News
Faculty and staff come through with millions during Rutgers Campaign
Archived article from Sep 20, 2004
By Ashanti M. Alvarez
The Rutgers Campaign produced big numbers at its closing this summer: more than 90,000 donors raised a record $615,347,473, and 3,126 faculty and staff members contributed $21,256,887 – three and a half percent of the overall campaign total.
Big or small, every gift made a difference, said Clement Price, director of the Faculty and Staff campaign.
“There’s a secretary at one of the offices here in Newark who made a pledge of $250 to the campaign,” said Price, who is also a professor of history on the Newark campus. “I just know for a fact that $250 to her – she probably felt that.”
The campaign, designed to raise funds as well as to energize the Rutgers community, kicked off in 1998 with a three-year, private fund-raising period and a $500 million goal. The campaign’s priorities included attracting and supporting top students, ensuring a superior academic program, recruiting and retaining top faculty, advancing the potential for discovery and enriching the campus and community environments.
In 2001, the Rutgers Board of Governors publicly announced the campaign. The final total represents a new campaign record for Rutgers, and the university administration has said Rutgers can look to fill more ambitious goals in future campaigns. The last campaign took place from 1984 to 1990 and raised about $166 million, a record at that time, according to Rutgers University Foundation interim president Jim Dawson.
The foundation’s board of overseers raised the initial campaign target from $425 million. “We wanted a number that would be attainable but we wanted to stretch ourselves,” said Dawson, who is also director of gift planning. “If you don’t stretch yourself there’s no point in having a campaign.”
One of the major achievements of the Rutgers Campaign was the total dollars secured for student financial support. More than $122 million was raised to assist students in paying for their educations. The campaign established more than 300 new scholarships and strengthened existing scholarships and other financial aid programs.
Lydia Rodriguez, associate dean of instruction for the Newark Faculty of Arts and Sciences, established a scholarship in her late father’s name. Each year, a deserving Rutgers undergraduate student will receive $1,000, with preference given to a student of Hispanic descent. The first recipient of the Juan B. Rodriguez Memorial Scholarship, Silvia Neves, just graduated last year.
Rodriguez’ father never went to college, but he supplied his daughter with encouragement and car insurance payments while she attended graduate school at Fordham University. “That really paid off, because once I graduated, my salary tripled,” Rodriguez recalls. “That was my inspiration, to keep the memory of my dad alive and give something back.”
Reflecting upon the campaign, Price noted that faculty and staff from the Camden and Newark campuses were particularly devoted to giving back to their schools.
“Many people on the Newark campus would tell me ‘Clem, I’ll give, but only if the money comes back to Newark’,” Price said. “These campuses have what might be called a sense of allegiance and identity that really matters to the university at large.”
Georgia Arbuckle-Keil, a Rutgers-Camden alumna and professor, established a scholarship fund in 1999 memorializing her late parents, Ralph Wesley and Marion Elizabeth Arbuckle. She is grateful to Rutgers-Camden for allowing flexibility in her class schedule as she took care of her wheelchair-bound mother.
“It’s not a lot of money, $1,000 a year,” said Arbuckle-Keil, professor of chemistry at the Camden College of Arts and Sciences. “I wanted to give something with consistency.” The money will go to a graduate of her alma mater, Palmyra High School, who faces financial need.
“I often think where I would be today if I had not been able to start my education by coming here to Rutgers,” Arbuckle-Keil said. “I was able to come here as an undergraduate after my father passed away. When I was a senior in high school I wasn’t sure if I would be able to go to college.”
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