Stakeholder Address 2024

Jonathan Holloway
President, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

October 8, 2024

Thanks and Reflection

Thank you very much, Brielle, for telling your Rutgers story, for your incredibly generous introduction, and for all your service to Rutgers.

If you remember, at my inauguration, I touched upon the theme, “This is what excellence looks like.” I boasted about great things and great people at Rutgers and repeated that phrase. Well, tonight, I’ll be talking a lot about the way we have risen even higher since that moment. And I just want to make clear right at the outset that YOU are behind our success. In fact, let me do something a little untraditional. If the folks at the arena can lend me a hand here and please raise the lights. Thank you. Everyone, please take a moment and look around at each other. Friends, YOU are what excellence looks like. You are what excellence looks like. And Rutgers is a better place today because of you.

This is the third Stakeholders Address, the brainchild of Kimberly Hopely, Executive Vice President for Development and Alumni Engagement. In year one, I took a leap of faith that Kimberly’s new idea might be worth trying. It clearly was, since we needed a larger space for year two. Now, here we are, in Jersey Mike’s Arena—our largest venue yet—and there are thousands watching virtually from their offices, homes, and watch parties across campuses, the nation, and around the world. This is a sign of institutional health. This is a sign of your commitment to this great place.

It should come as no surprise that tonight’s address takes on extra meaning as this is my final opportunity in this forum to share my thoughts with you. From beginning to end, I hope to make it completely clear how grateful I am for your contributions to Rutgers University.

I am grateful for your steadfast loyalty to this institution; for your dedication to its future; and for your constant concern for the well-being and success of our students. I’m grateful for your service to Rutgers in countless ways, from the personal to the professional to the philanthropic; for your wise counsel and friendly advice; for your leadership and teamwork on projects large and larger. I am grateful for your heartfelt kudos and, when necessary, your candid critiques. But who’s kidding who, I liked the kudos more.

All joking aside, your personal kindness, which so many of you have expressed over the past few weeks, means more than I can say. Thank you so very much.

Before I go any further, let me acknowledge what we are navigating while we come together this evening. Amid turbulent political currents both global and national, this is an especially solemn time. Yesterday was hard, anguishing, for so many people. We are all diminished by lives lost on October 7th and in the year since. Today, war in the Mideast rages on and threatens to expand its boundaries. Meanwhile, turmoil continues to engulf Ukraine and other hotspots that, for a host of complex reasons, garner less attention. Indeed, these are difficult days for the world and stressful times for our nation. These troubles are never far from our minds, even as we strive as an academic community to forge a better and safer and more equitable world.

Many times over the last year, my peer presidents and I have struggled to strike the right chord, doing everything we could to keep our communities safe while also protecting the freedoms that are the lifeblood of the academic enterprise. I didn’t need the events of the last year to let me know that I will not get everything right, but due to so many events in the last year there is one thing of which I am certain: never has our society needed higher education more. It is needed to protect inquiry, to provide open forums for exchanging difficult ideas, to change lives and opportunities, and to preserve those democratic values we hold most dear. Fortunately, never has Rutgers been better positioned to make a difference.

Celebrating Our Success

Over the past few years, our university has been through some deeply challenging times—a pandemic, labor strife, student protests, a budget deficit—but we’ve held firm to our vision for Rutgers. I’m not going to lie, it’s been hard. But we’ve had remarkable people step up and find a way forward. And though at times the media focus may have been on our struggles, all the while, something amazing was happening.

We kept telling the larger story of this university. We shone a spotlight on the scientists and health care heroes and others at Rutgers who helped us and the world come through the pandemic. We celebrated the remarkable talent of our faculty, helped our outstanding students capture some of the most coveted fellowships in the world, and reached out to our alumni near and far to share in our relentless pursuit of excellence. We redoubled our efforts to help our faculty win grants for their innovative research and scholarship.

And look at us now.

Applications to Rutgers are at an all-time high, with more than 76,000 students applying over the past year alone. And those applications came to us from across the country and around the world.

Just as important, enrollment is up. In fact, this year’s entering class is the largest in our 258-year history, and it is one of the most diverse. Nearly 25% hail from another state or another country, and best of all, this is one of the most accomplished classes as well.

And I say that from first-hand experience. Granted, my class for fifty first-year students is only a small sample, but there is something different—something extra special—about this new group. You can see it in their eyes and witness it in their behavior. They are engaged, they are mature, they are enthusiastic about being at Rutgers. And it’s exciting to see.

Let me mention one first-year student by way of example. Efesson Meyer is a first-year student who comes to Rutgers from Ethiopia via Boston. At Rutgers, he is a Posse Scholar, part of a nationwide network of students funded by the Posse Foundation for their leadership potential. He’s a member of the New Brunswick Honors College. He had an internship last summer at Mass General Hospital, and already has an internship lined up for next summer with Bloomberg. And although I would counsel him to slow down and smell the occasional rose, he already knows that he wants to work in the public health space when he graduates. This is the kind of student who chose Rutgers.

He is here with us this evening, and I’d like for him to stand and wave hello. Efesson invested in Rutgers. Let’s invest in Efesson, and all the students who have joined our community this year. They are what excellence looks like.

Consider those students who have been calling Rutgers their home for a few years already: scholarship winners like philosophy major Paul Boyd, the first Truman Scholar from Rutgers University–Camden, and our 16th overall. Or Ethan Dreyer, who spent part of last summer doing polymer synthesis at Murray State University on a National Science Foundation grant and also serves as captain of the Rutgers–Camden men’s soccer team. Or Angelina Vertiz, a senior at Rutgers–Newark and a first-generation college student, who came to the university through the Rutgers Future Scholars program and, while at Rutgers, has been involved in the Educational Opportunity Fund and the BOLD Women’s Leadership Network—two communities that have been instrumental in shaping who she is today.

Paul and Angelina weren’t able to make it tonight—not their fault, we didn’t give our guests much time to respond to our invitations to appear—and just before walking out here I learned that Ethan’s car died on the Turnpike, but I think he just showed up. So let’s applaud Paul, Angelina, and Ethan. Stand up, Ethan! Oh, Angelina made it, too; I didn't know that—welcome! 

In the world of athletics, look at us now.

A national champion in pole vaulter Chloe Timberg. Gold medals in Paris for Rutgers alums Kahleah Copper and Casey Murphy. Two more All-American wrestlers, and another, Sebastian Rivera, an Olympic bronze medalist. A fantastic 2023 season for our field hockey team, ranked as high as #3 in the nation. A huge recruiting season for Coach Steve Pikiell and the men’s basketball team. And nine months after triumphing over Miami in the Pinstripe Bowl, our Scarlet Knights beat University of Washington, last year’s national championship runner-up, before the second largest crowd in SHI Stadium history. If you were lucky enough to have been there, you will know that it was an evening that showed the world what New Jersey pride looks like.

Away from the runway, pitch, court, mat, and field, if you want to document our excellence further, look no farther than our incredible faculty. They’re the reason we have the #1 graduate programs in the country in African American History and Women’s History, #2 in School Library Media, and #7 in Discrete Mathematics, to cite a few examples. And they’re why our research portfolio is soaring. In the past year, Rutgers faculty earned a record $970 million in research grants and sponsored programs in fields such as artificial intelligence, climate resilience, and mitochondrial biology. Our researchers are studying tobacco cessation, developing a sweeter, firmer blueberry, assessing environmental impacts on pregnancy and child health, and so much more.

This is important, so let me be a bit more specific. Take, for example, Daniel Kopp, a three-time graduate of Rutgers, with a Ph.D. in materials science and engineering. He and his thesis advisor, Professor Rick Riman, invented a new way of making cement—one that literally lowers the temperature required in the manufacturing process by about 1,000 degrees Celsius, which will mean a huge, consequential decrease in concrete’s carbon footprint. The U.S. Department of Energy looked at what they were doing and awarded a $14.5 million grant to their startup company, Queens Carbon, to scale up their invention to revolutionize the cement industry without compromising cost or quality. Daniel is watching this via livestream from Boston where he is fundraising for Queens Carbon. Rick, however, is with us tonight. Let’s acknowledge them both.

Here's another example. Five years ago, a Rutgers team led by Professor Ray Panettieri won a $29 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to build a statewide network dedicated to clinical and translational science—the kind of work that turns laboratory discoveries into actual treatments that save and extend lives. This alliance, called NJ ACTS for short, helped Rutgers contribute immensely to Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine clinical trials and enabled Rutgers to become a hub for helping researchers nationwide study the long-term impacts of COVID in children.

Apparently, the NIH liked what it saw, and this year it gave NJ ACTS a new grant, this time for $39 million, to build on the great work already accomplished and to pursue opportunities in critical areas such as gene therapy clinical trials and opioid overdose prevention.

Now we want to equip our faculty to reach even higher. I told Prabhas Moghe, our chief academic officer, to elevate excellence across Rutgers in ways that change how the world sees us and how we prepare students for the future. Prabhas in turn challenged our chancellors to launch transformative projects under an umbrella we call Roadmaps for Excellence, and today those projects are ready to take off:

In Newark, an institute that uses data science and technology to address problems facing urban communities, such as health inequities, incarceration, and environmental justice. In Camden, an initiative that pulls together the best minds from childhood studies, economics, public policy, criminal justice, and other disparate fields to focus on Prevention Science. In New Brunswick, a project centered on artificial intelligence and data science that will drive innovative research collaborations and student programming across all schools. And at Rutgers Health, a center that brings the power of medical informatics and AI to bear on the greatest medical and clinical challenges of the 21st century.

Altogether, Roadmaps will invest $30 million in seed funds over several years as we recruit new faculty, start new programs, and improve our students’ readiness for cutting-edge careers. Our hope is, that with your support, these initiatives will enable Rutgers to rise even higher as a model of academic strength and a magnet for the very best faculty in the world.

I’ve been lingering over our students and faculty, and for good reason. When we think about university life we think of their worlds and their experiences. But I also know how much Rutgers staff contribute to that experience, in both subtle and sometimes profound ways. The nudge from an academic advisor, the smile from a dining services worker, the help from a campus police officer or a financial aid employee, the attentive ear of a residence life staff member, or the friendly voice of a department secretary.

And that doesn’t even count all the behind-the-scenes work that a student may never see: the human resources team that onboards their amazing new professor; the building and grounds worker who shows up at 4 a.m. to clear sidewalks after a snowstorm; the payroll officer who makes sure they get paid on time for their on-campus job.

Representing university staff tonight is Nicky Isaacson, one of the clinical social workers at our New Brunswick counseling center. Nicky, my wife Aisling, and I grew up in the same town and went to the same high school. Despite these proximities, Aisling and I didn’t know Nicky all that well before we moved to Rutgers. But from the moment we arrived, Nicky, and her husband Jay Crosson, embodied the spirit of the beloved community and welcomed us as old, dear friends. On more than a few occasions, she guided us to safe harbors just as she has done for countless students who seek her and her colleagues’ assistance during troubled times. Nicky, please rise and allow us to thank you.

One of my primary missions when I came to Rutgers four years ago was to sharpen the narrative about this place. Rutgers was already doing amazing things, and under my predecessor, Bob Barchi, we had made important investments in infrastructure, in systems, and in people. My job was to talk about everything that Rutgers was doing—and doing well. Although COVID may have slowed us down for a bit, the story still got out. And more and more people—inside and outside the Rutgers community—began to take notice and truly see our excellence. Better yet, they started to spread the story, and to support our mission in new and meaningful ways.

Our friends in the Legislature, on Capitol Hill, and in the Governor’s Office all took the time to hear our story, to see where Rutgers is making a difference for our students, for the state, for patients, and for communities. We’ve worked hard to build these relationships and to be a true partner. And they’ve responded by investing in our mission year after year.

That funding has, in part, enabled us to put shovels in the ground for transformational infrastructure projects on all our campuses. The HELIX project in downtown New Brunswick, which will include a new home for Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and a center for translational science. The Cooper Street Gateway project in Camden, which will enrich the student experience and provide a gathering space for the campus and the community. And the renovation and expansion of the New Jersey Medical School’s Medical Science Building in Newark, which will bring better research capability, attract new research funding, and give better care for the patients it serves.

And, of course, these facilities in Newark and New Brunswick will be essential pieces of the merged Rutgers School of Medicine, which is deliberatively but steadily taking shape over a five-year period.

Our partners in government believed in Rutgers—and so did you.

Last year, when we set an ambitious fundraising goal of $250 million, the Rutgers community met that goal and exceeded it. That happened not because of three or four major donors, as vital as those are, and not through a special milestone appeal. No, it happened because Rutgers donors by the thousands heard our story, shared our values, and personally committed themselves to our mission. Some 34,000 unique donors, more than 7,500 of whom were first-time donors, gave to Rutgers this year. Whether giving, attending events, volunteering, or responding to our communications, over 285,000 alums engaged with Rutgers with renewed pride and willingness to reconnect to their alma mater. This was a new level of engagement we’ve been working toward for years.

You made that happen. You, our stakeholders, made that happen.

While these accomplishments are great, now is not the time to rest. In order to keep moving forward, to address the important work ahead, I am looking to you to carry the mantel of responsibility so that we don’t lose the ground we’ve gained in recent years. Just take a moment to remember how far we have traveled.

For example, recognize what the U.S. News rankings have made clear, two years in a row: we are an elite institution with outstanding academics and a deep commitment to social mobility across all our campuses.

Rutgers–New Brunswick stands once again as #15 among all public universities in the nation, with only four Big Ten schools ranked higher than us, and that’s even counting #1 UCLA, which joined the conference this year. That’s extraordinary company.

Just as significant, Rutgers–Newark moved up to #39 among public universities and Rutgers–Camden has moved up to #46. Among all national universities, public and private, each of our three locations is in the Top 100. 

If that’s not enough—and it’s never enough—let’s consider what else U.S. News said about us: Rutgers–Newark is number five in the country—in the country—in social mobility, which measures how well we enroll and graduate economically disadvantaged students. Camden jumped to #15 and New Brunswick to #36 on that same score. And all three of our locations rank in the top 25 for the graduation rate of our students receiving Pell Grants.

This evening you’ve already met a few of our students—senior Brielle Fedorko, who introduced me, first-year student Efesson Meyer, and seniors Ethan Dreyer and Angelina Vertiz, all of whom are incredible ambassadors for Rutgers. Since this is my final Stakeholder Address, I thought it would be good to check in on former undergraduates who were part of my first two addresses.

In 2022, I was introduced to you by Allison Smith, then the president of the Rutgers University Student Assembly, who graduated the following May with a degree in criminal justice, and with minors in political science and public policy and psychology. Today, Ally is a graduate student in the Bloustein School, an intern with KPMG, and a graduate intern in the Violence Prevention and Victim Assistance office at Rutgers.

Last year, Cassandra Vega introduced me. She graduated Rutgers this past spring with a B.A. in political science and double minors in Latino and Caribbean Studies and Women’s and Gender Studies. Over the summer she was a policy coordinator in the New Jersey Department of Labor and Workforce Development. Today she is a Coro Fellow in Public Affairs, working within the New York City Economic Development Corporation. Tomorrow, I suspect, she will be running the country.

And then there’s Julianna Johnson, Rutgers 2023, who sent me an email the morning of last year’s Stakeholder’s Address that I inserted into my speech at the last minute. On that occasion, she was expressing her appreciation for Rutgers and all the opportunities afforded by her education here.

It now seems we have a pattern. A few weeks ago, Julianna sent me an update about her time as a Fulbright Fellow, teaching at two low-resourced schools in Taiwan.

“I know,” she wrote, “that my Fulbright experience would not have been possible if not for the support I received from the Rutgers community. While we are in college, we often fail to recognize the many lessons we learn from those who help us along the way as we focus on being independent and achieving our goals. I drew heavily on all that I learned at Rutgers, both inside and outside of the classroom, and know that this past year would have been far more challenging if not for those lessons. As a freshman, I would never have dreamed any of this was in my future. The academic and personal support and encouragement I received from the Rutgers community made all the difference for me and I tried my best to model that behavior with my own students and colleagues.”

Ally, Cassie, and Julianna are with us tonight. Please stand up so we can recognize and applaud you.

Serving the Common Good

Each of these examples—and they are, of course, just a few among many thousands of remarkable students and alumni who made the most of their time at Rutgers—each of these young people are exemplars of the values I hold dear: a commitment to excellence and access, a tremendous sense of the value in community building, and a determination to contribute to the common good. They want to make the world better for other people.

With this in mind, I want to return to a theme I struck early in my tenure at Rutgers. In 2021, the New York Times asked me to contribute an essay on what I thought would heal a broken country. I wrote about universal national service as a way to meet and understand people different from ourselves and as a means to rekindle a commitment to civil discourse. What came out of that project was a question that has continued to run through my tenure as president: how can we at Rutgers strengthen and advance our nearly 250-year national experiment in democracy through civic engagement and public service?

This question led directly to the Scarlet Service initiative that, for three summers now, has placed Rutgers students in paid internships at nonprofit agencies and government offices, at first in the New Jersey area and now also in Washington, DC. Hundreds of our students have taken part in Scarlet Service, touching the lives of children with special needs, families in danger of homelessness, legislative constituents, immigrants, the formerly incarcerated, hospital patients, neighborhood groups, and those battling mental health and addiction challenges. They have served in Congressional offices, museums, think tanks, federal agencies, and national advocacy organizations.

These students have had remarkable—and, for some, life-defining—experiences in serving others and in working for the greater good. Just as important, their work has made life better and brought hope to others in difficult circumstances.

My focus on civic engagement and civil discourse also inspired the first-year seminar course I have been teaching the past two fall semesters: “Citizenship, Institutions, and the Public.” Each week the students hear from remarkable leaders in the public, private, and non-profit sectors about how we might preserve our democratic institutions. We’ve heard from Chris Caren, the CEO of Turnitin, about the implications of artificial intelligence on our public life. Rutgers graduate Mike Emanuel, of FOX News, came back to talk about the importance of being a discerning consumer of news and commentary. And tomorrow I will welcome Sherrilyn Ifill, civil rights activist and former president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, who will be speaking about the vital work of legal advocacy.

The conversations in our classes have been rich and even inspiring. And I can’t say enough about the thoughtful questions that my students have been posing. If you want to feel great about the future of our nation, watch these videos, especially the Q&A at the end.

I’m excited about our students in Scarlet Service and in my seminar, but I also recognize a broader goal: making Rutgers University synonymous with civic engagement by creating a university-wide culture of service. I want people across the country to say, “Look at what’s happening at Rutgers. How can we engage our students and our faculty in serving the common good like they’re doing?”

As I’ve said before, Rutgers already does amazing work on every campus in this regard. But I believed that we could do more and be more intentional as a university about that mission. So last winter I asked some of our best minds, led by Camden Senior Vice Chancellor Nyeema Watson and Eagleton Institute Director Elizabeth Matto, to give me recommendations. How can we remove barriers to participation? How can we increase the incentives for faculty to build public service into their coursework? How can we best connect with community partners?

This summer they gave me a set of outstanding recommendations: let’s implement a centralized online platform to catalog the opportunities for civic engagement and track participation; let’s put into practice new ideas to encourage faculty to integrate service in their curriculum, through stipends, credits, and training.

Let’s do a much better job of marketing the initiatives we already have under way, and of valuing civic engagement in our promotion and tenure guidelines; let’s create a universitywide civic engagement council to connect leaders across the campuses. And, of course, let’s increase strategic funding to expand this great work.

I have accepted their recommendations, and I am more than eager to implement them. Indeed, if I can connect my name with anything that lives on at Rutgers after I have stepped down, it is this: to affirm to ourselves and the world that Rutgers is deeply and passionately committed to advancing the common good; to civic preparedness; to civil discourse. So, thank you, Nyeema, thank you, Elizabeth, both of whom are here—and thank you to the entire Task Force on Civic Engagement, several members of which are also able to join us in person: Stuart Shapiro, Francine Pfeiffer, and Brian Schilling.

As I reflect on the Task Force’s recommendations, I pledge that my work on this front will continue in earnest every remaining day of my presidency. And while I can’t say much more than this tonight, I hope that in the coming weeks I’ll be able to say more definitively how we will support and tie all these important recommendations together.

Dare to Believe

Friends, as I close this address, I want to offer you an invitation. It’s an invitation that I hope you’ll take up today and tomorrow, but even more importantly, one that you’ll embrace long after my presidency. I invite you to dare.

Dare to believe that Rutgers isn’t just on the rise—it is, in fact, now, today, among the best in the nation and in the world. That’s in part because so many of you have been telling the story of our excellence.

Dare to believe that while our brightest days are ahead of us, they’re already awfully bright. That’s in part because so many of you have made them brighter through your hard work on our behalf.

Dare to believe in our students—like the ones you’ve met tonight—and the amazing things they will achieve because of their Rutgers education. That’s in part because of the support so many of you have given to Scarlet Promise Grants and other life-changing scholarship programs.

Dare to believe in Rutgers Athletics, which gives us such a great platform on which to introduce Rutgers to folks across the country. That’s in part because of the generous support so many of you give, both in the stands and in your gifts.

Dare to believe in our research excellence, as we prepare to enter the “Billion Dollar Club” of institutions earning that much in annual grants.

Dare to believe in the power of civic engagement, and in our university’s enormous potential to become a model for the nation in serving the common good.

Dare to invest in our future, whether that’s a financial contribution you make, an internship you provide for one of our amazing students, or a conversation you have with a potential donor.

I just asked a lot of you, I know, but I consider these dares to be safe bets. Why am I so confident? Because when I came here, I dared to believe in you, and before I knew it, you dared to believe in me. As I stand before you, I can attest that these dares, these bets, paid off. Your belief has been transformative for me personally and for the university at large. 

You dared to believe and look at us now. You are our stakeholders. You are Rutgers. And We Are You.

Thank you.