Public Safety is tracking a significant snowfall that will be arriving in our area late Sunday morning (Jan. 25). It will snow heavily throughout the day and evening eventually tapering off Monday (Jan. 26) with 10-14 inches expected statewide. A sleet and freezing rain mix is also possible along the shore. Temperatures will be in the teens and twenties.
Due to this significant winter storm and the extensive campus clean-up operations that will need to take place, all in-person day and evening classes scheduled for Monday, January 26, 2026 have been cancelled. All scheduled in-person classes will transition to being held online or remotely. Additional information on the virtual format for each class will be provided by your instructor.
Faculty have been asked to prepare for Online or Remote sessions in the event of in-person meeting cancellations. These options will be determined by the Faculty member and all questions should be directed to the Faculty teaching each course section. Faculty also have been asked to be very understanding and accommodating of the individual situations of their students who may have difficulty managing these alternative online or remote class meetings on short notice.
Please note that only essential employees, as previously determined by their respective department leaders, should report to campus. All other employees should fulfill the requirements of their role remotely.
Campus operations for residential students, unless otherwise noted, will operate as scheduled, though hours may be modified or changed based on the conditions. Separate messages will be sent from the Peterson Library, the Beckerman Recreation Center, and Dining Services regarding any changes to their normal hours of operation. The Bergami Center for Science, Technology, and Innovation will remain open for residential students to use for study space and to participate in online classes.
Off-campus students that live in the City of West Haven should abide by the city’s parking ban during inclement weather to avoid having their vehicle tagged and towed. Please check the City of West Haven’s website for further information on their snow parking ban.
University News
Honorees included the former owner of Precision Metal Products in Milford, a retired executive with New York City’s Department of Highways, a senior engineer with Medtronic who serves as an adjunct faculty, and a company that has found the University’s engineering students to be go-to interns and employees.
December 10, 2018
Cory Hall, principal cybersecurity engineer at MITRE – a nonprofit that runs federally funded research and development centers that assist the U.S. government with scientific research and analysis – concedes that the project he developed for one of his first University of New Haven interns was a difficult one.
The task was to organize all of the internet’s domain records and to continually reorganize them to determine if computers had been hacked.
"The intern had to develop a method for capturing all of these billions of records and then sort them again every couple of days throughout the summer," Hall explains. "It was a really, really hard task."
Hall says the intern, Kyle Anthony '14, '15 M.S., was "absolutely able to do it" and presented several solutions. Anthony is now a full-time engineer with the organization.
Since then MITRE has provided paid internships to seven students, with plans already in place to take on more interns in the summer of 2019, and it has funded faculty and student research and paid travel expenses for student researchers.
In honor of this commitment, MITRE earned the Tagliatela College of Engineering’s Exemplary Partner Award.
"The partnership is a win-win situation. They get the cream of the crop students, and we get a fantastic relationship with a wonderful, leading edge organization.Abe Baggili, Elder Family Chair and assistant dean of the Tagliatela College of Engineering
"They’ve hired five of our graduates in the last three years and they all make six-figure salaries," Baggili continues.
The award presented to MITRE was one of four presented recently at the Tagliatela College of Engineering’s annual alumni dinner and hall of fame awards ceremony.
The Distinguished Alumni Award was given posthumously to William (Bill) O’Brien ’64, who was president and owner of Precision Metal Products in Milford. Over the course of four decades, O’Brien — who died at the age of 80 in May 2017 — expanded the company from a five-employee shop to a high-performance, precision-machined product business. With 140 employees, including an in-house engineering staff, Precision Metals supplies parts to the medical instrument, aerospace, and electronics industries.
O’Brien first became interested in engineering when he studied tool design and drafting after high school. After serving as a police officer in the Air Force, he got his degree in industrial engineering at what was then New Haven College.
His wife, Jean, said each day at work O’Brien lived by the philosophy "we can always do it better." That took root at the start of his career when, as an engineer at Schick, he’d work both shifts so he could watch a product line run and make changes so the process could be more efficient.
It continued when he became president and owner of Precision Metals in 1977. "He valued everyone’s knowledge," Jean said. "That’s why he worked with people on the floor a lot."
While he listened to all his employees, there were times when he had to be convinced. His son, Sean O’Brien ’97 recalled a time when, he as the general manager, proposed placing the lathe next to the milling machine which "was different than the norm at the time," said Sean.
"He always gave me the freedom to try to do things better," Sean said. Now, as vice president of Precision Metals, he says, "I try to do that every day."
The Pioneer Alumni Award was presented to Nicholas Squeglia ’60 A.S., ’63 A.S., a former director of quality and inspection with New York City’s Department of Highways.
He’d inherited a mess when he joined the department in the 1970s. Corruption was rampant in the city. Bridges and highway structures hadn’t been routinely and properly inspected and city roads had been damaged over decades when utility companies failed to properly create street curb cutouts.
Upon accepting the position, Squeglia, who studied management and industrial engineering at then New Haven College, drew from his manufacturing background, where he developed "c=0 sampling plans," which essentially changed the culture of quality programs by focusing on making manufacturing products 100 percent to specifications and eliminating the common practice of allowing a certain percent of defective items to be shipped.
At the time, Squeglia went against a standard that every company was using, both military and commercial, but, soon, his approach became the industry standard. His book "Zero Acceptance Number (c=0) Sampling Plans" was published by the American Society for Quality, and it is still in print more than 50 years later.
During his time with the Department of Highways, he oversaw quality across the five boroughs for thousands of miles of roads, 2,000 highway structures, and waterway bridges — and the work of more than 200 inspectors.
A certified six sigma black belt and certified quality engineer by the American Society for Quality, he later returned to manufacturing quality control, working on a startup that he sold, and he also was director of quality for a large, full-service, first-tier automotive supplier to 13 automotive assembly plants in the U.S., Mexico, Canada, and England.
Carolina Ramirez-Blier ’09, senior design quality engineer at Medtronics and an adjunct faculty in the Tagliatela College of Engineering, received the Outstanding Young Alumni Award.
When she thinks of the message she wants her mechanical engineering students to carry with them, it’s that the field of engineering needs a rich tapestry of voices. "When people come from different backgrounds, it brings new perspectives, and that can totally help make a team and a project successful," she said.
Her own professors told her this when she studied mechanical engineering.
"They pushed me to be confident in the fact that I could solve very complex problems, and I could do engineering like anybody else.Carolina Ramirez-Blier ’09
Growing up in Venezuela in a family of architects and engineers, she loved taking things apart to "see how things worked." She couldn’t get enough of math, science, and art and soon decided she would work in the place where they intersected: engineering. In 2001, after a year studying engineering in Venezuela, she moved to the U.S. and pursued an associate degree in graphic design, working in packaging design while knowing that "engineering was my calling."
A Presidential Scholarship allowed her to enroll in the University’s mechanical engineering program, and she felt committed to her academics and "the priceless opportunity" the University gave her. She had her son on the Monday of spring break, "and the following Monday, I was back in my classes full-time."
The next year, she won an Igor Sikorsky Scholarship, and the Sikorsky transmission team liked her work so much, she stayed on, working 30 hours a week, while taking classes fulltime and raising her family.
Ramirez-Blier, who went on to earn a master’s degree in mechanical engineering from Purdue University, wants the next generation of female engineers to know that so much is possible.
"Women engineers can do it all," she says
University News
New University-wide council will advance strategic partnerships, immersive student opportunities, and innovative research, supporting the University’s strategic plan the development of its pioneering Center for Innovation and Applied Technology.
The Charger Blog
Entrepreneur David Sussman, Pompea College of Business Advisory Board Member and chief visionary officer of The Family Security Plan®, is collaborating with University of New Haven students, faculty, and staff to create a program and app that helps Chargers support each other to achieve academic, personal, and professional goals. It’s called Uccountability.
University News
Vice President for Innovation and Applied Technology Paul Lavoie will serve on the Board of Directors and as America’s Chief Manufacturing Officer for the newly launched American Manufacturing Futures Institute.