Encyclopedia:
High School for Math, Science and Engineering at City College
High School for Math, Science and Engineering at City College (often abbreviated to
HSMSE) is one of the eight specialized high schools in
New York City. To get in, students must take the same
Specialized High Schools Admissions Test that students take to get into
Stuyvesant High School. It is a new school created in 2002, with an emphasis on
engineering.
HSMSE was designed to be a small school with only about four hundred students. Created in 2002 along with
Queens High School for the Sciences at York College, and
High School of American Studies at Lehman College, it was meant to be a smaller, "friendlier" alternative to the large Specialized High Schools
Stuyvesant,
Bronx Science and
Brooklyn Tech.
Classes
HSMSE has a partnership with
The City College of New York. It is located on the
City College campus, around 137th street in
Manhattan, and uses college facilities for its classrooms. The school is primarily housed in CCNY's Baskerville Hall
http://www.hsmse.org/info/directions.aspx. Most of the classes are college level, and many offer college credit. The school is well known among students for providing an intensive courseload that helps to prepare students for college.
Classes in HSMSE are an hour and a half long, and the school day stretches from 8:00 in the morning until 3:35 in the afternoon, though some seniors are dismissed at 2:05. Four main classes are squeezed into each day, with lunch and an enrichment class in the middle. The
enrichment classes at HSMSE are smaller "lighter" classes that the students choose according to their interests. Current enrichments include
Astronomy, Math Team, Drama,
Art,
Poetry Writing,
Web Design,
Engineering 101 and
Photography.
HSMSE participates in the
FIRST Robotics competition.
History
thumb|260px|left|HSMSE when it was contained in trailers.HSMSE was created in 2002 by Randy Asher, former assistant principal of the Mathematics department at
Brooklyn Tech. It was intended to be a much smaller school than Brooklyn Tech, with relatively small class size, and an emphasis on
math,
science,
engineering, and
architecture.
When the school was created, the college provided no building, leaving the school to inhabit a series of red aluminum
trailers located on the southern corner of campus. By its third year, the school had outgrown the trailers and started holding some of its classes in the college buildings. In addition, CCNY started tearing down some of the trailers to build residence halls, forcing HSMSE to completely move out of the trailers by 2006. The school is now primarily housed in CCNY's Baskerville Hall
http://www.hsmse.org/info/directions.aspx.
Originally, the school day ended at 4:00, but starting in the 2006-2007 school year, a pilot program was introduced to shorten the day to 3:35PM by cutting 15 minutes from lunch and enrichment.
On March 1, 2006, HSMSE's founding principal, Randy Asher, left the school to become the principal of
Brooklyn Tech http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/08/nyregion/08principal.html?pagewanted=all. Mr. Asher was replaced by William Dugan, previously HSMSE's Assistant Principal of Science.
In June of 2006, only a few months after Mr. Asher left, HSMSE saw its first ever class of seniors graduate.
External links
*
http://www.hsmse.org/ HSMSE's official website*
http://www.hsmsenews.com/ HSMSE's official newspaperTemplate:NYC Specialized High
New York City DOE
Category:Educational institutions established in 2002Category:High schools in New York CityCategory:New York City Department of EducationCategory:Specialized High Schools of New York City
