675 Years, and Counting: Tandon Celebrates the People Who Make the Place

There are some numbers you can put on a slide, and there are some you can't.

On April 22, 2026, NYU Tandon gathered to celebrate 47 members of its staff and faculty community whose combined service to the school now totals 675 years — a figure that drew appreciative murmurs when it appeared on the screen behind Vice Dean Eray Aydil during his opening remarks. But as Aydil was quick to point out, that number, impressive as it is, captures only a sliver of what the afternoon was really about.

"The numbers don't capture the grant that got submitted on time, the lab that stayed open late, or the recommendation letter that helped win an internship," he told the audience. "They don't capture how many students graduated from this school ready to change the world — in no small part because of the people in this room."

That framing set the tone. Senior Director for Human Resources Margaret Gibson, who emceed the ceremony, opened the proceedings and welcomed honorees at the 5- and 10-year marks, followed by Chief of Staff Ya-Ting Liu, who recognized those celebrating 15 and 20 years of service. Between groups, brief "fun fact" slides gave the audience a glimpse of the world as it was when each cohort entered Tandon, complete with a snippet of a signature song from the year, which drew knowing laughs, the occasional hum-along, and even a few dance moves as colleagues recognized tunes that had once been inescapable.

Aydil returned to the stage to honor those with a quarter-century or more of service, a group he described as the school's living memory. "Twenty-five years is where commitment becomes legacy," he said. "These are the people who know where everything is, and how everything works. That institutional knowledge is priceless." He noted that the honorees in this tier had seen Tandon through changes in leadership and even changes in name, remaining steadfast through each transition — and had, over those decades, watched countless students cross the commencement stage and go on to build distinguished careers of their own.

Two honorees received extended tributes from longtime colleagues. Andrew Rapin spoke about Stacey Spears, drawing on years of shared work to paint a picture of a colleague whose steadiness and generosity have shaped the experience of everyone around her. Peter Voltz followed with remarks about Claudette Dume, whose tenure has touched generations of students and staff and whose contributions, he suggested, are the kind that rarely make it into formal reports but define an institution all the same. Both tributes drew warm applause, and both reinforced the point Aydil had made at the outset: that years of service are less a measure of time than of trust accumulated, problems quietly solved, and people quietly lifted up.

Gibson closed the ceremony by presenting this year's Distinguished Awards, recognizing Michelle Newton (Outstanding Customer Service) and Colby Hepner (Inspiration through Leadership) for contributions that stood out even within a community where excellence is the baseline.

Group photos punctuated each tier, with honorees gathering on stage by cohort — a visual record of what Tandon looks like when you add up the years and the faces behind them. By the time the last group made its way down from the stage, the room had the unmistakable feeling of a family reunion: people catching up in the aisles, comparing notes on who had started when, discovering that the person they'd been emailing for a decade had actually been hired the same month they were.

"Counting up people and time spent on a job tells only a very small part of the Tandon story," Aydil had said near the start of the afternoon. By the end of it, the fuller story was everywhere in the room — in the tributes, in the photographs, and in the easy warmth between colleagues who, whether they'd been here five years or thirty-five, had spent that time building something together.