Newark College of Engineering Joyfully Celebrates a Pandemic-Delayed Salute to Excellence

After a lengthy hiatus imposed by the pandemic, the Newark College of Engineering (NCE) community of faculty, staff, students, alumni and friends gathered on campus this fall to celebrate its own at the annual Salute to Engineering Excellence.

“This is a homecoming for me,” said Nicholas DeNichilo ’73, M.S. ’78, summing up the powerful sentiment of the crowd assembled in the Campus Center atrium. DeNichilo, a vice co-chair of the NJIT Board of Trustees and the president and CEO of the Mott MacDonald Group, North America, was one of two recipients of the 2020 “NCE Outstanding Alumnus” award to receive this recognition at long last in person.

Waving from the podium at classmates he called friends for life, he also credited NCE with “opening doors for me” for five decades.

“We’re a microcosm of society, many of us first generation Americans and the first in our families to graduate from college. I’m the manifestation of my parents’ dreams, as are a lot of us in this room,” he said, adding that he carried with him core values of social responsibility, including the imperative to help others, and in his case in particular, students from underrepresented groups seeking careers as engineers.

“NJIT has been a foundation for me for 26 years, since I came up as a freshman in EOP (Educational Opportunity Program),” said Naseed Gifted ’01, the vice principal of Science Park High School in Newark and the creator of the sci-fi comic book series, P.B. Soldier, upon receiving his “Outstanding Alumnus” award.  

Electrical engineering, Gifted said, taught him to be a problem solver. The challenge he now tackles through both art and education is increasing the number of Black, Hispanic and Native Americans in STEM fields.

Remarking on the university’s experience throughout the pandemic, NCE Dean Moshe Kam noted, “NJIT did not just survive, but is thriving.” He called it a good time to reaffirm the institution’s values, including its social responsibility to the larger community beyond the campus and its commitment to social justice.

NCE also celebrated its connections with important partners in business, industry and research and development, bestowing the 2020 “NCE Outstanding Industry Partnership” on MTF Biologics, the Edison-based global nonprofit that provides grafts from donated human tissues for use in multiple clinical fields, while backing research that advances the science of transplantation.

At NJIT alone, the organization has funded more than $500,000 for tissue engineering research, while hiring NJIT graduates to work as scientists and engineers and participating in the university’s co-op program for students. MTF is represented on NJIT’s industrial advisory boards for biomedical engineering, the School of Applied Engineering and Technology, the Undergraduate Research and Innovation program and the Technology Innovation Translation and Acceleration program.

“We look forward to our continued partnership,” said Joe Yaccarino, MTF Biologic’s president and CEO.

The recipient of the 2020 “NCE Spirit Award,” Maurice Rached, a senior principal and the division director of transportation services for Maser Consulting P.A., has taught several courses at NJIT, The College of New Jersey and Rutgers University.

Recently, he played an instrumental role in establishing the “Next-Gen Soft Skills” certificate course offered by the Department of Civil and Engineering (CEE). Taught by different members of the CEE’s Industrial Advisory Board, the class focuses on success at the workplace. Topics include communication, relationship building, public speaking, business etiquette, time management, and interviewing and presentation skills, with the broader goal of building self-confidence, interpersonal skills and emotional intelligence.  Students cite Rached’s talk on presentations, with his tips for “reading a room” and “knowing your audience,” as extremely useful.

“I’ve seen some remarkable transformations in the course,” Rached has said of his experience. “One student became very emotional at the end of her final presentation and said the course had changed her life, including her perception of people around her.”

“This university is so transformative for so many young men and women,” noted NJIT President Joel Bloom, who also reflected on the idealism and generosity so many of them brought with them to college. “They make every day a privilege and a joy.”