Full list of Faculty Service Recognition honorees

If the number of years served by the honorees at this year’s Faculty Service Recognition Luncheon were added up, their combined experience dates back to the time of the pharaohs and the completion of the pyramids at Giza in Egypt.

Rutgers’ faculty research expertise dates back that far and beyond, and their research and teaching is preparing minds for the future.

In all, honorees at this year’s luncheon held May 7 at Neilson Dining Hall have racked up a total of 4,560 years of teaching and research experience at Rutgers. Economics Professor Leo Troy, from the Newark College of Arts and Sciences, was the sole 50-year honoree. He joined the Rutgers faculty in 1958 after working at the National Bureau of Economic Research.

“At the time, the faculty was much smaller, and I had many friends who have since retired or passed away,” Troy said. “I feel like I am one of the last survivors, as it were.”

A former department chair, Troy’s area of expertise is in labor unions and their effect on the economy. In recent research, he has examined the impact of unions on politics. “I say that private sector unionism was the unionism of the 20th century, but government unionism is the unionism of the 21st century,” Troy observed.

The role of labor unions has changed, as has the nation’s and the world’s economy, but Troy says one thing that has remained stable is the quality of students enrolled at Rutgers. “Although the background of the students has changed, in terms of the quality we get a pretty good distribution,” Troy says. “They are drawn from a different population. Nonetheless, if you examine from the standpoint of ability, quality has been sustained.”

Troy was on the first AAUP bargaining team with Physics Professor Paul Leath, honored for 40 years of service. Leath delivered a speech on behalf of the faculty, with Rutgers President Richard L. McCormick saying, “There is not a piece of this university that doesn’t have his imprint on it.”

Leath implored the faculty never to forget the “students whose tests and papers you have graded, whose lives you’ve touched, and whose careers you have inspired.”

“I want each of you to feel even prouder of Rutgers University when you gather here 10 years from now than you do today,” Leath said.