Presidential Perspectives
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Integrating the Urban University and its City Government |
For any leader of an urban university, the opportunity to participate in the creation of a new city government would provide wonderful opportunities to enhance the integration of their institution with their host community. For me, new to the job of Chancellor of Rutgers University–Camden, and new to the city (though not the region), the opportunity to lead the transition team for our new mayor (and alumna) Dana Redd has been illuminating, productive, and invaluable.
The City of Camden has long been challenged by economic dislocation, government corruption, and social problems, but over the past decade the city, with the support of anchor institutions such as Rutgers, Cooper Hospital, and Campbell’s Soup, began several efforts to rebuild its economy, housing, and social structure. The city now possesses the institutional infrastructure to make significant progress in improving life for its citizens. The new Mayor, Dana Redd, a former state senator with a long history of service to the city, has brought great energy to the task of revitalizing the poorest city in New Jersey. In less than a month in office, her strong political and organizational skills have already produced benefits, enabling the city to extricate itself from the strict oversight the State of New Jersey imposed a decade ago.
Our transition effort, co-chaired by myself and Susan Bass Levin, a former local mayor and state government official, focused on several areas, including youth development, family wellness, economic development, and housing and infrastructure improvement. In each area, a team of civic leaders worked to develop proposals for policy changes and government reorganization that will help our city grow and flourish. While the transition teams worked to develop a program for government reform, the co-chairs helped the mayor to identify talented public servants for her new administration and to create programs to increase the capacity of government officials to meet the increasing demands of their citizens.
Serving on the mayoral transition underscored what I, and so many of us, already realized -- the necessity for our universities to redefine themselves as fully engaged partners in the growth of our urban homes.
Rutgers’ participation in the transition has been multifaceted. Rutgers–Camden hosted transition meetings, welcomed the community to the Mayor’s public inauguration, and assisted in the management of the Mayor’s hiring process. In addition to forging closer connections with our community, our involvement identified several areas of research for Rutgers faculty to pursue over the next few years and helped us to locate opportunities for our faculty, students, and staff to engage with government agencies in mutually beneficial initiatives. For example, Rutgers’ Senator Walter Rand Institute for Public Policy and the Rutgers Institute for Management and Executive Development are developing a program to assess the capacity of government workers and to develop training programs to help them improve service.
In order to build on these initiatives, Rutgers held its first-ever Chancellor’s Civic Engagement Symposium on Jan. 29. Before an overflow audience of community leaders, faculty, students, and foundation representatives, Rutgers showcased a few of its civic engagement programs, and held a panel discussion wherein community representatives offered their perspectives on the role of a civically engaged university. This event launched a year-long campuswide effort to drill deeper into the essence of civic engagement in higher education, and to develop a blueprint for imbuing engagement and service into all aspects of campus life.
In the interim, Rutgers–Camden has hired a director to launch an Office for Civic Engagement, which will work with the faculty and the community to develop civic learning opportunities. We also introduced the Rutgers–Camden Achievement Initiative to enroll and support talented high school students from disadvantaged areas across southern New Jersey. And the Rutgers–Camden Center for Urban Research is in development to promote cutting-edge research that impacts the nation’s urban centers.
Certainly, there is no one answer. It's an ever-evolving process for both Rutgers and Camden. We start as good neighbors should -- with everyone at the same table. The city will not succeed without vibrant anchors such as Rutgers–Camden. At the same time, the anchor institutions will not be able to grow and flourish without an efficient government and optimism for the city’s future. Working together, we can achieve both of these goals at the same time.
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