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The Gateway Engineering
Education Coalition
At
The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art
The Albert Nerken School of Engineering
The present site contains the
results or products of most of the projects that were developed
either entirely at The Cooper Union or in collaboration
with other Coalition schools during our participation in
the Coalition’s activities from 1992 to 2002.
The projects developed by Coalition
Schools are accessible on the server of Gateway Central
at Drexel University: http://www.gatewaycoalition.org/
As Institutional Activities Leader
of the Gateway Coalition at The Cooper Union during the
entire duration of the project, I am particularly grateful
to Dr. Eli Fromm, Gateway Coalition Director, for his leadership,
perseverance and dedication to keeping a clear focus on
the objectives of the Coalition during this ten-year effort,
and to Dr. Eleanor Baum, Dean of Engineering at Cooper,
for her continual support during that long period.
I have found the experience of
close collaboration with colleagues at other institutions
extremely enriching both personally and professionally and
would like to thank in particular here all the members of
the Governing Board of the Coalition for their interest,
ideas and support.
I am also naturally very grateful
to the large number of faculty members at Cooper Union who
have participated in the work of the Coalition. They developed
the material presented here and worked with students, infusing
the engineering educational process with new ideas, new
methods and new content. I am well aware that the projects
and papers included in this site are but the traces of their
work. Its true measure can only be appreciated by those
who meet our students. However, a reflection of this appreciation
can be gleaned from the results of the assessment process
included here. This process was initiated at Cooper under
the direction of Dr. Gerardo del Cerro as Gateway Local
Assessment Director. Dr. del Cerro, now Assessment Director
for the whole institution, has carried out the tremendous
work of development and implementation of an assessment
system that will serve as a feedback mechanism for the continual
improvement of the educational process over the years to
come.
The impact of the work of Gateway
at the Cooper Union is not of course limited to the projects
that were directly sponsored by it. Its effect may be felt
in the reshaping of the plan of the building itself and
the lessons that may be drawn from it for the future building.
A look at the second floor of the present building with
the development of the Brooks Engineering Design Center,
the Studio Classrooms for Engineering Mechanics and for
Fluid Mechanics, the redevelopment of the Material Science
Laboratory and of the Schmidt Family Acoustics Laboratory
as well as the opening of the Robotic Theater will give
a glimpse of future possibilities. These laboratories have
allowed a whole new range of projects to be effortlessly
integrated in the curriculum. They have provided the faculty
involved a whole new panoply of tools for teaching and research.
Combined with the system of assessment that Gateway has
been instrumental in putting in place, they provide an ideal
environment where serious educational research can occur.
Perhaps, however, most important of all, are the subtle
effects that these changes have brought about in the attitudes
towards experimentation with different modes of learning,
the practice of interdisciplinarity and the acceptance of
the assessment process. All this should prove useful as
the school gears up for developing and implementing a new
curriculum in—hopefully soon—new surroundings.
In the midst of proceeding with
the work involved in this very long project, most significant
was the help received from my Administrative Assistants,
Norah Pierson and Valerie Cornell, who, in turn, kept tabs
on all aspects of the project and created an atmosphere
where it could evolve and flourish. Their contribution is
gratefully acknowledged here.
Last but not least, I would like
to recognize for special thanks the “Whirl-i-gigers”
Seth Kaufman and Maria Passarotti, who took a mass (not
to say a mess) of disparate and unpromising materials (a
pile several feet high of papers, lecture notes, video clips,
student reports, etc.) and turned them into this well-organized
and beautiful product. Their wizardry, artistry, technical
abilities and good humor is a perpetual source of wonder.
The result of all this work is
a rich and diverse repertoire of ideas and tools that should
be of great benefit to The Cooper Union and the entire enginering
education community in the years of renewal that lie ahead.
Jean Le Mée
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