Overview
The Charles V. Schaefer, Jr. School of Engineering and Science (SES), commonly the Schaefer School, is the engineering and science school of Stevens Institute of Technology, a private research university in Hoboken, New Jersey. Stevens itself was founded in 1870 and is described as the first college dedicated to mechanical engineering in the United States. The school received its current name in 1996 in honor of alumnus and former Stevens trustee Charles V. Schaefer Jr. The school occupies the southern portion of the Stevens campus along the Hudson River and is organized into nine academic departments from engineering and the natural and mathematical sciences. Since 2017 the dean has been Jean Zu, who holds the Lore E. Feiler Dean position.
Founding of Stevens and early engineering instruction (1870 to 1996)
Stevens Institute of Technology was founded in 1870 through an 1868 bequest of Edwin Augustus Stevens. For over a century the institution operated under various administrative structures while engineering remained its primary academic identity.
Schaefer School of Engineering (1996 to 2009)
In 1996 the engineering programs were organized into the Charles V. Schaefer, Jr. School of Engineering, named for Charles V. Schaefer Jr. (1914 to 1999), a 1936 alumnus who served as chair of the Stevens Board of Trustees and as co-chair of a four-year, $102 million capital campaign that preceded the naming.
School of Engineering and Science (2009 to present)
In 2009 the school was reorganized to incorporate Stevens's natural science and mathematics departments alongside its engineering disciplines, taking its present form as the Charles V. Schaefer, Jr. School of Engineering and Science. Michael Bruno served as dean until early 2016; Keith Sheppard, the associate dean for engineering and science, then served as interim dean during a two-year international search. She joined Stevens from the University of Toronto, where she had been chair of the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering since 2009 and was the first woman to lead that department. During her first term, the school added 64 tenure-stream and non-tenure-stream faculty members.
Campus and facilities
The Schaefer School occupies the southern portion of the Stevens campus at Castle Point in Hoboken, overlooking the Hudson River across from Manhattan.
Departments
The Schaefer School comprises nine academic departments:
Doctoral consortium
The school is a member of the Inter-University Engineering Doctoral Consortium (IUEDC), established in 2023 and led by the NYU Tandon School of Engineering. The consortium allows doctoral students at member institutions to cross-register for graduate engineering courses without paying additional tuition to the host institution. Other member institutions include Columbia University School of Engineering and Applied Science, Cornell Tech, Princeton University School of Engineering and Applied Science, Rutgers University School of Engineering, Stony Brook University College of Engineering and Applied Sciences, the City College of New York Grove School of Engineering, and the New York Institute of Technology College of Engineering and Computing Sciences.
Rankings
In its 2025 graduate engineering rankings, U.S. News & World Report ranked the school's graduate programs among American engineering schools, with individual program rankings including a tenth place ranking for Best Ph.D. in Data Science Programs.
Notable people
The following notable individuals studied or taught in engineering and science programs at Stevens that are now part of the Schaefer School: * Frederick Reines (B.S. 1939, M.S. 1941), recipient of the 1995 Nobel Prize in Physics for the experimental detection of the neutrino * Irving Langmuir (B.S. 1903), recipient of the 1932 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work in surface chemistry * Marques Brownlee (B.S. 2015), technology journalist and producer of the YouTube channel MKBHD * Bill Stromberg, former chairman and chief executive officer of T. Rowe Price * Jean Zu, current dean of the Schaefer School and former chair of mechanical and industrial engineering at the University of Toronto