Rutgers News Center

New officers elected to board of trustees

The Rutgers Board of Trustees has elected Rochelle Gizinski of Brick to a one-year term as its chair. She succeeds Robert A. Laudicina of Singer Island, Fla., who will remain on the board and serve concurrently on the Rutgers Board of Governors.

Gerald C. Harvey of Summit and Anthony J. DePetris of Camden were elected co-vice chairs at the board’s annual meeting in June. Harvey will be serving his second term as a vice chair. The new officers’ terms began July 1.

Gizinski, a certified civil trial attorney, is a partner at the law firm of Abazia & Gizinski in Carteret. She is a 1980 graduate of Rutgers College, where she majored in political science and history. Harvey is vice president, secretary and general counsel for TransTechnology Corp., a Union-based designer and manufacturer of hoists for military and civilian aircraft. DePetris, a 20-year public management professional, is director of administrative and personnel services for the LEAP Academy University Charter School District, Inc. in Camden, where he also resides.

-- Sandra Lanman

Rutgers center receives $3 million to ferret out terrorist activity

A Rutgers-led consortium has received $3 million from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to research advanced information analysis and computational technologies to ascertain possible terrorist activity.

The group will develop computing technologies that find patterns and relationships in data, such as news stories, open-source web logs, and other accessible information, to quickly identify emerging indicators of possible terrorist activity, and rate the consistency and reliability of the sources. Such information could give officials more lead time to investigate and potentially thwart terrorist plans.

Leading the Rutgers effort is the university’s Center for Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science (DIMACS). It will include partner researchers from AT&T Laboratories, Lucent Technologies Bell Labs, Princeton University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and Texas Southern University. Rutgers also will coordinate a team of four university-based centers, with others based at the University of Southern California, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the University of Pittsburgh. DHS will award a combined total of $10.2 million over three years to Rutgers and these institutions.

World Trade Center fallout

Rutgers scientists have created a computerized model that will help public health officials understand the environmental and health consequences of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001.

A paper in the July issue of the journal Environmental Fluid Mechanics describes the dispersion of a plume of aerosols – tiny particles suspended in air – from the World Trade Center disaster, and provides a way to evaluate human exposure.

The authors of the paper are Georgiy Stenchikov of Rutgers; Paul Lioy, Nilesh Lahoti, and Panos Georgopoulos of the Environmental, Occupational and Health Sciences Institute, a joint institute of Rutgers and the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School; and David J. Diner and Ralph Kahn of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The collapse of the WTC sent aerosols more than 4,000 feet into the sky and blew over lower Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens. Stenchikov and his co-authors address where the plume may have polluted the air and to what extent, giving public health authorities much more information about contaminant distribution.

-- Ken Branson

Sexual assault in NJ prisons relatively rare

Sexual assault among inmates in New Jersey state prisons is a relatively rare event, according to a survey by Rutgers researchers in collaboration with the New Jersey Department of Corrections, but physical assault is a more common occurrence.

The study, headed by Nancy Wolff, director of the Center for Mental Health Services and Criminal Justice Research at Rutgers – is the first to use rigorous scientific methods to collect data on prison victimization and to estimate rates for an entire state prison system.

The study was published on Springer’s Journal of Urban Health web site. Researchers conducted the survey of 7,221 male and 564 female prisoners between June and August of 2005. Inmates responded anonymously on laptop computers to questions through headsets.

When sexual assault did occur, female inmates were more likely victims than men by about a 2-to-1 margin, 3.2 percent to 1.5 percent, according to Wolff. About 2 percent of male and female inmates reported sexual assault by staff within six months of the survey.

Life without children a growing social reality

More and more adults are living more of their lives without children, according to the National Marriage Project’s 2006 State of Our Unions report.

The lead essay in this year’s report indicates there is an objective reason for growing parental discontent: a dramatic change in the pattern of our adult lives.
“Child rearing is no longer the defining experience of adult life,” says author of the report’s essay, Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, who is co-director of the National Marriage Project, based at Rutgers.

A combination of marrying later, less children and longer life expectancy means that a significantly greater part of adult life is spent without kids being in the house. In 1970, 73.6 percent of women, ages 25-29, had already entered their child-rearing years and were living with at least one minor child of their own. By 2000, the share had dropped to 48.7 percent. In 1970, 27.4 percent of women, ages 50-54, had at least one minor child of their own in the household. By 2000, the share of such women had fallen to 15.4 percent.

A growing percentage of women today are not having any children. In 2004, almost one out of five women in their early forties was childless. In 1976, it was one out of ten.

-- Theresa Kirby

Graduate program debuts in Jersey City

Jersey City has just become Rutgers’ newest “campus.” The School of Management and Labor Relations has introduced its Master’s Program in Human Resource Management to the city with its first course, “HR Strategy I: Introduction.” The three-credit class, designed with HR leaders in mind, meets weekly Monday evenings at the Hyatt Regency, 2 Exchange Place.

“This is the latest example of how New Jerseyans who live and work in the state or commute to jobs in New York will benefit from Rutgers’ presence, even if they don’t set foot on our three main campuses,” said David A. Ferio, graduate director of the Master’s Program in Human Resource Management (MHRM). “With the increased presence of so many financial services and other companies in Jersey City, its prime location and transportation options to and from New York, it makes perfect sense to offer experienced business leaders and recent graduates launching their careers this educational opportunity.”

Rutgers’ MHRM degree track is the most comprehensive in the country. The program covers such areas as resource/benefits/organization and rewards/compensation; workforce planning/selection/training and performance management; quantitative decision making; financial analysis; and employment law. Students enrolled in the 48-credit degree program will learn about business consulting, compliance, employee administration and data management functions.

Measuring the effect of nurses' work environment on dialysis patient outcomes

Assistant professors Linda Flynn and Charlotte Thomas-Hawkins at the College of Nursing are conducting a study to explore for the first time the association between the nursing work environment and nurse reported outcomes in dialysis centers.

The $75,000 study, funded by the American Nephrology Nurses Association, will explore how workplace factors influence positive patient and nurse outcomes.

This month, Flynn and Thomas-Hawkins will send a survey to 2,000 registered nurses practicing in dialysis centers across the United States.

“Since nurses are in the front line of patient care, their reports regarding the work environment and frequency of adverse events are considered important indicators of the processes and outcomes of care,” explained Thomas-Hawkins. “Enhancement of health outcomes among renal dialysis patients is a national priority.”

-- Miguel Tersy

National Science Foundation grant to enhance port security, efficiency

Rutgers has received a three-year, $600,000 National Science Foundation grant supporting research under way to improve the management of America’s ports.

The project connects Rutgers researchers with representatives from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the shipping industry, terminal operators, state and local highway agencies; and freight and technology companies in an effort to improve port competitiveness and the New Jersey economy. It aims to improve port competitiveness and boost the New Jersey economy.

Alok Baveja, an associate professor of management at the School of Business-Camden, is responsible for the overall management of the project. Maria Boile, an assistant professor of transportation at Rutgers’ School of Engineering, coordinates the technical and scientific management.

The project is one of only 15 selected for funding from among 188 proposals submitted to the NSF during the past year.

Baveja notes that recent controversies concerning the sale of U.S. ports to foreign entities underscore the need for this research. “Politics aside, the controversy spotlighted the need for cooperation that spans nations, agencies, and disciplines,” Baveja said.

-- Michael Sepanic