The Hillier College of Architecture and Design (HCAD) kicked off its year-long celebration of two very important milestones – the 50th year anniversary of the New Jersey School of Architecture and the 15th anniversary of the School of Art & Design. 

The Design Showcase is the college’s flagship fundraising and networking event, which provides a chance for members of the Hillier College community to connect personally and professionally. This year’s event took place in the Jewel Box of One Gateway Center in downtown Newark, made possible by Onyx Equities. 

NJIT’s largest and oldest college invited students, alumni, faculty, staff and friends to join together for NCE’s 25th Salute to Engineering Excellence celebration. The annual event honors the contributions and impact of the NCE community and features the college’s upcoming star students, dedicated faculty and staff, impactful alumni and industry partners.

Two NJIT undergraduates won prestigious fellowships. Olivia Kolakowski ’24 was awarded the Brooke Owens Fellowship, and Milan Patel ’23 has been selected as an Amgen Scholar at Columbia University. 

The Fellowship is designed to serve both as an inspiration and as a career boost to capable young women and other gender minorities who, like Dawn Brooke Owens (1980-2016), aspire to explore the sky and stars, to shake up the aerospace industry, and to help their fellow people here on planet Earth.

Four interior design students won awards at this year’s regional International Interior Design Association Student Design Showcase and Competition.

Okhyun des Lauriers '22, fourth-year student Haylee Merola, third-year student Martina Hanna, and third-year student Caitlin Majewski received awards.

NJIT students Aliya Laliwala and Mrunmayi Joshi have been selected to be part of this year’s Governor’s STEM Scholars class, which includes 128 scholars from 20 New Jersey counties — the program’s largest cohort ever.

The Governor’s STEM Scholars program was created to engage the next generation of research and innovation leaders in the state’s vast STEM economy early. Sixty-four percent of the class identify as female and 83% as students of color. When they graduate in May 2023, they will join an alumni cohort of over 700 Scholars.

Roberto Saenz, winner of the first-ever Hispanic and Latinx Leadership Council (HLLC) scholarship, wants to one day be an administrator at NASA and design his own spacecraft.

The Hispanic and Latinx Leadership Council (HLLC) held Café y Conexiones to kick off this year’s Hispanic Heritage Month celebrations at NJIT. 

Launched in January 2022, Café y Conexiones brings together NJIT’s Hispanic and Latinx students with HLLC members, alumni, and business and civic leaders in the Hispanic and Latinx communities on a regular basis during the academic year.

Johmary Adames, an industrial design major at New Jersey Institute of Technology’s Hillier College of Architecture and Design, is excited for the new semester. After participating in the Highlander Foundry program over the summer where she experienced entrepreneurship first-hand, she feels empowered to one day use her design knowledge in a company of her own.

Vishva Rana ‘23, a Goldwater Scholar, has always been interested in addressing sustainable issues. The mechanical engineering major, minoring in innovation and entrepreneurship, has been working on a real-time air quality monitoring system and hopes to see it implemented in Newark’s Ironbound.

NJIT computer science alumna Hang Nguyen, the first in her family to attend college, started her full-time career as a Google software engineer based on her ability to quickly absorb new skills. 

Nguyen grew up in central Vietnam, learned English and the outdated Pascal programming language in a school for gifted children, and ultimately chose to pursue her dream of not only obtaining a college degree but doing so in the United States.