On Campus
From bus driver to leader in higher education
At the start of the semester, Susan Schurman, fresh from a 10-year stint as a college president, taught her first class of undergraduates under age 21 in nearly two decades. After handing out the heavy syllabus to the 71 Rutgers students registered for “Introduction to Labor Studies and Employment Relations,” she noticed they looked a little overwhelmed – “a bit like deer in headlights.”
Schurman will demand a great deal from her students. Aside from the usual papers and reading, they will work on a political campaign and conduct a collective bargaining simulation.
In exchange for their hard work, the students get a teacher with a résumé and perspective unlike most academics. Schurman counts among her jobs: bartender, bus driver, chief negotiator for both labor and management, executive director of a humane society, and former Rutgers professor. From 1992 to 1997 she was an associate professor of labor studies and served as director of Labor Extension Programs at Rutgers before being wooed to become the founding president of the National Labor College (NLC) in Silver Springs, Maryland. The one-of-a-kind undergraduate college educates older adults – median age 42 – who work full time, either for unions or as practitioners of a trade.
“I have two passions: access to lifelong learning and unions,” Schurman said. “To me, they are strongly related. I believe the evidence shows that if you want to have a robust middle-class and a broad-based standard of living, you need a highly educated workforce and workers who have the freedom to join unions and bargain collectively. In the old days,” she continued, “one or another of those pathways could lead a family to the American dream. Today, blue-collar manufacturing has moved out of the United States, and the number of college graduates hasn’t increased since the 1960s. People want to finish their degrees, but they need alternatives.”
It is Schurman’s maverick thinking and eclectic background that led her to three diverse leadership positions at Rutgers. She returned to the university in September 2007 as a faculty member in the School of Management and Labor Relations (SMLR), with additional appointments as director of lifelong learning for the Division of Continuous Education and acting dean of the University College Community.
Schurman received a call from SMLR Dean David Finegold during the summer of 2006 after he had accepted the position at Rutgers. “He asked if I’d consider coming back, and I asked him, ‘What would I do?’ to which he responded, ‘What would you like to do?’
”That turned out to be just the right question,” Schurman said. The labor college, of which Schurman had been the first president, had just celebrated its 10th anniversary. She had seen the school through Middle States accreditation and had built an institution that honored George Meany’s vision of a post-secondary, independent center that would provide continuous labor education for union activists from all over the country.
“I was ready for the next challenge, and so much was changing at Rutgers,” Schurman said. “I was excited about the reorganization of undergraduate education, and I was excited to return to Rutgers because of its long history of commitment to civil rights, diversity, and social responsibility.”
Later that summer, Schurman met with Ray Caprio, director of Rutgers’ Division of Continuous Education, and agreed to take on a second position leading the university’s efforts in lifelong learning. She started back at Rutgers half time in January of 2007 while she oversaw the search for a new president at the labor college. Upon arriving full time in June 2007, she received an email from Barry Qualls, vice president for undergraduate education, asking if she would consider becoming acting dean of the University College Community while Dean Emmet Dennis was on leave. Schurman phoned Qualls and, after a short conversation, said yes. “I’d never met Barry Qualls but found him charming, delightful, and a gentleman – impossible to say no to.” she said. Plus, she added, the opportunity to lead a community of adult learners and nontraditional students was too good to pass up.
Schurman’s affinity for the working class can be traced to her roots in rural northern Michigan. Her mother’s family grew cherries; her father’s mined iron ore. Schurman won a full scholarship to Michigan State University, and after earning a bachelor’s degree, was well on her way to a master’s in higher education when she went through a period of soul-searching and decided to leave the ivory tower for the working world.
While bartending in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and moonlighting as a union organizer, she heard that the Ann Arbor Transit Authority was hiring its first women drivers. Little did she know when she applied in 1972 that she would stay with the authority for seven years and become a local union president. “I was 25 and one of six women bus drivers. The men hated us,” she said. On her first day, the male driver with whom she was training intentionally gave her instructions that caused her to clip a telephone pole. “That’s when I decided to demonstrate that not only can women do this job, we can be the best,” Schurman said.
She ran against the president of the local union – and won. She was promoted to director of driver training and zeroed in on the three biggest causes of driver-caused accidents: unresolved anger and stress, poor training methods, and an inability of some drivers to read maps. She set up driver training programs and developed workshops on stress reduction and literacy. During Schurman’s tenure as training director, the authority cut its accident rate in half.
“The job was an awakening,” Schurman said. “It was the first time I realized that the workplace could be an important place for post-secondary education and could make up for what was supposed to happen – but didn’t happen – in the K–12 educational system.”
Schurman has devoted her subsequent career to the dual goals of labor and adult education and workplace enlightenment. She returned to Michigan State University to complete her master’s and earned a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in higher, adult, and continuing education. She has served as director of the Labor Studies Center at the University of Michigan and as a research investigator in its School of Public Health, where she conducted a six-year study of occupational stress among auto workers, exploring the relationship between job demands and supervisory relationships and physical and mental health. While president of NLC, Maryland Governor Parris Glendenning appointed her to serve on the newly created State Higher Education Labor Relations Board, which oversees collective bargaining in Maryland’s public higher education system.
She will continue her tireless work at Rutgers. She was recently appointed by Executive Vice President Philip Furmanski to lead a study group that will develop a model for the future of lifelong learning in New Jersey and consider the role that Rutgers will play in supporting that vision.
“It’s an ambitious goal, but I plan to work closely with my university colleagues,” Schurman said. “It’s a wonderful place to be and a wonderful time to be here.”