Bright lights, delicious food, and party music was the perfect recipe for last Friday’s Founder’s Day Ball. This year’s ball was the fifth year that Stevens held the event in honor of the school’s Founder’s Day. Previous years saw the event held in the school’s library, but as Stevens expanded and hopes to expand attendance at the event grew, the Harborside Financial Center was chosen to host the ball. This change was made for last year’s event.
“As a committee we had a goal to increase the event size and Harborside could accommodate the guest list and was the perfect setting for the celebration for our university.” said Ashley Tomasura, SGA Vice President.
Every year, the SGA selects a Senator to take charge of the event and lead the committee to make sure fun is had for all. With the event boasting a roughly $60,000 budget, someone who was passionate about representing Stevens well and had the drive to make sure everything came together was needed to play the role of head of the Founder’s Day Ball committee, who ended up being Shannon Pierce ’17.
Pierce did note that it was a team effort stating, “The Founder’s Day Ball was a huge success! There was a ton of planning that went into it, and I could have done it without the help of my team…”
Harborside Financial Center was a splendid venue for the event elegantly decorated with beautiful greenery and purple and blue lights which truly was a sight to behold. This coupled with the New York skyline made for a night filled with fun, laughs, and lots of photos. Decked out in their fanciest formal gear, 540 members of the Stevens community including faculty, students, and staff flooded the hall to take part in one of the most memorable events of the year.
While it took a bit for the attendees to step away from the delicious food served and onto the dance floor, once people began to dance it was hard to stop. The dance floor was filled until the event was over, with appearances from Captain Maggi, Professor Wharton, and Dean Nilsen making the event all the more enjoyable.
In addition to the festivities, scholarly research also had its place at the event. This semester, Professor Lee Vinsel’s History of Stevens class created an opportunity for several students to present on two prominent figures in Stevens history at the beginning of the event.
One group, consisting of Christina DeLago, Natalia Kafel, Marissa Douglas, presented on the role that Martha Bayard Dod Stevens played in the founding of the institution. The focus of the presentation was meant to show that Martha had played a pivotal role in the founding of the Institution, even more so than her husband.
The other group, consisting of Philip Beach III, Lindsay Crossan, and Logan Bagarozy, detailed the accomplishments of Professor Harold Burris-Meyer. Burris-Meyer, a professor at the Institute starting in the ‘30s, had made various discoveries in the areas of sounds and their influences on human emotions and actions, which led to work on MUZAK, instrumental music heard in supermarkets, elevators, etc. The posters and presentations received praise from various attendees at the event, including President Farvardin.
Kristen Romanowski, SGA President, found the inclusion of the presentations a great opportunity to further promote the idea of community between faculty and students.
“Events like Founder’s Day Ball are meant to bring the faculty closer to the students, cultivating meaningful relationships and mentorships.” she said.
As those present left the event, they were given favors to commemorate the fifth annual Founder’s Day Ball. The favors were small glasses, which had the date of the event on them. Overall, the event was a grand success and further exemplified the hard work and dedication the students and faculty of Stevens have to their school. In regards to future celebrations, the SGA hopes to “continue to grow the event to about 700 to 800 undergrads and faculty members so that everyone will be able to celebrate a little bit of the Stevens history.”
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