Rutgers News Center

New study shows benefits to state from transit investments

Direct state support for each NJ TRANSIT bus, rail, and light rail trip yields significant benefits in economic growth, reduced traffic congestion, energy savings, urban redevelopment, and service to the state’s disabled community, a new study by the Alan M. Voorhees Transportation Center (VTC) has concluded.

Analyzing fiscal year 2005 data, the report found state operating and capital support for NJ TRANSIT totaled $702.5 million, averaging $2.88 per trip, or less than a gallon of gas per passenger each year.

New Jersey’s standing among the states in per capita income eroded through the 1970s following years of disinvestment in transportation. After the creation of the Transportation Trust Fund in 1984 and renewed investment, the state’s per capita income by 2003 was 28 percent higher than the rest of the nation, according to a study by economists at the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy. New Jerseyans captured three of every four new jobs created in Manhattan during the 1980s and 1990s, the researchers found.

While other metropolitan areas around the nation experience worse traffic congestion, New Jersey as a state has the highest daily volume on its highways, just beating out California. Without high levels of commuters carried aboard transit service, particularly to employment centers in northern New Jersey and Manhattan, this would have become even more severe.

The report concludes that decades of investment have allowed the state to emerge as a national leader in transit usage. In 2006, national public transit ridership broke the 10 billion plateau for the first time since 1957; in New Jersey, the growth in both bus and rail ridership has outpaced the national average. The results are even more pronounced for light rail ridership, which grew nearly 32 percent nationally between 1999 and 2005, but by 214 percent in New Jersey.

– Rick Remington

Holly Crawford named associate dean for research at Rutgers School of Environmental and Biological Sciences

Holly Crawford has been appointed associate dean for research in the Office of the Executive Dean at the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences (SEBS). She will head the new Office of the Associate Dean for Research, which will serve as a  resource to expand the research funding base of SEBS and the New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station. Crawford also will hold an appointment as an associate research professor in the Department of Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics at the school.

Crawford previously served for five years as an associate dean at the School of Engineering, with visiting professor appointments in materials science and engineering, biomedical engineering, electrical and computer engineering, and computer and information science. Since January 2007, she has been a research fellow in Rutgers' Center for Computational Biomedicine Imaging and Modeling.

Crawford, who holds a Ph.D. in library and information science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, has considerable experience as a consultant to industry groups, particularly in the areas of information technology and competitive intelligence.

The Office of Associate Dean for Research will provide grant training and consultation, sponsor research-focused events, suggest potential internal and external collaborations, prepare researchers for funding agency meetings, and contribute content on an as-needed basis.

                                                                                                       – Michele Hujber

Law student awarded Skadden Fellowship to improve workplace protection for immigrant women

Risha Foulkes, a third-year student at Rutgers School of Law–Newark, has been named a 2008 Skadden Fellow by the Skadden Fellowship Foundation. Foulkes is one of only 35 law students from across the country selected as a Class of 2008 Fellow and the only one from a New Jersey law school. Her winning project is to work with the ACLU Womens Rights Project in New York to improve workplace health and safety protections for low-income immigrant women.

The Skadden Fellowship Foundation, which has been described as a “legal Peace Corps” by the Los Angeles Times, provides employment for two years at the graduating law students sponsoring organization. At the ACLU Womens Rights Project, Foulkes will engage in administrative advocacy, litigation, education, and training to protect the health and safety of immigrant women working in agricultural and nail salon jobs in New York and New Jersey.

Foulkes received her bachelor’s degree from the University of Chicago and her master’s degree with honors from the University of Cambridge, England. She has focused her employment and volunteer experiences on meeting the needs of immigrant women. At Rutgers, she is the recipient of a Deans Merit Scholarship, an Eagleton Fellowship in Politics and Government, and a Peggy Browning Fund Fellowship. She has been an editor of the Rutgers Race and the Law Review, president of Law Students for Choice, and is co-founder of the Human Rights Forum.

                                                                                                            – Janet Donohue

Camden filmmaker receiving rave reviews for movie on Mexican pilot

A film on the fatal crash of Mexican pilot Emilio Carranza in the Pine Barrens has been winning high accolades, including a recent invitation to join a Smithsonian exhibition.

Titled Goodwill, the film was created by Robert Emmons, associate director of the Honors College on the Camden Campus, and details the life of Carranza, known as “the Lindbergh of Mexico.” Carranza’s plane crashed in 1928, while leaving New York for Mexico City on a goodwill flight the pilot was making as a return gesture to Charles Lindbergh. Members of the Mount Holly American Legion Post 11 recovered Carranza’s body, and have honored him each year since with an elaborate memorial service at the crash site. While Carranza was known the world over at the time of his death, today he is nearly forgotten in his homeland.

In addition to being shown during the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition “Our Journeys/Our Stories: Portraits of Latino Achievement” at the New Jersey Historical Society in Newark, Goodwill was also selected to be shown during the Orlando Hispanic Film Festival. The Rutgers–Camden filmmaker also has been asked to write the entry on Emilio Carranza for the Encyclopedia of Latino and Latina History.

Emmons, who teaches courses on filmmaking and new media at Camden, will help launch a media studies minor this fall. The filmmaker premiered Goodwill at Rutgers–Camden in July 2007.

“My continued goal is to keep Carranza’s goodwill mission going. I feel my film plays a small part in extending his mission,” says Emmons.

Camden law students provide free income tax assistance

This tax season, hundreds of low-income New Jersey citizens will receive a real break from approximately 75 Rutgers–Camden students who are providing free assistance in preparing income tax returns.

Students participating in the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) program at the Rutgers School of Law-Camden have been trained to help in the preparation of federal and New Jersey state tax returns. The program offers access to these free services at the Camden Free Public Library and on the Rutgers–Camden campus.

The student volunteers will seek to help clients complete their income tax returns on time and identify as many deductions as possible. In 2007, Rutgers–Camden law students assisted approximately 300 clients and helped to secure more than $350,000 in refunds above the amounts owed.

The Rutgers–Camden law school VITA program is offered at the Camden Free Public Library on Mondays and Wednesdays from 4 to 7 p.m. through April 9, and in room 103 in the Law School Building on the Rutgers–Camden campus on Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. on February 23, March 8, March 22, and April 12.  For more information about the VITA program at the School of Law–Camden, contact Pam Mertsock-Wolfe at 856- 225-6406.