The Cooper Union Alumni Association presented Paul Strassmann with the Gano Dunn Award for professional achievement, on April 26, 2015.

Two days after landing in New York on October 15, 1948 I went to a Jewish charitable agency, HIAS (Hebrew Immigrants Aid Society), to ask for help how I could get an engineering education. A kind and an amazingly patient lady pointed out to me that such an education was very hard to get because it required qualifications that I simply did not have which included no money for tuition.

Furthermore, engineering was not at all a recommended profession for Jews in 1948. Jews achieved prominence in other occupations, such as in finance, business and trading. It would be unlikely if I could get admission to any university or college without additional credentials, such as a high school diploma. In essence, the HIAS advisor confirmed what I had been already told by the Kubiceks.

I was devastated by such news, but that did not stop me insisting that only an engineering education would be an acceptable choice. The HIAS lady then mentioned that there was an excellent engineering school in New York, the City College that was tuition free except that applicants who were war veterans with admission priority besieged it. The veteran’s administration also paid their fees. At this point I was confused how a tuition-free college could have fees. Oh, the lady said, those were laboratory fees. In addition the costs for books and supplies could amount to as much as $150 per semester. I was crushed. In my refugee mindset there was no way how I could see my way of obtaining what appeared to me such a great sum of money.

I must digress now to explain why I was vehemently fixed on engineering as a career and would not consider anything else. Based on what I have experienced since 1938 I became convinced that the only property worth having was a skill that could be ported anywhere in the world without even carrying a suitcase. That eliminated for me anything that would be in any way connected with a business, especially after witnessing how my father became tied down to property as an inhibition to fleeing Slovakia. Although my hidden ambitions to seek justice had me dreaming about becoming a judge that was completely out of the question in America where I was an immigrant stranger.

Medicine did not appeal to me after I saw too many dying people who could not be helped. Engineering satisfied a deeply held emotional appeal. It offered a sense of calculating certainty about the tools that supported our civilization as well as independently verifiable evidence whether something that was created was working or not.

The refugees I have met — and these were people associated with the Kubiceks — talked about making big profits from trade. They were alienated from America and kept talking about the way things were in Europe. All I was interested in was earning modest wages that would afford a living that would guarantee, as a minimum, an unlimited supply of baked potatoes and a warm bed where I could sleep in peace. More than anything else, I wanted to become an American after I witnessed the generosity, uninhibited behavior and lack of prejudice against me from all of the Americans I had a chance to meet. Clearly, working as an American engineer would be a way to heaven on earth.

Meanwhile, back at HIAS, the lady could not comprehend why I kept insisting on engineering as a career. Out of compassion for my hard-headed perseverance or perhaps to get rid of me I was advised that there was a school for indigent New Yorkers just around the corner from HIAS, then located on Lafayette Street in Lower Manhattan. That school had been accepting exceptionally talented but needy students.

Subsequently, I found out that the highly rated Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art was the only engineering college in the United States that had no tuition because it was completely endowed by a good real estate investments. The student body was very small, admitting only one hundred engineering students each year.

I walked a few blocks north to an ancient looking red sandstone edifice and located the admissions office of the school. There I met Walter Watson, Director of Admissions and Registrar, and obviously the gatekeeper to Cooper. Mr. Watson showed much patience and listened with attention to my story. There was little he could do for someone speaking bad English, without a high school diploma and who did not even know what was a SAT test. Years later I found out that Watson engaged in research on the predictive attributes of SAT on academic success. His problem was that Cooper, known as most demanding school to get into, had looked only at SAT scores of the best students from New York elite schools, such the Bronx High School of Science and Brooklyn Tech. I suspect that, as a good statistician, Watson needed for his sample what appeared to be a bright but totally unprepared SAT-taker.

Watson suggested that I sit for an SAT examination so that I could submit an application for admission in the fall of 1949. Since I could not afford the $60 SAT fee — I was so poor that I was wearing a hand-me-down coat and jacket — he offered to pay for it. Meanwhile, I should hurry up and get a high school diploma. I accomplished that by enrolling for night classes at Jamaica High School so that I could qualify for what was then known as New York State Regents tests in English, American History and mathematics.

I plunged into the required reading materials and attended classes every evening until 10PM. Qualifying for a High School diploma turned out to be easy — the classes were filled with kids who had flunked regular High School classes and were now using the night school as a way of cramming for an exam that was particularly forgiving to disadvantaged candidates. I received my American high school diploma in May of 1949.

I barely passed the SAT in the spring. I also ranked at the bottom among the list of applicants for Cooper. Despite a failing grade in verbal skills I got an almost perfect score for logical reasoning, such as answering a question what shape looked like another when rotated in three-dimensional drawings.

For some peculiar reason there is one incident that I remember clearly from my first trip to New York on the way to HIAS. I stopped at Horn & Hardart. At that time it was a favorite cafeteria — the restaurant offered food from coin-actuated compartments. I bought a cup of hot cocoa for 15 cents. At each table there were glass jars with salt, pepper and sugar. As I kept adding sugar to my cocoa an old lady remarked that there must be something wrong with me if I kept adding more sugar to my cup as I was drinking. I did not realize it, but after years of rationed sugar (even in England) I could not get enough of it. In that moment I realized that I have finally arrived in a land of plenty.

Waiting for College - 1949

The summer of 1949 was to be filled with anxiety as to where I would be accepted for entry to college. As a safe school I enrolled in Queens College, a tuition-free New York City municipal institution, as soon as I received my high school credentials. I could now afford paying for the various college fees because I was employed as a sales clerk at the Gertz department store in Jamaica, New York for 65 cents/hour. It was an income that I considered to be generous by my standards.

My job was to keep in good order a counter where men’s Interwoven socks were on display. The purchasers, mostly women, had the habit of messing up the carefully arranged piles of socks. I was laid off from this job in April because men’s socks did not sell during the summer months, with a promise of a rehire in the fall.

The Cooper Union: 1953-1955

While in the Catskills camp I received the news that Cooper Union would not admit me. I was not despondent because that would only delay, but not change my plans. My daily three-mile bicycle commute from Forest Hills to Queens College and loads of homework were pleasant and gave me a great sense of accomplishment.

It was on September 20, 1949 when I received a message that a Mr. Watson called. A student, who was enrolled into the Civil Engineering Department at the Cooper Union, just dropped out. Could I show up early next morning and enroll? Although the classes had already started, I reported the following morning and started on the path of fulfilling a dream of becoming an engineer in America.

When I graduated as the second highest ranking student in the civil engineering department of Cooper in May of 1953 (cum laude and member in the engineering honorary society Tau Beta Pi, the honorary civil engineering society Chi Epsilon and the honorary journalistic fraternity Sigma Delta Chi).

Mr. Watson was pleased but dismayed. The disparity between my admission SAT scores and my academic results rattled his research findings that SATs offered a reasonable predictability of academic performance at Cooper. Mr. Watson pointed out that he could always show a high correlation between the SAT admission scores and the scholastic performance at Cooper. He never had somebody who started at the bottom and ended up second from the top.