They were Rutgers students in the mid-1970s, but one of their professors vividly remembers them like it was last semester.
“They were so talented, bright. and energetic,” Michael R. Greenberg said.
Greenberg is now the associate dean for faculty at the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy. And the handful of former graduate students in the Masters of City and Regional Planning program he refers to are now top executives, including the CEO and COO, of an internationally prominent consulting firm, the Louis Berger Group.
Over the years, the Bloustein School and the Berger Group have developed a close relationship that dates back to those early connections. And this year, that relationship has produced a graduate internship/fellowship program that offers unusual opportunities for first-year students to work on major planning and development projects, often in international settings.
The first group of four fellows will leave this spring for paid summer internships in which they will be working for the Berger Group in the Philippines, Costa Rica, Washington D.C., and Mauritius, an island nation off the east coast of Africa.
Patrick Jensen will head to Mauritius, where he will be doing program management work on a project to expand the Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam International Airport.
“I have never been anywhere near Africa,” Jensen said. “This is a tremendous opportunity professionally but also an amazing life experience.”
The other fellows and their assignments are: Rebecca Gerber, workforce development in the Philippines; Steve Michejda, projects pertaining to airline capacity modeling in Costa Rica; and David Stanek, working in Washington on a program aimed at improving the livelihoods of Iraqi farmers.
The fellowship, open to first-year students in the Master of City and Regional Planning and the Master of Public Policy programs, also provides tuition to cover their second year of study and may include a second internship in a local setting.
The program was spawned by talks between Bloustein School faculty and the Berger Group executives – talks that focused in part on the firm’s need to recruit and find new talent among a younger generation. The Berger Group, based in Morristown, New Jersey, is active in more than 80 countries, providing engineering, construction management, environmental and other services.
“They came to us on several occasions and talked about how they eventually need to find successors to lead the company,” Greenberg said. “To work for Berger, you have to be extremely bright, energetic, and willing to travel. So we created this idea in which students would really understand what it would be like to work for a company that requires those attributes.”
Nick Masucci, president of the firm, and one of Greenberg’s former students, said many of the Berger Group’s senior managers are graduates of Rutgers University and its planning and public policy school.
“Establishment of the Louis Berger Graduate Fellowship program is a means to acknowledge the company’s special relationship with the Bloustein School,” he said in a statement. “The fellowship is also an opportunity to return, in a small way, the many benefits the company has gained from that relationship while renewing its commitment to the goals, mission, and ideals of the Bloustein School.”