Rutgers President Richard L. McCormick Strengthens Commitment to Undergraduate Education, Diversity, Host Cities in Annual Address to University Community

NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. – President Richard L. McCormick reaffirmed his commitment to undergraduate education, diversity on campus and Rutgers’ partnerships with its host cities today in his sixth Annual Address to the University Community.

McCormick also announced the largest private donation in Rutgers’ history – a $13 million gift by an anonymous donor that will help the university launch the long-term initiative he announced last year to develop the Livingston Campus as a center for business and professional studies. Of the total donation, $10 million will support construction of a new building for the Rutgers Business School-Newark and New Brunswick.

McCormick spoke before an estimated audience of more than 500 students, staff, faculty and guests at the first University Senate meeting of the academic year in the Rutgers Student Center on College Avenue. Hundreds more watched via the RU-tv Network and a live webcast.

The new building will allow Rutgers to expand its New Brunswick business curriculum – currently an upper-division program with 400 students – to four years with 3,200 undergraduates. “We know there is high demand for business education, a clear need for business expertise, great talent among our faculty and opportunities for joint programs with the sciences and engineering,” McCormick said.

A second initiative announced by Rutgers’ president intends to raise the university’s level of excellence in the critical area of nutrition. Calling obesity and its associated health effects a “real epidemic, especially among children,” McCormick said, “Its implications extend beyond health care to social development, economic success and public policy.”

McCormick said Rutgers will build on its existing strengths, including its well-established departments of nutrition and food science, and expertise in such related areas as genetics and behavioral science, nursing, pharmacy, agriculture, public policy and educational outreach, as well as resources beyond the university, to create the New Jersey Institute for Food, Nutrition and Health on the George H. Cook Campus.

In reaffirming his commitment to campus diversity, McCormick said the year-old President’s Council on Institutional Diversity and Equity has developed a “signature initiative” in diversity cluster hiring featuring two proposals. One is a Newark-based cluster hiring effort in the field of urban entrepreneurship, the other is a New Brunswick-based, multidepartment effort in the field of Caribbean Studies.

While acknowledging the admirable diversity of the Rutgers community, the president observed that many students live in the suburbs and that too few come from New Jersey’s cities. He cited the new Rutgers Future Scholars Program, based in the university’s hometowns of Newark, Camden, New Brunswick and Piscataway. “We identified an initial cohort of 200 bright and talented rising eighth-graders whom Rutgers will mentor and support while they finish high school and to whom we have promised that if admitted to Rutgers, they will pay no tuition or fees,” McCormick said. “All of them come from disadvantaged backgrounds; virtually all would be the first in their families to go to college.”

The Future Scholars Program was just one of many examples of Rutgers’ engagement with its host communities that McCormick offered. He noted Rutgers-Newark’s century-long presence in the state’s largest city; Chancellor Steven Diner’s vision of a 24/7 campus bolstered by the opening of University Square for undergraduates and plans for new student housing; a partnership with the new superintendent of Newark’s schools to form a consortium to study the school system; and the School of Public Affairs and Administration’s initiatives in quality control with the Housing Authority and executive education with city hall employees.

In Camden, where Rutgers already makes major contributions to training preschool teachers, advancing downtown economic development, supporting the progress of the LEAP Charter Schools and backing the attorney general’s Operation CeaseFire initiative, Interim Chancellor Margaret Marsh is convening a working group of faculty and staff to develop, with community input, a strategic plan for Rutgers’ engagement in the city. One potential initiative involves placing some facilities, such as playing fields, in North Camden for Rutgers students and local residents. A second features the Center for Children and Childhood Studies working with teachers and parents in areas from preschool education to tutoring and mentoring Camden teenagers.

In New Brunswick, new student housing and educational facilities are important parts of the downtown cityscape. The university plans to move ahead with the initial phase of the New Vision for College Avenue and will open a new “destination” bookstore in the proposed Gateway building at Easton Avenue and Somerset Street that can serve as a “stimulating venue for special events and Saturday morning programs for children … a hub of university and city life,” McCormick said.

McCormick also invited area residents, and all New Jerseyans, to learn more about their State University at the first-ever “Rutgers Day” on the New Brunswick Campus. April 25, 2009, will be a “great big, one-day show-and-tell for the entire state,” McCormick said.

McCormick praised the new era of undergraduate education that began in New Brunswick last year with the creation of Rutgers’ new School of Arts and Sciences and unified admission and graduation standards for all students. “Taken together, these changes mark one of the boldest transformations in Rutgers’ history,” he said, “all designed to ensure that our students, no matter where they live, have the fullest opportunities to benefit from our outstanding faculty, staff and programs.”

McCormick stated the transformation is not yet complete. “It is clear we have not yet found the ideal academic arrangements for nontraditional students,” he said, and that while the centralization of student affairs has “improved and streamlined” the delivery of many services, “some students have felt the weakening of unique campus identities.”  Funding cuts have adversely affected staffing in some offices.

The university is committed to finding new revenue streams to make up for shortfalls in state funding to higher education, McCormick promised. “In the future, Rutgers will depend more than ever on private fundraising,” he said, adding that the university was in the early stages of its largest-ever fundraising campaign with a goal of approximately $1 billion.

The president believes the greatest potential for financial growth lies in revenue-generating academic programs. Saying Rutgers will never establish a program “just for the money,” he stated that “from practically every discipline, we can reach out to people who have educational needs that Rutgers can meet.” He proposed that revenues generated by these on- and off-campus professional programs, including executive education, continuing education and certificate programs, be used by the sponsoring academic units.

As for controversies surrounding Rutgers’ athletics program, McCormick affirmed the university’s commitment to a program that is managed in full agreement with the university’s policies. Toward that end, Rutgers is preparing a comprehensive manual of policies and procedures for athletics, he said.

McCormick has presented an annual address since his arrival at Rutgers in 2002. It is open to students, faculty, staff, alumni, members of Rutgers’ governing boards and the public.