Inaugural 'Rutgers Day' to Welcome Statewide Community to New Brunswick Campuses, Saturday, April 25

NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. – Rutgers is rolling out the “scarlet carpet” for its first-ever Rutgers Day celebration, inviting New Jerseyans of all ages to experience their state university up close at a family-friendly day packed with free performances, tours, exhibits, hands-on activities, lectures and more, Saturday, April 25.

Rutgers Day will include two of the university’s most popular spring events – the New Jersey Folk Festival and Ag Field Day – as well as the Zimmerli Museum’s Family Day. The Folk Festival and Ag Field Day, which have shared the same day for 35 years, typically draw more than 20,000 visitors to the Cook/Douglass campuses, and feature international food and music, arts and crafts, food, plant sales and animal shows. In addition to the activities of those longstanding events, Rutgers Day will incorporate an array of new ones.

“Rutgers Day is an invitation to people across New Jersey to experience their state university and all that it has to offer, from science and technology to the arts and humanities,” said Rutgers President Richard L. McCormick. “This giant, one-day show-and-tell is an opportunity for the Rutgers community to bring thousands of new visitors to our campus to see what we do.”

•     Faraday Physics Phenomena: Based on the tradition of the famous British physicist Michael Faraday, this science demonstration captures the imagination of children with real flowers that shatter like glass, exploding hydrogen balloons and other science marvels.

•     New Jersey’s Geology Time Machine: Travel in the Geological Hall “time machine” to 1872 when George H. Cook ran the New Jersey Geological Survey and the Rutgers Scientific School; see dinosaurs, a mastodon and a mummy, along with fluorescent minerals and more.

•     Eureka! Celebrate Undergraduate Discovery: Meet Rutgers undergraduates who are researching some of the most challenging questions of our time.

•     Face painting, scavenger hunt, storytelling: The popular Family Day at the Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum on the College Avenue Campus moves to Rutgers Day, featuring hands-on activities for children.

•     Hear and learn from Rutgers scholars and authors such as David Greenberg, whose talk on “Presidential Doodles” is based on his book, or Michael Rockland, who recently published a book on the George Washington Bridge.

•     Tours: Explore the rich history Rutgers University, founded in 1766 as Queen’s College, in a walking tour of historic Voorhees Mall and Old Queen’s campus.

•     Stage performances by the The Livingston Theater Group, and Capoeira, an Afro-Brazilian martial arts club

Schedules and locations of activities will be updated regularly on the Rutgers Day website. Maps and schedules also will be available the day of the event at information booths across campus.