Credit: Peter Tenzer

Provost Steven J. Diner

Steven J. Diner used his annual address to the Newark Campus community on October 15 to note several milestones and accomplishments – including the highest enrollment in the campus’s history and the exceptionally rapid growth of the campus’s resident-student population. 

He said the enrollment milestone – 10,550 students – reflected a total first-year enrollment increase of 40 percent over the last two years, an increase he credits at least partially to the improving image of the campus’s home city and a growing interest in urban education.

“Suburban students find cities attractive, exciting places; they don’t have the same fears their parents did,” Diner said. He predicted the combination of the campus’s location, its top-ranked faculty, and the quality of its academic and research programs would make it a “college of choice” for students seeking an urban education.

Diner noted that 2008 is the centennial of the founding of the New Jersey Law School, now Rutgers’ School of Law–Newark. It was the first of the several private colleges in Newark that eventually merged into the University of Newark, which became the northern campus of Rutgers in 1946. So, 2008 marks a century of Rutgers higher education in Newark. 

The provost reaffirmed his commitment to affirmative action and diversity and his enthusiastic support for President McCormick’s recently announced initiatives in this area. He reminded his audience that the University of Newark made a college education possible for generations of immigrants and students of limited financial means – people traditionally restricted in their access to higher education. He announced efforts to increase the diversity of faculty and senior administration while also making full use of student diversity as a “pedagological tool” in classrooms, citing diversity as a great “educational asset.”

A new Office of Diversity and Cultural Enrichment is being established on the Newark Campus, and a Provost’s Advisory Committee on Diversity has been appointed. The Office of Diversity and Cultural Enrichment will be jointly headed by Vice Provost for Research Lynn Schneemeyer and Assistant Provost for Student Life Gerald Massenburg. Asela Laguna-Diaz, professor of classical and modern languages and literature, has agreed to serve as special adviser on diversity to the provost. In that capacity, she will work with the new diversity office and will head the advisory committee. 

The provost also reported that the campus is undertaking a long-term space planning project to determine the best uses for space being vacated by the Rutgers Business School upon its move into a new facility. He also announced that a transportation/parking study has been completed, recommending dramatic changes in campus transportation policies to address the severe parking shortages and traffic problems plaguing the campus. This report will be widely discussed with the campus community.

In pointing to major economic developments in Newark – such as the Prudential Arena and new, upscale housing in the city’s downtown – Diner cited several campus projects that also will help the city’s commercial growth:

• Rutgers Business School’s move into One Washington Park
• plans to transform the former law school at 15 Washington Street into housing and a small hotel
• development of stores and other retail space in both the new University Square residence hall and the first floor of Parking Deck II
• a proposed mega bookstore on Broad Street – complete with a coffee shop –serving all six higher educational institutions in Newark as well as the public. 

“Rutgers in Newark has come a long way in the last 100 years, and the city of Newark has come a long way since 1967,” Diner said. “The best is yet to come.”