Moving Rutgers Forward

President Richard L. McCormick set a goal of moving Rutgers into the top tier of public research universities. The university has invigorated undergraduate education, achieved dramatic increases in grant funding for globally important research, made strategic investments in its campuses, bolstered connections with its 400,000 living alumni, and strengthened its service to New Jersey and its host communities. Rutgers is also ahead of schedule in a campaign to raise $1 billion in private support. The university has achieved increasing recognition, with more than a dozen academic programs rated among the nation’s top 10, high international rankings among public universities, and citation in SmartMoney magazine for return on student investment and in the Wall Street Journal for the corporate recruiting of its graduates.

Undergraduate Education

President McCormick led a historic restructuring of undergraduate education on the university's largest campus, New Brunswick. The far-reaching changes include combining four separate liberal arts colleges into a single School of Arts and Sciences, thus unifying admissions and graduation standards and enabling students to live anywhere and take advantage of any program or service in New Brunswick. Other features of the transformation include a popular first-year seminar program, a new core curriculum, signature courses on topics of grand intellectual sweep, enhanced opportunities for undergraduate research and service learning, a residential college for women that builds on the history and traditions of Douglass College, and a senior-year capstone experience. During his presidency, demand for a Rutgers education has grown, with a 25 percent increase in new student enrollment universitywide and a more than tripling of Presidential Scholars, recipients of the university’s top scholarship.

• Byrne Seminars
• Aresty Research Center for Undergraduates
• Office of Undergraduate Education

Research Success

During Dr. McCormick’s tenure, funded research at Rutgers increased dramatically. Faculty research now attracts $400 million or more each year in federal, state, corporate, and foundation grants. President McCormick identified several discrete areas of academic opportunity in which Rutgers can capitalize on interdisciplinary strength, the availability of resources, distinctive excellence, and widespread relevance, among them climate change, renewable energy, advanced materials and devices, nanotechnology, transportation, nutrition, and homeland security. Rutgers has placed a priority on seeking the funding to develop these as research areas in which to gain international distinction.

• Office of the Vice President for Research and Economic Development
• Office of Technology Commercialization
• Research Highlights

Livingston Campus

Working with faculty and staff, President McCormick developed a new vision for the once-neglected Livingston Campus in Piscataway to become the hub of business and professional education for the New Brunswick campus and a model for 21st century higher education. Livingston will host the schools of business, education, social work, and management and labor relations, and become the center of continuing education. Already completed or in progress are a state-of-the-art student center and dining commons, new apartment-style housing for 1,500 students, and a business school building. In the works is a hotel and conference center that will be available to all Rutgers programs.

• Vision for Livingston Campus
• Campus Improvements Universitywide 

Alumni Commitment

Immediately after restructuring undergraduate education, President McCormick championed a reinvigoration of the programs serving Rutgers’ 400,000 living graduates. With alumni leadership and support, his administration replaced a federated system of alumni organizations with Rutgers’ first-ever universitywide alumni association, featuring automatic membership for all graduates and no membership fees. More than 100 chartered alumni groups are now affiliated with the Rutgers University Alumni Association, and alumni involvement in Homecoming, Reunion, and other facets of university life has risen dramatically.

• Rutgers University Alumni Association
• Rutgers Magazine
• Alumni Relations

Community Engagement

President McCormick expanded Rutgers’ commitment to New Jersey and to its hometowns. He took new faculty on weeklong bus tours of New Jersey and encouraged them to make their teaching and research relevant to the state. He inaugurated Rutgers Day, an annual invitation for residents to experience their state university, and Rutgers Against Hunger, an ongoing effort to address hunger and poverty in the state. He helped establish the Rutgers Future Scholars program, which encourages selected teenagers from the university’s host communities of Camden, Newark, New Brunswick, and Piscataway to pursue higher education, with the promise of free tuition for those admitted to Rutgers.

• Rutgers Day
• Rutgers Future Scholars
• Rutgers Against Hunger
• Community Engagement

Our Rutgers, Our Future

Private giving to Rutgers has achieved new levels of generosity during Dr. McCormick’s tenure despite a weak economy. The university now raises well over $100 million annually in private gifts, and one donor has given $40 million, the most from an individual in Rutgers’ history. In October 2010, President McCormick announced the public phase of Our "Rutgers, Our Future: A Campaign for Excellence," a billion-dollar fundraising effort with a goal double that of the university’s previous campaign.

• Our Rutgers, Our Future
• Rutgers University Foundation

See a more extensive list of accomplishments during Dr. McCormick’s tenure.