On Campus
Lakewood High School's top students visit Rutgers–New Brunswick
All-day visit follows special invitation from President McCormick
A group of Lakewood High School’s best students traveled to the New Brunswick Campus Wednesday to meet President Richard L. McCormick and Rutgers faculty members – and get a taste of university life.
Forty-four juniors and seniors, hand-picked for the outing by their teachers and guidance counselors, were invited by President McCormick last May, when he and 39 faculty members visited the Ocean County high school as part of the New Faculty Traveling Seminar.
At that time, some Lakewood students and teachers said they would like to visit Rutgers but that their school district didn’t have the necessary travel funds. McCormick said he would arrange to have a bus bring the students to the New Brunswick Campus. Trips to the Camden and Newark campuses are possible next year.
McCormick met with the students Wednesday, November 28, for about 30 minutes, chatting and answering questions. He welcomed the students to Rutgers in the standing-room crowd outside his Old Queen’s office. “As I look around this room, I see your diversity. You look like the student body here. The student body at Rutgers very much looks like the people of New Jersey.”
Lakewood High School’s student body is about 30 percent African American, 40 percent Latin American and 30 percent white, according to the school’s principal, David Clauser.
Sixty percent of Lakewood High School students receive free or reduced lunches, and the Lakewood district has a state district factor of “B” on a scale from A to J, which means that among 616 school districts in New Jersey, only Group “A,” the so-called Abbott Districts, are more impoverished and receive more state aid, Clauser said.
In addition to meeting with McCormick, the group received an overview of the undergraduate application and admissions process, took a bus tour of the campus, and had dinner with several faculty members in a private dining room at the Busch Campus Center in Piscataway. They heard a lecture on the rap artist “Eminem” by Ben Sifuentes, an associate professor of American Studies at the School of Arts and Sciences, and toured a biology lab with Karl Herrup, professor of cell biology and neuroscience.
Wolfram Hoefer, an assistant professor of landscape architecture at the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences, ate lunch with the students. Hoefer said he found them “interesting and open-minded,” with very worthy questions about undergraduate research opportunities and the quality of academic counseling.
The students returned his compliments. Sarah Lorusso, a 16-year junior, hadn’t considered Rutgers before visiting. “I thought it was too big of a campus, that it wasn’t very intimate. But in talking to students and professors, I thought it was very well designed around the students.”
Chris Vega had been set to apply to The College of New Jersey but said he was going home to fill out a Rutgers application as well. The 17-year-old senior rated the tour “awesome,” and said “the president and the professors just impressed me. My first view of Rutgers was, kind of, everyone goes there, I don’t want to go. But it is such a beautiful campus.”
Madli Monesson, a guidance counselor at Lakewood High and a 1970 graduate of Douglass College, said that on the bus trip back to Lakewood she asked the students, “How many of you here came on this trip not even giving Rutgers a chance and now would be willing to apply? I’d say at least 10 to 14 hands went up.”