Stevens' Alison Cozzubbo named to USA TODAY team

This is a banner year for Alison Cozzubbo. The Stevens Institute of Technology civil engineering student has been named to USA TODAY's All-USA College Academic Team. Chosen from among nearly 600 nominees, she earned a prestigious slot in the competition's third team - an honor bestowed on only 20 other students selected from nationwide nominations. The honor included a feature in the Feb 27th edition of USA TODAY.

Alison also is one of two students in the country who'll be honored in March with a top national scholarship from Chi Epsilon, The National Civil Engineering Honor Society. In addition, she plans to graduate from Stevens in May with both a bachelor's and a master's degree, and a perfect 4.0 grade point average, which designates her "First in Class." And to top it off, she's just been accepted and awarded funding to do her doctoral work in coastal engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. MIT was her first choice, although she was courted by several prestigious universities.

Yet, if you ask Alison, none of this attention upstages what she learned in five years of college - such as, how to work with a team to design a real New Jersey highway bridge, and how to tutor and mentor young women to help them succeed in the male-dominated field of engineering.

Alison, the daughter of Elaine and (the late) David Sleath of Brookfield, Conn., was the first in her family to go to college. Born in Hackensack, N.J., she graduated from New Fairfield High School in New Fairfield, Conn. She chose Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, N.J., after attending its pre-college program called ECOES (Exploring Career Options in Engineering and Science), a high school outreach program she's given considerable time and energy back to every summer she's been a college student at Stevens.

"Alison has been a tireless volunteer and has assumed many key leadership roles in mentoring young women," says Kathleen Bott Fleming, Director of Stevens' Lore-El Center for Women in Engineering and Science, which administers ECOES. She sees Alison as a model student and a trailblazer in an academic field in which women are still underrepresented.

"Currently only 4 percent of the university engineering faculty in the United States are women, but Alison is determined to join their ranks and I have no doubt that she will get there," she says.

Alison's engineering professors agree.

"She exhibits all the qualities that are necessary for her to assume a leadership role as a professional engineer," says Dr. Henry P. Dobbelaar, Distinguished Service Professor in Civil, Environmental and Ocean Engineering at Stevens.

Those qualities include being a stellar student as well as excelling beyond the
classroom. Through her sorority, Phi Sigma Sigma, Alison has mentored freshmen and raised money for the Sept. 11th Disaster Relief Fund, among many other service activities. She helped establish Stevens' new student chapter of Chi Epsilon, The National Civil Engineering Honor Society. She's been very active in The American Society of Civil Engineers, which honored her in 2001 for her outstanding contributions. And she's lent her efforts to the Society of Women Engineers and many programs of Stevens' Lore-El Center for Women in Engineering and Science. Lately she's also been working to establish a new chapter of the National Society of Professional Engineers at Stevens.

Her perfect grade point average and extensive list of academic and scholarship awards attest to her abilities as a student. Among the awards, she received an American Society of Highway Engineers Scholarship, a Women in Engineering Scholarship, and an ECOES Research Scholarship; and she was named a Stevens Technogenesis® Scholar, an Edwin A. Stevens Scholar, and a Society of Women Engineers Scholar. Her team's Senior Design Project, "Analysis and Design of Highway Bridge Alternatives," was awarded Best Civil Engineering Design Project last year, and resulted in a published report sponsored by Louis Berger and Associates, Inc.

Yet it was the example she set by dropping out of college her second semester to care for her terminally ill father that helped inspire one professor to nominate her for the USA TODAY All-USA College Academic Team:
"She was in my thermodynamics class, but she had to take a leave of absence to take care of an ailing family member," remembers Dr. Erol Cesmebasi, associate dean of undergraduate academics. "This demonstrated her commitment to others in addition to her academic prowess."

Alison had promised her father she would finish college. And after she went back, she hit upon exactly what she wanted to pursue in life - a doctorate and career in coastal engineering. While in Stevens' year-long study abroad program at the University of Dundee in Scotland, a professor, Dr. Peter Davies, ignited her interest in fluid dynamics.

"I just fell in love with it," Alison says. And all the rest, she says, has fallen into place.

About Stevens Institute of Technology

Founded in 1870, Stevens Institute of Technology is one of the leading technological universities in the world dedicated to learning and research. Through its broad-based curricula, nurturing of creative inventiveness, and cross disciplinary research, the Institute is at the forefront of global challenges in engineering, science, and technology management. Partnerships and collaboration between, and among, business, industry, government and other universities contribute to the enriched environment of the Institute. A new model for technology commercialization in academe, known as Technogenesis®, involves external partners in launching business enterprises to create broad opportunities and shared value.

Stevens offers baccalaureates, master’s and doctoral degrees in engineering, science, computer science and management, in addition to a baccalaureate degree in the humanities and liberal arts, and in business and technology. The university has a total enrollment of 2,150 undergraduate and 3,500 graduate students, with about 250 full-time faculty. Stevens’ graduate programs have attracted international participation from China, India, Southeast Asia, Europe and Latin America. Additional information may be obtained from its web page at www.stevens.edu.  

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