Thankful for Rutgers' Excellence

November 21, 2023

Members of the Rutgers Faculty,

As Thanksgiving approaches, I want to thank all of you for the role you play in making Rutgers one of the best public research universities in the country. 

Across the institution—Camden, Newark, New Brunswick, and Rutgers Health—you are making world-shaping discoveries and pursuing brilliant scholarship. Your commitment to excellence also includes exceptional teaching and innovations in pedagogy, benefiting students in our classrooms, studios, laboratories and beyond and preparing them to bring their talents to the world.

I take immense pride in the strength of our faculty, our instructors, our lecturers—knowing that we share uniformly high standards across our great university. We are a unified institution in pursuit of excellence. While each of our campuses expresses our mission relative to its community, we collectively are realizing the benefit of a world-class faculty that relentlessly aspires to the same level of accomplishment, rigor, and distinction. 

It is easy to point to the prominence of Rutgers faculty, as these examples illustrate: In Camden, Professor Emily Marker’s recent American Historical Association prize; in Newark, Professor Mark Gluck’s interdisciplinary team earning a new NIH grant for its study of Alzheimer’s disease in African Americans; in New Brunswick, Professor Juliane Gross’s selection for the geology team supporting the first crewed lunar landing mission in a half-century; and at Rutgers Health, Professor Jeffrey Carson’s co-chairing an international panel on improving blood transfusion outcomes. These are just some of the latest examples of how Rutgers faculty members stand out again and again among those of our peers.

We are also seeing the fruits of your efforts more broadly. Each of our undergraduate campuses is now among the top 100 in the recent U.S. News & World Report rankings—one of very few universities in the country that can make such a claim. Our research grants are approaching $1 billion a year, bolstered by large collaborative grants and our strength in fields like computational biology. Driven by your profound commitment to our students, we continue to set the standard for Pell-recipient graduation rates and social mobility.

Complementing the terrific work of Rutgers professors, lecturers, researchers, and clinicians is the commitment of our dedicated staff and administrators, who keep our university running, serve our students and faculty and the broader public in myriad ways, ensure the safety of our campuses, and help us build toward an even more promising future.

This dedication creates an environment in which our students can thrive—and they do. In the classroom, on the stage, in the lab, on the field, in the studio, on the campus, and in the community, Rutgers students bring intelligence, talent, and passion to their work. And those abilities make Rutgers graduates become outstanding hires as they enter the workforce.

It is an honor for me to lead a university that speaks so forcefully to the democratic possibilities of higher education, and to work alongside such gifted and committed colleagues. For all you do, in concert with our staff, alumni, board members, donors, and friends who share in our mission and support our students, I offer my deep gratitude and enduring admiration.

Sincerely,

Jonathan Holloway
President and University Professor