Dr. Michael Hutmaker, Dean of Student Affairs, addresses Deans List students.

With a Cumulative Semester GPA of 3.71 for the fall semester 2006, 331 PolyThinkers—out of a total of 1480 eligible students across 10 disciplines—received honors at the Dean's List Recognition Ceremony in the Pfizer Auditorium on February 26, 2007. Speaking before a group of students, faculty and staff, Dr. Michael Hutmaker, Dean of Student Affairs, encouraged students to continue their efforts by observing that, based on their current standings, the Dean's list recipients constitute 95 Cum Laude (3.40-3.59), 35 Magna Cum Laude (3.50-3.69), and 102 Summa Cum Laude (3.70+) PolyThinkers, if they were to graduate today.

Provost Erich Kunhardt complemented the students on their performance and thanked them for fulfilling their commitment to the university and themselves. “The fact that you're here shows that you've been living up to the agreement you made with the University,” said Dr. Kunhardt,“ which is the pursuit of knowledge.”  As of February 2007, 39 students have received a 4.0 for the fall Semester and 13 have received a perfect cumulative GPA of 4.0 during their tenure at the school.

Cumulative Fall 2006 GPA of Dean’s List recipients -- Total / GPA by Department

• Othmer-Jacobs Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering - 39 / 3.71
• Department of Chemical and Biological Sciences - 16 / 3.69
• Department of Civil Engineering - 33 / 3.69
• Department of Computer and Information Sciences - 41 / 3.78
• Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering - 113 / 3.71
• Department of Humanities and Social Sciences - 10 / 3.67
• Department of Technology Management - 28 / 3.68
• Department of Mathematics - 11 / 3.76
• Department of Physics - 3 / 3.68

Black History Month 2007 at Polytechnic Institute of NYU

Polytechnic Institute of NYU, in association with the Downtown Brooklyn Neighborhood Alliance and Forest City Ratner Companies, hosted a "Celebration & Tribute to Frederick Douglass" in Wunsch Hall on February 12, 2007.  Joy Colelli, Dean of Admissions and New Students, welcomed attendees, including the fugitive-slave-turned-stateman's great, great grandson, Frederick Douglass IV and Bruce Ratner, President and Chief Executive Officer of Forest City Ratner Companies.

A multi-screen slide presentation, created by students from Poly's Integrated Digital Media Institute featured portraits of Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, Booker T. Washington, Gwendolyn Brooks, Colin Powell, Condoleeza Rice and others, and two students from Poly's National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE), Devaughn K. Lane and Tanzee Silver, gave a presentation entitled, "What If ...there were no people of color in the fields of Math, Science, Technology, Literature and Politics?"

Poly's Wunsch building, a Greek Revival landmark built in 1846, was purchased by the University in 1968 and housed Brooklyn's first black congregation -- the African Wesleyan Methodist Episcopal Church -- also known as the Bridge Street Church.  In the years leading up to and through the Civil War, the building served as a terminus point on the famous Underground Railway that helped fugitive slaves escape the South and begin life as free men and woman, by quietly sheltering runaway slaves in its basement. From 1854 to 1938, the church held services where prominent blacks, abolitionists and others championed black equality.

Darnley Howard, far right at electrical panel, in Polytechinic's Refridgeration Lab, 1920.

In recognition of the event, Christopher Hayes, Director of Special Projects, designed and produced an exhibit, with the assistance of University Archivist Heather Walters and the CATT Center, that features Polytechnic Institute of NYU's earliest known African-American alumnus, Darnley E. Howard, '20 ME.

Upon graduating from the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn in 1920 with a degree in Mechanical Engineering, Mr. Howard went on to serve as an instructor in P.I.B.'s Physics and Mechanical Engineering departments.  After eight years of service to the Institute, he left NYU-Poly to accept a position of Assistant Professor in Mechanical Engineering at Howard University in Washington, D.C, the nation's preeminent Black college.  Upon his departure from P.I.B., his colleagues noted in the 1928 November issue of the school's alumni magazine, NYU-Poly Men, “[Darnley's] cheerful manner coupled with his capabilities will insure him success in the new field of endeavor.  We wish him well.”

On the whole, such camaraderie between African- and Anglo-European Americans of the time was as unusual as the presence of African-Americans in teaching positions at university, be it in technology or liberal studies. In the ensuing years, Mr. Howard would go on to not only earn his doctorate, but also teach hundreds of African Americans the hard skills used in the sciences and engineering that would earn them entrée into professional disciplines to which they had earlier been denied access.

Dr. Darnley Howard

If freedom was the first step toward emancipation in the post-Civil War era, higher education promised fulfillment of the dream.  Thus, Dr. Darnley E. Howard, Poly's earliest known African American graduate, can be credited alongside Polytechnic Institute of NYU with advancing the cause of African American education in technology from the early 20th century through today.

Mr. Frederick Douglass IV, a serious large-framed man of few words cut in the likeness of his great, great grandfather said, “We have an inheritance here and we must not forget it.”

Poly's first President John Howard Raymond, circa 1860.

Among other remarks, it was noted by Chris Moore, a Brooklyn historian, that Poly's first President, John Howard Raymond, delivered the invocation for President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation at the Cooper Union Institute on Sept. 23rd 1862, which summarily freed all slaves in areas still in rebellion against the United States as of January 1863.  After leaving Poly, President Raymond went on to become the second president of Vassar College.  Thus, in a manner similar to the way NYU-Poly provided African -Americans higher education opportunities, the University's forebears also played a pivotal role in the education of 19th century women, which serves as a fitting segue to Women's History Month this March.

Go here for a list other of Black History Month events at NYU-Poly.

Go here to read about Poly's Black History Month event in the Queens Ledger.   

Since its inception in 1988, the Promise Fund Scholarship program has supported over 2,000 Polytechnic students in pursuit of the American Dream.  Most of Poly's Promise Fund Scholars are from minority groups, come from immigrant families, or are the first in their family to attend college. In addition to underwriting tuition costs of promising students, the Promise Fund also supports pre-college outreach programs for inner-city youth.

Promise Scholars Induction Ceremony

On February 7, NYU-Poly Trustee Bob Prieto ’76 ’77,  Senior Vice President of the Flour Corporation, challenged the Promise Scholars to accept the responsibilities incumbent upon them.   "These students are truly the promise of tomorrow. They are our future leaders—men and women who will take their place in society and help make the world a better place." In closing remarks, Polytechnic President Jerry Hultin said, "I want to offer my congratulations to our Promise Scholars…and thank our Trustees for their commitment to the University and these young men and women.  I would now like to ask the scholarship recipients to step forward to take their pledge."

In an on-going effort to improve the way the City of New York awards contracts, Polytechnic Institute of NYU worked alongside the Mayor's Office of Contracts to access the benefits and disadvantages of Cost-Based Selection (CBS) and Quality-Based Selection (QBS). Recently, the New York Association of Consulting Engineers and the American Council of Engineering Companies put out a brochure, “Building Quality into New York City’s Future: The Case for Quality-Based Selection,”  based in part on a Polytechnic Institute of NYU study conducted by Civil Engineering Department professors, Fletcher (Bud) Griffis, Symeon Christodoulou, and Lisa Barrett.  The 2002 report, summarized in a American Council of Engineering Companies newsletter, conducted research on quality methods for procuring both engineering and architectural services. On December 1, 2006, the City’s Procurement Policy Board passed a QBS policy based on the research and testimony provided by the professors. The key conclusions of this joint effort found that:

• QBS results in better projects with lower costs;
• QBS offers significant advantages over cost-based selection; and,
• The use of cost as the key selection factor may result in inferior projects even if the highest qualified firm is selected, since many of the disadvantages of bidding prevail.

The Polytechnic Institute of NYU study, "Qualifications-Based Selection (QBS) for the Procurement of Professional Architectural-Engineering (A/E) Services," is available from the New York Building Foundation. 

Shock front of a plasma aero-spike.

• S. P. Kuo and D. Bivolaru, “The similarity of shock waves generated by a cone-shaped plasma and by a solid cone in a supersonic airflow”, Phys. Plasmas, 14(2), 023503 (1 - 5), 2007.
• S. P. Kuo and Dimitrij Greco, “Determination of the height of the modulated electrojet region generating ELF radiation”, Geophys. Res. Lett., 34, L05103, doi:10.1029/2006GL029124, 2007.
• A. Labno, P. Rezy, M. C. Lee, L. M. Burton, J. A. Cohen, S. P. Kuo, D. L. Rokusek, “Whistler-mode Wave Interactions with Ionospheric Plasmas over Arecibo”, J. Geophys. Res., accepted for publication, March 2007.
• P. Rezy, A. Labno, M. C. Lee, W. J. Burke, J. A. Cohen, L. M. Burton, S. P. Kuo, D. Rokusek, “Electron Precipitation from the Inner Radiation Belt above Arecibo”, Geophys. Res. Lett., accepted for publication, 2007.

Director and Senior Faculty Fellow, Othmer Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies
Associate Professor of Biochemistry, Department of Chemical and Biological Sciences

• Presented a seminar at The State University of New York at Stony Brook entitled: "Hyaluronan Polysaccharide: Shaping Up the Random Coil" on Feb. 21, 2007.

Assistant Professor, Department of Technology Management

• Communications of the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) has accepted for publication Dr. Nov's paper entitled, ‘What motivates Wikipedians, or how to increase user-generated content contribution.’

Dr. Spencer Kuo, Professor of Electrophysics in Polytechnic's Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, has been named Principle Investigator by the Office of Naval Research for a grant relating to "Wave-Plasma Interactions in Artificial Modification of the Ionosphere and Magnetosphere by the HAARP HF Heating Facility."

Professor Keith Ross

Professor Keith Ross has been named a 2007 Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) for his contributions to the design and analysis of computer networks. Dr. Ross, Polytechnic's Leonard J. Shustek Professor of Computer Science, has published extensively in the areas of computer networking and distributed systems, and contributed to: stochastic modeling; optimization; Quality of Service; video streaming and video-on-demand; multi-service loss networks; web caching; content distribution networks; peer-to-peer networks; application-layer protocols; queuing theory; and, Markov decision processes.

The IEEE Grade of Fellow is conferred by the Board of Directors upon a person with an extraordinary record of accomplishments in any of the IEEE fields of interest. A brief citation is issued to new Fellows describing their accomplishments and the total number selected in any one year does not exceed one-tenth percent of the total voting Institute membership. IEEE was established in 1963, when the AIEE (American Institute of Electrical Engineers, formed in 1884) and the IRE (Institute of Radio Engineers, formed in 1912) merged to form a single Institution with 160,000 members. In doing so, IEEE became the largest scientific or engineering organization in the world. Polytechnic Institute of NYU's 6th president and a Fellow of both predecessor societies, Dr. Ernst Weber, served as IEEE's first President.

NYU-Poly President Jerry Hultin, Senator Frank Padavan ?55 and Polytechnic Alumni Executive Vice President Edward Sawchuk ?76 ?78 CE.

The POLYTECHNIC ALUMNI bestowed their highest honor, the Distinguished Alumnus Citation, to N.Y. State Senator Frank Padavan ‘55 EE at the National Engineers Week Dinner on February 15th, 2007. This annual dinner, co-hosted by the Metropolitan Engineering Societies Council, has taken place at Polytechnic for the past two years and brings representatives from over 25 engineering societies to campus.

Senator Padavan has represented the 11th Senate District in Queens for the past 32 years and is the only professional engineer in the New York State legislature. He is well known for his support of mental health related issues, government reform and port security. For more information on the senator, visit www.frankpadavan.com.

The University is pleased to announce Dr. Kurt H. Becker has joined NYU-Poly as Associate Provost for Research and Technology Initiatives and Dean of Sciences and Arts. Dr. Becker has held tenured faculty positions at Lehigh University, the City College of CUNY, and most recently at Stevens Institute of Technology. At Stevens, he was the Head of the Department of Physics and Engineering Physics since 2000; and since 2003, he was also Associate Director of the Center for Environmental Systems (CES), a joint center of the Schools of Engineering and Science.

Dr. Kurt H. Becker

Prof. Becker's background is in atomic, chemical, and plasma physics. He holds a PhD degree from the Universitaet Saarbruecken in Germany and is a Fellow of the American Physical Society. He has worked extensively on experimental and theoretical studies of electron-driven processes and on low-temperature plasmas, and has published more than 180 peer-reviewed articles and edited or co-edited 7 books.

Dr. Becker's research has been funded by the NSF, DOE, NASA, ARO, AFOSR, ONR, DARPA, and through contracts from industry. He has served on numerous review panels for federal funding agencies such as NSF, DOE, and NASA and holds 7 patents on the generation and maintenance of atmospheric-pressure plasmas and their application (six of these are joint patents with Provost Erich E. Kunhardt). In 2001, Dr. Becker was a co-recipient (with Erich Kunhardt) of the Thomas A. Edison Patent Award of the Research and Development Council of New Jersey.

Given his background and experience as an academic, researcher, and inventor with demonstrated ability to attract and sustain competitive research funding for more than twenty years, we look forward to Prof. Becker becoming an invaluable asset in our push to bring NYU-Poly to the forefront of technological universities.

Please join us in welcoming Kurt to the NYU-Poly community and we are confident that he can count on your enthusiastic support. His office is located in JB 555. He can be reached on ext. 3608 or via e-mail at kbecker@poly.edu.