Who should lead Rutgers in 2020? Someone who prioritizes carbon neutrality, staff say

The next president of Rutgers University should be someone willing to commit the school to carbon neutrality, according to staff and faculty who spoke at two recent town hall sessions that were part of the university's process to choose a new leader.

“The number one priority for the next president of Rutgers is going to be to make Rutgers carbon neutral,” said Robert Scott, an associate professor in the anthropology department. “I really would like someone who says, ‘You know what, this is uncontroversial and this is what Rutgers needs to commit to.’ When it comes to carbon neutrality, we need that kind of leadership.”

The search for the next person to oversee the state university and its $4.5 billion annual budget, which began after Robert L. Barchi’s announcement this summer to step down next year, is well underway, with candidates' reviews in motion.

The new president will be selected by a 23-member search committee and approved by the Board of Governors and Board of Trustees. Whoever they choose will take over as Rutgers' 21st president next July.

But before that happens, through October the public gets to submit nominations of candidates and weigh in on what skills and priorities they want in a new leader.

Town halls were held at the Rutgers Newark and New Brunswick campuses on Wednesday and Thursday with low turnout — less than a handful made comments in Newark and six people showed up to speak in New Brunswick.

Unionized staff who spoke at the town halls expressed displeasure that they have no representation on the search committee, and also said they wanted a new leader who would prioritize relationships with staff members.

A final town hall is scheduled for the Rutgers Camden campus on Oct. 2. For those who can’t make it to Camden, there’s still a chance to watch the meeting and make comments through video conferencing at one of the five satellite locations that will be set up in Piscataway, New Brunswick and Newark.

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The university has hired R. William Funk & Associates, an executive search firm specializing in higher education, to help recruit the next president. They will be paid $165,000 for the search and “will have reasonable expenses reimbursed by the university,” according to a search committee spokesperson.

Climate change has become a prominent issue in the 2020 presidential election and has been the focus of recent movements led by young people.

“We are facing a climate crisis of unimaginable proportions,” said Dunbar Birnie, a professor of materials science and engineering. “What’s really unique about us is we have expertise in many corners of the university that are addressing health, energy and sustainability aspects of climate change.”

Birnie said the university needs a leader who will coalesce that expertise and “do things differently. We’re still doing things the normal way, buying the same old electricity and advocating for policy but not really changing at the university level. Let’s have a leader who will advocate for that.”

Gregory Rusciano, the director of the Union of Rutgers Administrators, said he and the union members he represents want a new president with strong labor relations experience.

"A new university president coming to a university of this size with a vast amount of its workforce being unionized must be savvy in the skill and art of labor relations, something that's been lacking here for a very long time," Rusciano said. "It starts with the acknowledgement of a unionized workforce, the importance of collective contract agreements and having a presence in the process of negotiating those contracts."

Last spring, full-time faculty union members threatened to strike after a year of contract negotiations. There is still one union, representing 1,500 faculty at Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences school, negotiating a contract. 

By mid-fall, the search committee plans to select candidates for interviews. Finalists will be narrowed down by winter and a new president will be appointed early in 2020.

The search committee is chaired by Mark Angelson, who also chairs the Board of Governors. Deborah Gray White and William Best are vice chairs of the committee. White is a Board of Governors Distinguished Professor of History and Women’s and Gender Studies. Best is a Board of Governors member and emeritus member of the Board of Trustees.

There are four representatives on the committee from the board of governors, three from the board of trustees, one from the board of overseers, two from central administration, 11 from the faculty and two from among the students.

Catherine Carrera covers Rutgers University and higher education trends. Write to her at carrera@northjersey.com. Follow her on Twitter @CattCarrera.

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