Credit: Nick Romanenko

In December 2007, the Rutgers Board of Governors appointed Jeannine F. LaRue as vice president for public affairs. The Department of Public Affairs acts as a liaison and ambassador between Rutgers’ campuses and the government, corporate, and nonprofit communities. Overseeing state and federal relations, as well as Friends of Rutgers, LaRue will focus on relationship building with varied stakeholders throughout New Jersey and beyond.

LaRue’s career of more than 30 years in education, health care, government, and politics has focused on relationships as the building blocks to getting things done. Her private and public sector experiences have resulted in upwards of 17,000 contacts in her BlackBerry, which she always has by her side. She began her career as a high school English teacher; became the youngest person, first woman, and first ethnic minority elected to public office in Winslow Township; and served almost a decade as a lobbyist for the New Jersey Educational Association (NJEA). LaRue also served for more than a decade as a senior vice president for the Saint Barnabas Health Care System. She left that post in 2006 to join Governor Jon S. Corzine’s administration as deputy chief of staff, overseeing the Office of Appointments, Office of Constituency Relations, and Office of Intergovernmental Affairs. LaRue has won scores of awards and acknowledgments from nonprofit organizations and associations throughout the state.

A self-described “nonstop professional,” LaRue brings her massive network and well-honed skills in facilitation, negotiation, and crafting relationships to Rutgers. Dedicated to women and children’s issues throughout her career, LaRue is a mother of two biological children and one surrogate child, and is raising two of her teenage grandchildren – Aliya and Raheem – all while being one of New Jersey’s leading influencers. FOCUS Associate Editor Ashanti M. Alvarez sat down with LaRue to discuss her first four months at Rutgers as well as her vision for the department.

What is your vision for the Department of Public Affairs?

The vision I bring to this department is to develop partnerships among people here at Rutgers and legislators, corporate leaders, and the nonprofit community. These relationships will help us play the vital role in society that we expect from a major research university.

We can only achieve this through better relationships and regular communication with elected and appointed leaders at the state and federal levels. It's going to take the full engagement of our student body, our faculty, and our administrators, and also of our more than 300,000 living alumni.

What is your day like?

I am raising two grandchildren; they are 13 and 15. I get into the office between 8:15 and 8:30 when I don’t have earlier meetings. Having breakfast with my grandchildren and taking them to school every morning is my number one priority. We almost never have dinner together because of my profession.

My schedule remains packed with face-to-face and conference call meetings with corporate, community, and legislative leaders all with the goal of developing prospective partnerships that will advance a positive image of Rutgers University. Before my arrival, our state and federal relations operation did not have a physical presence on the Camden and Newark campuses. We now have offices in the School of Business on the Camden Campus as well as the School of Law–Newark, in addition to the offices Rutgers has always maintained in New Brunswick and in Trenton. I go once a week to each to meet with legislators and community leaders all in the name of how we are going to advance what Rutgers does not just in the cities but the entire regions of North and South Jersey.

How do you manage to do all of this? What keeps you going?

I love people, and I’ve always had a knack for connecting folks for the benefit of the whole. During my childhood days, I was very involved in church where I played the piano. (I was a classical pianist, and I had eight recitals.) One of the things that I always loved about the piano is that it connected me with people. My mother was a minister. I had my own singing group in church. At the end of concerts or services, folks would come up to me and say, “You really touched me with that song.” It was through my musical connections that I knew my profession would have to deal directly with impacting the lives of people in a positive way. That has always been very important to me.

What are some of the special issues on each of our main campuses?

Our campus can play a major role in Camden during this period of statutory oversight by the state. We have the Walter Rand Institute, we have the childhood studies department, and we’ve been doing a lot of interacting with the players in the Camden school district. But I want us to accelerate our efforts there. The Walter Rand Institute did the initial survey in assessing what the city government looked like, what are the available resources in the Camden city government. Now that all that information is in and people have had an opportunity to analyze it, we can help the city of Camden and the new COO [chief operating officer] Theodore Davis. For instance, we can help them with staffing through our graduate program. Since we are the state research university, we can team up with some of our institutes – the Walter Rand Institute, also the Cornwall Center in Newark – along with the League of Municipalities, and offer some additional resources to mayors throughout those areas. Right now the governor is talking about the consolidation of programs. We have some very good ideas we can lend to that discussion.

In North Jersey, Rutgers is definitely an economic engine in Newark. We own a lot of real estate. We are getting ready to do the ribbon cutting for the Rutgers Business School building. We have the beautiful law school building. There is so much going on in the city of Newark where Rutgers is a major player. Our professors, administrators, and students have totally integrated within the Newark school district and have assisted students in academic programs such as math and science. I would like to just accelerate that and enhance what we’re already doing.

In New Brunswick, I have already met with Dean Jolie Cizewski to look for outlets for our graduate students to assist in nonprofit areas or in state government. I am engaged in discussions with administrators from the Center for American Women and Politics to see if we can seek other funding avenues to help in some of the great programs they are developing. I also attended a very comprehensive meeting with the student leaders in New Brunswick at the Rutgers Club so that I could get their thinking on some of the needs on the New Brunswick Campus. They have offered some very good advice that I will take to Trenton.

Talk about some of the specific relationships you’re working on building.

David Finegold at the School of Management and Labor Relations would like to bring all of labor to the table to talk about how we can develop better relationships between management and labor in companies here in New Jersey. There are so many areas where our deans and our professors know the theory and know the research. We can write the prescriptions for some of the programs that will make it easier as we go through this recession.

The governor unveiled his crime plan last year, and we have the Police Institute in Newark, which was very involved in helping the state develop Operation Ceasefire. I had a meeting with [School of Criminal Justice] Dean Adam Graycar; he wanted to sit with Attorney General Anne Milgram. He said, ‘I want to be able to go through some of the programs and projects where we can help the state.’ They had a magnificent meeting. So we’re going to get engaged in the governor’s crime plan throughout the state but particularly in Camden and Newark.

We are developing a monthly RU Café, where we will go to restaurants, advertising in advance that the president, deans, and students will be coming, for networking meetings with business people, people from nonprofit organizations, and other people in the community. There were some folks who were involved in Rutgers years ago who, for whatever reason, are not involved anymore. They want to be involved in this program. I am really excited about that.

In two months we’ll know the impact of the state budget on Rutgers’ funding, as well as on tuition and fees. How do these meetings and relationships you are talking about factor into the budget process?

Legislators have made it very clear: They are willing to look at restorations, but they are not willing to add one more dime to this budget. Whatever restorations higher education would receive would mean taking money from existing programs in the budget. Higher education is so critical to the progress of this state. There may have to be a review of priorities.

So we’re taking our story on the road. We’re meeting with legislators – not just those on the budget committees and not just those where our campuses are. We’re meeting with them all and trying to make a case for some restorations to higher education in the budget. We want everyone engaged in this conversation to get them to understand that it’s important that the state continue to invest in its university.

Everything I have read about you reflects a passion for women’s and children’s issues. How do you plan to continue pursuing those passions here at Rutgers?

Because one’s job is so much a part of one’s life, I try not to spend time in a profession where the underlying vision of that operation doesn’t parallel with what I personally believe. And Rutgers, I believe, is so much a part of what I philosophically believe in life. I have been doing things with Rutgers for decades. I’ve been on panels hosted by the Center for Women and Work. I’ve been a residential professor for the New Leadership Program with the Center for American Women and Politics. I’ve been a visiting professor with Carl Van Horn and others. For years I served on the board of trustees of the New Jersey Public Policy Research Institute. So I will continue to do those types of things but now do it under the banner of Rutgers University, bringing communities together. I don’t see it as separate and apart. It’s all a part of my workday here in addition to carrying out the vision of the Board of Governors and President McCormick.

How do we get people to be more excited about Rutgers and to more strongly identify with Rutgers?

I have served on tons of boards of nonprofit organizations. They love and respect Rutgers University. But we’re big; we’re complicated; folks don’t always know where to go to get the assistance they need. They don’t have a contact person. I get tons of email from people who say, “Jeannine, we’re glad you’re at Rutgers. Where do we go to find this out or who do you think we should talk to develop a partnership here?” Some of these activities and projects will actually result in funding opportunities; others will advance our message in communities we may have inadvertently overlooked in the past.

This position in public affairs is an intense schedule and often must be conducted outside of our campus environment. Enhancing our image, connecting with our partners, and advancing our message cannot be done in a traditional 40-hour work week from my office. I must go out where the partners are and normally average 12-hour work days six days a week. But 18 months from now, we should be able to measure the progress and will have a magnificent story to tell.

How can the university community help you realize your vision?

I would like the various departments and organizations within Rutgers University to do a self-analysis of what their needs are. I ask them not to view public affairs from a lobbying perspective but from an advocacy and engagement perspective with various partners throughout the state. We have more than 100 institutes whose missions are to complement and affect public policy. I want to engage them in a dialogue about how they feel Rutgers can better serve the citizens of the state while also helping these institutes realize their mission.