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Class acts -- stories of six remarkable graduates Archived article from May 31, 2004
They revive and uphold traditions. They venture out into the world and help their own communities. They challenge the status quo. They are this year's Rutgers graduates. Here are the stories of half a dozen noteworthy students - only a fraction of the thousands of remarkable individuals the university produces every year.
A heritage rediscovered Squire Servance began his education at Rutgers as a biology major with a future, he believed, that would include M.D. after his name. But the first-year student also had an interest in the past. He became intrigued by the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity, an organization with a distinguished history that had disappeared from Rutgers several years before he enrolled.
Founded in 1906 at Cornell University, Alpha Phi Alpha was the first intercollegiate Greek-letter fraternity in America for men of African heritage. Actor and activist Paul Robeson and noted author W.E.B. DuBois had been Alpha Phi Alpha leaders. But the chapter had lost members at Rutgers, and a rebuilding effort in the early 1990s was cut short by allegations of hazing that cost the chapter its recognition. Servance decided to make another try at rebuilding the group. "I was impressed by the legacy of the organization and the potential for greatness," he says. Servance began building a new Rutgers chapter. Four years later, Alpha Phi Alpha is still a small group - there are about 10 brothers - but the fraternity has become active on campus. Members coordinated the "Build a Dream" banquet honoring Martin Luther King Jr. and created a local high school outreach program, "Alpha Teens." Servance, last year's chapter president, received the Outstanding Chapter President Award from Rutgers' Office of Fraternity and Sorority Affairs. A recipient of a prestigious James Dickson Carr scholarship, which honors the memory of Rutgers' first African-American graduate, Servance majored in biomedical engineering and cell biology and neuroscience at the School of Engineering. His research explored the neuroscience of Parkinson's disease. He also observed neurological surgery at area hospitals and founded an honors society for biomedical engineers. But last year he decided on a different career path. "I understood science; I was good in science, but I no longer wanted to be a doctor," Servance says. "I can now see myself as a patent attorney or an executive in a pharmaceutical company." Toward that end, he plans to attend Duke Law School after graduation. - Pam Orel
The ride of her life The last student-run mounted safety patrol in the country lives on because a Rutgers student and admitted "horse geek" wouldn't take no for an answer. For Rachel Holmes, a supervisor in the patrol, it wasn't the only battle of her college career, but it may have been the most rewarding. Holmes came to Rutgers after working several summers on a ranch in Colorado, where she learned to ride. She joined the Rutgers Equestrian Team, competed in national tournaments and rode with what was then the Cook-Douglass mounted patrol. But in the fall of 2002, the program faced a challenge. The university was struggling with a tough fiscal situation, and the patrol was to be disbanded unless funds to care for the three horses could be found. "I talked to anyone who would listen," Holmes says. "I found that the mounted patrol had a great deal of support from students and other members of the Rutgers community. Once word got out, a lot of people weren't willing to let it fade away." Largely due to activism by Holmes and other student riders, the patrol received funding from several university sources, including the Division of Public Safety and Housing Administration.
Now called the Rutgers University Mounted Patrol (affectionately known as RUMP), the patrol rides off into the night seven evenings a week throughout the academic year. The group of 16 student officers and three horses is now part of the Rutgers Community Service Officer program. Students wear a modified version of the CSO uniform and are trained in the same first-aid and other safety techniques. Holmes, a general honors program student and George H. Cook Scholar, has a penchant for horses and activism. Her research at Cook focused on ways in which horse manure can be used as a resource for farmers. She served for four years on the Cook College student council and was a student representative to the Rutgers Board of Trustees. In 2003, she participated in the student march on Trenton to demand greater funding for higher education. Holmes faced another challenge that year: She underwent successful treatment for cancer. "Right about that time, I bought a young horse from Rutgers that no one else wanted because she had some health problems and lost her hair," Holmes says. "It was a perfect fit. I lost all my hair that year, too, and we both got better together." The horse, RU Twister, lives at a horse farm in Monmouth County. After college, Holmes has a job waiting in the New Jersey Department of Agriculture; she is also weighing entering divinity school. "I want to explore the relationship linking the environment, spirituality and religion," she says. The Clifton resident received a Bachelor of Science degree this month with a double major in environmental policy, institutions and behavior, and religion. "The people at Cook have taught me so many valuable lessons," Holmes says. "I've learned that service to other people is one of the greatest priorities in life." -Pam Orel
A quest for an equitable world Fayiza Abbas was 9 when her family visited a successful uncle in Pakistan. As she stood on the marble floors of her uncle's opulent home, she peered out the windows at the servants' quarters: humble huts with straw roofs. "I felt so horrible … I'm standing on marble and their children are playing with pots and pans," Abbas recalls. "I knew that I wanted to do something to help other people."
Her family trips to Pakistan, India, the Philippines, Singapore, Germany and other countries played a large part in where Abbas is headed after graduating from Rutgers College with a double major in political science and English. Chosen as a Fulbright U.S. student scholar, Abbas will travel to Egypt at the end of August to begin study at the American University in Cairo (AUC). She also will join the Refugee Legal Aid Project, which assists Egypt's thousands of refugees from Sudan, Eritrea, Palestine and other countries. "Egypt has been a model country in the Middle East in that they've been the most willing to let refugees inside their borders," says Abbas, who spent last spring semester abroad at AUC. The problem is that once inside Egypt, the process of finding legal aid and achieving asylum status can be arduous. The Refugee Legal Aid Project, established in 2001, helps asylum seekers wade their way through paperwork, teaches refugees work skills and trains Egyptian lawyers on refugee law and convention. Abbas will meet with the group on weekends. During the week, she will pursue a master's degree in forced migration and refugee studies. Abbas' zeal for helping others reaches back to her high school years. Her parents, who emigrated from Pakistan to Fremont, Calif., when Abbas was 2 months old, would shuttle her back and forth from convalescent centers to soup kitchens to dirty beaches in need of a cleanup. She has worked with the United Nations and Amnesty International in New York City. One summer she volunteered at a girls' orphanage in Lebanon. She always has experienced a certain amount of guilt for having a good life while others suffer. "I think I almost feed off of it," Abbas says. "The guilt will just alleviate itself over time as I realize that I have the ability to accomplish more and help more people. I think that you almost need that sense. Not guilt, but that awareness of where you are in the larger scheme of things." In Cairo next year, Abbas may focus her research on access to education for refugee women and children. And in her spare time, she looks forward to rejoining the AUC crew team. "We would row at sunrise on the Nile," Abbas says. "It was an amazing experience." - Ashanti Alvarez
A road less traveled Shpresa Ahmeti learned many lessons during her five years at Rutgers - among the most valuable, the ability to think for herself. Ahmeti came to Douglass College intending to major in a hard science and become a physician. Finding Western medicine too focused on memorization and detail, she designed a course of study she hopes will lead to a career in "integrative medicine," a field that combines scientifically based methods with unconventional healing techniques, such as prayer and meditation. She graduates this month with a double major in biology and religion and a minor in philosophy. The nontraditional path is not unfamiliar to Ahmeti. In 1985, when she was 4, she and her family - ethnic Albanians - immigrated to Paterson from what is now Macedonia. They left after her father's government office was set on fire. Her flight from ethnic and religious strife at an early age encouraged independence and a willingness to question convention. It also made her grateful to be in America, where, she says, "you can still say whatever you want and no one's going to shoot you." Ahmeti graduated from Passaic County Technical Institute. At the suggestion of a friend, she came to Douglass, where she searched for the right mix of studies, ending up with her customized, interdisciplinary degree. Ahmeti has been politically active as a member of women's and gay rights organizations; she organized Rutgers' delegation to last month's march in Washington, D.C., for women's reproductive rights. Ahmeti expects some day to earn a graduate degree in public health, a specialization that she believes would keep her connected to community and service, and allow her to bring culture and religion into her healing practice. Integrative medicine makes sense to Ahmeti, who notes that "the roots of medicine are in religion." In ancient societies, religion and healing were fully integrated as one practice, and priests and healers were one and the same person. Raised as a secular Muslim, she will continue to study Eastern and Western religions and healing but not practice a religion, which she believes all too often becomes a social doctrine that divides society and people. Instead, Ahmeti tries to live by Immanuel Kant's categorical imperative to act only according to principles that one would wish to become universal rules of behavior. These are lofty ideals for a 23-year-old who hopes to travel the world before settling into graduate school and a career in integrative medicine. "I have an openness," she says. "I wouldn't call it a plan, but I have hope. Actually, my name means 'hope' in Albanian." - Patricia Lamiell
Law student had four-legged eyes and ears It is not unusual for a young person to go through 12 years of public school and four years of college, earn a master's degree and then pursue a law degree. But it is very unusual - remarkable actually - when the person is visually impaired. Blinded by illness at the age of 4, C. Patrick McKenna has accomplished just that, aided by his own determination, Braille technology, educational aids and a helpful guide dog. After earning a Bachelor of Arts at Lafayette College in Easton, Pa., and a Master of Science at the Graduate School in New Brunswick, the 30-year-old was awarded a law degree at the commencement convocation of the School of Law-Newark May 28. At his side was his faithful Seeing Eye dog, Asta, a 4-year-old black Labrador retriever, who has been his constant companion during three years of law school. Before Asta, McKenna found his way around the Lafayette and Rutgers campuses with the help of fraternity brothers or housemates, or by himself.
McKenna can perceive bright colors like yellow and white, but is otherwise legally blind. For personal reasons, he declined to use a dog or a cane to assist in navigating the campuses after he learned the routes. "Before the dog, I would either remember where something was, perceive it or sense it just before I hit it. I ran into stuff all the time," he recalls. Facing the larger urban environment of Newark and the commute by train from his Somerset home, McKenna decided to accept the aid of The Seeing Eye in Morristown, an organization that provides guide dogs. Asta and McKenna took to each other right from the beginning, he says. A geology major at Lafayette, McKenna went on to Rutgers where he earned his master's degree in environmental sciences with an emphasis on pollution remediation and prevention. At first he was intimidated by the prospects of the LSAT, the bar exams and the paper chase for which law school is known. However, once McKenna started looking for jobs in environmental sciences, he discovered that there was an advantage to having a law degree, in terms of both opportunity and salary. McKenna credits his friends and Professor William Goldfarb of Cook College, who taught the environmental law course he took in graduate school, with being extremely influential in convincing him to pursue a law degree. After Rutgers, McKenna hopes to land a position with the state practicing environmental law. In his leisure time, he will continue to work out in the gym nine hours a week and go horseback riding, a pastime he has enjoyed since boyhood. The experience with Asta has convinced McKenna of the usefulness of a guide dog in his future endeavors. The 55-pound canine steers him away from fallen trees and ditches and keeps him out of harm's way when crossing the street. "I haven't had one hospital visit since I've gotten her," McKenna says. - Douglas Frank
Earning a law degree - via the Mideast If you think law school exams are challenging, try taking them in a military tent a half-mile from a U.S. Air Force runway during the war in Afghanistan, like Mark Maldonado did. While earning his juris doctor degree from the School of Law-Camden, the U.S. Air Force major was deployed to Oman in the Persian Gulf to support the air war in Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom. Later, he was posted to Iraq for the second gulf war. An aircraft commander with the 108th Air Refueling Wing at McGuire Air Force Base, Maldonado flew a KC-135E Stratotanker, an aircraft nearly half the length of a football field.
The 34-year-old pilot juggled duty to his nation with his law school studies, taking most exams before or after his deployment. The one exam he had to take while on active duty was 36 pages long. "There were eight of us in a tent," Maldonado says of his stint in Oman. "It was tough to sleep with the noise from the bombers and refueling aircraft taking off. We were flying around the clock." Maldonado flew 45 combat and combat-support sorties, earning four air medals. Maldonado's experience at the Camden law school was equally intense. After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, he was assigned to fly combat air-patrol missions between Washington, D.C., and New York. The all-night sorties took their toll on the commuter student. "I lived in Burlington Township, so the drive to campus wasn't long by car," he says. "It just got long when I took an airplane ride in between." Traversing difficult terrain isn't new to Maldonado. Born in New York City, he moved to Puerto Rico with his family as an infant. When he returned to the United States as an 8-year-old, Maldonado couldn't speak English. To complicate matters, he and his mother lived in a crime-ridden Bronx neighborhood. "I witnessed the worst and the best in people and, as time went on, I saw the law in action in ways that did not benefit the average person," he says. "Knowledge of the law provides someone with a great tool. I love the fact that I may be able to make a difference." Maldonado graduated in January and received his diploma at the law school convocation this month. He earned a bachelor's degree in 1991 at the U.S. Air Force Academy. Today, Maldonado serves in the U.S. Department of Justice's Honors Program, which provides recent law school graduates the opportunity to work in the Justice Department. He was assigned to the counter-terrorism section of the criminal division. Maldonado lives in Arlington, Va., with his wife, Lori, also a USAF pilot, and their daughters, Laura, 9, and Sarah, 4. His wife was instrumental in his decision to attend law school, he says. "I have always wanted to be a lawyer. I knew I would regret it if I didn't try. My wife saw this and, despite knowing the great sacrifices we would make - both emotionally and financially - she made it easy for me to pursue my dream." - Michael Sepanic
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For questions or comments about this site, contact Greg Trevor Last Updated: May 30, 2006 © 2012 Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. All rights reserved. 
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Rachel Holmes
Fayiza Abbas
C. Patrick McKenna and his guide dog, Asta
Photo by Roy Groething
Mark Maldonado, center, with members of the 108th Air Refueling Wing at McGuire Air Force Base
