Our History and Mission
Founded in 1870 by “America’s First Family of Inventors,” the Stevens family, Stevens Institute of Technology is a premier technological research university with a legacy of leadership in fields including engineering, finance, cybersecurity and coastal resilience.
Stevens graduates co-founded both General Motors and Texas Instruments, engineered the world’s first urban power plant, engineered and erected the steel frames of New York City’s Empire State Building and Chrysler Building, and directed the design and preparation of spacecraft modules for NASA’s Apollo moon launch missions. From Frederick Winslow Taylor, the father of scientific management, and Mark Crispin (inventor of the IMAP email protocol), to Nobel Prize-winning physicist Frederick Reines (discoverer of the neutrino, confirming the ‘big bang’ theory), artist Alexander Calder (inventor of the hanging art form known as the mobile), award-winning journalist and political commentator Richard Reeves and cloud-software pioneer Gregory Gianforte, Stevens has produced a long line of technical and business leaders, innovators and entrepreneurs.
Stevens laboratories and facilities continue to enable groundbreaking research. The Davidson Laboratory features the fastest wave tank complex located at a U.S. university and has played a role in virtually every major maritime and coastal engineering advance of the past century and a half, including the development of modern submarines and the re-engineering of Apollo space capsules. The Hanlon Financial Systems Lab features a state-of-the-art simulated Wall Street trading room complete with Bloomberg terminals streaming real-time market data and a full suite of leading-edge software tools for financial analysis. The Systems Engineering Research Center (SERC), a Stevens-led consortium of approximately twenty institutions, is supported by the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), producing important insights in the creation and evolution of complex systems and the development of systems engineers. The Immersion Lab enables high-definition visualization of complex concepts and data for professional audiences and non-professional audiences and stakeholders. Stevens is home to three National Centers for Excellence, research facilities selected by the U.S. government to lead national research, development and education efforts to address critical global needs including port security, ship design and development and systems engineering.
Stevens Institute of Technology provides in-person, hybrid, research, and online courses. Courses using the online format are provided from the Hoboken campus.
Research Centers & Labs at Stevens
- Center for the Advancement of Secure Systems and Information Assurance
- Center for Complex Systems and Enterprises
- Center for Decision Technologies
- Center for Environmental Systems
- Center for Healthcare Innovation
- Center for Innovation in Engineering & Science Education
- Center for Neuromechanics
- Center for Quantum Science and Engineering
- Center for Research Toward Advancing Financial Technologies
- Center for the Maritime Security Center
- Davidson Laboratory
- Hanlon Financial Systems Center
- Highly Filled Materials Institute
- Systems Engineering Research Center
- The NJ Center for Microchemical Systems
The Stevens mission is clear:
Our mission is to inspire, nurture and prepare students for an increasingly complex and technology-centric world, to develop innovative solutions to the most challenging problems of our time and to expand the frontiers of knowledge.
In our new Strategic Plan titled Stevens 2032: Inspired by Humanity, Powered by Technology, this plan builds on the transformative progress of the last decade and charts our path for a future likely to be characterized by rapid change, unrelenting disruption and the deepening penetration of technology across all aspects of life and work.
We believe this plan is bold but attainable. We believe that, by achieving the goals articulated in this plan, Stevens will further ascend, claiming a place among the most respected technological universities in the nation and the world.
Our vision for Stevens describes our future state:
By 2032, Stevens will be a national and global leader in technology-centric education and research, serving as a magnet for exceptional students from all backgrounds who will fuel the innovation economy and for world-class faculty who create knowledge and technologies that transform the future.
Four overarching strategic priorities provide the framework for our ambitious goals and affirm our commitment to: (a) enhancing our students’ experience and success, (b) amplifying our impact through research and innovation, (c) elevating the academic reputation of Stevens and (d) strengthening and connecting our community.
We will measure our progress both quantitatively and qualitatively and with the full understanding that our goals are both interconnected and interdependent. We will not sacrifice quality for quantity. We will not make progress on one goal at the expense of another. All boats will rise.
We aspire to become the destination of choice for promising, academically talented students who will make a difference in our world. We aspire to dramatically grow and implement a world-class online learning environment.
We aspire to create a curriculum and campus of the future, empowering our students and faculty to dream big. We will provide them with the guidance, environment and support they need to achieve their goals.
We aspire to make our mark on the world through groundbreaking research, innovation and technology commercialization, and by attracting and supporting exceptional graduate students to our innovation ecosystem.
We aspire to have a proud, cohesive and connected community whose impact is greater than the sum of its parts.