historic observance.
Sharon Lobo, RA (AR'91), along with Don Erwin, RA, and Ron Bielinski, PE, AIA, PP, CIH, CSP, announced the formation of Erwin Lobo Bielinski, specializing in forensic architecture and engineering.
Stephan Pascher's (A'82) 1997 film Home(Sick) was shown at MoMA as part of the exhibition Tomorrowland: CalArts in Moving Pictures.
Jennifer Reeves (adjunct instructor, film) showed her film The Time We Killed on August 8th as part of Movie Night on the Elevated Acre, part of the River to River festival.
Anthony Vidler, dean of the School of Architecture participated in Refashioning Urban Spaces in Paris and New York for the 21st Century in April. The event was co-sponsored by the Urban Studies Program of Fordham University, the Institute of French Studies of NYU and Le Maison Francaise of NYU. In addition, Dean Vidler participated in the Urban Field Speakers Series sponsored by Toronto's Prefix Institute of Contemporary Art in April.

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