Rutgers New Faculty Traveling Seminar gets under way this month
Archived article from May 10, 2004
By Amy Vames
Later this month, 35 new faculty members will board a mobile classroom, embarking on a five-day bus tour and rolling seminar that will immerse them in the rich diversity of New Jersey’s people and places.
Beginning May 24, the faculty members chosen for President Richard L. McCormick’s inaugural Rutgers New Faculty Traveling Seminar, dubbed “Garden State 101,” will spend five days and four nights exploring different parts of the state. The seminar is an effort to help these tenured or tenure-track faculty members, all of whom have been at Rutgers three years or less, learn more about the state’s history, economics, culture and government.
The president said the seminar, which he will lead, will provide a “unique ‘living classroom’ where new faculty members can become acquainted with the people, places and perspectives — along with the sights and sounds — that shape New Jersey.”
Additional goals are to make new faculty aware of the communities that produce many of their students; to help them gain a deeper understanding of the state’s concerns and issues; and to open new lines of communication with the citizens of the state and make Rutgers more relevant to all New Jerseyans.
Douglas Blair, executive vice dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences–New Brunswick/Piscataway and chair of the advisory committee that helped develop the seminar route, said that about 60 faculty members applied to go on the tour. “In choosing participants, we aimed for a good mix of people from all of the campuses and across a wide range of disciplines,” Blair said.
Participants come from more than a dozen U.S. states and as many foreign countries, including China, Spain, Switzerland, Jordan, Russia and Ecuador.
Blair notes that the seminar will help build collegiality. “It won’t surprise me if connections we never anticipated between faculty on the bus result eventually in research collaborations or other joint projects,” he said. Blair added that he wishes there had been a similar program when he was a new economics professor at the university. “When I arrived at Rutgers 22 years ago, several years passed before I met a faculty member from another department,” he said.
The seminar will offer a weeklong smorgasbord of New Jersey’s rich heritage. Covering about 540 miles across the Garden State, the bus will make stops in 16 towns, including Trenton, Camden, Atlantic City, Bedminster, Morristown, Paterson, Newark and Jersey City. In the state’s capital, participants will tour the State House and the Old Barracks Museum. In other towns, they will meet with local businesspeople, farmers and government officials, eat at neighborhood restaurants and take walking tours. The stops are designed to give the faculty members a taste of the culture and history, as well as the issues impacting each locale.
Time driving from town to town will be well spent: mini-lectures will be presented on the bus on such topics as New Jersey’s economy, history, agriculture, entertainment and politics.
Alison Isenberg, a tour participant who has taught history at Rutgers for the past two years, went on a similar tour of North Carolina in 1997 when she was a professor at the University of North Carolina. One surprising outcome of the North Carolina tour, she said, was that it helped dispel the stereotypes of college professors held by some of the people they encountered en route. “Of course, we had our own stereotypes of the state,” she added, and the tour helped break those down as well. “I know very little about New Jersey,” Isenberg said, “and I hope to get a deeper sense of the issues in the state. Also, seeing where your students come from is priceless.”
The tour will end May 28 with a barbeque at the president’s home for the participants and their families. For more information, visit the New Faculty Traveling Seminar Web site at travelseminar.rutgers.edu.
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