Engineering Newsletter

New SEAS Dean Feniosky Peña-Mora welcomed more than 1,500 new students and their parents, family, and friends as part of Convocation for Columbia College and The Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science. Peña-Mora (right) joined University President Lee C. Bollinger and new Columbia College Dean Michele M. Moody-Adams at the August 31 ceremony on South Lawn. “Like all of you new first-years sitting out there, I’m a firstyear,” he said. “Like you, I am thrilled to be here and to be part of this great institution that traces its roots back to 1754.

“You are following in the tradition of the classes that have preceded you. You are becoming part of an academic lineage that goes back to the founding of the University. King’s College, as Columbia was known then, in its founding mission in 1754, was charged to ‘enlarge the Mind, improve the Understanding, polish the whole Man [and today, also women], and qualify them to support the brightest Characters in all the elevated stations in life.’

“To complement the teaching of what we now know as liberal arts, the mission of King’s College was also to teach ‘the arts of Number and Measuring, of Surveying and Navigation . . . the knowledge of . . . various kinds of Meteors, Stones, Mines and Minerals, Plants and Animals, and everything useful for the Comfort, the Convenience and Elegance of Life.’

“. . . [F]rom the beginning, Columbia has been an institution of and for engineers, and, as such, our School has had a long history of educating engineering leaders whose contributions have influenced the lives of the world’s citizens.” Calling them the future of the School, he told the assembled students that they can impact lives as significantly as such famous alumni as Pupin, Parsons, Armstrong, and others who have preceded them. Go to the SEAS home page to read the speech and see the video of Dean Peña-Mora’s remarks.