Cooper Union

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Jump to: navigation, search

Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art


Established 1859
School type Private
President George Campbell Jr.
Location New York, NY, USA
Enrollment 918
Tuition Free
Admissions Most Selective
Campus Urban
Homepage www.cooper.edu

The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art is a privately funded college in Lower Manhattan of New York City. Cooper Union is located in the East Village, around Cooper Square and Astor Place (3rd Avenue & 6th~9th Streets). It is one of the few institutions of higher learning to offer a full-tuition scholarship to all admitted students. The school offers degree programs in architecture, fine arts, and engineering.

The Cooper Union is one of the most selective colleges in the United States, with an acceptance rate of 10-12%. With nearly 70% of accepted students coming to attend, it is also one of the most desired schools in the country.

A substantial portion of the annual budget is generated through donations from a highly successful group of alumni both in the public and private sectors. Students in the School of Engineering have become important figures not only in the science and engineering community but as leaders in corporate and government organizations. The art and architecture schools have produced some of the most renowned creative figures in recent times, most notably Herb Lubalin, Eva Hesse, John Hejduk, Daniel Libeskind and Milton Glaser.

Contents

Founding and early history

The Cooper Union was founded in 1859 by American Industrialist Peter Cooper who was a prolific inventor and a successful entrepreneur. A self-made millionaire, Cooper had not received formal education and he made it his lifelong mission to provide opportunity for the poor by offering "education that was as free as the air we breathe and the water we drink." The Cooper Union began with adult education in night classes on the subjects of applied sciences and architectural drawing, as well as day classes for women on the subjects of photography, telegraphy, typewriting and shorthand. Discrimination as to race, religion, or sex was expressly prohibited.


Early board members included Horace Greeley and William Cullen Bryant.


Important Speech

The Great Hall
Enlarge
The Great Hall

On February 27, 1860, the school's Great Hall became the site of an historic address by an unknown attorney from Illinois, then an undeclared candidate for the Republican Party's Presidential nomination. Abraham Lincoln's dramatic speech opposed Stephen A. Douglas on the question of federal power to regulate and limit the spread of slavery to the federal territories and new States. Widely reported in the press and reprinted throughout the North in pamphlet form, the speech galvanized support for Lincoln and contributed to his gaining the Party's nomination for the Presidency. Coincidentally, Peter Cooper also ran for President in 1876.

Since then, the Great Hall has served as a platform for many historic addresses by American Presidents Grant, Cleveland, Taft, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson and most recently Bill Clinton on May 12, 1993 in his major economic address on reducing the federal deficit. To this day, the Great Hall continues to serve as an important metropolitan art space, hosting lectures and performances by key figures such as Steve Reich, Salman Rushdie and Rudy Giuliani.

Modern changes

The Cooper Union evolved over time into the current form of a college with three schools in architecture, art, and engineering. Regardless of the changes, the tradition of tuition-free education is still thriving. Cooper Union is currently conducting a comprehensive revision to its curricula and has proposed plans to change the usage of its real estate assets, so that it may continue to offer full-tuition scholarships to all accepted students.

Image:2004 09 cooperunion.jpg

The School of Art

The School of Art draws on the creative energy of the East Village to produce some of the most distinguished artists in the world today. It is arguably regarded as the most prestigious art school in North America. Admission is largely based on the rigorous and sometimes infamous 'home test'. Students spend most of the time in studio courses equipped with state-of-the-art facilities.


The School of Engineering

The Albert Nerken School of Engineering has about 550 students. The school offers ABET accredited Bachelor of Engineering (B.E.) programs in Chemical Engineering (ChE), Civil Engineering (CE), Electrical Engineering (EE), and Mechanical Engineering (ME); a Middle States accredited Bachelor of Science (B.S.) program in engineering (BSE); and a Master of Engineering (M.E.) program.

Up to the class of 2006, students choose to major in the one of the four traditional disciplines (ChE, CE, EE, and ME), or customize their education by opting for the BSE degree that has fewer requisite courses and greater opportunity for elective courses.

New curricula take effect beginning with the class of 2007. Under the currently published Course Catalog, students can still choose to pursue the traditional ChE, CE, EE, and ME degree programs, but greater flexibility in course selection is being planned for the four degree programs. In addition, there are proposals to offer students choices of "concentrations" (possibilities include Nanotechnology and Bio-engineering) that will offer groups of courses in more specific fields than the four traditional disciplines. The details of the new curricula are work in progress and therefore subject to change.

The Master of Engineering program offers an opportunity for The Cooper Union undergraduate students to obtain a master's degree with one additional year of study after completion of the bachelor's degree.

Curriculum

The curriculum before the class of 2007 requires 135 credits for graduation and has the following breakdown of credits:

Required Courses:

  • Math: 20 credits
  • Chemistry: 7.5 credits
  • Physics: 13.5 credits
  • Engineering, Interdisciplinary: 8 credits
  • Electrical Engineering: 51.5 credits
  • Humanities/Social Sciences: 12 credits

Elective Courses:

  • Engineering/Science: 10.5 credits
  • Humanities/Social Sciences: 12 credits

There is a strong emphasis on basic math and science courses, as well as an emphasis on developing students' expressive skills by the unusually high number of credits required by humanities/social sciences courses.

In the required undergraduate electrical engineering courses, electrical engineering students learn about the fundamental concepts of digital logic, circuit theory, electronics, digital signal processing, computer architecture, control systems, communication theory, electromagnetics, integrated circuits, and electromechanical energy conversion. Juniors are guided through a series of lab experiments and assigned projects. Seniors propose their own projects and many of them participate in inter-collegial contests.

In the new tentative curriculum proposed for the class of 2007 and beyond, three tracks of specialization are offered: Computer Engineering, Signal Processing & Communications, and Electronic Systems & Materials Engineering. The tracks offer different selections of advanced courses for specialization, while sharing the same "foundation courses".

Curriculum development was supported by a planning grant from the National Science Foundation, under the Principal Investigator, Dean Simon Ben-Avi. The New multi-disciplinary B.E. degree has a freshman and sophomore class already. (2004-2005). First graduation is expected in 2007.

Facilities

  • Micro Lab (μLab): equipment for Computer Architecture, such as programmers for microcontrollers and programmable logic devices
  • Integrated Circuit Engineering Lab (ICE Lab): workstations and software (HSPICE, Cadence, Verilog, ADS) for designing integrated circuits and microwave circuits
  • Junior Lab: equipment and workbenches with oscilloscopes, multimeters, power sources, etc.
  • Senior Lab: workbenches with uncertain collections of equipment used by the senior projects that are in progress
  • Multimedia and Microprocessor Lab:
  • Wireless Communications Lab
  • Imaging Systems Lab
  • Electronic Materials Lab
  • The Forrest Wade Rapid Prototyping Laboratory

Cooper Union in Pop Culture

Susan Skoog's coming-of-age movie "Whatever". A precocious suburban teen harbors dreams of moving to the city to study art at Cooper Union.[1]

An early scene in the now-legendary 1981 movie Downtown 81 starring Jean-Michel Basquiat.

Basquiat

External links

Personal tools