Alumni Profile:  Sean Cusack BSE ’98

Sean Cusack graduated from The Cooper Union in 1998 with a BSE degree. He has worked on software infrastructure for 15 years at Bloomberg LP, Merrill Lynch, and Jefferies & Co. At Cooper, he wears many hats. He currently serves as a council member of the Cooper Union Alumni Association and is Co-Chair of the Communications Committee. As a member of the “Gang of Six” he helped found the advocacy group known as The Friends of Cooper Union. For The Cooper Union, Sean has served as an adjunct professor since 2003 teaching the “Introduction to Computer Science” course. In addition, in 2012, he taught a course open to all three schools on Web and App development and project management, and in the summer of 2012, he organized “Cooper App Camp”, a workshop open to both students and alumni. Together with a number of students and faculty, Sean also started the Cooper Union Entrepreneurship Society.

Sean is a strong proponent for a free Cooper Union and is inspired by the notion of the school being, in the words of The Cooper Union graduating class of 1871, an “everlasting protest against that avarice and ambition which rear overshadowing fortunes for mere personal gratification.” Communication is the key to the strength of any organization, and Sean is being recognized for his efforts to make information accessible and available, which has helped grow and build our Cooper Union community over the past few years.

In the fall of 2011, accepting President Bharucha’s challenge to form a taskforce for solutions to the tuition crisis, Sean initiated CooperUnionTaskForce.com, a resource to share information, news, and research on what was happening at Cooper Union. The site’s landing page continues to be the host for recordings of important Cooper Union events and forums, which Sean was often livestreaming and live-tweeting. As an active member of Friends of Cooper Union, he helped to bring the various stakeholder groups of the Cooper Union community together. As Co-Chair of the Communications Committee, Sean administers social media for the organization, and writes articles articles for the CU Alumni Newsletter and website. Going forward, Sean is filled with many exciting ideas for enhancing the CUAA website. He extends a warm invite for more contributors to the Newsletter and ideas on how we can build a stronger community.

For three years, Sean worked as a scoutmaster with children at the Icahn House West homeless shelter. His experiences with these kids got him thinking about how to create fun learning environments for different grade levels. Combining his passions of teaching, programming and video games, Sean started Learnosaurus, Inc., a service that will convert grade level K–5 homework into educational games. A crowd-funding video of the project featuring a puppet show was launched at the Founder’s Day Street Fair held in April of 2014.

Sean Cusack BSE’98 receiving the 2014 CUAA Alumnus of the Year Award in the Great hall during the 2014 Founder’s Day Festivities