Announcing My Plans

September 17, 2024

Dear Rutgers Community,

In August, I informed Amy Towers, Chair of the Board of Governors, that the 2024-2025 academic year will be my final year as university president. I will take a sabbatical the following year during which I will return to long-standing research projects before joining the faculty on a full-time basis. This decision is my own and reflects my ruminations about how best to be of service.

Serving as the university president has been an enormous privilege and responsibility. Throughout my tenure, I have been appreciative of the former and respectful of the latter. I welcomed the opportunity to join the Rutgers community in July 2020 because I found inspiration in the possibilities that this institution represented: a belief that cutting-edge research could thrive in a university that was committed to making education as accessible as possible to a profoundly diverse student population. The reality behind this inspiration has been reaffirmed time and again during my tenure.

As I enter my final year as President, I am proud of what this university community has achieved during a challenging time for higher education and for society more broadly. Our first-year class this fall is the largest in our history—better yet, it is among the most diverse and most accomplished as well. Its members enter a Rutgers deeply committed to social mobility—where every one of our campuses ranks among the Top 25 national universities for the graduation rate of students receiving need-based Pell grants.

At the same time, Rutgers research is stronger than ever. This past year, our researchers received a record $970 million in grants, over a quarter of which came from the NIH. More than 250 companies are engaged in research alongside our faculty, and we now boast over 100 active startups.

Rutgers is bursting with energy and innovation. In Camden, a transformational Cooper Street Gateway Project now underway will enrich the student experience and provide a gathering space for the campus and the community. In Newark, community-focused collaborative work thrives, like the NSF-funded Newark Geoscience Ecosystem, which is enlisting graduate students to help residents address local environmental issues. And a new initiative called ScarletWell aims to make Rutgers–New Brunswick a national model in prioritizing the health and wellness of students, faculty, and staff.

A decade after we established our biomedical division, Rutgers Health is engaged in some of the most life-changing discoveries, from our innovative contributions to the battle against COVID-19 to the Rutgers Cancer Institute’s T-cell clinical trials. And enormous hope and promise attends the projects in the ground—the Health + Life Sciences Exchange (HELIX) rising in New Brunswick and the Medical Science Building expansion in Newark—as well as the five-year process of forming Rutgers School of Medicine out of our two outstanding medical schools.

Just as important, we are creating a culture of service and citizen engagement at Rutgers. The Scarlet Service Initiative, now three years old, has provided hundreds of life-shaping internship opportunities at nonprofit and government organizations in the New Jersey region and in our nation’s capital. A new recognition program celebrates our employees’ exceptional dedication to serving the common good—here and beyond Rutgers. And a task force on public engagement has just given me a set of recommendations that, when implemented, will help make Rutgers synonymous with service.

Along the way, we have strengthened our vital relationships with those who support our mission each year: our partners in Trenton, who have approved record appropriations to Rutgers, and our donors, who last year provided more than $250 million in gifts to the university (including $54 million for scholarships). I am immensely grateful for these investments in our community of scholars.

In my inaugural address, I repeatedly used the phrase “This is what excellence looks like.” Again and again over the past four years, I have witnessed examples of excellence across our university: students winning international fellowships and spending countless hours doing community service; nurses and doctors combining world-class medical research with the deepest care for their patients; faculty members elected to the most prestigious academies and bringing undergraduates into their labs and archives to see research first-hand; staff members going above and beyond to solve a financial aid problem, a housing issue, a life crisis.

All these examples, and so many more, are the source of our excellence at Rutgers. Incredible intelligence and ambition abound in our community, to be sure, but they are matched by an enduring empathy and compassion. It is that remarkable combination that enables our university—our Rutgers—to make New Jersey, our country, and the world a better place.

There is plenty to do before I complete my term and I remain focused on that work, especially that which is committed to the connections between Rutgers and civic preparedness and civil discourse. But whatever the topic, I remain steadfast in my belief that Rutgers is on the rise and is earning the respect it has long deserved. I look forward to seeing it flourish in the years ahead.

With gratitude,

Jonathan Holloway
President and University Professor