Rutgers Board of Trustees Elects 2008-09 Officers

NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. – Anthony J. DePetris of Camden, co-vice chair of Rutgers’ Board of Trustees, has been elected to a one-year term as chair, succeeding Gerald C. Harvey. DePetris had served two one-year terms as co-vice chair.

Mark P. Hershhorn, of Upper Providence, Pa., was elected to his second term as co-vice chair. He will be joined as co-vice chair by Robert L. “Bob” Stevenson, an alumni trustee from North Brunswick.

DePetris, a 22-year public management professional, is director of administrative and personnel services for the LEAP Academy University Charter School District Inc. in Camden. He served as vice chair of the board of trustees for Paul VI High School in Haddonfield from 2003 to 2006. He has taught courses in public administration at Rutgers-Camden and the School of Urban Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Delaware, from which he earned a Master of Public Administration degree.

A 1984 graduate of Rutgers-Camden, DePetris has been a member of the Rutgers Board of Trustees since 1998, and a member and past chair of the Rutgers-Camden College of Arts and Sciences Dean’s Leadership Council. He has been a member of the Rutgers-Camden Alumni Association Board of Trustees since 1984 and was its president from 1991 to 1993. In 2001, DePetris received the Rutgers University Alumni Federation’s Meritorious Service Award.

Hershhorn is a 1971 graduate of Rutgers College and earned an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School in 1972. He is chair and chief executive officer of CKS and Associates, Upper Providence, Pa.

Hershhorn is a member of the Quill and Ledger Society, the Chair and Gavel Society, a past chair of the Rutgers University Foundation Board of Overseers and currently chairs its Governance Committee. Hershhorn has been a member of several committees, including the Board of Governors and Board of Trustees joint committees on Budget and Finance, Buildings and Grounds, and Intercollegiate Athletics. He was elected to the Board of Trustees in 2002.

Stevenson, who earned a Bachelor of Science from Rutgers’ School of Engineering and a Bachelor of Arts from Rutgers College in 1965, and a Master of Science in Business from the Illinois Institute of Technology in 1968, has been on the Board of Trustees since 2002. He has chaired the board’s Nominating Committee as well as the advisory committees on Research and Graduate Education and the School of Engineering. Stevenson has served as a member of the Board of Governors and Board of Trustees joint committees on Budget and Finance, Buildings and Grounds, and Educational Planning and Policy. He served as president of the Rutgers Alumni Association in 2001. In 2007, Stevenson chaired the Implementation Committee for the president’s Task Force on Alumni Relations, which created a single universitywide alumni association called the Rutgers University Alumni Association.

Stevenson is president of PL Custom Emergency Vehicles, Manasquan.

The new officers’ terms will begin July 1.

Established in 1766, Rutgers is one of the nation’s premier research universities, serving more than 50,000 students on campuses in Camden, Newark and New Brunswick. The Board of Trustees was the governing body of the university from its founding as Queen’s College in 1766 until the university was reorganized in 1956, when a state law created the Board of Governors as the governing body.

The Board of Trustees serves in an advisory capacity with certain fiduciary responsibilities over assets of the university in existence before 1956. In addition, the Board of Trustees elects five of the 11 members of the Board of Governors. There are 59 voting members, whose selection is mandated by state law: 28 charter members (of whom at least three are women and three are students with full voting rights); 20 alumni members nominated by the Nominating Committee of the board; and five public members appointed by the governor of the state with confirmation by the state Senate. The six public members of the Board of Governors also serve as trustees.