City Room: Bloomberg Pledges Money and Land for Engineering School

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg raised his offer on Tuesday to universities interested in setting up a school of engineering and applied sciences in New York City: along with practically free use of a swath of land, the city will contribute as much as $100 million.

Mr. Bloomberg publicly presented an invitation to universities to bid on the chance to create a campus, either on one of three city-owned properties or elsewhere in the city. Issuing the request for proposals is the latest step officials have taken to try to make New York more competitive with Silicon Valley as a hub for technology-based businesses.

“During the 1980s and ’90s, Silicon Valley — not New York City — became the world’s capital of technology startups, and that is still true today,” Mr. Bloomberg said in a speech at a conference on the city’s future at the Grand Hyatt hotel in Midtown. “But if am right, and if we succeed in this mission, it won’t be true forever.”
City officials say the school could prompt as much as $6 billion in economic activity by creating 30,000 temporary and permanent jobs and, more important, by fostering innovations that could become big businesses. They argue that the city’s financial contribution, which would come from its capital budget over several years, would pay off in increased tax revenue and economic growth.

Mr. Bloomberg said he was encouraged by the “strong response” the city received to a call late last year for schools to express interest in the idea. The city received 18 submissions that involved 27 institutions from around the world — some teamed up to present ideas — and used those ideas to help focus the offer. Among the most enthusiastic bidders were Cornell and Stanford Universities.

In December, the first invitation identified four city-owned properties as potential sites for a new campus: the south end of Roosevelt Island in the East River, part of the Brooklyn Navy Yard, parts of Governors Island in the harbor and the Farm Colony on Staten Island. The Staten Island site has been dropped from consideration because it was not appealing enough to the first respondents, city officials said.

Cornell and Stanford each chose the Goldwater Hospital campus on Roosevelt Island as the place it would want to develop a campus. Stanford said it envisioned an investment of as much as $1 billion in a school that would have about 100 professors and 2,200 graduate students.

At the time, city officials had not indicated how much financial help they were willing to provide. But the mayor said Tuesday that the city would invest “up to $100 million in infrastructure upgrades” in the proposal that is selected.

But Seth W. Pinsky, the president of the city’s Economic Development Corporation, said the less city money a bidder asked for, the better its chances of winning the competition would be.

Cornell has not yet said how much it thinks its proposal would cost, said David J. Skorton, the university’s president. But he said the school’s trustees were “just thrilled” at the prospect of setting up a “revolutionary campus” in the city, which has long been home to its medical school, Weill Cornell Medical College.

“This is going to be a complete campus, not an annex of Ithaca or a way station,” Dr. Skorton said.

Stanford’s president, John L. Hennessy, said that his university would submit a formal proposal. “A Stanford New York campus is a unique opportunity to launch another center of innovation on the East Coast,” Dr. Hennessy said in a statement. “New York will be a dynamic partner, drawing talented people from around the world.”

Some schools based in the city have complained that Mr. Bloomberg has overlooked them in his pursuit of a big-name school from elsewhere. But city officials say that any university with a highly rated school of engineering or applied sciences is welcome to bid, even those like New York University or Columbia University that have their main campuses in Manhattan.

“Universities from around the country, and some from around the world, have expressed interest in our offer,” Mr. Bloomberg said in his speech. “And that’s how it should be, because we are an international city — and a city that believes in free competition.”

The tight schedule for the project indicates that the mayor would like ground to be broken for the school before he leaves office. Bidders face a deadline of Oct. 28 to submit their proposals, and city officials hope to choose a winning bidder by the end of the year.

View the original article here

Best Civil Engineering Books

View the original article here

5 Best Mechanical Engineering Books

View the original article here

Top Ranking Engineering Colleges in USA

View the original article here

Top Ranking Engineering Colleges in USA

In the United States, the word college is frequently utilized to specify a stand-alone higher level activity of educational institutions that are not the parts of a university also as to refer to the parts within a university. Stand-alone institutions that have tendencies themselves to call colleges are sometimes universities in the international significance of the state. Typically in the United States, a university includes a set of an academically-diverse units called schools or colleges, but a college-whether it is a stand-alone infirmary of higher learning or an element within a university-typically focuses on one academic facet that is individually-chosen by that institution, where that a college is a non-agitated departments within that sphere. Mark that the septuplet colleges or schools which are composition of universities and are typically collocated on the same campus or left each different on adjacent campuses within the construct of a university is also not connected with an affiliating university.

The American group is largely redistributed. Unrestricted universities are administered solely by the respective states.

American universities mature as individualist accreditation organizations to pledge for the value of the degrees they bid. The accreditation agencies rank universities and colleges on criteria specified as academic quality-the grade of their libraries, the business records of their ability, and the degrees which their body enclose. Non accredited institutions are detected as non-existent in propertied and rigor, and may be termed as certificate mills.

Colleges and universities in the U.S. diversify in cost of goals: some may emphasise a vocational, byplay, engineering, or specialized technical curriculum whereas others may accentuate a left discipline curriculum. Some includes many of the above features. Now the TOP 20 PICKS which include countries prominent Universities and Colleges are categorized as public and private as below.

PUBLIC

University of Virginia (Charlottesville)City University of New York - Hunter College (New York, N.Y.)New College of Florida (Sarasota)Florida State University (Tallahassee)University of Colorado-BoulderState University of New York-BinghamtonUniversity of Georgia (Athens)Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Blacksburg)Texas A&M University (College Station)University of Oklahoma (Norman)

PRIVATE

Swarthmore College (Swarthmore, Pa.)Harvard College (Cambridge, Mass.)Wesleyan College (Macon, Ga.)Princeton University (Princeton, N.J.)Yale University (New Haven, Conn.)Williams College (Williamstown, Mass.)Rice University (Houston, Texas)Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge, Mass.)Amherst College (Amherst, Mass.)Wellesley College (Wellesley, Mass.)

Each of these institutions may prefer different individual polar schemes of organization using the words, in most-macroscopic to most-microscopic prescript: university, division, school, college, conference, office and department.

Students can relate to several colleges using the democratic Programme. There is no bound to the count of colleges or universities to which a student may choose to apply, though an effort of individual application must be submitted for apiece. With a few exceptions, most collegian colleges and universities have the contract that students are to be admitted to (or forsaken from) the entire college, not to a specific division or stellar. This is unlike college admissions in many indwelled countries, as fit for high admissions. Few students, rather than forsaken, are "wait-listed" for a specific college and may be admitted if added alum who was admitted decides not to look the college or university. The clique bailiwick parts of admittance are ACT/SAT scores, GPA, College Programme, Essay, and Letters of recommendation or praise. Not all colleges ask essays or letters of praise or recommendation even though they are often sometimes proven to increase chances of permissiveness.

View the original article here

Science, Engineering, and Innovation - The Storm is Just Over the Horizon - A Book Review

No, we are not talking about Typhoons or Hurricanes, nor are we discussing the Tornados in the Mid West - we are worried about the future of America's competitiveness, it's serious, and it's time we addressed this at a national level. It's time we fixed the problem, without band aids or slogans. Indeed, to really wrap your mind around the challenges ahead, there is a very good book, which I'd like you to read:

"Rising Above the Gathering Storm, Revisited: Rapidly Approaching Category 5," written by and compiled for members of the 2005 Conference of the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering and Institute of Medicine; published by The National Academies Press, Washington, D.C. (2010), pp. 104, ISBN: 0-309-16098-7. (doi: 10.4087/FOUNDATIONREVIEW-D-10-00026).

Wow, now that was one heck of an eye-opener indeed, yes, I highly recommend it to you. This report and book can be downloaded in.pdf online, and I suggest you do so, and as it states in the introduction it deals with the following concerns;

"What are the top 10 actions, in priority order, that federal policymakers could take to enhance the science and technology enterprise so that the United States can successfully compete, prosper, and be secure in the global community of the 21st century? What strategy, with several concrete steps, could be used to implement each of those actions?"

Call it a reality check on future action which must be taken here in the United States, and what we need to do about it. Now then, permit me to absolutely trash the insanity and arrogance of these scientists and engineers who state in this report; "While only four percent of the nation's work force is composed of scientists and engineers, this group disproportionately creates jobs for the other 96 percent." I am sorry but that is complete nonsense - entrepreneurs create 100% of the jobs, and we hire them!

Without entrepreneurs, this country is history and cannot compete in the future in global markets. And most of the innovation comes from entrepreneurs, who take discoveries, fund research, pay taxes to fund research, provide all the jobs, and then pick up that ball and run for the touch-down. This report further purports that scientists and engineers enable the entrepreneurs, but it doesn't tell you that without entrepreneurs, the scientists aren't needed.

Now then, where this report is correct is that we do need pure research and funding towards innovation, and we must work on education so we have the proper number of math and science majors, as well as engineering students. It also points out the challenges with global competing with China, and intellectual property theft issues. And yes, it very much is a gathering storm, one we certainly ought to be considering and working on to bridge this gap and cut off this future crisis. Please read this book-report and consider it.

View the original article here