Rutgers University: Improvement in programs, facilities for 2018-19 school year

Students, faculty and alumni will arrive on Rutgers University New Brunswick and Piscataway campuses this fall to find new or upgraded facilities, resources and amenities.

They include an online student platform, dedicated spaces for alumni, the highly anticipated Richard Weeks Hall of Engineering on Busch Campus in Piscataway, a new home in downtown New Brunswick for the School of Arts and Sciences, and the new Paul Robeson Plaza.

Move for School of Arts and Sciences

The largest academic unit at Rutgers–New Brunswick, School of Arts and Sciences has moved some of its most innovative projects and operations to an office building at 1 Spring St.

The move brings an influx of university employees, faculty and professional staff, to the downtown area, along with a myriad of initiatives. They include some with a strong public health focus, such as a psychology lab that examines underlying factors for nicotine addiction, language processing studies involving autism, and research on the genetic disorder Tourette’s Syndrome. The building also includes a robotics lab, the Rutgers Oral History Archives, and The Language Center.

“We are bringing a microcosm of arts and sciences to downtown New Brunswick,” said Peter March, the school’s executive dean. “This is an exciting development with many benefits for the school and for the city. Many of the units coming into the Spring Street location work directly with the public, so rather than bringing folks out to some far corner of campus, we now have a centralized location for them to come.”

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March said the move helps the school solve persistent space shortages on campus while also making some of its projects more accessible to the public. 

The school hosted an open house on Aug. 29 to introduce itself to the city and give demonstrations of some of the projects that will be in the building. New Brunswick Mayor James Cahill, Rutgers Interim Chancellor Chris Molloy, and other Rutgers leaders and renowned researchers attended.

The demonstrations included robotics, psychological approaches to smoking cessation, and oral history interviews with New Jersey citizens. Attendees also saw The Language Center’s sophisticated videoconferencing systems that allows Rutgers students to take courses at other Big Ten schools without leaving campus.

Adam Khanu, a senior biology major and psychology minor who is a research assistant in the Department of Psychology’s new offices and labs, said he is looking forward to the convenience of larger working space and closer proximity to downtown stores, restaurants and transportation

“This is a very nice building,” Khanu said. “There’s more space, so we’re going to be able to do bigger and better things and be able to expand. It’s also really close to a bus stop, which is convenient for fellow RA’s who live on campus and commute.”

The School of Arts and Sciences offers majors and minors across the academic spectrum and has roots that go back to Rutgers’ Colonial beginnings. Most of the school’s day-to-day teaching, research, and service will continue to take place on the Rutgers campuses in New Brunswick and Piscataway.

But the move is a particularly beneficial change for the Rutgers Oral History Archives, which records the stories of New Jersey citizens, including many elderly veterans.  Shaun Illingworth, the director of the archives, said the new location has parking for his interviewees, better acoustics, and more room for students working with him.

“This is going to make us a better resource for the people of New Jersey and the university community as we broaden the scope of our program to include more people around the state,” Illingworth said.

“Our original office was above the academic building,” added Avery Kelley, a student employee of the Oral History Archives. “A lot of students would walk in there, so it was very disruptive, but now we have the space to do more work.”

The new site brings intellectual capital and capabilities that complement the plan by city and state officials to build an “innovation hub” in New Brunswick. The Spring Street location is adjacent to the construction site for a proposed science and technology research center.

March said he wants the Spring Street building to function as an incubator for students developing their own innovations.

“As Rutgers’ largest school, we welcome the vision for an innovation hub in New Brunswick,” March said. “We come as like-minded and supportive neighbors bringing our own hub.”

Other centers and departments with specialized units moving to Spring Street include:

• Cognitive Science
• Computer Science
• Genetics
• Linguistics
• Spanish and Portuguese
• World Language.

Gio Sayad, owner of Gio’s Deli adjacent to the new Arts & Sciences building, said he hopes that hungry students and research scientists come visit his two-year-old business.

“Hopefully, it gives business around here a boost,” Sayad said.

myRutgers

Students used to have to visit various sites to successfully navigate to the many student services apps and forms — but not anymore.

As part of a student experience improvement initiative, Rutgers recently unveiled an upgraded myRutgers student portal that provides a mobile-friendly dashboard to access Rutgers student services apps. There, students can view grades and transcripts, register for courses, manage financial aid, see Rutgers debit card balances, access email and calendar, and view important alerts and reminders.

David Badger, Rutgers director of information technology in the Office of Information Technology Enterprise Application Services, said the upgraded myRutgers portal reduces the complexity for students to find and use apps. It is designed for students at all Rutgers locations.

“Your dashboard presents only the widgets for the apps you use — it’s personalized for every student,” Badger said.

“For any Rutgers student, it’s a saving grace,” Khanu said. “At school, you use it constantly to check on a bus. It’s so convenient … as opposed to having to look at a bunch of different apps for things online.”

The team is exploring future enhancements, including information from learning management systems, such as Canvas, Sakai, Blackboard and Moodle, plus advisory services, career services, to-do-lists and more. Students can log into myRutgers at my.rutgers.edu.

Paul Robeson Plaza

A groundbreaking ceremony for the Paul Robeson Plaza in the Vorhees Mall behind Ford Hall on College Avenue in New Brunswick will take place 11 a.m. Wednesday, Sept. 5.

Paul Robeson Plaza is an initiative conceived and championed by the Class of 1971 for its 45th anniversary. The three-year fundraising campaign was led by the Class of 1971 and assisted by the Rutgers African-American Alumni Alliance with the mutual goal of honoring the legacy of the legendary Rutgers College alumnus. The Plaza will open at a dedication ceremony in the spring.

"Paul Robeson is a global figure of the 20th century who was influential in many areas, such as human rights, peace and freedoms,” said Jim Savage, chair, Rutgers Class of 1971 Milestone Campaign Committee to Build Paul Robeson Plaza. “We felt that there should be a tribute to Robeson on Rutgers' College Avenue Campus that went beyond just placing his name on a building. We wanted to create a monument that displayed photographs of Robeson etched into the granite, acknowledgments of the contributions he made to the world, and his own quotes that would encourage people to learn more about him. He left a great legacy to this world as a role model of a person who is concerned about social justice and human rights."

The groundbreaking precedes the January kickoff of a year-long celebration of the centennial of Robeson’s graduation in 1919, during which he served as valedictorian. The celebration will feature lectures, performances, art exhibitions and more.

Accomplished as a scholar, athlete, activist and performing artist of stage and screen, Robeson is one of Rutgers’ most distinguished alumni and the quintessential 20th-century Renaissance man, the university said in a news release. The son of a runaway slave, Robeson attended Rutgers College in New Brunswick on an academic scholarship he received upon graduating from Somerville High School. He was the university’s third black student and its first black football player. 

At Rutgers, “Robey” — as he was known at school — showed his prowess on the athletic field as well as in the classroom. He won 12 varsity letters in football, basketball, baseball and track. He was a two-time All-American in football, who is in the College Football Hall of Fame. His scholarly accomplishments included being inducted into the Phi Beta Kappa Society and Rutgers’ Cap & Skull Society. He delivered the commencement address to his graduating class in 1919. 

Khanu said he is pleased to see Rutgers honoring its influential alumnus.

“It’s a form of motivation for minority students on campus because of everything he’s contributed during his time at Rutgers and what he’s done for minorities,” he said. “We already have the Paul Robeson Center that does a lot for black organizations, so going in further by having that monument is an honor that I’m glad that Rutgers is doing.”

Here are look at several other recent Rutgers developments in athletics, community outreach, education programs, additional student services, and buildings:

Athletics

The Rutgers Athletic Center in Piscataway has a new basketball court on which the Big 10 men’s and women’s teams will play this year. An outline of New Jersey is displayed at center court along with Block R spirit mark. This serves to project the pride the Scarlet Knights have in representing The State University of New Jersey, the athletics department said.

“We are The State University of New Jersey and our court now reflects that,” Men’s Basketball Head Coach Steve Pikiell said.

“We’ve put the map of New Jersey front-and-center on our basketball court,” Director of Athletics Pat Hobbs added. “We’re ‘Jersey,’ and we are very proud of being ‘Jersey.’ We now have one of the most identifiable floors in the country.”

The design features light and dark wood stains to define court sections and provides a more pronounced look within the 18,000 square feet of maple that installed. The installation required 115,000 nails, 40,000 staples, and 16 gallons of paint.

Community outreach

EATING HEALTHY: Christopher Ackerman, a research associate at the Center for Tobacco Studies at Rutgers School of Public Health and an amateur chef, is one of the instructors at “Coqui the Chef,” a nonprofit educational program founded by South Bronx native Tania Lopez. Coqui the Chef is a puppet who teaches urban children how to cook nutritious recipes from inexpensive ingredients found in their neighborhood stores.

According to Rutgers, the program is an oasis in what the U.S. Department of Agriculture calls one of the nation’s largest urban food deserts: a low-income community with little or no access to inexpensive, healthy food.

“Eating healthy and affordably can seem an impossibility to many city residents,” Ackerman said. “With supermarkets a rarity in urban centers, residents often think that nutritious meals are out of their reach and rely on high-fat fast food or packaged convenience store selections instead. We want to teach children while they are young that they can cook simple, nutritious meals.”

A partnership between Rutgers and 4-H is giving children the opportunity to work with university scientists on urban gardening, STEM exploration and more. The hope is that by educating today’s urban youth about food systems and their community’s food needs, they will have the knowledge to advocate for themselves and their neighbors tomorrow.

“Once they understand where their food comes from and how much work goes into it, kids are empowered to be a part of their food system rather than be victims of their food system,” Marissa Staffen, a Rutgers’ 4-H agent and 2012 graduate of Rutgers-Newark’s School of Public Affairs and Administration.

YOUTH LEARNING ABOUT SCIENCE RESEACH: Beyond agriculture, 4-H STEM programs allow youth to experience Rutgers’ latest research through hands-on investigations alongside scientists and engineers. Science Saturdays connects middle school students with researchers. These interactions benefit children and faculty, said Rachel Lyons, chairwoman of Rutgers University’s Department of 4-H Youth Development, who grew up on a dairy farm in Hillsborough and participated in 4-H growing up.

“For those with projects funded through the National Science Foundation, there are broader impact requirements,” she said. “We train faculty to take their current research and message it in an appropriate way to students of varying ages so they can meet that goal — and our goal of getting high-level science out to kids who may not have access to it.”

All that knowledge recently converged at the annual 4-H fairs this summer, Lyons said.

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“At the fairs, our kids are able to see their peers showcasing not just their animals and harvests but also their science or art project,” she said. “They are learning about public presentation, teamwork and the commonalities of their experiences.”

For Edison seventh-grader Atharva Kulkarni, this summer was a time to continue his passion — cancer research — while attending a three-week Rutgers Summer Scholars Program in New Brunswick, part of Rutgers Summer Session from the Division of Continuing Studies. Of the 145 students in the program, the majority are high school juniors and seniors.

After learning about how his grandmother had suffered from breast cancer and a classmate’s mother who recently passed away from metastasized breast cancer, Kulkarni decided that he wanted to study this insidious condition and to help in the fight to find a cure.

“Cancer is a very clever illness,” he said. "It recurs in unpredictable ways. It is a really hard disease for doctors and patients to fight because it has a mind of its own. I want to understand that mind.”

IMMIGRATION AND INCLUSION: At a time when immigration is a divisive issue in the nation, Rutgers Graduate School of Education (Rutgers GSE) is working with immigrants to build inclusive societies. This year, the school’s Conversation Tree Program won a national award for best practices in education for bringing together immigrant communities with Rutgers students to practice every day English language skills, so they can talk to their children's teachers, their boss and doctors. 

Through such outreaches as The Conversation Café, the program aims to break down stereotypes on various sides of contentious issues. Students also benefit by developing skills to sympathetically interact with people for whom English is a new language. 

“Rutgers GSE is dedicated to building inclusive communities and has developed significant and intentional partnership activities with New Jersey school districts and communities,” Rutgers GSE Interim Dean Clark Chinn said. “The Conversation Café is one illustration of this work that provides opportunities for students and community members to build new social networks and break stereotypes on both sides. We are honored by the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education’s recognition of our work.”  

Education programs

Rutgers Graduate School of Education recently launched the Urban Social Justice Teacher Education Program to prepare student teachers to advance equity in education and address issues of social justice in their schools. School districts in Bound Brook, Franklin Township, Highland Park, New Brunswick, North Brunswick, Neptune and Rahway comprise the GSE Community School Partnership Network.

The Center for HR and Leadership Development at the School of Management and Labor Relations will offer a new executive certificate program, “HR at the Crossroads.” Geared toward HR pros, this program will tackle issues related to artificial intelligence, analytics, big data, the gig economy and more.

Getting ahead of new, advanced standards that are coming in the field of nutrition and dietetics, Rutgers School of Health Professions was selected as the first in the country to develop and pilot a graduate future-education model: an entry-level masters of science in clinical nutrition.

New standards set by the credentialing agency for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics will kick in by 2024. Rutgers Program Director Dr. Jennifer Tomesko said a master’s rather than a bachelor's degree will be needed to become a registered dietitian nutritionist in recognition of the level of clinical expertise and support they provide interprofessional health care teams.

“We’re innovative and always ready to take on a challenge,” said Tomesko, who will be starting the new program with 22 students on Sept. 4.

Rutgers School of Health Professions and University Behavioral Health at Rutgers are starting the nation's first academic-based peer support certification program based on shared experiences for veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder, recovering addicts and alcoholics and more. The program meets a growing need for recovery supports for people who face trauma, mental illness and opioid dependence, Director Amy Spagnolo said.

“The peer support workforce has promise to assist many people in recovering their lives, on their terms,” Spagnolo said.

Credits earned can be applied later to an associate's or bachelor's degree in psychiatric rehabilitation.

Student services

School of Arts and Sciences’ new “Career Explorations in Arts and Sciences Initiative” features an elective for sophomores and juniors to help think deeply about the future, develop resources and skills to navigate the job market, and continue evolving throughout their working lives.

The initiative includes campus events that introduce students to Arts and Sciences’ network of alumni. Rather than relying solely on university Career Services, this innovative new program enlists faculty and alumni to get students thinking early on about their lives, the university said. Hundreds of students have been signing up, according to the university.

Buildings and facilities

Many recently completed physical structures across the university will streamline academic and social experiences, said John Shulack, vice president of University Facilities and Capital Planning.

“The Richard M. Weeks Hall of Engineering is the biggest project we’ve completed this fall,” Shulack said.

The environmentally sustainable Weeks Hall, conceived as an interdisciplinary “Engineering Gateway,” is a state-of-the-art 104,000 square foot facility that offers students, faculty, and researchers an advanced infrastructure of smart classrooms and collaborative laboratories. The recently opened hall will focus on robotics, urban and coastal water systems, geosystems, environmental process and molecular analysis, energy and more.  

The new four-story, 145,000 square-foot, state-of-the-art home of the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology provides teaching, laboratory and support space that aims to enable Rutgers–New Brunswick to expand and accelerate its research in drug design, alternative energy, biomaterials and nanotechnology.

The Alumni House at Rutgers–New Brunswick at Van Nest Hall, 19 College Ave., also opens its doors this fall. This first-ever dedicated alumni space at Rutgers–New Brunswick offers a meeting room for alumni groups and a warm welcome to all visiting graduates, the university said.

The seventh-floor renovation of the Clinical Academic Building will provide more than 26,000 square feet of administrative and laboratory space for the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School Department of Medicine when completed in the spring. The renovation will offer flexible, open lab space for increased visibility, as well as collaboration and interaction among researchers, administrators, clinicians and residents. Updated spaces will include new offices, tissue culture rooms and a microscopy suite.

The School of Management and Labor Relations will unveil its newly remodeled Labor Education Center in New Brunswick and a new student lounge at the Janice H. Levin Building in Piscataway, where students will enjoy bright, modern spaces for learning and relaxing between classes.

Upgrades to the Labor Education Center include:

• New technology, furniture, carpeting, and paint in classrooms
• Teleconference/satellite class capability
• A new entryway and brighter hallways
• Renovated men’s and women’s restrooms for students, faculty, and staff
• New faculty offices and a refurbished departmental suite
• A reimagined courtyard with improved accessibility.

Coming soon will be:  

• New outdoor seating for students
• Electronic directories
• HVAC updates in progress.

This fall, the School of Management and Labor Relations also debuts new and improved spaces for learning, studying, and relaxing between classes at the Levin Building. These include:

• A new student lounge with table and high-top seating for 60
• New furniture and podiums in three classrooms
• Two renovated conference rooms.
• An electronic directories will be added soon, the university said.

“This is more than just a fresh coat of paint,” Association Dean Elaine Stroud said. “You wouldn’t even recognize some of the spaces in these buildings. They’ve been gutted and reimagined with new furniture, new technology, and a new look and feel. It’s all part of our commitment to providing the best possible learning environment for our students.”

The Rutgers School of Dental Medicine will complete a $16 million state-funded renovation of its research laboratories, including new facilities for its Center for Oral Infectious Diseases and centers for microbiology and immunology. Researchers at the school have received millions of dollars in federal grants and venture capital to pursue a potential therapy for cancer and autoimmune diseases, as well as research into predatory bacteria funded by the U.S. military. It also received major funding to study the prevention and treatment of oral health diseases.

The new facilities will open in November and include new space for the school’s Center for Microbiology and Immunology. Original labs built during the 1970s and 1980s will be renovated and contain space for research on biomaterials and other projects. Labs for pain research and behavioral science also received an overhaul. 

Staff Writer Bob Makin: 732-565-7319; bmakin@gannett.com