The subject of this 10th installment of my series of articles about great universities in the United States is Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art. Located in the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan, Cooper Union is unique in part because every undergrad student there receives a full-tuition scholarship.

Inventor-industrialist Peter Cooper founded the school in 1859 because of his conviction that an education “equal to the best” should be available to all qualified students, regardless of origin or financial means. What he created was highly selective, academically rigorous, and among the first colleges to admit women and minorities.

With approximately 1,000 undergraduate students and 100 graduate students, Cooper Union is defined in many respects by its intimate size and strong sense of community. While many universities in America have expanded to accommodate growing demand, Cooper Union has maintained a concentrated footprint focused on architecture, fine arts, and engineering. The 8:1 student-to-faculty ratio is one of the lowest in the U.S., and the average class size is quite small.

Despite its modest size, Cooper Union is widely acknowledged for academic strength, on par with America’s more well-known elite universities. Newsweek magazine recently named Cooper Union the “#1 Most Desirable Small School” in the U.S. (as well as the #7 most desirable overall). U.S. News & World Report ranked it as the best college in the northern United States. Business Week praised it as one of the best design schools for creative talent, and Princeton Review named it one of the best colleges in America, as well as one of the “best value” colleges based on academic quality and cost.

The full-tuition scholarships provided to all admitted undergraduate students are valued at more than US$ 160,000, given tuition at schools of comparable quality. The same full-tuition scholarships are provided to international students, who make up more than 15% of the student population.

Due to financial pressures, Cooper Union has been considering proposals to charge tuition for graduate programs. Those proposals are controversial among alumni, students, and faculty, and the debate continues. In typically engaged Union fashion, a group of students recently occupied a suite of the main campus building for several days as a protest against charging tuition in any part of the school.

Cooper Union’s Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences staffs three distinct academic units — the School of Architecture, the School of Art, and the School of Engineering. All students take a core curriculum of required courses in the humanities and social sciences in their first two years, with great flexibility to explore additional interests through elective courses.

The largest of the three schools, the Albert Nerken School of Engineering, is consistently ranked as one of the top undergraduate engineering programs in the United States, with internationally well-regarded degrees in chemical, civil, electrical, and mechanical. The school’s graduate program has an interdisciplinary focus, including concentrations in environmental engineering, robotics, computer systems, and biomedical engineering.

One of the unique features of the engineering curriculum is its “No Nonsense Engineering Communication Training,” a series of lectures and seminars which teach engineering students valuable communication skills across a broad range of fields including journalism, business writing, and even theater.

The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture, regularly ranked in the top tier of American architecture schools, offers a 5-year program terminating in a Bachelor of Architecture degree. Only about 16% of Cooper Union students are enrolled in the Chanin School. The small student population allows for ample individual studio/work space and facilitates extensive one-on-one interaction with professors on design projects and research.

The School of Art enrolls 1/3 of Cooper Union’s students and offers a diverse visual arts curriculum — including painting, film and video, photography, sculpture, drawing, and printmaking — leading to a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. Students can personalize their studies by drawing from a broad visual arts catalog as suits their interests. The curriculum, faculty, and resulting student opportunities are greatly enriched and extended because of the world-leading New York City arts and design environment in which the school sits.

Distinguished graduates of Cooper Union include the iconic Thomas Edison, Batman creator Bob Kane, famed architect Daniel Libeskind, paper-architecture pioneer Shigeru Ban (who designed Christchurch’s proposed cardboard cathedral), post-minimalist sculptor Eva Hesse, illustrator John Alcorn, Skeleton Key lead rocker Erik Sanko, Special Olympics president Bruce Pasternack, and DC Comics artist and designer Neal Pozner.

The relatively small alumni corps lays claim, by my partial count, to at least 12 Rome Prizes, 21 Guggenheim Fellowships, 3 MacArthur Fellowships, 9 Chrysler Design Awards, a Nobel Prize in physics, and a disproprionately high number of Fulbright Scholarships and National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowships.

In terms of life before graduation, founder Peter Cooper believed that students should be directly involved in the governance of the school. Thus, there are extensive opportunities for students to participate on Student Councils, policy subcommittees, and administrative boards, as well as across a range of other student organizations and extracurricular activities. Although athletics is not a priority, the school fields teams in eight varsity sports, including tennis, basketball, and volleyball.

Cooper Union and its students have long been known for political engagement and social activism, starting with an appearance by Presidential candidate Abraham Lincoln just months after the school’s founding. In what is known as the Cooper Union Address, Lincoln  passionately articulated his opposition to slavery. The dramatic speech was widely reported and reprinted, and helped propel Lincoln to his party’s nomination. Some historians believe that the speech at Cooper Union is to be credited for making Lincoln President.

In the years since then, the Great Hall has received numerous Presidential candidates including Ulysses S. Grant, Grover Cleveland, William H. Taft, Theodore Roosevelt, and Barack Obama, as well as sitting Presidents Woodrow Wilson and Bill Clinton. The Great Hall has also hosted the births of the NAACP, the women’s suffrage movement, and the American Red Cross, and has served throughout the school’s history as a rallying ground for other social, political, and economic causes.

That’s a heady legacy for one room at one college. And there is quite a bit more to talk about, but that’s probably enough information for a Friday afternoon. I’ll conclude by noting, of course, that no discussion of Cooper Union’s strengths, advantages, and pleasures can be considered complete without at least a brief mention its location …

There isn’t the space, or indeed any real need, to catalog the benefits and joys of living in New York City. I’ll simply note that Cooper Union sits adjacent to a major subway station, and you can get from your desk to Times Square, Central Park, Broadway, more than 90 museums, hundreds of live performances, more than 25,000 restaurants, and millions of potential job opportunities in a few short minutes. You can’t beat that.

Cooper Union’s immediate neighborhood, Manhattan’s iconic East Village, is a vibrant mix of culture and counterculture ideally suited for student life … with artist studios, dynamic streetlife, pop-up galleries, experimental theater, independent cinema, live music clubs (specializing in a diverse array of genres), poetry performance clubs (including the Nuyorican Poets Café and Bowery Poetry Club), trendy boutiques, and far too many coffee houses, bars, and cafés to count. And New York University (NYU), with its extensive facilities and offerings, sits just a couple blocks away.

The birthplace of both punk rock and American post-modernism (per my East Village friends), the neighborhood nestles amidst the similarly interesting and dynamic Greenwich Village, Little Italy, Chinatown, Gramercy Park (filled with historic architectural gems), Soho, and the East River, all with their own particular charms. Chelsea and Tribeca are close by. There are a number of parks, playing fields, and other green spaces readily at hand.

For more information about the character, history, and offerings of Manhattan’s various neighborhoods, as well as about visiting or living in any of the great city’s five boroughs, visit the official New York City website.

For more details about Cooper Union, specific fields of study, and how to apply, visit the school’s main website. And of course, feel free to email our Educational Adviser, Drew Dumas, at DumasAG@state.gov if you would like more information or have specific questions.

Next up in this series will be Princeton University. Please let me know if you have any suggestions regarding schools I should feature after that. I’m almost to the end of my initial target list, and I’d like the next tranche to reflect your interests.

I always wait until the last moment to complete my year-end lists because in this job the unexpected is to be expected. Who knows what the final days of a year will bring? As it’s now almost 11:00 p.m. on New Year’s Eve, though, I think it’s probably safe to close the books on 2012. So, back to the countdown …

5. Pacific Islands Forum

A clear choice for the Top Ten list again this year was the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF), held on Rarotonga in the Cook Islands. Trumping our participation last year, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton led the largest and highest-level U.S. delegation ever to attend the annual event in its 41-year history. For the second year in a row my Embassy hosted the delegation because the Cook Islands is within our area of accreditation.

With the Secretary and me were the Governor of American Samoa Togiola Tulafono, several of my fellow Ambassadors, U.S. Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Locklear, Coast Guard Commander Rear Admiral Charles Ray, and other senior officials from the White House, USAID, Peace Corps, Department of State, Department of the Interior, Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, and several other agencies.

The delegation came to work. As we did last year, my team and I scheduled our various principals for more than 120 separate meetings and public appearances with officials from other nations, NGOs, multilateral institutions, businesses, and citizens groups. It was a punishing but highly productive schedule for the 48 hours or so that most of our visitors were in town, as well as for the week that my team spending preparing for the deluge of arrivals.

The Secretary had perhaps the busiest agenda, packed with individual and group discussions with Pacific heads of government and heads of state, remarks to the Post-Forum Dialogue plenary, a commemoration of America’s historic and ongoing peace and security partnerships in the Pacific, and other events focused on trade promotion, gender equality, and fisheries. And she found time to chat with Cook citizens on the street during a couple of walk-abouts between meetings, which set off an island-wide “Auntie Hillary” frenzy.

In all, over the course of the PIF, Secretary Clinton launched a large number of new initiatives of mutual benefit to the island nations and the United States on issues of regional security, sustainable development, marine protection, climate change, gender equality, education, and economic partnership. Oriented toward capacity building, people-to-people engagement, and entrepreneurial self-reliance, the initiatives provide a recipe for empowerment, not dependency. For a full list of the extensive business accomplished, see my September post about the PIF.

4. Auckland Consulate General Restructuring

As I’ve discussed before, we’ve been engaged in a good bit of internal restructuring at the Mission to bring our programs, staffing, resources, and methods into alignment with current, rather than legacy, circumstances and priorities. That’s all much more difficult than you might imagine, but it’s essential to becoming more effective at our work. Simply put, there wouldn’t be a credible Top Ten list without our restructuring activity. In 2011 we focused on retooling the Embassies in Wellington and Apia (which is why “Embassy Restructuring” was #4 of my 2011 Top Ten). In 2012 we focused intensely on the Consulate General in Auckland.

When I presented my credentials in December 2009, we had a full consular team but just one catch-all program staff position in Auckland despite that city representing more than a third of New Zealand’s population. (The population percentage increases even further if one includes the greater metro area, which I  define as the places within an easy day’s commute of the Auckland CBD.) Such a skeletal deployment makes very little sense and certainly impaired our effectiveness.

Over the past year we’ve corrected the problem by creating new portfolios and moving several existing American-officer and locally-engaged positions from Wellington to Auckland. In doing so we have rebalanced our program staff to achieve a roughly 50/50 split between our two facilities, and have created in Auckland fully functioning economic, political, public diplomacy, and public affairs teams. I am particularly excited about positions we’ve created in Auckland for university outreach, educational advising, and Pacific communities engagement. The changes are already producing results, and will pay dividends far into the future.

3. Secretary Leon Panetta’s Visit to New Zealand

We hosted our third visit of the year by a senior member of the Cabinet when Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta came to Auckland in September. The first American Secretary of Defense to visit New Zealand in more than 30 years, Secretary Panetta engaged in a busy two days of meetings, including with Prime Minister John Key, Minister of Defence Dr. Jonathan Coleman, and Leader of the Opposition David Shearer.

The visit takes a place high on the 2012 Top Ten list because it was emblematic of the tangible revitalization of security relations between the two countries over the past two years.

In June, Secretary Panetta and Minister Coleman signed in DC the Washington Declaration, a short statement that expressed our joint commitment to expand defense cooperation and establish regular senior-level strategic security policy dialogues.

Earlier in the year New Zealand hosted both the first U.S.-N.Z. joint air exercises and the first U.S.-N.Z. joint army/marine exercises in more than a quarter century.

Also this year New Zealand was invited for the first time ever to send a ship to participate in the U.S.-sponsored RIMPAC, the world’s largest international maritime exercise.

Such engagement is of significant benefit to both our societies, as well as to our neighbors. In an unpredictable world, enhanced coordination and interoperability will allow us to respond together more quickly and effectively to natural disasters, humanitarian crises, and other exigencies here in the Pacific. Compelling evidence of what I mean was our joint U.S. Coast Guard / Royal New Zealand Air Force mission a year ago to provide emergency fresh water supplies to Tokelau, thus averting a crisis.

The steps taken this year were wise, long-overdue, and mutually beneficial. Considered together, the Washington Declaration and the Wellington Declaration provide a framework for engagement that both looks confidently forward and reaffirms the deep, vibrant partnership that our two countries have historically maintained.

2. Celebration of Samoa’s 50th Independence Day

On June 1, 2012, the nation formerly known as Western Samoa celebrated its 50th Independence Day. As you may recall from several of my posts that month, our Embassy Apia team put together an impressive schedule of substantive and ceremonial events to mark the august occasion and underscore the long, deep history of U.S.-Samoa friendship. In fact, the United States had the largest, most diverse, and most vibrant international presence at the independence celebrations.

I led an official Presidential Delegation appointed by the White House which included, among others, Admiral Cecil Haney (Commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet), Congressional Delegate Eni Faleomavaega, and my colleague Ambassador Frankie Reed (our current American Ambassador to Suva, and former Chargé d’Affaires at Embassy Apia). We brought with us the U.S. Navy destroyer USS Chafee (with 350 sailors on board), the N.O.A.A. climate research vessel Ka’imimoana, and several Coast Guard and Navy aircraft for ceremonial fly-overs.

Our U.S. Navy 7th Fleet Band paraded and played concerts on Upolu and Savaii. The acclaimed African American step group Step Afrika! performed at schools, in church halls, and on stage at the national variety show. The Navy musicians, steppers, Peace Corps volunteers, my Embassy colleagues, and I all marched together in the official procession on Independence Day. And we hosted several dinners and receptions at our new Chargé Residence, including for the Samoa Chamber of Commerce, the large number of fellow Americans from American Samoa who attended the festivities, and senior government officials.

In terms of substantive activity, we announced our plans to build a new district medical center near the airport. We awarded several economic development grants. And Prime Minister Tuilaepa and I signed a Shiprider Agreement which will allow the Government of Samoa to place Samoan law enforcement officers on American Coast Guard and Navy ships passing through Samoan waters. Those officers will be able to direct the interdiction, arrest, and fining of foreign vessels engaged in illegal commercial fishing, trafficking in persons, or trafficking in prohibited substances, all serious problems in parts of the Pacific.

One of the highlights of our program was a reception aboard the USS Chafee after we signed the Shiprider Agreement on the foredeck. The 7th Fleet Band entertained guests including the Prime Minister, Head of State, King of Tonga, Governor-General of New Zealand, Governor of American Samoa, Deputy Prime Minister, several Cabinet Ministers, senior officials from French Polynesia, and heads of NGOs active in Samoa.

Our commemoration of Samoa’s 50th year of independence was, in my view, the most impressive and successful effort in the history of Embassy Apia. My colleagues underscored meaningful historical linkages and ongoing collaborations, while taking significant steps to deepen and expand relations further. Our Apia team planned for many months and then, along with visiting support from Wellington and Auckland, worked 15-hour days for more than a week to implement the program. It was the kind of effort that puts a big smile on your face, and easily ranks as one of our top two Mission efforts of 2012.

1. Celebration of the 70th Anniversary of US-NZ Bilateral Relations
and the Arrival of American Forces during World War II

In a photo-finish with the Samoa 50th, the top slot on my 2012 list goes to the Mission’s extensive commemorations of two highly significant milestones in shared Kiwi/American history. In February we marked the 70th anniversary of the establishment of formal diplomatic relations between the two countries, and in June we marked the 70th anniversary of the arrival of American military forces in New Zealand at the request of Prime Minister Peter Fraser after the outbreak of World War II in the Pacific.

It’s difficult to talk briefly about the anniversaries because the program spanned virtually the entire year, starting with social media efforts in February and concluding with the Marine Ball in November. I’ve already written more than a dozen blog posts about various elements of the commemorations, so I won’t recount the details again here.

I’ll simply say that, inter alia, we produced stamps, minted coins (at left), sponsored a 1940s video contest for students, held a memorial concert at Old St. Pauls, took the U.S. Marine Forces Pacific Band on a 3-week concert tour of cities and towns that had hosted Americans during the war, and held large 1942-themed Independence Day receptions for almost 1,500 folks in Wellington, Auckland, and Christchurch.

We talked live and online about the importance of shared history … Walter Nash’s arrival in DC to establish New Zealand’s first ever diplomatic mission abroad … the bedrock relationship formed when more than 150,000 American servicemen and women came to New Zealand during the war … and the shared service and sacrifice of our respective forebears during some of the darkest days of the prior century.

The Government of New Zealand held a wreath-laying ceremony at the National War Memorial attended by the Prime Minister, Governor-General, Leader of the Opposition, Minister of Defence, and other dignitaries. There was a moving sunset retreat on the Parliament forecourt with the Prime Minister and Governor-General, followed by a Parliamentary reception. Commemorative statements were read in the House, and New Zealand Post issued a set of anniversary stamps. The Kapiti Council and Kapiti U.S. Marines Trust held a series of additional events.

There was great warmth in the celebration of our shared history, which is the rock-solid foundation on which the relationship between the two nations still stands, whatever the vagaries of the politics of the day. Seventy years on, Kiwis and Americans still stand shoulder to shoulder on the issues that matter the most in the world. We advocate together for universal human rights from a position of deeply held, shared civic values. We still serve and sacrifice together in peacekeeping and reconstruction efforts around the world.

And we work closely together on a wide variety of economic development, climate change, disaster response, gender equality, rule of law, political empowerment, and other projects. In a show-me-the-money era when values are often viewed as quaint inconveniences, it’s important to remind ourselves that first principles rather than pecuniary gain bind our relationship together.

Of course, we don’t always agree on everything. But really, that’s to be expected. If we don’t occasionally squabble, then we aren’t being honest with each other. What matters is not the 5% or so of the time that we disagree, but the 95% of the time that our instincts, interests, and priorities naturally align. And what matters most of all is how we deal with disagreement when it occurs.

By those measures and all accounts, 2012 was a very good year.

*  *  *

That’s it for now. I hope you’ve enjoyed this brief tour through the highlights of another gratifying year at American Missions New Zealand and Samoa. Our 2010 was an excellent year significantly surpassed by 2011, which in turn has been exceeded by 2012. I’m very much looking forward to the pleasures and challenges of maintaining that steep trajectory in 2013.

Next year brings another couple of special anniversaries. October 12, 2013 marks the 175th anniversary of American diplomatic presence in Aotearoa. On that date in 1838, U.S. Secretary of State John Forsyth commissioned John R. Clendon to be the first United States consul in the lands later to be called New Zealand.

In addition, August will mark the 70th anniversary of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt’s iconic island-hop trip through the South Pacific during the height of the war. From August 27 through September 2, 1943, Mrs. Roosevelt stopped in New Zealand to tour Red Cross facilities, visit marae, raise the profile of women’s contributions to the war effort, and engage with soldiers and civilians in Auckland, Rotorua, and Wellington.

Plans are afoot …

For now, though, Dr McWaine and I, and everyone else at American Missions New Zealand and Samoa, wish you and yours a very happy, healthy, and rewarding New Year … Kia hari te Tau Hou … Ia manuia le Tausaga Fou … Hau’oli Makahiki Hou.

A couple weeks ago Dr. McWaine and I participated in one of my favorite annual events, the opening of the new Antarctic season. As usual, I spoke at the evening reception hosted by Antarctica NZ, sat with the Mayor and Mayoress at a diplomatic corps luncheon hosted by the Christchurch City Council, attended a wreath-laying at Scott’s statue, and read a passage from scripture at the traditional “South to Antarctica” church service.

I enjoyed catching up with my Antarctica NZ friends Lou Sanson, Ed Butler,and Rob Fenwick. I learned quite a lot talking with the departing scientists as well as the American air crews that ferry U.S. and N.Z. personnel, equipment, and supplies southward. I had fun with the verbal jousting with Mayor Bob Parker that defines our relationship (and sometimes startles innocent bystanders). And of course I was delighted to catch up again at the opening reception with Lady June Hillary, one of my favorite folks.

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Like other Americans and our friends around the world, today the Embassy paused in silence to mourn the loss of the thousands of people murdered in New York, Virginia, and Pennsylvania eleven years ago today, and to commemorate the courage and selflessness of those who rushed to respond to the attacks, in many cases at the cost of their own lives.

In an annual event of particular significance to us, my colleague Colin Crosby traveled down to Christchurch to participate in a ceremony at the 9/11 Memorial in Firefighters Reserve. The Memorial contains sculpture crafted from World Trade Center girders gifted to Christchurch by the City of New York on the occasion of the 2002 World Firefighters Games, the first multinational gathering of fire and rescue professionals after the terrorist attacks.

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