Stevens Institute of Technology



Stevens Institute of Technology is a technological university located on a 55 acre campus in Hoboken, New Jersey, USA – founded in 1870 with an 1868 bequest from Edwin A. Stevens. It is known for its engineering, science, and technological management curricula.

The institute has produced leading engineers, scientists, and managers in industry and government. Two members of the Stevens community, as alumni or faculty, have been awarded the Nobel Prize: Frederick Reines (class of 1939), in Physics, and Irving Langmuir (Chemistry faculty 1906-1909), in chemistry.

The Stevens campus encompasses Castle Point, the highest point in Hoboken. Historic Sybil's Cave bores into the side of Castle Point, and below and to the east of the university is Frank Sinatra Park, Castle Point Park, and Castle Point Skate Park. The tallest building in the institute is the Wesley J. Howe Center, occupying the site of the former "Stevens Castle" on Castle Point.

Among the prominent research centers of Stevens are the Davidson Laboratory, Wireless Network Security Center, Keck Geotechnical Laboratory, Plasma Physics Laboratory, Nicoll Environmental Laboratory, Electron Microscopy Laboratory, Center for Mass Spectrometry and the Center for Complex Adaptive Sociotechnological Systems (COMPASS).

Dr. Nariman Farvardin is the seventh president of Stevens. He took office July 1, 2011.

Education environment
Stevens is composed of four academic schools: the Charles V. Schaefer, Jr. School of Engineering and Science, the College of Arts and Letters, the Wesley J. Howe School of Technology Management and the School of Systems and Enterprises.

Stevens offers the Bachelor of Engineering (B.E.) degree in electrical, chemical, biomedical, materials, civil, mechanical, systems, computer, environmental, naval, and ocean engineering, as well as in engineering management. A total of 145-155 credits is required for the B.E. degree. The engineering programs are accredited by the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) and have been accredited by ABET continuously since 1936.

The Bachelor of Science (B.S.) degree is offered in chemistry, business & technology management, computer science, mathematics, physics, materials science, and chemical biology/biochemistry. At the graduate level, Stevens offers the Master of Engineering (M.Eng.), Master of Technology Management (M.T.M.), Master of Science (M.S.), Master of Business Administration (M.B.A.), Engineer (E.E., M.E., Comp. E., C.E., and Ch. E.), and Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) degrees.

Stevens offers an accelerated Chemical Biology/Pre-Medical program with the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey. In this program, students can enter the medical school after the third year at Stevens. Stevens confers the B.S. degree after the first year of medical school.

There is also a prelaw program with New York Law School, and a "3-2" (5 year) dual-degree program with New York University, in which students earn a B.S. in science from NYU, in addition to the B.Eng. from Stevens. Stevens Institute of Technology International offers two graduate programs in the Dominican Republic – a Master of Science in Information Systems and a Master of Engineering Manufacturing Technology and Project Management

The mission of the Charles V. Schaefer, Jr. School of Engineering & Science is to address the challenges facing engineering and science now and into the future while remaining true to the vision of the founders of Stevens as one of the first dedicated engineering schools in the nation. The Schaefer School of Engineering & Science offers Bachelor's, Master's and Doctoral degrees in various engineering and scientific disciplines for the traditional full time students as well as part time professionals.

The School of Systems and Enterprises (SSE) emphasizes the industry and government experience of its faculty to provide real-world applications to its students. SSE offers a range of programs including Bachelor’s, Master’s, and Doctoral degrees along with a combined Bachelor’s and Master’s program and Graduate Certificates. Graduate courses at SSE are provided through flexible program delivery with options including on campus, at a work site or online through Stevens’ WebCampus.

In 2010, Stevens opened a new location at the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington, D.C. offering graduate courses focused on technology management, systems engineering, and the sciences.

The College of Arts and Letters (CAL) approaches the humanities, social sciences, and the arts from a science and technology perspective. While every undergraduate at Stevens is required to take a set of humanities courses, CAL offers Bachelor of Arts degrees in literature, history, philosophy, and the social sciences. CAL was established as a separate college in 2007 as part of a larger institutional realignment. CAL's formation followed a history of integrating humanities and liberal arts education which dates back to the university's founding in 1870. In Fall 2011 CAL will be offering a new M.A. and graduate certificate in Technology, Policy, and Ethics.

The Wesley J. Howe School of Technology Management emphasizes quantitative methods of management, particularly those unique to the management of technologically-based organizations. The Stevens undergraduate program emphasizes mathematical business models, applications of hard science to the concept and marketing of products, financial engineering (stochastic calculus, probability, and statistics as descriptors of the dynamic behavior of financial markets) and the case study method of business analysis. The capstone project in the Business curriculum is the design of a technology-based business, with the accompanying business plan, operations research, market analysis, financial prospectus, and risk analysis. Several of the capstone projects done in the business school have actually been realized in the marketplace as new companies. Stevens has a 7:1 student to faculty ratio that allows smaller classes and increased opportunity for student-faculty interaction.

Current focus in Stevens is integration of business and technology, with technology coming first. The aim is to produce alumni possessing both the skills to create and to lead and manage technological projects.

The Honor System gives the student the privilege to take an examination without proctoring by a professor. Students are required to sign the Honor System pledge attesting that they have not "asked for, given, nor received aid during this examination" in exchange for that privilege. The pledge reads, "I pledge my honor that I have abided by the Stevens Honor System." At the time of its incorporation, students taking examinations were watched closely by a proctor, and asking not to be proctored was a revolutionary idea. Proctoring presumes students will not do the honorable thing, whereas the Honor System places great trust in the students. Stevens treats its students as future professionals, who will maintain the honor and integrity of their professions. In the case of infractions of the Honor System, a jury of the student's peers hears the case in a trial and decides the outcome.

Stevens was the first technological university in the United States with a humanities department. At least eighteen credit hours of humanities (history, literature, social science, philosophy, and art/music) are required of all undergraduates.

Athletics
The sports teams are called the Ducks. They participate in the Empire 8 Conference and NCAA Division III. They were one of the first 5 College football teams

History
The Stevens Institute of Technology is named after a family of accomplished inventors and engineers.

In 1784, the land now occupied by Stevens Institute of Technology was purchased by John Stevens, who would later reverse engineer the British steam locomotive to American standards for domestic manufacture. Robert Stevens, one of John Stevens' sons is known for inventing the flanged T rail, a form of railroad rail in use today throughout the world. With his brother Edwin A. Stevens, Robert created America's first commercial railroad.

When Edwin A. Stevens died in 1868, he left a bequest in his will as an endowment for the establishment of an "institution of learning", providing his trustees with land and funds.

The Stevens Institute of Technology opened in 1870 and initially was dedicated to mechanical engineering.

The original course of study was a single, rigorous curriculum that was based upon the European model of science, modeled after the French and German scientific and technical schools, rather than the shop schools that were common at that time. The original degree offered was that of "Mechanical Engineer" (M.E.), in addition to a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering, chemistry, or physics. Stevens granted several Ph.D.s between 1870 and 1900, making it one of the earliest Ph.D. granting institutions in the United States. The broad-based interdisciplinary philosophy was put into practice by the founders from the first graduating class. While the original area of concentration was mechanical engineering, and despite the title of the degree, the curriculum included courses in all of the then-current engineering disciplines; mechanical, civil, chemical, and electrical engineering. In 1880, Robert H. Thurston, professor of mechanical engineering at Stevens, was nominated the first president of the American Society Of Mechanical Engineers.

In 1959 the undergraduate engineering degree was changed to the Bachelor of Engineering (B.Eng.) to reflect the broad-based interdisciplinary engineering curriculum (note that the M.E. degree of that time was a baccalaureate degree, not to be confused with the present Engineer's degree which is a terminal professional graduate degree).

The campus began on the edge of the family estate at Castle Point in Hoboken. It occupied a single building now designated the Edwin A. Stevens Building and a Federal historical landmark. Stone designs on the building's facade are believed to be derived from a pattern repeated in the floor mosaic of Hagia Sophia, the great cathedral in Istanbul, which Edwin A. Stevens is believed to have visited in the late 19th century.

In 1959, the 40-room Victorian mansion, "Castle Stevens" was demolished to be replaced in 1962 by the 14-story Administration Building, later renamed the Wesley J. Howe building.

In 1906, students at Stevens, under the guidance of President Humphrey, created the Honor System – moral and ethical code governing the life of Stevens students, preaching equality and honest work.

Stevens has a distinguished history and presence in the fields of economics of engineering and management science. Frederick Winslow Taylor (M.E., 1883), the "father of scientific management," developed time and motion studies in the steel industry and other manufacturing industries. The time and motion studies elucidated the most efficient way to do each task, the methods of distributing work in a factory, the assigning of production resources to workers and processes, and the quantifying and measuring of the resulting productivity. His books Shop Management and The Principles of Scientific Management remain classic monographs in the field. Although few or no plants today employ exactly the system of management that Taylor described, the underlying principles of analysis and empiricism that shaped his methods are still in use today. Henry Gantt, Taylor's classmate, was the developer of the "Gantt chart", which is a graphical technique for identifying the critical path- the succession of particular steps in a process that control the cost and schedule as a function of the dependencies between the steps. Present day, computer-aided program evaluation and review techniques, critical path optimization, and linear programming techniques still utilize Gantt's principles.

Closely associated with time-motion studies was the psychology of employee and organizational behavior. Dr. Charles Gaudet organized one of the first Psychological Studies Laboratories at Stevens in 1945. The Laboratory developed psychological tests and standards for public employees such as police and fire. These tests, elements of which are in use today, have proven themselves accurate predictors of performance under stressful conditions.

During the Manhattan Project, the International Nickel Company, under the direction of president Charles Stanley (M.E., 1943) developed the ultra-pure nickel that was used to fabricate diffusion barriers used in the gaseous isotope diffusion separation process at Los Alamos which produced the uranium-235 used in the Hiroshima atomic bomb. Previous attempts at gas diffusion failed due to impurities in the diffusion barrier alloys causing corrosion of the apparatus by the uranium hexafluoride gas used in the process. Frederick Reines, (M.E., 1939, M.S., 1941), who would later discover the neutrino &mdash; which won him the Nobel Prize in 1995 &mdash; directed the experimental division of the Manhattan Project.



SS Stevens, a 473-foot, 14,893-ton ship, served as the floating dormitory from 1968 to 1975 for about 150 students. Permanently moored on the scenic Hudson River at the foot of the campus across from New York City, this first collegiate floating dormitory became one of the best known college landmarks in the country. Following the sale of the ship, students of the Class of 1975 presented funds to the institute for the preparation of a site on Wittpenn Walk where one of Stevens ' six-ton anchors was placed in tribute to "the Ship". Recounting the events and sentiments on the day Stevens was towed away, the alumni association expressed in its journal, "She disappeared into the fog and into our hearts."

During World War II, the institute was honored by the naming of the Victory Ship, SS Stevens Victory, a merchant cargo ship built by the Bethlehem Fairfield Shipyard at Baltimore. Launched on May 29, 1945, the ship was among of a group of 150 ships that were named for US Colleges and Universities.

Starting in 1971, women were first allowed to enroll in Stevens.

In 1982, Stevens was the first institution in the U.S. to require all incoming freshman undergraduate students to purchase and use a personal computer. Around this time, an intranet was installed throughout the campus, which also placed Stevens among one of the very first universities with campus networks.

WCPR, the radio station of Stevens Institute of Technology, has one of the largest record collections in the state of New Jersey at over 10,000 LPs.

Research at Stevens
The Research Enterprise at Stevens features three National Research Centers of Excellence: the Center for Secure & Resilient (CSR) Maritime Commerce; Systems Engineering Research Center (SERC); and the Atlantic Center for the Innovative Design & Control of Small Ships (ACCESS). Stevens also features the Center for the Advancement of Secure Systems & Information Assurance (CASSIA), a nexus for research advancements in cybersecurity in addition to a wide range of research centers and facilities.

Research at Stevens is structured into three overarching areas that are based on the needs of society and a determination of how the assets of the university can be utilized by industry and entrepreneurs.


 * Nanotechnology & Multi-scale Systems - Develops and implements nanotechnology-enabled solutions spanning a broad spectrum of engineering and science disciplines. Rooted in nanoscale science, yet, focused on real-world problems, these emerging technologies will have transformative value in the areas of national and global interest including energy, health, electronics, communications, the environment and national security.
 * Secure Systems - Is a cross-disciplinary research area focused on developing transitional breakthroughs in national security technology. The Maritime Security Laboratory established in partnership with the U.S. Navy focuses on emerging maritime threats while researchers in the departments of Mathematics, Computer Science, Computer Engineering and Physics work on a wide variety of cybersecurity issues.
 * Systems Engineering & Enterprise Management - Addresses questions that are related to the nature of sociotechnologic systems within the context of global competitiveness in their process to create economic value. Research efforts create unique knowledge about the functionality of socioeconomic systems and focus on developing practical methods, tools and heuristics that leaders can apply to increase the productivity of sociotechnical systems and improve their economic value.

Dr. Joseph Mitola III is the Vice President of the Research Enterprise.

New Jersey lawsuit
In 2009, Stevens had attracted attention as described in a New York Times opinion piece entitled "The Stevens Scandal" regarding allegations of financial irregularities.

On September 17, 2009, after a three-year investigation, New Jersey Attorney General Anne Milgram filed a 16-count lawsuit against Stevens. The lawsuit alleged that president, Harold J. Raveche, and chairman, Lawrence Babbio, Jr., misrepresented the finances of the school and caused the endowment to fall by $42 million from $157 million in 2000 to $115 million in 2009. The lawsuit revealed that Raveche received below-market loans from the school, at least some of which were forgiven by Stevens. The complaint also raised questions about Raveche's salary which was greater than that of the president of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a much larger, better known school. Harold J. Raveche's salary in 2009 was approximately $1,119,685 plus $350,000 expenses for a total compensation of $1,469,685.

A Wall Street Journal article notes that it is unusual for a state to take action against an educational institution on questions of salary or financial management. Stevens denied all allegations, contended that the state attorney general had overstepped her legal authority over a private institution, filed its own lawsuit against the state, and sought to seal the case from the public.

The New York Times reported that Jack B. Siegel, a Chicago lawyer specializing in non-profits, said that the Stevens case was "the case of the year" in non-profit circles because there were accusations that the school was "keeping two sets of books, misleading the board and forgiveness of below-market-rate loans." This accusation was never substantiated.

On January 15, 2010, Stevens announced that the institute and the New Jersey Attorney General's office agreed to a settlement of the September, 2009 lawsuit filed by the NJ Attorney General, as well as the separate suit filed by Stevens against the Attorney General. In the settlement, the parties agreed to a number of changes to Stevens' governance procedures, all of which are scheduled to be implemented by June 30, 2011. Additionally, in a letter to the institute, Lawrence T. Babbio Jr. and Harold J. Raveché, announced that Raveché had voluntarily decided, after 22 years of service as the institute's sixth president, that he would not continue as president beyond June 30, 2010. The settlement makes Dr. Raveché’s a consultant to the Institute and forces him to repay the outstanding balance of his loans. It concludes with no admission of liability or unlawful conduct by any party.

Notable alumni

 * Lawrence Babbio, B.E., 1966, vice chairman and president of Verizon Communications, Domestic Telecom Group.
 * Igor Bensen, B.E. Mechanical Engineering, 1940, founder of Bensen Aircraft.
 * George M. Bond, creator of the eyepiece micrometer
 * Samuel P. Bush, 1884, steel and railroad executive, public servant, patriarch of Bush political family
 * Alexander Calder, M.E., 1919, creator of the Mobile and popularizer of that art form
 * Alfred Kinsey
 * Fred H. Colvin, M.E. Hon., 1944, journalist, author, and editor in the fields of manufacturing, machine tools, etc.
 * James Corcoran, M.E., M.S., President and CEO, Lockheed Martin Corporation
 * Hiten Patel, M.S., Chairman and CEO, Collabera Inc
 * Leon Febres Cordero, M.E., 1953, President of Ecuador, 1984–1988
 * Mark Crispin, B.S., 1977, Inventor of IMAP
 * Nate Davis, B.E., President and COO - XM Satellite Radio; formerly COO of XO Communications
 * L. Sprague de Camp, M.S., 1933, science fiction author,  Lest Darkness Fall , The Wheels of If, The Great Monkey Trial, winner of the Hugo Award (1997)
 * Alfred Fielding, 1939, Co-inventor of Bubble Wrap
 * Henry Gantt, developed the Gantt chart, an important project management tool
 * Louis A. Hazeltine, M.E., Sc. D., 1926, founder Hazeltine Corporation, inventor of the neutrodyne radio receiver
 * Richard Herman, B.S., 1963, Chancellor of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
 * Peter Cooper Hewitt, electrical engineer and inventor of the Mercury arc rectifier
 * Walter Kidde, B.E., 1897, founder of Walter Kidde Constructors; oversaw the construction of Port Newark and Kearny, New Jersey's first traffic circle and the world's first cloverleaf interchange, the Pulaski Skyway; served as New Jersey State Highway Commissioner; founder of the Walter Kidde Company, maker of WWII safety equipment
 * Jonathan Lynch, CTO of Northern Power Systems in Vermont
 * Eugene McDermott, M.E., 1953, founder, Texas Instruments
 * John McLean, MD, B.S., 1960, developer of corneal transplant and founder of the Eye Bank for Sight Restoration
 * Charles Stewart Mott, M.E. 1882, co-founder of General Motors Corporation
 * Charles Petzold, B.S., M.S. 1975, Author, The Annotated Turing: A Guided Tour through Alan Turing's Historic Paper on Computability and the Turing Machine 2008, Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software 1999, Programming Windows 1988-1998
 * Richard Reeves, M.E., 1960, Emmy Award winner, syndicated columnist, author, television commentator
 * Frederick Reines, M.E., 1939, M.S. 1943, discoverer of the neutrino, 1995 Nobel Prize in Physics
 * Richard H. Rice, M.E., 1885; Ph.D. honoris causa, 1921, mechanical engineer and inventor.
 * Jean Savitsky, BS, 1985, Managing Director at Jones Lang LaSalle and Project Director of the Bank of America Tower, the first Platinum LEED (Green Building) High Rise in America. COO of Energy and Sustainability Services at Jones Lang LaSalle.
 * Edwin Augustus Stevens, Jr., son of the school's founder.
 * Frederick Winslow Taylor, M.E., 1883, developer of scientific management methods and time-motion studies
 * Gerard Joseph Foschini, PhD 19??, Prominent Telecommunications Engineer that is in the top 0.5% of most widely cited authors.