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PHOTOCOPY
PRESERVATION
Service Speeches
Service
MEMORANDUM
To:
Eli Segal - Director, The White House Office of National Service
cc:
Jack & Rick
Fr:
Martin Rodgers
Re:
Summer Service/National Service Speech
February 27, 1993
Ten thoughts/items of info for the big show.
(1) I would try some lines like:
"Building on President Bush's leadership in this regard, let us create a diverse,
voluntary, largely decentralized system of national and community service which challenges
all of us -- of every race, color and creed, of every socioeconomic background, of every
generation and stage of life -- to serve according to our means. Let us go further to boldly
suggest that all forms of service -- stipended and unstipended, full-time and part-time, formal
and informal -- are of equal importance if we are to transform our nation and rebuild
community.
"The new Trust Fund will be the "engine" of that system providing thousands of
young people with the opportunity to serve in intensive, rigorous, full-time experiences. It
will direct the resources of our nation's young people at problems of critical national need
and in the process both empower young people and grow our emerging grassroots service
infrastructure."
And then something like what we did at the University of Notre Dame:
"Building on the best of our shared religious traditions, let us define ourselves by
what we give instead of what we got, by what we do for others instead of for ourselves..."
(2) Being at Rutgers and because the focus is on a Summer of Service, challenge
higher ed institutions and summer youth employment administrators. There have been
changes made in existing law that allow for existing College Work-Study and Job Training
Partnership Act dollars to be better spent by redirecting them to community service. We've
primed Reich/Reilly and Rivlin on these points. As in Pennsylvania, this will increase the
impact and reach of the President's Summer of Service and eventually his system of service
exponentially. For example if the President were to strongly encourage that 5-10% of the $1
billion+ in JTPA summer youth monies be used for new and existing youth corps we'd have
an explosion of service all over the country this summer. And the beauty is that there is no
way they can spend all that money well otherwise so this is very much on message. And
some $100 million would allow for a quantum leap of summer corps that would provide the
foundation for year-round corps (Many of the PA corps and City Year started as summer
corps). You should have received background materials on PA's Summer of Service already.
I'll send down a volume of clippings on PA's summer youth corps where some 3,900
youngsters served last summer throughout the state using JTPA dollars. This stuff is great
press.
(3) As with most higher ed institutions, Rutgers has service and citizenship included
in its mission statement and goals -- its a land-grant. Rutgers wants to be a "good neighbor"
See attached.
(4) A brief summary of the Commission on National and Community Service's grants
to NJ are also attached. Their corps incidentally leverages JTPA dollars and emphasizes
diversity. Diversity is a good selling point to emphasize especially in the wake of Los Angeles.
My generation is very and increasingly concerned about social issues and race. See
attached Freshman Norms. The civil rights generation was about changing laws and
integration. We are about the tougher task of changing hearts and proving that there is
value-added in diversity.
(5) Higher Education institutions should be further challenged to develop corps-
based models. There are many reasons why: (a) such models would reduce the start-up and
overhead costs of non-profit based corps -- group health care, administration, office space...
(b) universities already have a base in communities so they aren't completely outsiders and
universities are always trying to improve town-gown relations (c) this would allow some of
the corps to be residential using excess dormitory space or cheap "student housing" nearby
providing for a more intensive experience (d) the educational and the training needs of corps
could be met with campus resources and facilities (e) this would improve service-learning
efforts on the campus (f) this would allow the corps to be very diverse socioeconomically,
geographically and ethnically; and would do alot to encourage non-college or precollege
participants in such programs to go on to college. Many of the same points could be made
for high schools and as I mentioned in my paper this is a way of "putting a face" on the
Commission's B-1 and B-2 grants.
(6) The President should stress that all Departments and Agencies shall be asked to
help develop this system of national and community service in the context of their objectives
and mandates.
(7) The Trust should be presented in terms of improving educational access for all
but especially the middle class. I think it makes sense to refer to it as the National Education
and Service Trust, a NEST for America's future, but perhaps not for this speech. The savings
from direct loans and income-contingency should be reinvested in expanding higher
education/national service.
(8) I would stress the strong bi-partisan support for service across the ideological
spectrum. And while it's the most important issue we face and the issue is hot, I think we
run a tremendous risk connecting national service rhetoric to the economic stimulus battle
which is regretfully growing so partisan and ideologically-divided. Moreover, my generation
(the audience), the Twentysomething-and-younger generation, abhors ideological/partisan
battles. We don't have time for them, we're about what works. I do think you can link the
economic message and the service message without getting overly partisan if you do it as a
direct, personal challenge from the President to my generation and phrase them both in
terms of: an interplay between sacrifice and opportunity, deficit reduction being inextricably
bound to the quality of life of my and succeeding generations, our future = our country's,
asking us to lead and to recognize that real leadership exacts a toll each and every day and is
synonymous with service. Young people leading the nation out of the Depression through
hard work in the CCC is a decent analogy.
(9) I've attached Senator Wofford's remarks at the 30th anniversary of the Peace
Corps ceremony as well as his JFK School speech for some good rhetoric and ideas.
(10) I would stress the LOS ANGELES RIOTS as a poignant reason for service. Look
at the costs if we don't act: dependency in all its forms, alienation, turmoil Young folks can
shoot at us or build up our society I think we're nearing a year anniversary of the event, the
nation's attention has been drawn to it again with the civil suit, nothing was ever passed by
Congress or Bush because of stupid bi-partisan bickering when people were/are in desperate
need (fiddling while Rome burns), and finally Newark has a lot of the same problems as
South Central.
Best of luck and my direct number is 224.4158 if I can be of any further assistance.
MELANNE,
MEMORANDUM
FYI HOPE
To:
David Kusnet
this hElps & YOU ARE WE!!
Fr:
Martin Rodgers
MARTY
Re:
Monday's Service Speech
27 February 1993
I had a change of thought on the ride home last night and subsequently changed the
memo I'm sending to Eli this morning. It's enclosed but the basic difference is discussed
below:
I am still nervous about linking the economic message and the service message.
Again, I believe that your audience, my generation, the MTV-Twenty Something generation,
for the most part really abhors partisanship and ideologically (left versus right, neo-this,
paleo-that) bickering while Rome burns. We're about what works and getting to work.
But last night I thought you could link the economic message and the service
message without getting overly partisan if you do it as a direct, personal challenge from the
President to my generation and phrase them both in terms of: an interplay between sacrifice
and opportunity, deficit reduction being inextricably bound to the quality of life of my and
succeeding generations/ an issue of generational equity and intergenerational responsibility,
our future = our country's, asking us to lead and to recognize that real leadership exacts a
toll each and every day and is synonymous with service. Young people leading the nation
out of the Depression through hard work in the CCC is a decent analogy. The direct and
personal part cannot be underscored enough, the President should speak to/with us as equal
partners in the nation's future, don't speak at or about us.
The Los Angeles message is particularly strong for my generation because as all the
surveys suggest we are very concerned about social issues and race relations. And nothing
every happened in the wake of the riots last year because of nearly comedic partisanship and
gridlock and everyone wanting to add pork exactly what we can't stand. I've included the
most recent Freshman norms survey which is quite powerful. The civil rights generation
and movement changed laws and removed physical barriers between black and white, allowed
for integration; we are about the much tougher task of changing hearts, removing barriers
of the mind, and proving that there is value-added in diversity.
Three brief final thoughts:
I would try to phrase the Trust and the Summer of Service more as a challenges than
a programs. Mention like in the Inaugural and ND that the not so young have a role to play
as well.
And I think there is something to the idea that the Trust and national service hinge
on two fundamental assumptions/premises: that young people not only want to change the
country but that they can indeed change the country. Ask them to prove that, something
along the lines of
"In proposing the Trust and this Summer of Service, I knew that some would object.
I knew that we might draw opposition from powerful interests (banks, unions, elements of
the educational establishment...). But the underlying premise of the Trust is that I want to
put the future in your hands, is that I firmly believe that if given the opportunity your
creative talents and energies can change the face of this nation and rebuild community. And
given this belief, this confidence in you based on my own experience, I was equally
convinced that if we should have to battle for national service there was no voice more
powerful than that of your generation united. You all may not have money, only some of
you can vote now, you don't have a PAC, but I am convinced that together you can beat
back the critics of this plan and of your generation. This is your moment, your opportunity
to lead and to serve and to define your generation as one where service and leadership are
indistinguishable.
"Perhaps I'm wrong. Perhaps you don't want to serve. Perhaps you aren't ready to
lead. Perhaps the magazines and your critics are right: you are a lost, lazy, unconcerned,
laidback, me-first, numbed generation.
But I don't think so. I'm betting on you."
Higher Education Research Institute
The American Freshman: National Norms For Fall 1992
INCREASED FRESHMAN INTEREST IN RACIAL UNDERSTANDING AND SOCIAL CHANGE
Sharp increases in interest on issues related to race were
to the 1990 high of 20.6). The goal of "participating in a
recorded in the Cooperative Institutional Research Program's
community action program" reached its highest level of popu-
national survey of 1992 college freshmen. The percentage of
larity in more than a decade (26.1 percent, up from 23.5 percent
students for whom "helping to promote racial understanding"
in 1991). Nearly one out of three freshmen endorse "becoming
is an 'essential' or 'very important' goal jumped sharply to a
a community leader" as a 'very important' or 'essential' goal,
record high of 42.0 percent (up from 33.7 percent in 1991).
doubling the percentage recorded when this question was last
Similarly, six out of seven freshmen (85.1 percent) disagree
asked (in 1972, at 14.9 percent, compared to the 1992 percent-
with the proposition that "racial discrimination is no longer a
age of 30.7).
major problem in America," up from the levels recorded during
STRONG INTEREST IN THE HEALTH PROFESSIONS
the past several years (79.7 percent in 1991).
The percentage of new college freshmen indicating an
interest in majoring in the health professions reached a new
Commitment to Promoting Racial
Understanding as a Life Goal
high in 1992 (15.6 percent, up from 12.9 percent in 1991),
(Rated as 'Essential' or 'Very Important')
continuing a trend started five years ago. This year's interest
level represents a doubling of interest since 1987, when 7.2
45%
percent of the entering freshmen wanted to major in these fields.
Aspirations for health-related careers parallel the major field
40
interest trends, reaching all-time highs in both nursing (5.7
percent versus 5.2 percent in 1991, up from a low of 2.2 percent
35
in 1987) and medicine/dentistry (5.9 percent versus 4.9 percent
in 1991). Interest in allied health careers is also up sharply (8.0
30
percent in 1992, up from 4.8 percent in 1986).
The percentage of students planning business careers con-
25
tinues to decline, reaching 14.3 percent in the current survey
(compared to 15.6 percent in 1991 and the 1987 peak of 24.6
20
Freshman Interest in Business
15
1977
1982
1987
1992
30%
Business
majors
A record two out of every five freshmen participated in an
organized demonstration last year (40.5 percent, up from 39.0
25
percent in 1991). This figure continues a pattern of renewed
participation in protests and other forms of activism, which is
20
more than double the levels recorded during the late 1960s (15.5
and 16.3 percent in 1966 and 1967, respectively). Plans to
participate in student protests during college also remained
15
high (at 6.9 percent, down slightly from 1990's high of 7.1
Business
percent).
careers
10.
The survey also shows the percentage of students who say
that "influencing social values" is an 'essential' or 'very impor-
1968
1972
1976
1980
1984
1988
1992
tant' goal in life reached an all-time high (43.3 percent, up from
39.6 in 1991), while wanting to "influence the political struc-
percent). With this latest drop, interest in business careers has
ture" remained near record high levels (20.1 percent, compared
declined by almost one-half in just five years. Interest in
Higher Education Research Institute
University of California, Los Angeles
business-related majors shows a similar pattern of decline,
interest in business, suggest that students are beginning to shift
reaching its lowest point since 1972 (16.3 percent in 1992,
away from the materialistic philosophy that seemed to be
compared with 15.5 percent in 1972). Although freshman
dominant during the 1980s.
interest in business fields doubled between the 1960s and late
ACTIVITIES DURING HIGH SCHOOL
1980s, the strong and consistent declines over the past five
years have largely eliminated these gains.
The survey shows that freshman volunteerism is up this
year, with a record two out of three (65.6 percent) saying they
ECONOMIC WOES CONTINUE TO AFFECT STUDENTS
performed volunteer work during the past year (up from 64.7
The survey suggests that students have not been insulated
percent in 1991). The percentage of students planning to
from the effects of last year's stagnant economy, and that they
participate in volunteer or community service work during
are increasingly choosing colleges due to economic, not educa-
college increased to record levels as well, with 16.8 percent
tional, considerations. Record numbers of students indicate that
saying there was a 'very good chance' that they would perform
they selected their freshman college on the basis of low tuition
such activities while in college.
(30.0 percent, up from 27.7 in 1991), because of the offer of
Beer and alcohol consumption was down among this
financial assistance (28.3 percent, up from 27.8 in 1991), and
year's freshmen, with only about one-half of the freshmen
because they wanted to live near home (23.6 percent, up from
saying they 'frequently' or 'occasionally' drank beer (53.5
21.3 percent in 1991). The freshmen do not seem satisfied with
percent). This is a substantial drop from the three out of four
this situation: One in four indicate they are not attending their
freshmen who reported drinking beer in 1981 and 1982. The
'first choice' college (27.9 percent, up from 26.3 percent in
current frequency of beer consumption is now about equal to
1991 but down from the high of 32.1 percent in 1988) while a
that recorded in the late 1960s. Wine and liquor consumption
record number predict that there is a 'very good chance' they
also declined for the fourth straight year (to 53.9 percent from
will transfer to another college before graduating (16.1 percent,
66.7 in 1987-88). However, the number of students who agree
up from 13.0 percent last year).
that "marijuana should be legalized" continued to rebound for
A record one in six freshmen (17.4 percent, compared with
the third straight year (to 23.0 percent, up from the low of 16.7
13.1 percent in 1989) indicated a 'major concern' about their
percent in 1989). The current agreement level is nevertheless
ability to finance college, while the percentage who decided to
considerably lower than its peak in the late 1970s. Whether
go to college because they "could not find a job" reached an all-
changing attitudes toward the legalization of marijuana simply
time high (8.2 percent, up from 7.3 percent last year and 1978's
represents a liberalization of attitudes or increased usage is
low of 4.4 percent). A record number also reported their father's
unclear, but previous research suggests that attitude trends
occupation as 'unemployed' (3.3 percent).
parallel usage trends.
FRESHMAN ATTITUDES
FRESHMAN LIFE GOALS
The survey reveals continuing change in the self-assess-
Student commitment to "being very well off financially"
ment of political identification. The percentage of students who
dropped for the fifth straight year (from 75.6 percent in 1987 to
classify their political views as 'liberal' or 'far left' increased to
73.0 percent in 1992), while the percentage of students endors-
its highest point in 15 years (26.7 percent). The percentage who
say they are 'conservative' or 'far right' remained stable at 20.3
percent. This resurgence in political liberalism continues a
Freshman Life Goals
trend that started several years ago, but is still well below the
levels recorded during the late 1960s and early 1970s.
85%
The attitudes of freshmen toward specific political issues
Be very well
continue to be mostly liberal, while reflecting changes in the
off financially
larger political landscape. Interest in maintaining abortion
75
rights and improving the environment remain at or near their
respective all-time highs, with nearly two out of three students
65
(64.1 percent) agreeing that "abortion should be legal," and
almost nine out of ten (89.7 percent) agreeing that "the Federal
55
government is not doing enough to control environmental
Develop a meaningful
pollution." Agreement that "Nuclear disarmament is attain-
philosophy of life
able" reached a record high of 67.8 percent (up from a low of
45
54.2 in 1985) while the number of students who believe that
military spending should be increased reached its lowest point
35
ever (20.8 percent, down from 26.0 percent last year and a high
1968
1972
1976
1980
1984
1988
1992
of 38.8 percent in 1982).
The survey results were more mixed on issues of personal
ing "develop a meaningful philosophy of life" as a life goal
freedom. The percentage of students who agree that "employ-
increased for the fifth straight year (to 45.6 percent). These
ers should be allowed to require drug testing of employees or
trends, in combination with the dramatic declines in freshman
job applicants" increased for the fourth straight year to a record
high (82.4 percent). The percentage of freshmen who believe
In The American Freshman, data have been weighted to
that "it is important to have laws prohibiting homosexual
provide a normative profile of the American freshman popula-
relationships" dropped for the fifth straight year to its lowest
tion for individuals engaged in policy analysis, human resource
point ever (to 37.6 percent). Although nearly one-half of the
planning, campus administration, educational research, and
men in the survey (48.6 percent, compared with 28.3 percent of
guidance and counseling. The data are also useful to the general
the women) endorse this point of view, the agreement of both
community of current and future college students, their parents
men and women has dropped by a similar amount over the last
and to college faculty.
five years. Eight out of ten freshmen believe that "the Federal
The survey instrument, the Student Information Form, is
government should do more to control the sale of handguns"
revised annually to reflect the changing concerns of the aca-
(80.4 percent). A clear majority of freshmen also believe that
demic community and others who use the information. A major
"colleges should prohibit racist/sexist speech on campus" (61.2
purpose of the freshman survey is to provide initial input
percent for all freshmen), with support being strongest among
information for longitudinal research. Follow-up surveys of
women (64.5 percent versus 57.2 percent of the men).
individual students in each entering fresman cohort are rou-
Attitudes toward sex continue to change, with the number
tinely done two and four years after college entry via the
of students agreeing that "if two people really like each other,
College Student Survey. Longer-term follow-ups are con-
it's all right for them to have sex even if they've known each
ducted at various intervals depending on funding.
other only for a very short time" reaching a record low (44.2
The normative data presented in The American Freshman
percent, down sharply from 51.0 percent in 1990). Men, how-
are reported separately for men and for women, and for 35
ever, are nearly twice as likely to endorse this view (58.8
different groupings of institutions. The major stratifying fac-
percent, versus 31.9 percent for women). One in four women
tors are institutional race (predominantly black versus pre-
(25.2 percent) report that they frequently "discussed safe sex,"
dominantly white), control (public, private-nonsectarian, Ro-
compared with one in five men (19.0 percent). The percentage
man Catholic, Protestant), type (university, four-year college,
of freshmen who believe that "the only way to control AIDS is
two-year college), and the "selectivity level" of the institution.
through widespread, mandatory testing" declined for the fourth
straight year to a new low of 63.5 percent. Attitudes toward date
rape continue to change, with 11.1 percent of the freshmen
disagreeing that "just because a man thinks that a woman has
The Cooperative Institutional Research Program
'led him on' does not entitle him to have sex with her," the
lowest recorded value. However, 17.1 percent of the men
The Cooperative Institutional Research Program (CIRP)
disagree with this viewpoint (compared to 6.2 percent of the
is a national longitudinal study of American higher educa-
women), demonstrating there are still substantial gender differ-
tion. Established in 1966 by the American Council on
ences on this subject.
Education (ACE), the CIRP is now the nation's largest and
oldest continuing empirical study of American colleges and
The 1992 national survey involved questionnaires com-
college students. Since 1966, some 8 million students,
pleted by 304,935 freshmen entering a national sample of 606
100,00 faculty, and 1,300 institutions have participated in
two- and four-year colleges and universities. Of these, 213,630
CIRP surveys.
questionnaires from 404 institutions judged to have surveyed
the most representative samples of entering freshman were
The annual CIRP survey of entering freshmen is now
used to compute the national norms, which are statistically
administered through UCLA's Higher Education Research
adjusted to represent the nation's total population of approxi-
Institute, under the continuing sponsorship of the American
mately 1.7 million first-time freshmen. Since 1966, more than
Council on Education.
8 million students and 1,300 institutions have participated in the
survey.
Project Staff
This is the twenty-seventh annual report of national nor-
Eric L. Dey, Director
mative data on the characteristics of students attending Ameri-
Alexander W. Astin, Founding Director
can colleges and universities as first-time, full-time freshmen.
William S. Korn, Associate Director for Operations
This series, initiated in Fall 1966, is a project of the Cooperative
Ellyne Riggs, Office Manager
Institutional Research Program (CIRP), a continuing longitudi-
nal study of the American higher education system sponsored
For additional information about the CIRP, please write or call:
by the American Council on Education (ACE) and the Graduate
Higher Education Research Institute
School of Education at the University of California, Los Ange-
UCLA, Graduate School of Education
les.
405 Hilgard Avenue/320 Moore Hall
The principal purpose of the CIRP is to assess the effects
Los Angeles, CA 90024-1521
of college on students (see Astin, et al., 1966). During the past
Phone: (310) 825-1925
27 years the CIRP has generated an array of normative, substan-
Facsimile: (310) 206-2228
tive, and methodological research about a wide range of issues
BitNet: ebolsif@uclamvs
in American higher education.
Upcoming 1993 Cooperative Institutional Research Program Surveys
The Cooperative Institutional Research Program (CIRP) and UCLA's Higher Education Research Institute (HERI) will offer
a freshman and College Student Survey in 1993. These surveys, described below, are open to all two-and four-year colleges and
universities.
Annual Freshman Survey
The annual survey of entering college freshmen covers an array of demographic, experiental, and attitudinal issues. The
questionnaire also covers degree aspirations, major and career plans, and expectations about college. Participating
institutions receive a campus profile report, plus national normative data. Institutions can merge their CIRP freshman survey
data with other campus data (such as files from the registrar's office) to create a longitudinal data file to assist institutional
research, planning efforts, and accreditation studies.
College Student Survey
The College Student Survey provides a cost effective vehicle for campuses interested in outcomes assessment. The College
Student Survey is especially effective when used with the CIRP freshman survey to develop longitudinal student data. The
survey focuses on student experiences during college, and includes items that measure satisfaction with key aspects of the
college experience. These surveys are particularly useful for accreditation reports, retention studies, and self-study
assessments.
Related Publications
The American Freshman: Twenty-Five Year Trends. This comprehensive report summarizes twenty-five years of the CIRP
freshman survey data. Included with the report is an analytical essay summarizing the major changes in the freshman population
over the past two decades. Separate sections will provide the trends for men, women, and all students. This report covers a wide
range of issues: demographic characteristics, academic ability, student goals and aspirations, preferences for major and careers,
expectations of college, attitudes on political and social issues, and life goal questions.
The American College Teacher: National Norms for the 1989-90 HERI Faculty Survey. Provides an informative profile of
teaching faculty at American colleges and universities. Teaching, research activities and professional development issues are
highlighted along with issues related to job satisfaction and stress.
For additional information about all HERI publications and survey programs,
please contact the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA, (310) 825-1925.
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UCLA
SPEECH COMMEMORATING RUTGERS' 225TH ANNIVERSARY
Ramada Renaissance Hotel, East Brunswick, New Jersey
Friday, November 15, 1991 - 6:30 P.M.
Francis L. Lawrence
Governor and Mrs. Florio, members of the Legislature, Governors and
Trustees of the university, faculty and staff, and Rutgers alumni - both here and around the
country:
I am delighted to greet you at this wonderful celebration of Rutgers University
on its 225th anniversary. Rutgers was the eighth college to be founded in the American
colonies. In 1766, William Franklin, who was the Tory son of Ben Franklin and the Royal
Governor of the Province of New Jersey, issued a charter from George III of England to a
group of Dutch clergymen to establish Queen's College.
The first president, Jacob Hardenbergh, who awarded a single diploma at the
first commencement, could not have anticipated that at the university's 225th Anniversary
Commencement last May more than 9,000 degrees would be awarded to the graduates of
Rutgers' 26 schools and colleges for the successful completion of bachelor degrees, master's
and Ph.D.s earned in over 100 different degree programs. The alumni who are gathered
here and who participate tonight in this celebration by closed circuit television represent the
more than 221,000 living loyal sons and daughters of Rutgers.
Yet the message Jacob Hardenbergh delivered to his tiny commencement
audience - that education is not just a personal accomplishment and a private good but a
social benefit and a public obligation - is the same timeless message that brings us together
tonight. "It is impossible," he said, "that colleges can be founded, maintained and properly
cultivated without the necessary funds for their support. The contributions then for the
raising and augmenting of such funds, are not properly Charity or Alms, but money set out
at Interest, and not only such as send children to college receive the benefit, but the whole
society." From the beginning, the founders of the college that was to become Rutgers,
The State University of New Jersey, understood that the support of the university is an
investment in the community that enriches the present and ensures the future. As President
Mason Gross told his audience at the Rutgers bicentennial commencement ceremonies in
1966, " from the beginning, one important part of the College's conception of itself was
service to the community and the nation."
1
And so I think it is most appropriate that we have chosen as the theme of our
anniversary celebration: 225 Years - Preparing New Jersey for the 21st Century and that we
pay tribute tonight to the ways in which our alumni serve their communities. Service has
been at the heart of Rutgers' mission from the beginning.
Because Rutgers is so important to the state and the nation, it is one of New
Jersey's most visible assets. Just pick up the New York Times or Newsweek or the Wall
Street Journal, or listen to radio and television coverage of breaking world and state news.
You will find book reviews by Rutgers faculty, books published by the Rutgers University
Press, Rutgers faculty experts commenting on issues that range from women in American
government to pollution in our oceans. Add to this the many news stories announcing the
discoveries, inventions, and other contributions of Rutgers faculty and students.
Rutgers has become one of the biggest and one of the best universities in
America. We are the pride of New Jersey and everything about us is a matter of intense
interest, from our unique student volunteer service programs to technological triumphs. As
we mark our 225th anniversary, we should note that the university is preparing to celebrate
another important commemorative event: the 50th anniversary of the discovery by Selman
Waksman of streptomycin, the drug that led to the conquest of tuberculosis. This discovery,
in which his students cooperated, is a quintessential example of how university research can
lead to enormous social benefits. In research, Rutgers is a national leader today in areas as
diverse as ceramic engineering and fiber optics, agricultural biotechnology, discrete
mathematics, theoretical and applied computer science, and women's studies. Rutgers is
prominent among the research universities that accomplish most of the nation's basic
research. In Japan, such work has been done primarily in industrial laboratories; in Europe,
research institutes operate separately from higher education; in the Soviet Union, too, until
recently, national academies and research institutes were separate government enterprises.
Only in the United States have we forged integrated partnerships among universities,
government, and industry, yielding a unique synergy capable of producing results ranging
from new insight into the causes of human disease and better methods to prevent or cure it to
improved telecommunications and more productive agriculture. Rutgers, in cooperation with
the state government, has been especially effective, in forging these partnerships. Under the
auspices of the New Jersey Commission on Science and Technology, we have concentrated
our efforts in precisely those industries that serve the emerging technologies of the 21st
century: biotechnology, advanced materials, information technologies, and environmental
protection.
The joint industry-university-government partnership in high technology was
fruitful here because New Jersey has one of the highest concentrations of scientists and
engineers in the country. The state contains more than 700 industrial and academic research
and development laboratories. The $15 billion that these laboratories spend annually is 10%
of New Jersey's gross state product and 11% of our national R&D expenditure. Since 1984,
the state's voters have approved $100 million in bonding and the state's leaders have
budgeted another $20 million in annual research support for a dozen Advanced Technology
Centers and several related programs. For every dollar the state has spent on the Advanced
Technology Centers, two dollars have been generated in matching support from business and
2
federal sources. More than 475 businesses are involved in this effort as industrial sponsors
of the Advanced Technology Centers. Numerous small businesses have spun off as a result
of these activities.
The investment New Jersey makes in Rutgers has been leveraged magnificently
by the university. During the past year, we had a 3.5% increase in externally funded
research to $96 million, despite a 24% decrease in state-sponsored funding. Grants from the
federal government and support from corporations and foundations increased. Among the
major federal grants in the past couple of years have been a $7.2 million 5-year grant from
the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism to the Center of Alcohol Studies and
an $8.8 million 7-year Outstanding Investigator Grant from the National Cancer Institute to
Dr. Allan Conney of the College of Pharmacy.
Like most public universities today, Rutgers is also leveraging state funds with
private giving. Our alumni and friends came forward in our recent capital campaign with
magnificent support. We started with a goal of $75 million and ended with donations of over
$166 million. Last year, our Rutgers University Foundation set a record with 37,000 donors
who contributed a new annual high of $27.6 million. It is almost unheard of to set a new
fundraising record in the year following the end of a major capital campaign. This new high
included a 14% increase in alumni giving. I am certain that we can look forward to even
greater success in the future.
All of the Rutgers high technology centers and federal grants are most
impressive and absolutely vital in order to enable our state and our nation to be major
players in the new global market economy. Equally impressive is the contribution that our
tremendously talented faculty at the cutting edge of research make to the education of our
students. Rutgers is a leader not only in research but in the education of a highly skilled
workforce capable of participating in the increasingly competitive, technologically
sophisticated working environment of today and tomorrow. In the Center for Ceramics
Research and the Center for Fiber Optics Research alone, more than 200 undergraduates
have worked as interns and technical assistants in the past couple of years, gaining invaluable
hands-on experience in up-to-date technology. Well over 100 undergraduate students carry
on laboratory research annually under the supervision of their faculty mentors in the
Department of Biology in New Brunswick. And, of course, such mentorship is not limited
to the sciences. Every undergraduate history major with a B average or better is eligible to
conduct independent studies under the supervision of a History Department faculty member.
Honors programs in Newark and Camden as well as New Brunswick encourage hundreds
more of Rutgers' best students, enrolled in our 100 different major fields, to design research
projects and write theses on their original work under the guidance of faculty directors, often
on a topic related to the current research of the faculty member.
3
Obviously, Rutgers' scientific and technological strength benefits our current
students and the state as a whole. Our distinguished faculty includes 20 members of the
National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine. With 11 members in the
National Academy of Science, Rutgers ranks 8th among the 27 public members of the
Association of American Universities. As I am sure that most of you know, in 1989
Rutgers' academic quality was recognized nationally by an invitation to join that prestigious
association of the 58 leading research universities in North America. Rutgers' national
distinction has been recognized popularly in high ratings by several magazine guides to the
best institutions of higher education.
Our faculty is as diverse as it is distinguished. Among top public research
institutions, Rutgers ranks first in its percentage of black faculty and first in its percentage of
women faculty. In tight economic times, we have continued to make the hiring of minorities
and women a top priority. Over 50% of the faculty hired this fall in the New Brunswick
Faculty of Arts and Sciences are minorities and women.
In its long, successful drive to national prominence, Rutgers has continued to
pay careful attention to a strong base of undergraduate education and to building not only the
quality but the diversity of our student body and our faculty. In 1988, the vibrancy and
strength of our New Brunswick undergraduate colleges earned high praise from the visiting
Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools' Evaluating Team, which said that
Rutgers "may have the best undergraduate program of any large research university in the
country." This fall, 1 of every 5 valedictorians in New Jersey chose to attend Rutgers and
nearly one-third of this fall's first-year students were in the top 10% of their graduating
class. That is a wonderful indication of the quality of the students Rutgers attracts, even
more impressive than the 62 point increase in our SAT scores in the past eight years. We
now enroll nearly 49,000 students of whom a little over 13,000 are in graduate and
professional programs and nearly 36,000 are undergraduates. 89% of our undergraduates are
New Jersey residents.
We are especially proud of our success in increasing the diversity of our
student body, which reflects the growing diversity of the state's population. Both this fall
and last, minority students composed more than 38% of our first year entering class. New
Jersey and Rutgers have been aggressively recruiting and bringing into higher education
talented but economically disadvantaged students of all races and ethnic backgrounds through
the state's Educational Opportunity Fund. At the same time, Rutgers has attracted national
attention for the work of our university community in encouraging the open expression of
ideas while discouraging bigotry and harassment based on prejudice. Our Common Purposes
program sponsors a variety of projects ranging from cultural events and fairs to conferences
and speakers on multicultural appreciation and cooperation.
We are also very proud of Rutgers' extraordinary record of success in
graduating its students. Our graduation rate of 67.8% for a five-year cohort ranks us fifth
among 21 peer AAU public research universities. Most of these 21 AAU state universities
graduate roughly 45 to 55% of their class. Rutgers' graduation rate is a good 20% higher
than the average of its AAU public peers.
4
Rutgers has earned the respect of the nation and of our state. According to a
Star Ledger-Eagleton Institute poll taken in June, Rutgers ranks first among all the
institutions that inspire "a lot" of confidence in New Jersey citizens. The university has risen
11% points since 1984, from 35% to 46%.
Some of that confidence may stem from our efforts to inform the state last
year about Rutgers' work in the service of New Jersey. We campaigned very hard last year
for budget restoration but we focused our campaign upon the solid facts of our contributions
and our accomplishments in education, research, and public service. When I asked our
faculty last fall for information on Rutgers public service, we were inundated by thousands of
pages describing hundreds of outreach programs that Rutgers' 26 schools and colleges and
scores of centers and institutes conduct for the improvement of New Jersey public schools
(especially in the areas of literacy, math, and science); for the preservation of the
environment; for the solution of human service problems in housing, transportation, crime,
and other areas; for research in education and in public health; for training and services to
government officials; for agriculture and marine and coastal area concerns; for the justice
system; and for business and industry. If we had extended our service inquiry to an
international scope, we would have been able to describe Rutgers projects such as the one
with local Polish governments on the organization and functioning of American democratic
governance. Another international Rutgers project began with a few journalism conferences
in Poland and Czechoslovakia and has expanded to an exchange of information and
instruction on the principles of the free press that the Rutgers Journalism Resources Institute
will conduct in several European countries.
You and I, our faculty, staff and students, and our distinguished alumni - the
great Paul Robeson, Nobel laureates Milton Freedman and Selman Waksman, sculptor
George Segal, impresario Sonny Werblin, and seven governors of this state including the
present holder of that high office, Governor Jim Florio - are part of a great land-grant
university tradition of public service. We extend the boundaries of the Rutgers campus
beyond the borders of the state with a zeal that recalls the energy of our founders. As a
great state land-grant university whose impact today extends world-wide through its teaching,
its research, and its public service, Rutgers has always viewed itself less as an ivory tower or
an academic cloister than as a missionary society with an obligation to disseminate its
knowledge as broadly as possible. It is in that spirit that I congratulate the Rutgers Alumni
Federation and each of you in our alumni associations and regional clubs on your decision to
make a specific commitment to community service projects for literacy. Nothing could be a
more appropriate celebration of the 225th anniversary of one of America's oldest colonial
colleges, its youngest state university, and one of its most distinguished institutions for
research and education. I thank you and I salute you.
5
Inaugural
Address
STATEMENT INTERSENTS NOVA IN
Francis L. Lawrence
President
March 3, 1991
Rutgers,
The State
University of
New Jersey
Inaugural Address
March 3, 1991
Francis L. Lawrence
President
A
a newcomer to New Jersey and new president of Rutgers Univer-
sity, I have had a wonderful, perhaps a unique opportunity to see
the state and to assess its character, its accomplishments, and
its potential for the future. New Jersey is a state packed with
technologically advanced industries; bright, capable, prosperous citizens; and
pressing urban problems. The people - in business, in industry, in education,
in agriculture - are flexible, energetic, open to progress, aware of complex
social concerns, and willing to make great sacrifices for the sake of their
children and the good of the state. At the same time, New Jerseyans are shrewd
and demanding. They have strong opinions, long memories, and little tolerance
for either empty promises or poor performance.
Coming from the warm bayous of private education in Louisiana to the crisp,
highly charged waters of New Jersey's great state university has been one of the
most invigorating transitions of my life. From the deep South, I reached out to
national educational leadership positions, but in New Jersey I am inside the
nation's most active higher education belt. I am being inaugurated as president
of the flagship university in a state that has lent its enthusiastic support over
the past decade to the development of a great land-grant institution as an active
partner in the support of industry and business, of agriculture, of primary and
secondary education, and of human services such as health, housing, transpor-
tation, government, and environmental concerns.
I have come to this great university in an attractive and progressive state at a
time that is a turning point not just for New Jersey but for the nation. It is a
turning point in which education has a crucial role to play and, while primary
and secondary education are indispensable, higher education is equally
important. Because New Jersey under Governor Jim Florio has established
itself as a national leader in taking the hard route to deal with its problems in
both budget and education, what New Jersey does will be watched carefully by
1
the rest of the nation. And Rutgers is also under observation following its
meteoric rise to national prominence.
New Jersey, in partnership with Rutgers, The State University, can recon-
struct higher education and its interpenetration of society. I would like to offer
a proposal for the long-range improvement of the state's business, industry, and
education. New Jersey can build in Rutgers the country's first major public
research university that recognizes and rises to the challenges of our society by
a serious effort to transform itself. Reasons that require a new kind of university
with new priorities and functions can be summed up in three broad but
compelling demands. The first is the demographic shift in the United States
toward a larger population of minorities. In some sections of the country, people
already refer to this fact as "the new majority" or "the minority majority." The
census figures for 1990 show that the population shift in New Jersey is in the
same direction as national trends: less white, more Asian, Hispanic and
African-American. This trend toward an increasingly multicultural society calls
for a new vision of the university that responds to the needs of a more diverse
student body. The second imperative of our time is the fact that the jobs of the
future will require higher levels of education.¹ Since minorities and women are
now disproportionately concentrated in low-skilled jobs, but are projected to
compose nearly two-thirds of the workforce by the year 2000. the steadily
escalating skill levels for new jobs are a concern on both human and economic
grounds: an abundant supply of skilled workers is the essential key to economic
growth as well as to social progress. The third change that forces us to consider
new means of conceptualizing the university is the way and extent to which the
need for knowledge is changing. Knowledge is now required on a continuing,
pervasive basis by individuals, by corporations, by all sectors of the public and
all levels of government. Not only do workers and professionals need to update
their education. but cities and states need data that are up-to-date and given to
them in a usable form. Business and industry need research innovations and
technical and managerial assistance to be competitive in an aggressive national
and world market.
For a new university, a people's university, we need a new way of concep-
tualizing higher education. The very term higher education lends itself to the
long-outdated concept of a university as an ivory tower. The ivory tower was
once an apt image for colleges and universities. They perched on a pinnacle
above the great masses of people. They carried on studies of little or no
relevance to the practical tasks of society. They educated a tiny percentage of
2
the population who were destined for the pursuit of a small number of learned
professions. The ivory tower is a cold, precious image, but not inappropriate for
the cloistered education of a chosen few. Even now, in decrying and rejecting
the ivory tower as an analogy for the modern university, some elite institutions
make it clear that they reach down from a great height to make their connec-
tions with the rest of society.
Although the proportion of the population served by higher education
broadened considerably after the initiation of the land-grant model, and it
became even larger after the Second World War, still Jacques Barzun, in his
beautifully written but testy and thoroughly elitist 1959 book, visualizes
education as The House of Intellect.² Even Clark Kerr in his 1963 vision of the
multiversity talks about a "city of intellect."3 Since I went to college in that era,
I know that universities were still dealing with a relatively restricted portion of
the whole potential workforce. Students still talked about "going out into the
real world" after college. The campus was a place apart, a walled fortress with
its own life separate from the community. On Friday nights, young men who
lived and worked only a few blocks away from my mid-city university some-
times swaggered over to our dormitories in groups and invited us to come out
and fight. We wisely refused.
Now it is time for all of higher education to emerge from its isolation, to
come out to fight - not against, but for the community around it by extending
itself to the community, making itself a part of the community, and embracing
in itself the needs and goals of the community. The concept of a much more
inclusive university with a broader mission of teaching, research, and service
is, of course, very much in the land-grant tradition. One of the early great land-
grant university presidents, Van Hise of Wisconsin, declared that the borders
of the campus are the boundaries of the state. The new people's university
would be a great, comprehensive extension of the land-grant model, not just in
agriculture, but in industry, business, and education. It would go out with a
much more ambitious and intensified effort to extend the university's services
into some of the important areas where it now works on a program-by-program
basis. The architectural images of the past are too enclosed and separate for the
new university. An inelegant but appropriate term for its coverage and its
interrelated systems might be a network. Those of you who have read the
documents Rutgers issued in January and February describing the university's
hundreds of programs in the service of New Jersey know how well prepared
Rutgers is to become a model of the new university, in even closer and more
3
comprehensive partnership with the state.
In the summer of 1990 when our most pressing national problems were how
to shore up U.S. industry to compete in the world market and how to spend the
eagerly expected peace dividend, an article in Change magazine proposed that
the federal government fund a national engineering extension service on the
model of the agricultural extension service.⁴ Georgia Tech runs such a state-
wide corps of engineers who work primarily with small, technologically less
advanced firms, helping them with specific technological problems. There are
twelve offices and twenty-six agents. The agents are assigned to an area in
which they may have as many as 500 companies to serve. They advise clients
on everything from manufacturing processes to cost control. Obviously their
agents are spread thin. The restricted state funding they receive makes it
necessary for them to do contract work to cover expenses. Nevertheless.
the engineering extension service is popular and well-regarded by Georgia
industry.
The combination of university research and university outreach and
extension service has been one of the basic conditions for the overwhelming
success of American agriculture. There is no reason why the same coordinated
approach for the transfer of technology, training workers, and continuing
education for practicing engineers could not make the same kind of crucial
difference to industry. We already have the research facilities that serve a
selected number among the state's industries. Now we need the complete, fully
integrated outreach capacity of an engineering extension service for industry.
Let us take the extension concept to its logical conclusion. What has already
worked for agriculture and in more limited programs for industry could also
work for service-oriented businesses and for education. Again we have some of
the elements of the service orientation and we are operating a number of
successful programs, but full-fledged extension services in business and
education would give far greater dissemination of techniques and opportunities
for consultation, continuing education, and problem-solving focused on
practical local conditions and real-life situations, just as agricultural extension
does in its field. The tremendous advantage that extension services add to on-
campus continuing education is that the extension agent need not fit the
individual client into the Procrustean bed of well-planned but generalized
classroom instruction. Clients are able to apply information directly in the
setting of their own situations. The extension agent develops a knowledge and
sensitive feel for the differences of the specific area. Extension strengthens its
4
clients at their base of operation, where they need help.
The advantages of extension services well integrated with the research and
teaching of the university flow both ways. The contact the extension service
creates between its clients and the university teacher/researcher and students
provides invaluable insights from real, specific practice and focuses attention
on actual problems, enriching the quality and sharpening the focus of both
training and scholarship. Our schools of engineering, business, and education
would benefit as much as their clients throughout the state from university
extension services. With the addition of extension services, the interrelation-
ship among teaching, research, and service would be clearly and fully realized.
It is unfortunate that at the federal level the vision that created such a success-
ful continuum from practitioner to teacher/researcher and students in agricul-
ture was not extended to other, equally appropriate fields.
If the national vision has faltered, that is all the more reason to seize the
initiative of national leadership by creating at the state level in New Jersey a
new model of the land-grant university with a stronger, more comprehensive,
fully-realized mission of service that better meets the complex, expanding,
recurrent needs of society for knowledge. This extended land-grant research
university with its vital links to practice would also be a more exciting and
challenging place in which to teach and to learn. The new university can
contribute to the reconstruction and reinvigoration of industry, business and
education. It will produce a redeveloped, stronger state economy and society.
An expanded land-grant research university with a statewide network of
extension services in engineering, business, and education as well as agricul-
ture answers only the third among the demands I cited for a new kind of
university: the demand for knowledge on a continuing, updated, pervasive basis
by all sectors of the public. The first and second demands are: the demographic
shift toward an increasingly diverse society composed of at least one-third
minorities, and the higher levels of education that the work of the future will
require.
To respond fully and usefully to these challenges, we must expand the
university and make it a more supportive, more far-reaching network, not only
externally but within itself. That is, we will have to educate a broader, more
inclusive spectrum of our society. Earlier I referred to the evidence of the 1990
census that the population of New Jersey, like that of the rest of the nation, is
gradually becoming less white, increasingly African-American, Hispanic and
Asian. But the census figures do not convey the full extent of a continual shift,
5
because the census includes all ages. According to the census, the present
minority population of New Jersey is only a little over 20%. However, the
statistics on the distribution of New Jersey public school students presumably
portray the future: public schools are now 33.9% minority. In contrast, the New
Jersey public high schools graduate only 24.1% minority students and the
minority proportion of New Jersey public high school graduates continuing
their education at college level is lower still: 20.8%. New Jersey public higher
education does relatively well, enrolling about 21.3% minority students, and
Rutgers' undergraduate minority enrollment is even better: a little over 26.9%.
When the McNeill-Lehrer News Hour journalists went looking last fall for a
campus with a large minority enrollment, they chose Rutgers as one of the
biggest and most diverse universities in the country. We are not doing badly in
enrolling minority students but enrollment is only the first step, though
admittedly a very large and difficult one. I want us to renew and reconstitute
the way that individuals and groups within the University perceive and relate to
one another as well as the way the University relates to its external constituen-
cies. It will not help us or our students to enroll a richly diverse student body if
we fail to educate them, do not prepare them to live in an increasingly multi-
racial and multicultural society, and do not graduate them.
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey is a twenty-year veteran in
many areas of access and opportunity. The James Dickson Carr Scholarship
Program is the nation's largest minority undergraduate recruitment program.
Efforts such as Challenge '69 and the Committee to Advance Our Common
Purposes make attempts to encourage cross-cultural understanding. Rutgers is
also the home of a nationally-renowned minority student program in the Newark
Law School. On our three campuses we run twenty-three pre-college programs
to encourage and prepare disadvantaged students. But we can and should
do more.
I have renewed our substantive commitment to the hiring of minority faculty,
despite our financial problems, because the faculty is the permanent backbone
of our diverse academic society. We are engaged in an ongoing campaign for
Minority and Cross-Cultural Programs to fund student and faculty advance-
ment, academic and personal development programs, and cultural enrichment
and understanding. That is an important initiative, but our basic need, for the
sake of all of our students, minority and non-minority alike, is to affirm publicly
our renewed commitment to teaching and undergraduate education. We have
taken some simple but significant steps to demonstrate and strengthen those
6
essential facets of the University's mission. I have asked that all promotion
and tenure packets as well as hiring recommendations address each faculty
member's qualifications and accomplishments in teaching. For promotion and
tenure, appropriate documentation of teaching excellence should be offered.
We have also added to our program reviews a review of undergraduate
education.
The devotion of the Rutgers faculty to our undergraduate students' instruc-
tion simply cannot be doubted by anyone after the magnificent way they have
rallied to teach overloads and to donate funds for instruction to tide us over the
budget crisis. But if the crisis continues and worsens, we cannot expect the
temporary heroic double shifts that faculty and administrators have worked this
spring to continue. It is a truism in any organization, whether for-profit or
not-for-profit, that you cannot save money simply by cutting back on personnel.
You must downsize the operation and you must change the way you operate. If
our budget shrinks, we will have to cut back on enrollment, increase class size,
and put a hold on the initiation of all but the most promising new programs.
Those steps will deny many qualified students admission to Rutgers, make
interactive classroom learning difficult or impossible, and reduce the
University's flexibility in responding to new areas of knowledge and new
opportunities in training students for growing fields of employment. We will
also have to examine our existing programs very carefully to see if student
demand, program quality, and the fit of each program with Rutgers' mission
justify continuing every program we now offer. In all of this cost-cutting self-
examination, maintaining the quality and, as much as possible, the quantity of
the instruction Rutgers offers our students will be our highest priority.
In view of Rutgers' historic commitment to undergraduate education, the
cutbacks in undergraduate enrollment and the increase in class size, if they
become necessary, will be particularly painful for students and professors
alike. Whether or not we are forced to make the circumstances of teaching and
learning more difficult, we must find the resources to offer our whole academic
community more of the support they need to succeed. If we are under the guns
of the economic equivalent of war, we have more need than ever of the aca-
demic equivalent of fortifications and armament.
For our faculty and instructors we need the Teaching Evaluation and
Development Center recommended by the University Senate to assist in
assessing and improving teaching skills. No one is ever so perfect in a profes-
sion that he or she cannot be better; most of us can learn from new techniques,
7
new insights, and sometimes from the simple correction of faults obvious to
everyone but ourselves.
For our students, we already have some excellent resources, such as the
Math and Science Learning Center and the Writing Workshops, as well as the
Gateway Programs, but we need more comprehensive services with greater
capacity for tutoring, for supplementary instruction sections in especially
difficult basic subjects, for outreach activities to our dormitories, for computer-
assisted instruction, and for basic learning skills improvement. I want to make
a commitment to our Rutgers students to give them the support they need to be
successful. The old-style state university conceived its programs as a pyramid,
admitting thousands more entering students than the institution expected or
wanted to graduate. Rutgers was never an open-admission state university in
quite that style, but our goal as a new model of the land-grant university,
undertaken in productive partnership with the state, will be to educate all
students to the very top level that they are capable of accomplishing with their
cooperation and hard work. No one ought to expect either to fail or just to get by
at Rutgers. All of us, faculty, students, and administrators, should be working
at the very top of our ability, to the limit of our capacity, for the best education
we can achieve here.
As part of our renewed commitment to undergraduate education, I respect-
fully suggest to the faculty that it may be time to undertake a university-wide
examination of our requirements for the baccalaureate. An examination of our
convictions and our goals for what every educated person ought to know will
focus our attention on undergraduate education in a way that no other exercise
really can. We might consider all alternatives, from the imposition of additional
requirements to the lifting of all prescribed courses for a completely elective
curriculum. The university-wide consideration would necessarily be more
descriptive than prescriptive. It would probably be most useful for the study to
outline a reasonable set of common goals in the form of competencies, curricu-
lar breadth, and depth. Each college would then plan to fill in the outline in its
own way. In the course of the study, the delegates from each college might
return to their constituencies and consult them on such pivotal issues as
whether breadth ought to be achieved (a) through study of the methods of
understanding literature, history, social problems, biological and physical
processes; (b) through simple, familiar distribution requirements: (c) through
the Great Books or, as it is currently known, the Dead White Men approach to
Western civilization; or (d) through a more widely inclusive approach to a
8
greater range of books and cultures. This will give us the opportunity to join in
the Great Curriculum Debate that now fills our popular as well as our scholarly
newspapers and magazines.
If you will permit me a moment of digression, I must remark that few things
in my life have been so entertaining or have cast more light on my original
studies in French literature than has this battle over what its defenders
solemnly call The Canon. As a college student, I thought that the Quarrel of the
Ancients and the Moderns, which was the effort of 17th century French writers
to free themselves from a slavish imitation of the authors of Roman antiquity,
was without a doubt the most boring episode of a century I knew as the
Classical Age, more for its own quality than its links with the past. Of course,
there was an underlying Great Idea in the debate, the idea of the possibility of
progress, linked with the conviction that standards of taste and beauty are
relative, not absolute. This was the threshold of the 18th century, which
distinguished itself from the 17th by the tendency toward relativism. Eigh-
teenth century intellectuals took a skeptical view toward credos and standards
that they saw as more dependent on time and place than on absolute truths.
Paired with skepticism was a companion tendency toward expansionism, the
effort to relate various fields of knowledge to one another. The 18th century was
also an age of advances in science, philosophy, and the industrial arts. It is
somehow quite invigorating to see that there is so much life in the old debate
between the dogmatic champions of immutable absolutes and the more flexible
advocates of social change. Perhaps we can displace the blame for the present
controversy from Alan Bloom's favorite villain, the weighty 19th century
German philosopher, Nietzsche.
Long before Nietzsche, progress and relativism were championed by the
amicable, nimble 17th century French poet, Charles Perrault. Perrault is not
so easy to cast as a sinister heavy. He was the author of the Parallels Between
the Ancients and the Moderns but he was also the talented popularizer of the
Mother Goose rhymes. From this less threatening perspective, we may be
able to recognize the fact that the present push to include multicultural
perspectives in the curriculum is not the end of the world. It is not even the
sign of a splintering of American society into separate, particular groups. It is
an acknowledgement of the growing minority presence in American society and
of the growing reality of not only economic but educational and cultural
exchange in a more closely linked, interdependent world society. Just as
Americans in the variety of their ethnic heritages actually do reflect a much
9
broader range of cultures around the world, so it is increasingly important that
Americans of every origin learn much more about the diverse cultures of the
global society in which we now live. International education is not a pleasant
luxury of the idle rich: it is the material of survival. From this view, the
possibility of many dedicated and enthusiastic teachers expounding the virtues
of the diverse cultures they study does not look so frightening to me as it does
to the worried opponents of multicultural curricula. The fact that I love Pascal
has fired many students with appreciation for his works, but I have yet to
convert myself or anyone else to Jansenism. The violent reaction against
enthusiastic, partisan multiculturalism in the curriculum that we are seeing
even among neoliberals tempts us to ask if there is not an unpleasant underly-
ing basis of racial paranoia in this anxiety. Could it be that it is easy to
denounce apartheid in South Africa, a comfortable ocean away, but when it
comes to giving up apartheid in the curriculum, the answer is, never!?
But, as I said, I digress. The university-wide examination of undergraduate
education that I propose to the faculty for its consideration ought to encourage
or perhaps even demand that all required courses to fit the goals of breadth in
the new curriculum be new or substantially revised courses. The effort of
rethinking what we want undergraduates to know and of designing courses
worthy of being required for all undergraduates in the college should challenge
and engage our senior faculty and should produce basic courses of great depth
and interest to both students and teachers. We would expect that the recom-
mendations on breadth would give consideration not only to multicultural
issues but to the late President Bloustein's suggestion of a community service
option or requirement for undergraduates and to other attractive possibilities,
such as required study of foreign languages, the fine arts, or global and national
perspectives on environmental issues. Finally, the study should suggest or
should ask the colleges to consider not only what our students ought to learn
but how, the most effective way for them to learn. and ways to measure whether
they are learning it. These concerns might be approached quite differently at
the level of the competencies, where they can probably be met by simple
standardized tests. and the levels of breadth and depth. where the use of
standardized tests of facts and basic skills would run the risk of trivializing our
objectives.
Although a great deal of attention is deservedly focused nationally and
locally on undergraduate education in the research university, we must not
mistake the equal importance of graduate education and research, not just for
10
the sake of the institutions - which exist only in the people who constitute
them - but in the vocations of the faculty. Research is not an esoteric and
useless function performed by pampered descendants of Baron Frankenstein in
luxurious laboratories. Research is the creation of new knowledge, the
reinterpretation and reworking of our perceptions of reality, the exciting,
challenging work that every university professor entered his or her field to
accomplish. Some of us are better at it than others. Some research will be cited
more often, some will create new economic opportunities for the state, some
will lay a foundation for the conquest of disease, some will alter our perception
of economics or history or literature or physical phenomena for a long time to
come. Support of research is a very important part of what a university is all
about. If we gave it up, students would not need to progress to higher learning.
In fact, much of what I learned in college is taught in high school or is no
longer taught at all. It is outdated or has been superseded. If our society were to
withdraw all support from research, I suppose that a few stubborn scholars
would still labor, but the rate and the scale of progress would slow to a crawl.
Our problem is not that our research universities and their faculty members
have given too much support and attention to research. Research is a great and
continuing need of society. It is that, in order to carry on the immensely
exciting and socially beneficial work of research, they have been forced by the
limits of their strength and their resources to devote too little time and attention
to undergraduate education. The solution to our problem is not to spend less of
our funds and ourselves on research but to increase the importance and the
money that we devote to teaching both undergraduates and graduates. We must
remember and give new life to the model of the scholar/teacher: the scholar as
the mentor of students. We must reassert the importance of mentorship in the
scholarly life. Teaching without research is lifeless; research without teaching
is sterile. We need to discover new knowledge in order to teach at the level and
the intensity that instruction in a research university ought to aspire to reach;
we need to teach in order to disseminate our knowledge to the extent that
research scholars should burn to accomplish.
My final point in the secular sermon on education that this inaugural
address has privileged me to deliver is not about service or teaching or re-
search, but a fourth goal that I believe to be an equally essential part of the
mission of the university, just as it is part of the mission of every successful
organization, whether educational, political, military, industrial, business, or
family. I have talked a great deal since I came here five months ago about the
11
importance of the learning that our students do outside class as well as inside
class. In the university, students, faculty and administrators must learn to live
and work as a community. Community service outside the university is a worthy
experience, but it is equally important or more important for us to learn how to
work through our differences in our own internal sphere of work and recreation.
In order to build this university's consciousness of itself as a community, I
declared even before my arrival that I wanted to reinvigorate - some would
have said resuscitate - the University Senate, Rutgers' only university-wide
body, as a forum advisory to the president. This was especially important
because the Rutgers University Senate contains almost every element of the
University community: elected representatives of the faculty, elected student
representatives, alumni, and administrators. I announced on arrival my
intention of attending Senate meetings and asked that all administrators who
are members do likewise. I am also attending the meetings of the Senate
Executive Committee and my administrative colleagues whom I have asked to
act as liaison to Senate committees are attending their meetings as well. I gave
my first University speech at the Senate and presented first to the Senate my
report on The Joint Future of New Jersey and Rutgers, The State University. The
Senate and I may not always agree, but I intend to listen to them as they listen
to me. Sometimes I expect that I will convince them. Sometimes I am sure that
they will convince me. We will make every effort to arrive at a consensus. I
have also formed a President's Student Advisory Council, composed of the
elected presidents of our school and college student governing bodies, and
other administrators have taken similar steps. Through the Senate, I have urged
all units of the University to include student representatives on all appropriate
standing committees, such as the college or school curriculum committees.
Within the administration. my goal is to build a cooperative community of
service to our constituencies: the faculty, the students, and the schools and
colleges. The Administrative Systems Efficiency Committee, composed of
faculty and student representatives as well as administrators from all three
campuses, is working to build stronger, more responsive relationships of
responsibility and cooperation within and among all three campuses.
To complete this final vision of the university as a community, let me
recount the ways that I have talked about building unity, extending networks,
and bringing our diverse society together.
First I proposed that, as the intellectual nexus of our state in an era when
advanced knowledge is an absolute necessity not only for individuals but for all
12
of society, the land-grant university needs to be transformed into a comprehen-
sive network of service. With the cooperation and support of the state, Rutgers
can become the new people's university with coordinated extension services in
industry, business, and education as well as agriculture. Rutgers can be a
dynamic force for the gradual reconstruction and reinvigoration of the state's
economy and human services.
Next I discussed the necessity of educating a much broader, more inclusive
spectrum of our society. I remarked on the fact that Rutgers is particularly well
prepared to undertake this mission because our enrollment of minorities
is large.
I also affirmed the need for making Rutgers a true learning community by
providing additional support for both teaching and learning, despite the very
difficult budget problems we currently face.
I suggested to the faculty that in order to focus our attention on undergradu-
ate education more intensely and productively, it might be time to undertake a
university-wide examination of our requirements for the baccalaureate. I
observed that this seemingly dry academic exercise has lively contemporary
implications that we need to consider.
I asserted the necessity not only of service and teaching but of research in
our university community. I urged that research be understood as the basis of
our vocation and the source of our knowledge. I asked that we take the scholar/
mentor as our model in the learning community.
Finally, I talked about the necessity to be a community outside as well as
inside the classroom. I implied that this might be one of the most important
aspects of the mission of the university. It is also one of the hardest lessons we
have to learn. We are, whether we like it or not, a very diverse community filled
with strong individuals. It is possible to build great strength through diversity.
The idea that the social whole is greater than the sum of its parts can be traced
to Emil Durkheim in its intellectual formulation, but it is an intuitively
perceived practical truism.
How do we get from here to there? How can we progress from a collection of
individuals and groups in one place to a real functioning community? Is it
strong leadership that we need?
I hate to disappoint you, but unless we are willing to surrender our freedom
as well as our responsibility, I think that strong leadership is not the answer.
We need only look at the mounting disappointment of the American people in
each of our presidents over the last three decades. Kennedy was said to be an
13
inspiring speaker but unable to strong-arm his programs through the Congress.
Johnson was viewed as a shrewd politician but a flawed and uninspiring leader.
Nixon was condemned as an abuser of power. Ford was derided as not up to the
stature of the office. Carter was seen as idealistic but ineffective and too bogged
down in detail. Reagan was ridiculed as charming but empty, too detached from
the actual implementation of his goals and not sensitive enough to the needs of
the poor and minorities. One president after another failed to fulfill America's
unrealistic expectations of solving all the problems of the national community.
So we sacrificed each one in the fire of our contempt, fueled by our public
media and fanned by our political commentators. We looked to the next
election for a new knight in shining armor. Our wish for superheroes can be so
overpowering that if we cannot conjure them up, we demand that our leaders
play the roles so that we can cheer them or jeer them as our personal interests
and our feelings toward authority figures may dictate. The hard and unforgiving
truth is that no one can lead where the public is unwilling to follow, as even our
most popular presidents have discovered.
America is a huge and powerful country. New Jersey is an important state.
Rutgers is a distinguished university. We can be greater. As disparate groups
of individuals devoted to our own interests, expecting that by charismatic magic
the administration can bring community out of our conflict and confrontation,
we are less than the sum of our bright, energetic, talented individual parts. We
can be more. But what it requires is more than innate intelligence - we have
plenty of that. It requires more than good will and a high opinion of our own
perception of what is right - we are brimming with sterling principles and
righteousness. It requires more than technical expertise, rhetorical polish and
theoretical knowledge - we are well supplied with all the intellectual equip-
ment we need.
What community most emphatically does not require is blind self-sacrifice
and unquestioning submission to charismatic or dictatorial authority and
superior wisdom. What it requires is much harder and a lot less glamorous than
either the vices of unbridled self-interest or the joys of equally immoderate
self-abnegation.
Community requires hard work. It is not a gift or an entitlement. It is built
on voluntary civility and self-restraint in rhetoric and in action. It does not
delight in distortion or appeals to emotion. It employs intelligence, talent, good
will, expertise, high-flown theory and down-to-earth common sense to serve the
14
common good in a system of mutual support. It is crippled by reckless power
struggles among competing interest groups. Above all, community requires the
acceptance of personal responsibility for the achievement of individual
ambitions and community goals.
What does it require to lead a community? Nothing more than an under-
standing of the nature of community, coupled with hard work and some
humility. On those grounds I am qualified. Though I have to admit that I feel
like one of those stalwart but modest heroes, hand over heart, in the marriage
proposal scene of a Louisa May Alcott novel, the truth is fairly simple: you do
not need me to make Rutgers an even greater university, I need you.
References
1. William B. Johnston et al, Workforce 2000 (Hudson Institute, 1987).
2. Jacques Barzun, The House of Intellect (Harper & Brothers, 1959).
3. Clark Kerr, The Uses of the University (Harvard University Press, 1963).
4. Russel C. Jones, Bethany S. Oberst, and Courtland S. Lewis, "Building U.S.
Economic Competitiveness: The Land-Grant Model,"
Change (May/June, 1990, pp. 11-17).
GERS THE
PRESIT
1990
RE
UNDERGRADUATE EDUCATION
7
RENEWING OUR COMMITMENT
A Presidential report titled Undergraduate Education
at Rutgers: An Agenda for the Nineties was released in November 1991. Based upon a number of
Rutgers reports from the Academic Forum and from Provosts' committees on all three regional
campuses as well as national reports and personal conviction, the
report outlined the President's highest priorities for the improve-
ment of undergraduate education throughout the university: re-
newed emphasis on teaching and service along with research as
valued missions; a solid program of teaching enhancement and
evaluation; support for teaching and learning, both in the class-
room and outside it; and cultivation of a university-wide environ-
ment that is open, civil, supportive, disciplined, caring, and just.
At the same time, the University Committee on the Undergradu-
ate Curriculum was charged by the President to develop a clear
and specific articulation of entrance requirements for incoming
students; to suggest means to address the special curricular and
teaching issues in the sciences, mathematics, and engineering; to
recommend university-wide goals for general education require-
ments; and to outline a framework for departments to evaluate
majors and involve students in research. Each college will be
asked to measure its curriculum against the university-wide goals
of high standards in basic skills, coherence of general education,
and integration in major programs.
TEACHING EXCELLENCE CENTERS
At the heart of Rutgers' mission is educational at-
tainment. If our students are not learning and succeeding in their studies, we are failing as an
institution of higher learning. In an effort to encourage, promote, and reward the balance
Livingston College marks Divali.
The Center of Alcohol Studies
After two years of painstaking
the Indian Festival of Lights. with
receives a $7.2 million grant for
work, the restoration of Winants
music. dance. and fireworks, part
research on the treatment of
Hall. the university's first dormi-
of a new program titled "Diversity
alcoholism.
tory and one of its most treasured
buildings is completed
SERVICE
31
CONTRIBUTING TO NEW JERSEY
The university's efforts in outreach are the manifes-
tation of its fulfillment of the public service component of its mission. In last year's budget
advocacy process, President Lawrence released The Joint Future of New Jersey and Rutgers, The
State University of New Jersey, a report which explained the role Rutgers has played in the state's
enormous economic and social growth. The report was
accompanied by a detailed 10-booklet series entitled In
the Service of New Jersey outlining the hundreds of pub-
lic service projects that the university community pro-
vides to New Jersey's schools, economy, environment,
human needs, health, justice system, cultural activities,
government, and citizens.
A Great University for a Great State spotlights
the university's achievements in undergraduate and grad-
uate education, research, and public service. Minding
New Jersey's Business: Rutgers and the State's Economy
highlights Rutgers' vital role in the state's economy
through its outreach programs for business, high tech-
nology transfer, and as a supplier of much of New
Jersey's highly trained work force. Rutgers: New Jersey's
Environmental Resource illustrates the university's myriad activities in preserving and improv-
ing the environmental quality of New Jersey, from its coastal waters to its Pine Barrens to its
farmlands. Learning to Make a Difference: Rutgers and New Jersey's Schools focuses on the vital
role of the state university in assisting secondary and elementary schools, particularly urban
schools, through joint efforts in literacy, math, and other areas.
JANUARY 1992
James L Flanagan. Board of
Productivity, wins the prestigious
Local Democracy in Poland is
Governors Professor of Electrical
eighteenth Marconi International
awarded $1.3 million from the
and Computer Engineering.
Fellowship Award.
Agency for International Develop
Disease Contro for
te.continus beloive Pole
32
Rutgers: Good for New Jersey's Health headlines Rutgers' various outreach services,
policy research, and laboratory research in areas such as AIDS, alcoholism, Lyme disease, and
mental health. Rutgers and the Justice System features a glimpse into Rutgers' leadership role in
the state's judicial and political systems and in tackling societal problems. People Make the
Difference: Rutgers and Human Services explains the search for better solutions in New Jersey to
problems such as caring for the aging, housing, and transportation. Rutgers: A Cultural Leader
places center stage the wide range of plays, concerts, art exhibits, and other activities offered by
the Rutgers campuses at Newark, Camden, and New Brunswick. For the People: Rutgers' Role
in Government Services underscores the education, training, and hundreds of services provided
to government leaders and employees at the local, county, and state levels. Rutgers: A Public
Resource for New Jersey's Citizens spotlights the numerous outreach activities of Rutgers
Cooperative Extension, as well as the services of Rutgers' library system.
An eleventh report in this series is entitled Rutgers: Continuing the Tradition of Public
Service, 1991-1992. It profiles the extensive media coverage during this past year highlighting
the partnership between New Jersey and its State University. Rutgers continues to serve as one
of New Jersey's most indispensable and valuable resources. During 1991-92, many of the
thousands of programs and activities of Rutgers faculty, students, and staff that directly
benefit individuals, businesses, and government were chronicled by New Jersey's newspapers.
RUTGERS: A GOOD NEIGHBOR In addition to the myriad outreach efforts and public
service partnerships within the state, a recent study entitled Rutgers Regional Report: Economic
Impact of Rutgers University on the City of New Brunswick and Surrounding Region, prepared by
Professor James Hughes and graduate student Susan G. Blickstein of the Department of
Planning and Policy Development, shows that Rutgers plays a key role in the civic and
economic life of the city of New Brunswick and the surrounding region. The employees and
students at Rutgers have a direct financial impact on New Brunswick and the vicinity. The
report outlines the numerous programs initiated at Rutgers that directly benefit the city and
area. The university's 8,972 New Brunswick-area employees generate a total of $250 million
in annual consumer expenditures; of this total, a conservative estimate is that $41 million
Jeffrey K. Lehrer. a junior at
election marks the first time a student
FEBRUARY 1992
The award-winning Thomas A.
Edison: From Workshop to
Rutgers College. is inducted as the
has had a vote on either of the
Edison Papers project publishes
Laboratory, June 1873-
first voting student member of
university's governing boards.
Volume 2 of the Edison Papers,
March 1876.
The Paners of Thomas
takes place in New Brunswick. The annual payroll for Rutgers' New Brunswick employees
33
exceeds $274 million. The university spends a total of $278.4 million per year on supplies and
services; of this total, $30.7 million is spent on supplies provided by vendors in the New
Brunswick area of which $9.6 million worth is provided by businesses located within the city
itself. In total, the university can be credited with over $2.8 million in annual city property tax
revenues, excluding the county portion of the local tax.
Working together with several other public higher education institutions, the New-
ark campus is deeply involved in contributing to the renaissance of New Jersey's largest city. In
addition to numerous collaborative efforts with the schools, arts institutions, city government,
and corporations, the Newark colleges are developing a major science park project designed to
bring economic development to the area. Small business and minority business assistance
programs affiliated with the Graduate School of Management in Newark have a strong record
of developing new businesses in those sectors across the state. The Newark campus and NJIT
have formed a consortium to cooperate in a number of service and academic areas in order to
expand student options and maximize our efficient use of state funds.
At the Rurgers-Camden campus, faculty have worked with the secondary schools in
Camden and South Jersey to develop summer programs that offer high school students on-
campus experiences at Rutgers (Philadelphia Regional Introduction for Minorities to Engi-
neering, Parent Adolescent Collaboration for Education, Museum Education Enrichment
Program, the Summer Algebra Institute, the City Kids Recreation Program, and the LOGO
for Mathematics Students Program). A local and then national discussion on health care,
involving Rutgers faculty, resulted in a major grant to study health care delivery in South
Jersey. Still other professors served on numerous local community boards such as the Walt
Whitman Center, the National Conference of Christians and Jews, the Camden City Rotary
Club, the Camden City Public Library, and the American Diabetes Association. Literacy
tutoring, food drives for the needy, and a campaign to clean up the city are just a few of the
student-initiated community projects developed at the Camden campus this past year.
MARCH 1992
New equipment is installed for
Joseph J. Seneca, Professor of
touch-tone registration. which will
Economics, is appointed University
make student registration and the
Vice President for Academic
addine and dropping of classes
Affairs.
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UNIVERSITY MISSION AND GOALS
As the sole comprehensive public research university in the New
Jersey system of higher education and the state's land-grant institution,
Rutgers University has the mission of instruction, research, and service.
Among the principles the University recognizes in carrying out this three-
fold mission are the following:
Rutgers has the prime responsibility in the state to conduct
fundamental and applied research, to train scholars, researchers,
and professionals, and to make knowledge available to students,
scholars, and the general public.
Rutgers should maintain its traditional strength in arts and
sciences, while at the same time developing such new professional
and career-oriented programs as are warranted by public interest,
social need, and employment opportunities.
Rutgers will continually seek to make its educational programs
accessible to an appropriately broad student body.
Rutgers is committed to extending its resources and knowledge to a
variety of publics, and bringing special expertise and competence to
bear on the solution of public problems.
Consistent with this mission, the Board of Governors in 1980,
following a review of the University's achievements and capabilities as well
as New Jersey's needs, adopted a statement of goals that set the bold
aspiration of enhancing Rutgers' national and international standing and
establishing the University as a major center of higher education.
By pursuing these goals in the 1980's the University has made major
strides towards the attainment of a new level of national distinction.
These goals shall continue to guide the development of the University in the
decade ahead as Rutgers achieves even greater eminence and contributes even
more fully to New Jersey's well being in the tradition of this nation's
great land-grant universities. As the goals state, Rutgers will:
Continue development of the University as a national and
international resource by:
-- improvements in the quality of its instruction,
research and public service;
-- increased emphasis on the contributions of its scholars; and
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-- increased emphasis on an atmosphere that stimulates learning,
encourages creativity, rewards service, and contributes to the
personal and professional growth of all the members of the
Rutgers community.
Increase the number of areas of graduate education, research, and
scholarship of national and international renown.
Improve the already high quality of the undergraduate experience in
the liberal arts, seeking both to preserve the diversity of its
programs and to develop students who will provide future leadership
for the state, the nation and the world.
Develop and improve programs to serve society's needs for broadly
educated, humane, competent professionals.
Serve the needs of the State of New Jersey by:
-- conducting research on such basic issues of public policy as
energy, transportation, urban affairs, agriculture, human
services, coastal and marine science and similar areas,
especially those of emerging importance;
-- fostering programs in the arts, music, and theater to enhance
the cultural environment;
-- conducting research and retraining programs to improve education
in the schools;
-- working with state and local government officials to help
improve the quality of citizens' lives;
*
-- working with business, industry and labor to provide a resource
for their research and development needs and for the future
education of their personnel; and
-- working to strengthen and improve the institutional capability
and performance of state governmental bodies.
As it enters the 1990's, Rutgers reaffirms these overall goals of
the University -- goals that set the course for the University in the coming
decade and that underlie and inform the missions and goals of the Camden,
Newark and New Brunswick campuses.
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CAMPUS MISSIONS AND GOALS
Within the context of the overall University goals, each campus has
articulated a statement of mission and goals appropriate to its history,
traditions, location, population served, size, and stage of development.
Camden Campus
Rutgers-Camden is committed to assuming academic leadership for
carrying out the University's goals of teaching, research and service in
southern New Jersey. It will implement these goals through the development
of a comprehensive campus that will provide a broad range of undergraduate
and graduate educational opportunities to a diverse and expanding student
body. While ensuring the continued quality of its undergraduate offerings,
Rutgers-Camden will develop as a distinguished center for graduate and
professional education, including participation in doctoral-level education
in selected areas, in southern New Jersey. In addition, the campus will
establish centers of research appropriate to its geographic region and
expertise, and bearing national and international recognition for
excellence. The campus will enhance the quality of its teaching, research
and public service programs through recruitment and development of
outstanding faculty to complement and augment the existing body of faculty.
While continuing to serve the needs of students in southern New Jersey and
the Delaware Valley region, Rutgers-Camden will expand the size of its
student body through recruitment from a national pool, consistent with
maintaining and improving student quality.
Newark Campus
Rutgers-Newark is a major public university center committed to
excellence in teaching, research, and service to the community. Through its
undergraduate programs, the institution aims to equip students with
knowledge and skills to participate in the economic, scientific, cultural
and political life of the community and the nation. Through its graduate
and graduate-professional schools, the institution aspires to prepare the
nation's scientific, commercial, social and political leaders. This broad
definition of goals is also shaped in significant ways by the metropolitan
area location in which Rutgers-Newark operates -- a location which is one of
the most densely populated regions in the nation.
Rutgers-Newark is ideally positioned, by its location, history, and
program emphases, to take the leadership role in educating leaders and
citizens who are technologically literate, racially and socially diverse,
and readily adaptable to future opportunities and challenges.
÷
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Rutgers-Newark has entered into a new period in its history, an era
in which institutional growth in size and stature will be the benchmarks of
its future: a major goal is to offer educational and research programs of
high quality and impact which will be recognized nationally and
internationally. Rutgers-Newark aims to compete at national and
international levels in the recruitment of faculty and students and,
simultaneously, to pursue vigorously those initiatives that will facilitate
access of students from northern New Jersey to its classrooms, laboratories
and professional training programs. Indeed, in this highly urbanized state,
Rutgers-Newark can become a national role model for urban university centers
which wish to pursue the dual goals of excellence and access.
New Brunswick Campus
Rutgers-New Brunswick is committed to promoting excellence in
graduate and undergraduate education, in research and scholarship, and in
service to the community, state, and nation. With its rich traditions, its
size and diversity, and its comprehensiveness of academic programs, it
occupies a strategic leadership position within higher education in New
Jersey and in the nation. The high quality of its faculty and programs in a
wide array of areas, and its momentum toward increased distinction, provide
rich opportunities for the campus to continue its evolution toward becoming
one of the world's outstanding research universities. With its
distinguished history in undergraduate education and its innovative
educational structures, the campus will promote the highest quality of
instruction and broad learning environments that benefit students at all
levels and with varying needs. Rutgers-New Brunswick, through systematic
and innovative program development, will continuously strive to meet the
highest educational and research standards and thereby join the ranks of the
small number of truly distinguished university centers.
Rutgers-New Brunswick is committed to increasing systematically the
number of instructional, research, and service programs of distinction; to
retaining and enhancing its strong commitment to undergraduate education; to
attracting the most highly qualified students and faculty; and to insuring
broad access to its programs. Only by achieving excellence across a broad
array of educational, research, and service programs, while maintaining a
vigorous commitment to diversity, can the campus fulfill its responsibility
*
to the state and nation and be true to its own history and traditions.
Rutgers-New Brunswick is dedicated to providing instructional,
research, and public service programs that will insure the continued
economic, social, and cultural development of the state and its people. In
pursuing these goals, the campus will insure that the interrelationship
among undergraduate and graduate education, research, and service which is
the hallmark of the best public research university center is maintained and
strengthened.
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New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station
In the land-grant tradition, the New Jersey State Agricultural
Experiment Station (NJAES) is committed to the development and delivery of
basic and applied research in the areas of food, agriculture, and
environmental and life sciences, and the application of knowledge gained
through research to help the people of New Jersey acquire the understanding
and skills needed to address problems in the renewable natural resources.
NJAES will seek to build strength in the relevant sciences that will lead to
excellence in research and extension, and will give increased emphasis to
multidisciplinary approaches to solving complex problems facing modern
agriculture and the environment. In adapting the land-grant concept to
contemporary circumstances, NJAES will exploit the new technologies which
will permit greater efficiency in agriculture and food production and
success in solving environmental problems.
-
Building on existing strengths, NJAES will focus on specific thrust
areas of critical importance to New Jersey's economic and social
development: intensive production agriculture; food science and nutrition;
marine and coastal sciences; environment; and biotechnology.
Office of the Executive Vice President
and Chief Academic Officer
November, 1989
-5-
UNITED STATES SENATOR HARRIS WOFFORD
PEACE CORPS 30TH ANNIVERSARY
"PEACE SERVICE"
STEPS OF THE LINCOLN MEMORIAL
AUGUST 4, 1991
What an honor to stand in this special place, among so many friends, to mark an
occasion that's so important.. not only to those of us here, but to our nation and the
world.
My own memories of this site run deep. Embedded not so much in the mind's
eye...but in the mind's ear. They go back to my 13th birthday. April 9th, Easter Sunday
1939.
Over the radio came the breathtaking voice of Marian Anderson. Denied the right
to sing in Constitution Hall, she stood right here, wrapped in a heavy winter coat against
the late-afternoon chill. And those first words out of her mouth:
"My country, 'tis of thee,
Sweet Land of Liberty,
Of thee I sing.
Land where my father's died,
Land of the pilgrims pride,
From every mountainside,
Let freedom ring."
And freedom rang out, clear as a bell -- to a throng of 75,000 spread across this
mall. And to millions more across this nation who, like me, sat by their radios. With
chills down our spines because of what we heard and felt -- a song of freedom, of justice
and hope.
That song rang again from this place a quarter century later. Again, I heard it
over the radio. I was with some of you. In Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. By then I was with
the Peace Corps in Africa. But again sanding in this spot was a great American whose
voice rang out for freedom.
Again the call was to make the American dream come true. From every
mountainside, in every valley, to see that all God's children are judged by the content of
their character and not the color of their skin.
Martin Luther King showed us the way. He pointed out a path those of you here
committed yourselves to follow. He said:
"Everybody can be great because anybody can serve. You don't have to know about
Plato and Aristotle to serve. You don't have to know Einstein's theory of relativity to
serve... You only need a heart full of grace, and a soul generated by love."
Peace Corps volunteers have made those words become flesh. Today, we come
back together to celebrate three decades of service. One hundred and thirty thousand
strong, you have all the flaws the flesh is heir to. You know, too well, how we all fall
short.
But I can say this with conviction and from experience: Seeing you in action now
over many years, you have hearts full of grace and souls generated by love. And with
that power, you have been making a difference, you are making a difference, and you will
be making a difference in this world.
On the way to his first inaugural as President, with the nation on the verge of
Civil War, the giant of vision and dignity whose image looks down on us today, said
"Every great political idea I ever had came from the Declaration of Independence."
Well, I've found that just about every great idea I ever had about public service
came from the Peace Corps. One of them came when we stood not far from here on the
White House lawn with Sargent Shriver and John Kennedy to send off the first group of
Peace Corps volunteers. There was a spirit of urgency in the air. A determination to
take personal responsibility and direct action against the pressing human problems
facing the people of the developing world.
Today, we have desperate problems right here at home. And our challenge is to
apply that same sense of urgency we carried to Ghana and Benin, India and Paraguay to
solving the problems of our families in North Philadelphia and South Carolina, the hills
of West Virginia and the streets of Southeast Washington.
Our country can still mobilize against military threats and natural disasters across
the globe. But the human disaster of drugs and illiteracy, poverty and hunger, crime and
dependency is claiming another generation of our young people. And we must take
action to break that cycle of despair.
I believe the time has come for returned Peace Corps volunteers and staff to lead
a new movement in our own nation. I believe our people especially our young people -
- are ready to serve. Just as you and I were. We just have to find the right way of
asking.
I pledge to do my part in the Senate to help find the right way to ask. In the
weeks ahead, I'll offer concrete proposals, in the tradition of the Civilian Conservation
Corps, the GI Bill and the Peace Corps.
The time has come to develop a system of voluntary national service that touches
the lives of millions of young people -- millions, not just thousands. Giving them the
chance to serve, earn and learn. To discover, as we have, how great it is to make
something better of our lives, and of our community. To raise our sights from the greed
and self-interest of this last decade to the active duty citizenship and service of a new
era.
2
I ask you to take your own vow to renew the vow you silently took in joining the
Peace Corps -- to engage in true American pursuit of happiness through service. That's
the great song of freedom. And I call on you to continue reaching out to one another as
you've done these past few days, to do that work and carry that song across this nation.
There's no better place to start than right here and now. With old friends,
Abraham, Martin, Marian and John. Who all believed, as we do, that here on earth,
God's work must truly be our own.
Instead of any polite applause today I ask you to stand and silently take that
common vow, in your own words, and then go forth in your own ways to make our
dream come true.
###
United States Senator Harris Wofford
Class Day Address at the John F. Kennedy School of Government
Cambridge, Massachusetts
June 3, 1992
Faculty, friends, and, of course, all of tomorrow's graduates and your families;
I know that some of you will receive what are called "mid-career" degrees. It reminds
me of a recent Hudson Institute study which says that in the next century the average
working adult would pass through seven careers.
I don't know that I've constantly been retraining, as Bob Reich might put it, for
higher-order, value-added, symbolic analyzing tasks. But, in a sense, my own seventh
career as the first Democratic Senator from Pennsylvania in 23 years did begin here at the
Kennedy School.
I was at an Institute of Politics workshop on the idea of national service just over a
year ago. It was here that I learned that Senator John Heinz had been killed in a terrible
airplane accident not far from our home in suburban Philadelphia. And it was a month later
that I went to the Senate determined to make something good come out of the tragedy of
John Heinz's death.
I'm also moved to be here tonight -- as I was moved last week at the Kennedy Library
dinner across the river on the 75th anniversary of John Kennedy's birth -- because of the ties
that bind this school and me together through my leader in one of those earlier careers.
This school named after him is, most appropriately, dedicated to enhancing the
professionalism of public management. As someone who's always strived to light fires under
governments and bureaucracies since I was a teenager, I believe deeply in your mission.
And, of course, I got to keep my new job by winning an election against one of your
recent former Institute of Politics directors. Described as "an aging, nearly anonymous New
Frontiersman," I was said to be up against a "world-class political pro." "A Bambi up against
Godzilla," they wrote.
So I'm here to encourage you to go against the odds, and take on the godzillas -- and
even the political pros -- who may stand in your way, as you go forth to your own new
frontiers.
And I salute you as you set forth! That's an old Army Air Corps salute thats become
the trademark of our Pennsylvania campaign.
Last week at the Library, talking to John Kennedy, Jr., nearly 30 years after his
father's assassination, I wondered if maybe my salute sprang from the memory of a little
three year-old saluting his father's coffin as the caisson rolled toward Arlington. Maybe I've
been wanting to salute John Kennedy for 30 years.
1
My remarks tonight will try to roll together in one ball a part of John Kennedy's
unfulfilled legacy that you and I together should be able to fulfill in our time. I am here to
challenge you in one vital sphere to make a reality of John Kennedy's primary proposition,
that we should ask not what our country can do for us, but what we can do for our country.
My salute to you comes from my heart, because I know you are not asking what your
country can do for you -- a question probably more often asked by your friends across the
river at the Business School -- but asking instead what you can do for your country, for your
community and for your world.
There is, of course, much you can and will do. And my salute goes with you --
whatever you choose to do. But I want to speak tonight not about how we can draw more
and better professionals into public service that's preaching to the choir in this building.
I want to talk about what all of us, as "amateurs," as lovers of the common good --
that is, what all citizens and especially all young people -- can and should do for their
country.
As my wife says -- "complains" might be a better word -- for the past forty years,
wherever you set me down, my political compass will quickly spin around and point toward
the idea of universal service and especially to the idea of national service by all citizens
coming of age in America. All -- rich and poor and middle class, high school drop-outs and
college-bound, young people of all genders and sexual orientations, of all races and cultural
backgrounds. I mean service in the military forces as well as in what I hope will be much
larger citizens forces.
This idea of universal service, beginning with the young, has taken on new urgency
in the aftermath of last month's events in Los Angeles, at a moment when we have finally
turned our attention to the problems of our inner cities and of our young people.
It's too bad that to get the nation's attention we must fall from the high rhetoric of
1000 points of light to the 1000 fires in Los Angeles. But in our history it's always been true
that on the great problems it takes great pressure, great struggle, great drama, even often
great tragedy to get the great action required.
I'm not just thinking of those who marched and went to jail and died to get the right
to vote for Black Americans and bring down the walls of legal segregation. I'm thinking
specifically about one of my last conversations with Martin Luther King.
He had reached one mountaintop but found the Promised Land still far away, over
other peaks of a whole range of mountains yet to be crossed. He was beginning to move up
the next steep slope -- the mountain of poverty in our cities, the mountain of class mixed
with race, the mountain we have not climbed. And he has met defeat in the streets of
Chicago, and was going on to Memphis.
2
Martin raised the possibility of persuading the people of one of the nation's worst
slums to openly, deliberately, peacefully walk out of that slum and, at a publicly-stated time,
set it afire. To set a blaze that would sear the conscience of the country. And to go to jail
for doing this and stay in jail until the country acted.
I doubt he would have gone that far, but in any case, the fire has come this time and
one thing we know is that when fires were set violently in his own day, Martin Luther King's
message wasn't "Burn baby, burn!" It was "Learn baby, learn."
Last month, the day after the riots ended, from dawn until dusk, I was in the streets
of South-Central Los Angeles. I saw the worst and the best of our country: I saw the
burned-out stores, smelled the smoke, and talked with the people. With pastors and
parishioners, with high school students, with young black professionals, with police and
national guardsmen, with volunteers cleaning the streets.
I saw miles of Los Angeles that had the look of Third World cities I've seen
smoldering under police or army rule.
Old graffiti was being painted out at one corner while new graffiti was being sprayed
on at another, with Los Angeles Police Department SWAT team members looking across their
guns at the most frequent slogan on the walls: "Kill the L.A.P.D."
An unconcerned young man moved away as we neared the graffiti he had just tagged
on the last wall of a burned-out block. It was only his nickname to show he'd been there.
"He's a gang-leader," said my guide, Tracy Robinson, a specialist on the gangs that he
said had enlisted 90,000 young people -- and caused hundreds of gang-related deaths the
previous year.
And I saw the better angels of our nature at work, men and women of all colors and
cultures who were clearing the debris in small teams all that long Sunday.
With shovels and brooms thousands of volunteer citizens had responded to the call of
Edward James Olmos, to join him at 6 a.m. at First and Broadway. The star of Stand and
Deliver and Miami Vice had driven to TV station after station, issuing an appeal to join in
cleaning up the mess caused by the fire and then cleaning up the mess that caused the fire.
"I'm just using my medium," he told me as we walked along Broadway early Sunday
morning.
What struck me with special poignancy was that I had seen it all before. Twenty-
seven years ago I walked the streets of Watts after the terrible riots of 1965 engulfed that
section of South Central L.A. The refrain from the Sixties song rang through my head, then
and now: "When will we ever learn?"
What should we from learn from Los Angeles? First of all, that this is not just a crisis
of cities, or of race though it is indeed both of those -- It is in its most explosive form, a
crisis of our young people.
3
That point was put to me by Pastor A. D. Iverson of the Paradise Baptist Church in
Southcentral Los Angeles. He sat in his dark study without electricity, with two candles
flickering on the table, and told me that not all the rioters were black or Hispanic, but all
were young.
We are losing our young, he said, to alienation, hopelessness, frustration, and anger,
to the epidemic of crack cocaine, to the gangs that replace family, church or any other
institution that instills the values of responsible citizenship and productive workmanship.
"This was a wake-up call," Reverend Iverson said. "Pray God we don't press the
snooze button." The lack of good education, the lack of challenging work or good jobs for
which they are ready, the lack of constructive alternatives and opportunities for the young
was the crux of the problem, the pastor said.
A remarkable group of volunteer students with whom I met at the end of the day
pressed the case that the cause of the alienation among their peers was the sense that they
had no way to participate in society, no way to do something important, no alternative form
of action than the excitement and camaraderie of the street gangs.
Those high school students, and many of the older people with whom I talked,
pointed to the whole process of coming of age in American today. With vivid evidence, they
spoke of the need for early childhood education for all, beginning with prenatal care, good
day care and Head Start. They liked the idea of using summers, to get challenging
experience either in intensive "Upward Bound" learning, or in "Outward Bound" in the
wilderness, or in effective apprenticeship work, or in well-organized, demanding community
service corps.
They said they would enlist for a year or more of full-time community or national
service after high-school, together with other young people from all backgrounds, if well
organized projects were available and if their living expenses could be paid.
They wanted to tutor younger kids or care for senior citizens, fight graffiti, reclaim
neighborhoods from drug dealers, be supplementary community police, repair parks or
rehabilitate homes for the poor.
In any case, they wanted to stop being viewed as the enemy or as a danger and begin
to be viewed as a resource as talent ready, earlier than people might think, to make a
difference.
The toughest indictment of our current dependency system, and the best argument
for how to change it, was best put to me a few years ago by a young high school dropout,
this time in Philadelphia. He had gone from a street gang into the Philadelphia Youth
Service Corps.
When I asked him why he had enlisted in the Corps, he first said something like this:
4
"Look, all my life people have been coming to do good against me, I got tired of people
trying to help me all the time. This Corps asked me to do the helping. I'm doing
something now, I'm making a difference."
And I believe this principle makes all the difference. The saving principle in this life,
for all of us, is to serve not to be served. To learn responsibility by taking it. To learn
citizenship by doing it.
Where does this lead? It leads all the way back to the Thirties for some light on what
worked in the Great Depression and where we went wrong. What worked was the Civilian
Conservation Corps that enlisted almost three million young unemployed Americans in
residential, army-run camps in or on the edge of our parks and forests.
The corpsmembers of the CCC were challenged to achieve big goals. Their success in
later years proved that the qualities of productive workers and good citizens are much the
same: initiative, responsibility and teamwork.
What worked with F.D.R. was work -- not the dole, not welfare, but work, and for the
CCC corps members -- in the nation's service. The young men of the CCC transformed our
parks and forests and then graduated into the National Service of World War II. More
importantly, they transformed themselves. Just as the G.I. Bill after that war was one of the
best investments America ever made, so was the Civilian Conservation Corps.
And the story of its boldness and speed of its creation should give a fresh sense of
possibility to those of you future government servants who have come along in an era when
the federal government hasn't been able to take action on any of the great domestic
challenges facing our country.
Roosevelt showed how fast and efficiently we can get action when we work together.
A week after first outlining the CCC idea, in the middle of March 1933, Roosevelt sent a
message to Congress calling for its enactment. Ten days later, March 31, 1933, Congress
established the Civilian Conservation Corps in a simple, two-page act.
F.D.R. set a goal of 250,000 corpsmembers in camps by early summer. And by the
end of July, there were 1,300 camps with over 300,000 young men in the woods. One of the
leaders in developing the CCC was a Colonel on his path up the ranks: George C. Marshall,
who managed 17 CCC camps in the southeast. Some people talk about a "Marshall Plan" for
our cities. But this is the kind of Marshall Plan I would like to see today.
After World War II, the CCC was forgotten, until the War on Poverty was being
planned by Sargent Shriver in the Sixties. The proposed residential Job Corps had some of
the elements of the CCC, and it's proved very worthwhile. But it was and is a job-training
corps, not a service corps. It is an intense form of learning for those who need it most.
Sargent Shriver used to say that those who really need a good prep school away from
the distractions of their home conditions are not the very rich, but the very poor.
5
He planned for 100,000 young people to be in the Job Corps in the first three years and then
go up to half a million. It never got beyond 70,000 because of the war in Vietnam.
When I had the privilege of helping Sargent Shriver in the early days of the War on
Poverty we also envisioned a million strong Volunteers in Service to America -- the Peace
Corps come home. But VISTA never passed the 10,000 volunteers mark for the same reason.
When the War in Vietnam consumed the attention and resources of the country, the
idea of asking all young Americans to serve for a year as volunteers for the rebuilding and
education of America was trampled under by the fight over the draft and a war that divided
our nation against itself. But the idea of large-scale, voluntary national service has been
turned up again by the harsh logic of events that came to a climax in Los Angeles.
Let me tell you more specifically what I have in mind so that I can throw this ball --
this idea for action and social invention -- to you. First, I want to make clear I am not
proposing the one big, federally-run domestic Peace Corps that we once envisioned.
Instead, I see us coming to a new GI Bill for all young people, with a voucher for a
year or two of living expense stipends that could be used to support work in a wide range of
service programs run by local, state or federal governments, or by communities, churches,
student organizations or non-profit corporations. After which the corps members would have
earned an educational bonus to help pay for college or further job training.
We already have the National and Community Service Act of 1990 to build on. That
creative law is supported by Republicans as well as Democrats and its crafting and enactment
by the senior Senator from Massachusetts is another of the many ways Ted Kennedy has
carried on the legacy of his brothers. That Act has laid the foundation for the rebirth of the
CCC and of other forms of effective youth service corps.
Such corps, in which the corpsmembers "serve, earn and learn," are an important part
of the answer to the crisis of the young. More than sixty such corps are in operation today
around the country. Pennsylvania is proud to lead the way with the largest number of youth
corps of all kinds. Every city, every community can develop one or more.
Indeed, I think the best such effort already underway is right here in Boston, the City
Year program, founded by Harvard graduates Alan Khazei and Michael Brown. It brings
together urban and suburban young people, college-bound and high school dropouts, rich
and poor of all colors in an intensive, year-long service corps that offers a weekly stipend of
$100 and a $5,000 bonus on graduation.
There were five applicants for each place last year. There will be ten for each place
this year.
A second building block is Senator Boren's Community Works Progress and Youth
Community Corps Programs Act which I am co-sponsoring. Support for two new national
youth corps are key elements of that legislation.
6
A Youth Community Corps would allow secondary school students to earn college
scholarships by working on approved community projects after school, on weekends, or in
the summer. And a National Youth Community Corps, would create dormitory
environments for young people age 17 to 22 to work on projects ranging from reforestation
to auxiliary police work to urban renewal. Help me and our dozen Senate co-sponsors to get
this bill passed.
Third, we need to reclaim the original idea behind college work study. When Con-
gress created the program almost 30 years ago, it assumed that most of those student jobs
would be in the community. But colleges and universities have defined the public service
programs that students would work in as programs on campus helping their own budgets.
That's an indictment of the leaders of higher education. I was a college president and
was part of that whole process and understand the budget pressures. But join me in asking
colleges and universities to see that the majority of those jobs are in fact serving the
community.
Fourth, an expanded investment in the Job Training Partnership Act would be helpful.
But there is already more than a billion federal dollars a year spent on mandated youth
programs. What we need most is a change in approach. Too often the "work experience" for
youth in these programs is merely make-work. They punch the clock, fill the time, but do
nothing that will give them the chance to develop the kind of skills, sense of discipline and
self-reliance that will be essential for them to succeed it in the world of work.
These federally funded job programs need to reorganize and refocus their efforts along
a youth corps model. Doing so would make possible a quantum leap in youth service
without having to spend an additional dollar.
Fifth, we must expand VISTA and the Peace Corps. Having been involved in the
founding of both the Peace Corps and Volunteers in Service to America -- our domestic
Peace Corps -- I know these programs can change lives. Not only of those who are helped,
but of those who do the helping.
That's the hidden genius in the idea of service corps. That's what that Philadelphia
Youth Service Corpsmember understood when he said he was tired of people doing good
against him. Let me say it once more: Service is a way of developing the characteristics
needed not only for responsible citizens, but also for productive workers -- discipline, self-
reliance, teamwork, initiative, leadership and a commitment to life-long learning.
There have been enough pilot programs to prove that this approach works in the 90's
as the CCC worked in the Thirties. The time has come for the pilots to ignite the whole
furnace.
This is one idea that transcends politics, that goes beyond left or right, that draws on
the liberal agenda and the conservative agenda at the same time. It is an idea that brings
Arthur Ashe and Sam Nunn, Bill Buckley and Bill Clinton, Marian Wright Edelman and
Father Hesburgh, Barbara Mikulski and General Schwartzkopf together on the same platform.
7
Work not welfare is now a self-evident truth and we know we can begin applying this
principle to the young. We understand that personal responsibility and self-esteem can't
simply be taught, they have to be earned.
It's a scandal that we know this but sit by while another generation of inner-city
young people drop out of school, or graduate from school into the streets, joblessness, drugs
and the dependency systems of welfare or prison. And it's a scandal that a society with
children who need care, roads that need repair, bridges that need building is allowing and
sometimes paying able men and women to sit idle. It's a scandal, too, that we do not
challenge the college-bound to move beyond a self-centered life of civic indifference.
In cities across our country 10-year-olds point loaded guns at each other's heads. It's
time for Congress and the White House, Democrats and Republicans to stop pointing fingers
at each other's policies.
It's time to sit together around a table and hammer out solutions that do work,
instead of wasting time and money on those that don't.
In our hearts and in our minds we know why angry, jobless, hopeless young people
burn and loot their own communities. We don't need another commission, another study,
another pilot program. We need action. Immediate and sustained action.
So let us begin. Let's begin at the place where we can most agree. Let's commit
ourselves to saving another generation of young people by engaging them in the hard work
of building their own communities, starting with the rebuilding of Los Angeles by the young
of Los Angeles. Let's challenge and enable and empower them to do so.
The results will not only bring new hope to our nation, but new purpose as well. It
will also represent a return to the tradition out of which this school grows: a belief that
public service fulfills an obligation to our country, rather than a privilege the country can
bestow.
When John Kennedy was asked how he became a war hero, he replied, "I had no
choice they sank my boat." But when he was asked why he entered public service rather
than just enjoying his family's wealth, he invariably explained that he felt obligated to serve.
He didn't say that because he had a $100 million to spare so he might as well run for
president. He simply said he owed it to his country.
That was a powerful ethic. An ethic we must return to today if we're to break the
gridlock in Washington and take the kind of action the people of this country are calling for
to rebuild our economy, reclaim our cities, protect our environment and make the right to
affordable health care a reality for every American. An ethic we need to put into action
before the problems mounting around us sink our boat.
Let's begin building that ethic in our youngest citizens. And maintain it in our own
careers.
8
The best commencement address I ever heard was given by my best teacher --
though never, unfortunately, in a classroom -- Scott Buchanan, the philosopher and founder
of the Great Books program at St. John's College in Annapolis. He told the graduates not to
be overawed by the systems, ideologies, and worlds around them because, "for all their high
and nighty poses, they are only possibilities, which with boldness, laughter and ingenuity on
our part can be set aside and replaced. For the best of all possible worlds is yet to be found,
if Satan is to be confounded and God is to be justified."
That was also John Kennedy's approach. I'll never forget his mandate to me as he
assigned me to organize executive action for civil rights -- to help him use the power of the
Presidency to achieve the full constitutional rights of all Americans.
His job description was just this: "Harris, you know what we need to do in civil rights.
Go do it."
That is my message to you tonight. You know much of what needs to be done in
America and for America. Now, with boldness, laughter and ingenuity, go do it.
# # #
9
The Commission on
National and Community Service
Information Packet
on Grant Recipients
Prepared for:
The Board of Directors
June 30, 1992
Revised July 15, 1992
Conservation and Youth Service Corps
FY92 Grantees
New Hampshire
Concord
New Hampshire will develop both state and sub-state corps programs focusing on summer, full-
time corps for in-school and out-of-school youth. Community needs to be met are: (1) reduction
in dropout rate from secondary education and increased return to school for high school
dropouts; (2) improvement of the image of youth as productive community assets; (3) creation of
a strong volunteer role to mobilize interest in community service and leadership development;
and (4) completion of projects that provide long-term public benefits to the environment and
human service needs.
Budget Request
$1,025,616
Grant Amount:
$600,751
Project Name:
New Hampshire Conservation and Youth Service Corps
Contact:
Mr. Ray Worden
Address:
New Hampshire Job Training Council
64B Old Suncook Road
Concord, NH 03301
Phone:
603 - 228-9500
Fax:
603-228-8557
New Jersey
Trenton
This proposal seeks to enhance and expand the New Jersey Youth Corps by: adding a one year
full-time community service component; providing a full-time comprehensive summer
community service component with ITPA; adding post-service benefits and implementing
training programs focusing on leadership training with Higher Education Innovative programs.
Budget Request
$2,820,697
Grant Amount:
$1,000,000
Project Name:
New Jersey Youth Corps
Contact:
Mr. Martin Friedman
Address:
New Jersey Dept. of Higher Education
20 W. State Street, CN 542
Trenton, NJ 08625
Phone:
609-633-6628
Fax:
609-984-9300
9
National Service Models
FY92 Grantees
New Jersey
Trenton
The Board has given preliminary approval for New Jersey to further develop its school strengthening
model. The project would build on previous programs for school development by adding a unique
community service component for involving parents and college students in schools. While favorably
impressed with the proposal, the Board concluded that a planning grant will enable New Jersey to
undertake additional preparatory work for a project possibly in the 1993 grant cycle.
Budget Request
$4,712,942.00
Grant Amount:
$150,000.00 (Planning Grant)
Project Name:
Urban Schools Service Corps
Contact:
Mr. Martin Friedman
Address:
New Jersey Dept. of Higher Educ.
20 W. State Street, CN 542
Trenton, NJ 08625
Phone:
609-633-6628
Fax:
609-984-2684
Oklahoma
Oklahoma City
Oklahoma has proposed a career development/mentorship model that will assign up to 20 AFDC
recipients to entry-level jobs in health care organizations and will provide training and mentoring aimed
at helping them develop relevant job skills as they serve. This model is unusual in that it is in the health
care field, where the need for trained personnel and the number of available jobs is expanding relatively
rapidly.
Budget Request
$190,815.00
Grant Amount:
$200,000.00
Project Name:
Health Career Volunteers
Contact:
Ms. Susan Hall
Address:
OK Department of Human Services
P.O. Box 25352
Oklahoma City, OK 73125
Phone:
405-521-3500
Fax:
405-521-6684
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Higher Education Innovative Projects
FY92 Grantees
Native American Educational Services (NAES)
Chicago, IL
NAES will establish student service programs that address four needs in the Native American
community; 1) high school retention through tutoring and mentoring programs, 2) better
understanding of parental rights regarding foster care through a juvenile and parental rights
education program, 3) improvement of facilities through a grounds and housing renovation
volunteer project, and 4) conservation of natural resources through a resource management
curriculum development project. Four different campuses will be involved in Chicago; Fort
Peck, MT; Minneapolis; and Menominee, WI.
Budget Request
$121,350.00
Grant Amount:
$84,650.00
Project Name:
Family Community Service Partnership
Contact:
Mr. Robert V. Dumont
Address:
NAES College
2838 W. Peterson
Chicago, IL 60659
Phone:
312-761-5000
Fax:
312-761-3808
New Jersey Department of Education
Trenton, NJ
The New Jersey Department of Education will establish three new service components. The
Urban School Enrichment Program will involve students in designing and conducting after
school, weekend and summer service programs for urban elementary and secondary students.
The College Leadership Program is a year-long leadership training program for 90 college
students, and the Campus program will provide funds for service-learning curriculum
development.
Budget Request
$520,527.00
Grant Amount:
$200,000.00
Project Name:
Higher Education Innovative Projects
Contact:
Dr. Martin Friedman
Address:
NJ Dept. of Higher Education
20 W. State Street, CN 542
Trenton, NJ 08625
Phone:
609-833-6628 / 984-2684
Fax: 609-984-9300
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Serve-America
FY92 Grantees
New Hampshire
Concord
New Hampshire's plan is to enhance teacher education in community service, provide state level
technical assistance to local schools in developing quality community service projects, and distribute
mini-grants to local educational institutions for implementation of projects.
Budget Request
$73,333.00
Grant Amount:
$54,656.00
Project Name:
New Hampshire Serve America
Contact:
Mr. Ray O. Worden
Address:
New Hampshire Job Training Council
64B Old Suncook Road
Concord, NH 03301
Phone:
603-228-9500
Fax:
603-228-8557
New Jersey
Trenton
Two RFPs will be distributed for projects which address environmental problems and societal issues
related to poverty, with the intent of increasing youth citizenship, contributing to educational reform, and
helping students gain an appreciation for diversity. Service-learning opportunities will be expanded for
youth from diverse backgrounds to work together in common community service activities. School-
based projects will bring students and adults together from low wealth and non-low wealth districts.
Community-based agency projects will involve out-of-school, special needs, imminent drop-out youth
and adults.
Budget Request
$600,000.00
Grant Amount:
$493,302.00
Project Name:
Serve-America
Contact:
Mr. Martin Friedman
Address:
New Jersey Dept. of Higher Education
20 W. State Street, CN 542
Trenton, NJ 08625
Phone:
609-984-2684
Fax:
609-984-9300
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