If you are visiting Stevens this summer or fall, be sure to take some time to check out the great sculpture collection around campus. The newly-designed S.C. Williams Library Web site has published a list of all the pieces along with the artists and the history behind them.
Stevens Institute of Technology has a long tradition of enterprise and innovation that started with the Stevens founding family. One example is Colonel John Stevens III, who started the first U.S. patent office. During his life, the steam engine was created. However, it could not sustain a long journey. So Colonel John developed an improved engine that could, and to protect it he started the U.S. patent office.
Today, recent graduate Rita Patel, '05, is carrying on the Stevens tradition at the U.S. Patent Office, where she is a Patent Examiner. It's her job to review patent applications that come in and search databases to see if a patent or similar patent applications exist for a proposed invention. She helps to determine an application's "patentability."
The coolest invention she's reviewed yet? The iPhone. We wonder what Colonel Stevens would have thought of that gadget.
