Cooper Union’s 12th head

Effective July 1, 2011, Dr Jamshed Bharucha will take over as the 12th president of the Cooper Union, New York the highly selective, 152-year-old prestigious American university known for its full tuition scholarship to every undergraduate pursuing a degree in engineering, fine arts or architecture. Mark Epstein, chairman of the Cooper Union board of trustees, described Bharu­cha as an innovator with interdisciplinary background combining the "science of learning” with "critical and creative thinking skills” to solve global problems.

Bharucha brings with him his experience as provost and senior vice president of Tufts University where during the last nine years he is credited with having "elevated the university’s academic stature, sparked multi­discipli­nary collaboration, strengthened diversity and led the insti­tution’s international engagement” whilst overseeing nine schools and colleges. On the faculty of three academic departments at Tufts — music, psychology and neuroscience — Bharucha, an accomplished violinist, is a pioneer in studying how the brain responds to music. "As an academic leader he has been an advocate for educational innovation, including active forms of learning,” notes an introduction to the new president on the Cooper website.

(Above): Cooper Union’s award winning academic facility; (right) new president Dr Jamshed Bharucha: interdisciplinary innovator

"He is an inspired educator, exemplary administrator, and dedicated scholar as well as a great humanist. At a time when our nation needs more interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary research and teaching... I congratulate Bharucha and the Cooper Union on moving forward into a bright future together,” commented Dr Vartan Gregorian, president of The Carnegie Corporation of New York. "The Cooper Union’s outstanding programs in architecture, art, and engineering will be well served by the leadership of Bharucha… Drawing on his exceptional personal qualities and academic experience, Bharucha will be able to help build upon the Cooper Union’s proud history,” commended Lee Bollin­ger, president of Columbia University. "Bharucha’s appointment brings to the Cooper Union a proven administrator of the highest caliber, a humanist committed to the highest academic standards and an internationalist with great sensitivity to the cosmopolitanism that New York embodies. Cooper Union is fortunate to have a president of his caliber,” acknowledged Dr Shashi Tharoor, Member of Indian Parliament and former United Nations under-secretary-general for communications and public information.

The incoming president was quoted in an article in The New York Times, "Cooper Union is a jewel but it can shine even brighter. It’s got enormous upward potential to continue to be an innovator in higher education in terms of preparing college students to be leaders who are concerned throughout their lives with the betterment of society.” Referring to founder Peter Cooper’s "soaring ideals that resonate with me very strongly,” Bharucha added, "He believed deeply in access to education based on merit without regard to family income or religion or connections. That may sound normal today but 150 years ago this was a pretty bold idea.” Born in 1791, Cooper enjoyed less than a year of formal schooling but became one of the most successful businessmen of America’s Gilded Age.

Among the most competitive colleges in the country, last year Cooper Union reportedly received 3,354 applications for a freshman class of 214 and made it to national news when a prospective student from Florida sought to impress the admission officials by creating an unusual art project with a piano placed on a sandbar off the Miami coast. In 2009 Cooper Union celebrated its 150th anniversary with the opening of a new academic facility at 41 Cooper Square. The building by architect Thom Mayne won virtually every major architectural award and achieved a Platinum LEED rating. "Designed to soar into modernity, the new building combines engineering labs with art studios, social spaces and faculty offices, the better to truly facilitate multi and interdisciplinary learning,” states their website.

Bharucha’s multi­dis­ciplinary interests were triggered by his parents. Father Jal, an engineer from Bom­bay, was among the first engineers in India to employ computers in structural design, using an early facility at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in the 1960s. His mother Elizabeth (née Elizabeth Emily Robinson), a musician from Albany, New York, was organist and choral director at the Scots Kirk (Church of Saints Andrew and Columba) and the All Saints Church in Bombay. They had met at the University of Michigan. His parents were founder members of the Bombay International School where Jamshed studied before graduating Phi Beta Kappa (an academic honor to "celebrate and advocate excellence in the liberal arts and sciences”) from Vassar College where he majored in biopsychology before earning an MA in philosophy from Yale University and a PhD in cognitive psychology from Harvard University.

Bharucha spent a major portion of his academic career at Dartmouth College where he was the John Wentworth Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences and Dean of Faculty besides holding other leadership positions. As an outstanding teacher he received the Huntington Teaching Award in 1989 and the Undergraduate Teaching Initiative Special Award in 1992. The talented academic also had an opportunity to serve as editor of the interdisciplinary journal, Music Perception, was a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences and a trustee of Vassar College.

Committed to honor Peter Cooper’s ethos, "The object of life is to do good,” Bharucha will steer the organization to remain true to its mission to offer the best education money cannot buy.