Fagan is a talented project manager and financial organizer. She also enjoys working with students, professors and industry people. When she talks about her job – she’s the administrative assistant for program development and special projects in ECE -- she is quick to note how much she enjoys working on various projects.

She loves organizing the senior design project, for instance, because the students are so bright and so eager to showcase their learning, she says. The students become so invested in their projects, and get so much out of them, that even after they graduate some keep in touch with her.

For two years, she helped administer the DARPA project, in which student teams  build a robotic car. The projects were so successful that some students later wound up getting great jobs at major companies. The companies were impressed by the sophisticated work the students did for the DARPA project.

She also helps organize a summer career program, a two-day class to introduce high school students to electrical and computer engineering. Students come from the New York metro region to take the class, and some eventually enroll at NJIT.

Another rewarding aspect of her job is liaison between the ECE chairman and the department’s industry advisory board -- a board that is filled, in her words, “with a great group of incredibly supportive industry people who devote a lot of their time and talents to the department and its programs.” 

She coordinates an introductory class with guest industrial lecturers. The lecturers tell students about real-world engineering. She also manages the department’s budget and helps research professors manage their budgets (she is a finance expert who before coming to NJIT worked for 11 years as assistant treasurer for the Museum of Modern Art). Thanks to her exemplary work, Fagan received this award.