K-12 STEM Education
The Cooper Union Summer High School Internship Program
Since the summer session of 2006, students from the Manhattan Comprehensive Night and Day High School have been design and building Rube Goldberg machines at The Cooper Union. NY1 News covered this project in 2007; a link to their article is found here.
The video here explains the inspiration for this project and showcases student work from the summer of 2012.
The 2013 Rube Goldberg Exhibition video is found here.
Metropolitan Expeditionary Learning School (MELS) Outreach Program
This outreach program has been led by students from the Formula SAE Team and Cooper Union’s chapter of Pi Tau Sigma (the Mechanical Engineering Honor Society). Organized by teachers Abigail Sewall and Jenna-Lyn Zaino from MELS, this collaboration offers a chance for the seventh grade class to visit Cooper Union and learn about energy efficiency and alternative fuels during winter break. During spring break, Cooper Union's students repay the visit by traveling to MELS and leading a workshop with students there constructing fuel cell powered model cars.The model cars constructed by MELS students are assembled from kits that were donated through a joint initiative between the John Deere Corporation, the Society of Automotive Engineers, and A World in Motion. These kits were developed to help budding engineers learn about the complex packaging and technical applications involved in automotive engineering, and in particular, how to produce mechanical power from basic hydrogen and oxygen.