Introduction
The School for the Physical City (SPC) is located at 55 East 25 th Street, just off Park Avenue South, and is growing steadily in size and the impact it has on teaching in New York City.
SPC uses the city as a foundation of its curriculum; exploiting the city's physical and social infrastructure as an immediate teaching laboratory and resource. Students primarily work on team projects and spend about a day a week exploring the city or its surroundings to complement and strengthen the work done at school.
The traditional high school model has not been consistently successful and SPC is an experiment in a new, stimulating, supportive teaching approach that is highly linked to the "real world". Part of the "support" are SPC's partners; The Cooper Union, The Cooper Union Infrastructure Institute, Outward Bound, USA, NYC Outward Bound, NYC Mission Society, New Visions Public Schools.
Cooper Union provides its support in a number of ways. First, we are part of SPC's laboratory and we invite them in to explore. Secondly, that invitation is pro-active in that we not only invite them to explore us and our facilities, but we also provide expertise in the form of faculty, students and staff to aid them in their explorations. This is done through student tutors/mentors, specific teaching programs, fund raising and design support.
Cooper Union's partnership with SPC is coordinated through the Dean's Office in the Albert Nerken School of Engineering. (Susan Dorsey, Administrative Associate (ext. 286, dorsey@cooper.edu).