Review & Outlook 2005: Stevens’ students excel in class, on the field

HOBOKEN, N.J. — Heading into the 2005-2006 academic year, the faculty, staff, administration, and alumni of Stevens Institute of Technology can take stock of a remarkable set of achievements and firsts on the part of recently graduated seniors and lowerclassmen and the incoming freshmen Class of 2009.

“In the term just concluded,” said Stevens’ President Harold J. Raveche, “the Institute conferred degrees upon the largest undergraduate and graduate classes in its history. We are looking at the largest incoming class of freshman ever in the fall – more than 500 students enrolled and headed to campus. At the same time, we are able to be more selective than ever in our approach to admissions. Our Division III athletics program is attracting extraordinary young scholars – 160 freshmen alone will participate in a team sport – and our division ranking is rising fast.”

Indeed, for the first time since the inception of the award, Stevens finished among the top 50 schools in the United States Sports Academy Division III Directors’ Cup. With five teams qualifying for the NCAA Tournament this past year and four advancing past the first round, Stevens earned its highest-ever finish at 46th, marking the most successful year in the history of athletics at the institution.

Stevens also had its first national champion in the form of Equestrian Team member Kerri Rettig, who as a freshman finished first in the Intermediate on the Flat at the 2005 Intercollegiate Horse Show Association National Championship Show held in May.

Raveche refers to the combination of intellect and talent in athletics, as evidenced by Stevens students, as a hallmark of the talent-base needed for the US to compete in the global economy – tech-creative students who excel in the fields of academics, technical achievement and in leadership and team-building through athletics.

As a sign of young alumni dedication emerging from this constituency, within a year of their graduation, scholar-athletes Allison Donnelly, Lindy Gibbons, Giuseppe Incitti, and Brian Lalli, all Class of 2004, took the time to establish a new and exciting alumni organization – the Stevens Varsity “S” Alumni Club.

The four founders will assume positions on the Executive Board along with other volunteers, and will help with organization and setup of specific self-sponsored events that promote Stevens athletics and alumni activities. The club as a whole, say the organizers, “will aid, when needed, with recruiting, fund-raising, forums for prospective students, and other events.” The club will also “promote the overall culture of Stevens athletics, as well as model the success rate of students moving into the professional world,” said the founders.

In other areas of student achievement, Stevens’ unique undergraduate Business and Technology (B&T) program graduated its second class. “Nationally, the starting salaries of business majors tend to be considerably less than those of engineering and science graduates,” said Associate Dean Louis Laucirica, who oversees the B&T program. “However, at Stevens they are very much on par with engineering and computer science majors, given an average starting salary of $54,000. In fact, a Business and Technology graduate in the Class of 2005 (who earned a concurrent master's degree) received an offer package that included a signing bonus and totaled $80,000.”

“The Business and Technology program prepares a whole new kind of graduate for the workforce of the 21st century,” said Dr. Lex McCusker, Acting Dean of The Wesley J. Howe School of Technology Management. “These young people know exactly where they want to go when they graduate, exactly how to get there, and how to handle major responsibility when it’s entrusted to them. They are among the most savvy and sought-after graduating seniors for mid-level executive positions in telecoms, pharma and the financial industry – as well as by any major firm where the understanding and management of both business and technology is crucial, and where the intersection of the two is appreciated as mutually reinforcing.”

“The Stevens program produces trained and polished young professionals who are prepared to present and articulate complex subjects clearly and concisely,” said one executive of a major corporate IT firm where B&T students served internships. “This most coveted quality further distinguishes the Stevens’ B&T intern among undergraduate students.”

“She was phenomenal,” said another executive at a major pharmaceutical firm where a B&T student interned. “Colleagues could not believe the amount of work and the quality of work that she did. Her knowledge and understanding of both business and technology was a real asset to our company.”

These testimonials represent the average feedback regarding B&T students before graduation.

The Stevens tradition of entrepreneurialism and invention, originating with the Institute’s founding family, was fully on display this year as well. Living up to Princeton Review and Forbes’ designation of Stevens as one of the “25 Most Entrepreneurial Campuses in America,” Stevens graduating seniors continued to turn out more examples of patentable technologies.

“Dr. Norman Marcus, a well-known pain management physician at NYU Medical School, has been working in collaboration with Team MECCo, one of our 2005 Biomedical Engineering Teams in Senior Design,” said Dr. Helena Wisniewski, Stevens’ Vice President for Institute Technology Initiatives. “Together, they designed and built a device to facilitate a new high-tech method for diagnosing and treating pain.”

The special electrical stimulator device was built by seniors Ryan Stellar, Jeckin Shah, and Daniel Silva, a.k.a. “Team MECCo,” for their Senior Design project in Professor Vikki Hazelwood’s biomedical engineering class. The device is patent pending.

“This is an important collaboration [with the students at Stevens],” said Wisniewski, “resulting in a revolutionary development in the diagnosis and treatment of pain. The device will undergo clinical tests this summer, with an eye to commercialization. The now-alumni Stevens design team will be participating fully in upgrades and modifications of the device.”

MECCo represents but one of the patentable technologies to emerge from the Stevens 2005 Senior Design program.

“This is going to be a year of major consolidation of gains made over the last decade,” said President Raveche. “Stevens is poised to fulfill its destiny as an education and research powerhouse – the kind of institution that faculty, staff, administration, students and alumni all believe that Stevens should be. I encourage you all to keep in touch with our progress as we exceed each of our current benchmarks on the way to achieving our future goals.”

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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