Wentworth News

Wentworth’s running group will not be able to run the roughly 200-mile Ragnar Relay race through Cape Cod this year, but they will go ahead with a relay of their own while continuing to raise money for the Student Emergency Fund.

On May 7, 8 and 9, the 12-member team of students, faculty and staff will run their respective legs of the race from their current locations. Running on the road, track or treadmill, they will cheer each other on through text messages and social media.

Wentworth Institute of Technology’s Co-ops and Careers office was recently honored with the Innovation in Program Development Award by the Eastern Association of Colleges (EACE). The group was recognized for the ASPIRE@Wentworth initiative.

Dr. José Sánchez has been named Wentworth Institute of Technology’s new Dean of the College of Engineering and Computer Science. He will officially begin on July 1.

By Greg Abazorius

It was mid-March and President Mark Thompson had newly announced that the university would be moving to distance learning in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. Within hours, numerous alumni, parents, corporate partners and others reached out to ask how they could help.

While working with Teradyne Inc. as an engineering co-op, Wentworth Electromechanical Engineering student Abbie Petersen noticed the process in place for prototyping millimeter wave (mm-wave) components was inefficient. She decided to do something about it and Teradyne provided the grant to do it.

By Dennis Nealon

A group of faculty members, lab technicians and staff at Wentworth Institute of Technology is producing face shields for Brigham and Women’s Hospital and its epic fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We have innovative and creative people from science, engineering and design programs all collaborating on this,” said Sam Montague, chair of Wentworth’s Department of Industrial Design. “Everyone is very eager to use their expertise to help.”

Facing the cancellation of in-person events across the world, Wentworth’s Co-ops and Careers office got creative, moving their popular Career Fair event online and finding success.

A sold-out virtual fair took place March 31 with 114 representatives from 74 organizations and 338 students participating.

During initial fears about Covid-19 many weeks ago, the office considered holding the event but discouraging handshakes and other physical interactions.

With people across the world staying home, drastically altering their regular routines, Wentworth’s Fitness and Recreation (FitRec) is providing a piece of normalcy to daily life.

Group fitness classes are going live on Instagram and being posted to YouTube, the #fitrecchallenge has been established, walking and “couch to 5k” programs are underway, and videos showing how to do certain exercises are being created. All of it is being conducted by Wentworth FitRec staff and students.

The Mechanical Contractors Association of America presented Professor Cristina Cosma of Wentworth’s Department of Construction Management with its Educator of the Year Award.

Cosma was honored for her mentorship of students within Wentworth’s MCAA chapter, as well as her industry knowledge and involvement. Students who nominated Cosma for the award credited her with the chapter’s fast growth and success.

“A mentor’s role is to provide guidance, advice, encouragement, support, and resources. Cosma checks off all of these boxes and more,” read the nomination.

Top-heavy buildings typically incorporate many walls to help support the weight. Jacob Lehrer went in a different direction when designing a library.

Asked to conceptualize a structure featuring round columns for Professor Ines Benitez’s Architecture Studio 2 class, Lehrer remembers thinking, “Why not play it up?”

He implemented one-foot concrete columns among few walls on the first floor to give the building the dramatic appearance of heavier upper levels that are barely supported underneath.

Simmons University and Wentworth Institute of Technology will jointly host a virtual “Digitizing Women’s History: Wikipedia Edit-a-thon” event from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Tuesday, March 31.

Wentworth has been named to the list of “50 Best Online Colleges for Return on Investment” by Online Schools Report, a resource site that considers student satisfaction, admission rate, online presence, department size and median debt by program.

The university earned the number 10 spot on the list. Wentworth’s top 2% ranking among U.S. schools for value added earnings and its high occupational earning power were cited by the group.

While much of the world shifts to distance and online modalities of education due to the Coronavirus outbreak, Wentworth officials have experience on which to build.

Six degree programs and one certificate program are fully available remotely right now and more programs are in the works for later in 2020 and 2021.

Wentworth President Mark Thompson was among area university officials who spoke to Boston Business Journal in their “Arts, engineering colleges face extra hurdles moving classes online” article. He speaks of the laudable way that staff and faculty have quickly adapted to a new landscape given an outbreak of Coronavirus.

Maarouf Barry is a student living anything but the typical college lifestyle. Not only is he active at Wentworth, he also runs his own start-up in his home country in Guinea that focuses on an industry integral to African cuisine: palm oil.

“Palm oil is the main crop that we grow, and palm oil in Africa is like olive oil in Italy. It’s our main cooking oil that we use, and a vital ingredient in most of our cuisine,” says Barry, BSM ’20.

Though many events around the world have been officially cancelled in recent weeks, Wentworth’s March Career Fair is not one of them. The fair will go on as a virtual experience.

On Tuesday, March 31, the online fair will take place on WITworks from 3-6 PM. Students are invited to upload their resume to the site and research participating employers. Employers will communicate directly with students on the day of the fair and answer submitted questions.

For their alternative spring break this year, a group of 11 students looked to alternative energy.

Eschewing a traditional spring break spent on the beach or other vacation spots, Wentworth students partaking in the yearly ritual known as ASB choose to complete community work, often assisting food pantries, local schools and other non-profit organizations. This week, the group headed to San Francisco to help install solar panels with GRID Alternatives.

Wen Stephenson, author of What We’re Fighting for Now Is Each Other:  Dispatches from the Front Lines of Climate Justice, will speak in Blount Auditorium on Wentworth’s campus on Tuesday, March 17 at 6:00 p.m.

Stephenson, a former editor at the Boston Globe and the Atlantic, and currently a contributing writer for the Nation, will share his story of climate activism and how individual citizens can insist upon change.

UPDATE: Using a pair of goals in the third period, the top-seeded and 12th ranked Endicott College men's ice hockey team edged Wentworth Institute of Technology, 2-0, in the championship game of the 2020 Commonwealth Coast Conference Tournament.

Find a full recap of the game at the Wentworth Athletics website. 

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Wentworth has created a website to keep the community informed about the university’s efforts around the coronavirus outbreak. This is the central resource to access important information from health agencies and stay current with any and all potential developments on campus.