On the Record; #2632

Premier funding for on the record is provided by KSCNGA, committed to serving customers strengthening the business community and investing in New Jersey's future. With major funding provided by, the Fuel Merchants Association of New Jersey and the National Oil Heat Research Alliance. It's a saving energy and the environment, today's oil heat, intelligent warmth for your home. Promotional support provided by New Jersey Business Magazine, the magazine of the New Jersey Business and Industry Association, reporting business news for more than 50 years reaching over 28,000 businesses statewide. It can't be easy running Rutgers University, more than 53,000 students, 380,000 living alumni, three campuses, a $1.9 billion budget and a complicated relationship with the state.

Richard McCormick is in his eighth year as president of Rutgers and he's our guest this week. Dick, thanks for coming in. Thank you, Michael. Thanks. I could have thrown a few more stats in there like 4,100 faculty and 6,500 staff. We employ a lot of folks around the state of New Jersey and they do great work. We're in the midst of a protracted recession, the state of New Jersey is broke, how healthy is Rutgers? Rutgers is surprisingly healthy and where our fate is in our own hands with respect to our recruitment of students and their work and our faculty and their teaching and research and the resources that all of them bring in, we are doing surprisingly well. The scarcity of resources from the state of New Jersey, which affects higher education across the country, not just here, is a serious problem and likely will continue to be for the years ahead and I worry about that. Our facilities especially demand significant more investment than they have had but we have a responsibility to cope and respond to hard times like everybody else does and due to

the excellence of our faculty and staff and our 53,000 students that you mentioned, we are in fact doing that very well. What is it that you want from Governor Christie at this point in time? So far Governor Christie has been terrific when he's met with me privately during the campaign and afterward and when he's met with the Council of Presidents, that's all the College and University Presidents in the state in mid-December, he made clear his strong support for higher education and particularly at this economic time, his understanding that we can make a big difference. We train the knowledge workers of the 21st century, we produce the new ideas that generate fresh employment, fresh ideas, fresh income, fresh tax revenues and investments in the college and colleges and universities are essential. He said that even better than I just did and I know he believes that I know he gets it and I am optimistic despite the serious structural deficit that he currently faces as Governor Christie and no doubt higher education will be affected by that like everybody else.

Governor Christie understands what we can contribute to the future and specifically to the economy. During the campaign he did talk about increasing spending on higher education, I think he said it when he was standing next to Tom Kane's senior who I think leans on him to impress upon him the importance of higher education in the overall fabric of the health of the state. But there is no money, we haven't had a facilities bond issue in 20 some years here, he can't increase operational aid to higher education, I don't think, what's the impact of that on you? Well first of all let me circle back to your observation about Governor Tom Kane. It's my understanding that Governor Kane has been Chris Christie's mentor since Governor Christie was 14 years old and there is no question that that mentorship has affected many things about his political life but particularly his understanding of higher education and the need for the people of New Jersey to make investments in it, just as Governor

Kane did during the 1980s. I'm confident that Governor Christie will do the same but there is no doubt as you've observed that it's going to be very hard to do in the short run and so we're going to have to rely more than ever before on our own resources, our own entrepreneurship and our own energy and as I observed a moment ago Rutgers is doing pretty well at that. Let's talk about how well. There is a ranking out of Arizona State University, the measurement of university performance rankings and of the top 200 research universities in the country, public and private, Rutgers ranks 57th in research expenditure, 77th in federal research expenditure, federal grants, 30th in the amount of faculty who are national academy members, but 187th in SAT scores of undergraduates, there are those who would say this is so so, this is not what New Jersey

deserves. Okay, well those figures are accurate in some respects in misleading in others. Last year our faculty brought in $391 million in new support for research, most of it from the federal government but also from a wide range of other sources. We did very well in competing for example for federal stimulus money. This year we're on track to bring in nearly $500 million again, most of it from outside the state in research support and this for a university without a medical school and with all of the investments that tend to come from the federal government and the NIH into the biomedical fields. We get some of that but less than a university that had a medical school would. The rankings of our faculty are really very, very good. Numbers of national academy members are growing significantly. The SAT scores where I never heard that number before. It's important to remember Rutgers prides itself deeply on the diversity of its student

body and I just don't mean it's racial and ethnic diversity. I mean it's economic diversity, 75% of our students rely on financial aid of some kind or another, 30% of them qualify for federal Pell grants which means they're from truly disadvantaged backgrounds, almost 30% of them are the first in their families ever to go to college. Rutgers is not a rich kid's school. It's not a school whose students were born with silver spoons in their mouths. They're New Jersey middle class kids and they come to Rutgers from a wide diversity of mainly New Jersey backgrounds, not necessarily with the top SAT scores but they grapple, they scrap and by the time they complete their Rutgers degree they are ready for life and work and hard work in the 21st century. Some would say that in a high knowledge state like this state that our rankings of our state university should be up there with Michigan, the University of North Carolina, Wisconsin,

Washington where you came from, University of California system. Well, in some numbers they are and in some they're not. Rutgers came late to being the state University of New Jersey in 1956. Michigan, for example, since you mentioned Michigan, the University of Michigan was found in 1837 ever since all of the elements of the University of Michigan have been part of that university and now it's a great university. Rutgers was if you will cobble together by a disparate elements both within New Brunswick and around the state, Newark and Camden, it hasn't had the benefit of centuries of being the state University of New Jersey and to some extent our private heritage which we're deeply proud is a bit of a burden upon us as we strive to serve the people of New Jersey and match the rankings of the best. When you say a bit of a burden, have the people of New Jersey embraced Rutgers the way the people of other states embraced their state university or do we still have a ways

to go? Well, your question is in a stew and yes we still have a ways to go. And it's not just about Rutgers, it's about public higher education in the northeastern United States, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York and the New England states are all blessed with extraordinarily numerous and outstanding private institutions and so much of the interest and attention in higher education in this region of the country goes there and our state institutions on the whole are less well developed. Certainly Rutgers and Penn State and Pittsburgh and several of the state University of New York campuses are truly outstanding but public higher education in the northeast probably doesn't have the command of public respect, affection and attention that it does in the Midwest say where everybody wants their daughter to go to the U. You referred to the private status of the University up before 1956. There are people around the country who still think of Rutgers as an Ivy League school

which leads to the observation that maybe Rutgers is better thought of out of New Jersey than within New Jersey? Well, some people say that when I was president of the University of Washington and was becoming the president of Rutgers some of my then colleagues congratulated me on becoming the president of an Ivy League university. I set them straight proud as I am of Rutgers status as the state University of New Jersey. But I think you're right within New Jersey we have significant work to do to make clear the extraordinary education that we provide in the research and service that benefit the people of our state. That's what the greatest research universities do and I would acknowledge that we have a ways to go to fulfill that high ambition. What place does sports play in your estimation in that effort? No question that sports and particularly football brings a lot of attention and happy to say recently very positive attention to Rutgers.

It causes people across our state to wear Rutgers caps to put the block R on their automobile and to talk about Rutgers in the parking lot of the local supermarket. That's only good. That's only good for the university. It's not the most important thing we do but it is unquestionably the most visible thing that we do and happily we're doing it very well. It makes a difference to the perception of Rutgers. A lot of people agree with that but you know there's a whole cohort who thinks that it distracts from education, that it takes resources away from education as one person put it to me. It sucks up all the oxygen in the room to which you would say. I would say it adds a lot of oxygen to the room. The resources for example that went into the recent controversial expansion of our football stadium have come entirely and will come entirely as we repay the debt from the revenues generated by football, from ticket sales, from in some cases from the increased ticket prices, from concessions, from parking, from revenue that is generated by the football program

itself and it has not sucked anything out of the resources available to our academic programs in fact by bringing visibility to Rutgers it has in fact added oxygen to those programs. When you fired the athletic director Bob Mokehi, the state political establishment went into a tizzy. Bob Mokehi had quite a reputation, he was Brendan Burns chief of staff, he ran the metal and sports complex for years before he went to Rutgers. You obviously thought it was time for a change and you said so at the time there's those who think it was mishandled and that maybe he should have been treated differently or you sat down with by you or given a time frame or something that it was kind of a brunt. Well, I'm not going to discuss the difficult personnel decision that I made or how I made it but if you look back at the year plus since then particularly the appointment of our new director of athletics Tim Pernetti, the energy that he has infused, the sunshine

and accountability that he has brought to the management of athletics and the continued success of our programs including the success of our student athletes. The NCAA puts out a PR academic progress ranking each year in football, the most visible of our sports, Rutgers is third in the nation in the progress that our student athletes are making toward graduation and first among all public universities the only ones up there with us are Stanford and Duke and a few others with enormous resources. So if you look at the direction in which Rutgers athletics is headed there can be no question that that direction is a good one, a promising one and a proud one for the university. What about the six minor sports you had to drop that people still write letters to the editor about the newspapers, what were they, fencing and crew, diving, heavyweight and lightweight crew, men's and women fencing. Rutgers wasn't and isn't budgeted to mount 30 intercollegiate sports, no other university

in the big east has more than 24 which is our current number, Connecticut has 24. Only a very small number of programs in the country, a few public ones with unfathomably great resources like Ohio State and a handful of private ones also with considerably deep pockets, Stanford and Harvard can mount 30 intercollegiate sports, 24 when you consider the cost of scholarships for student athletes, coaches, facilities, transportation, all of the infrastructure required amount, competitive teams in intercollegiate sport, we're not budgeted to do 30. So what we did was we made a strategic choice to write size Rutgers athletics down to 24 and by the way, all of the sports that were eliminated as intercollegiate sports are now run as club sports at Rutgers and they have more participants at club sports than they did as intercollegiate sports and there's no indication in surveys of our students or parents, anybody else that we're failing to provide Rutgers men and women with the athletic

opportunities they want. I hear the Big 10 is looking for one more school, Mike Rutgers fit into the Big 10 and leave the Big East. I read that stuff in the papers all the time just like you do. We are proudly members of the Big East, we recently went through a lot with the Big East when several of its members left five years ago, we added more three left, we added five, we are working very hard to make that conference the best it can be as we go into the next round of your ruling out moving into the Big 10. I'm saying we are now in the Big East and we're working hard so that it can be the best it can. I recently completed a two-year term as chair of the Council of Presidents and Chancellors of the Big East, so I've been in a leadership role there and I'm proud of that, I'm proud of our current conference. What would you say your biggest achievement has been in seven years as President American? I think probably the dramatic reorganization of our New Brunswick campus with the aim

of improving undergraduate education so that every one of our 25,000 New Brunswick undergraduates had the best opportunity to take advantage of our programs and our faculty no matter where they lived, what campus they were on. We used to have a system born of Rutgers' private roots that we discussed earlier in the conversation, different undergraduate colleges with students but no faculties, but arcane rules. If you live here, you can't study that, if you live there, you can't do this. What was the college's name? Well, Rutgers, Rutgers, Rutgers, Livingston University College. They lost their faculties in 1981 but curiously they retained their student bodies and each of the college is without benefit of a faculty, nonetheless at admission standards, general education requirements, graduation, right, administered academic discipline, ran honors programs all without a faculty. I'm told you could have applied to one and been accepted and applied to another and been rejected. Absolutely. People would ask me all the time and say my son was admitted to Rutgers College or to Livingston

College but not Rutgers College, what does that mean? Or my daughter was admitted to Douglas College and Rutgers College and where should she go. We have retained the best of all of our prior worlds, Douglas is still proudly in all women's campus. You now call it Douglas residential college. The Douglas residential college carries on all the traditions of women's education and opportunities for women that Douglas did but its students are now enrolled in the School of Arts and Sciences or the School of Engineering or wherever they choose and they may live on the all women's Douglas campus but they have complete opportunities to study anywhere at once. And there's one commencement where there used to be four or five commencement. Well, we are migrating in that direction for students who were admitted to Rutgers College or Douglas College prior to the transformation which took effect in the fall of 2007. They have a choice. They may graduate in a Douglas College ceremony or Rutgers College ceremony or a School of Arts and Sciences ceremony.

By 2011, we will have completed the transition and there will be one commencement ceremony. Governor Whitman abolished the Department of Higher Education. There used to be a chancellor overseeing all of public higher education in the state. In the absence of a chancellor, some think that the president of the state university should be the advocate for all public universities in the state. Do you see that as part of your role? Sure. To the greatest extent that I can play it, I do. I'm proud of being president of Rutgers which is the largest and I believe the most distinguished of our state's public research and public colleges and universities. And that's saying a lot because there are a lot of very good institutions in New Jersey. I proudly accept that the president of Rutgers has a special role. That doesn't mean, however, that I'm the boss of the other presidents. Their traditions and their institutions are proudly independent. And I think since the abolition of the Department of Higher Education, the colleges and universities

of New Jersey, including Rutgers but not Rutgers alone, have well used the increased independence that they have. So I accept responsibility for a special role born of who Rutgers is but let's not exaggerate the authority that goes with that role. You and your eighth year university presidents don't usually last much more than ten. Although some have and some at Rutgers I suppose have, how about you, how long? Well I don't know, I'm 62 years old and I know that at the end of my career I'm going to want to return to the classroom and to writing history. That's something. You're a history professor at Rutgers for 16 years. 16 years before you became an administrator. That's correct. And I loved what I did then and I want to get back to doing it but not quite yet. And at age 62 you and your second wife have now adopted a brand new infant, a biracial infant.

Well we have a picture of you holding her on. That shows me and Katie, she was one day old in that picture. We had the wonderful experience of having a birth mother in the Midwest pick us and we flew out to meet Katie the day after she was born and have now brought her back to New Jersey and are in the process of adopting her and the adoption process takes months. But we are proudly her mom and dad and I'm a little bleary eyed these days but Joan and I are very happy. Congratulations on that. How else has the recession affected Rutgers? I noticed this week that enrollment is way up. People can't afford to go out of state anymore. They're staying in school longer because there are no jobs. What's going on? I'm sure all of those factors are at work. I think the academic reputation of Rutgers to which the success of athletics has contributed is the main thing that's responsible. We had more students on all three of our campuses, Camden, Newark and New Brunswick than ever

before, last fall, 54,000. Right now in the spring semester you always have a little less in the spring. We have between 52 and 53,000 students on all of our campuses again a record for each campus and we are very proud of that. Now, having said that, the economic recession is affecting our students. Some of them are struggling to pay their tuition and so it's more important than ever that as I observed before, three quarters of them are on financial aid. Our financial aid office is working literally, working overtime to ensure that every student to the greatest extent possible has what he or she needs. Our academic programs have been heard as well in so many areas. We're simply not making the faculty appointments that we could where we're having. Are you hiring adjuncts instead of full-time faculty? In some cases we are and we're hiring fewer full-time faculty than we would like. This is a bad thing, not just for Rutgers but for the state of New Jersey in nanotechnology, in transportation, in a whole wide range of fields that could contribute directly and

immediately to the economic growth of our state and where we could hire among the best in the world we can't afford to do so right now. If there's one area where I would welcome the state of New Jersey helping with a really two areas, one is facilities where, as you said, we have an adabond issue in 22 years but the other is, if there could be targeted support for faculty appointments in areas engineering for example, where Rutgers has needs and existing strengths. Our students are crying, banging down the doors to get into the classes and the research those faculty do will contribute to the state's economy. I can't think of a better way. Governor Kane made targeted investments like that in Rutgers faculty to the huge benefit of the university and the people of New Jersey. When we were talking about research grants you said you don't have a medical school. Senator Lesniak among others still thinks that there needs to be a restructuring of higher education in the state so that you and UMDNJ Rutgers and UMDNJ and NJIT are become two institutions instead of three and Rutgers would have a medical school and you'd attract more federal

grants. Yeah. It's a very interesting idea. I've talked with Senator Lesniak about that many times. I know from my own experience as Provost at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill which has a great academic medical center and a great medical school and as president of the University of Washington and Seattle which also has a great academic medical center that a university gains enormously and its students and faculty in the state in which it resides gain enormously from having the academic medical center part of the comprehensive research university. Here in New Jersey UMDNJ is a separate health sciences university with great strengths in the south and the center and in Newark but I think the conversation is overdue about how to ensure that New Jersey, the people of New Jersey and prospective students and prospective health science practitioners and researchers have the fullest advantage they possibly can of our resources and yes I would welcome a conversation about that. We learned this week that Governor Corzine is thinking about teaching at the Eagle Institute

at Rutgers. I think it came as a surprise to some of you that he was thinking about it but with Governor Christie holding the purse strings you sure you want to add Governor Corzine to your teaching steps? I want to make clear that there is no teaching position and no compensation for Governor Corzine at Rutgers. We are hoping that he along with other former governors like Governor Kane and Governor Byrne will become part of the Eagleton Institute's program on the governors. We are hoping that he will donate a significant amount of his papers to the university, to the archive on the governors and that he will give occasional lectures associated with his role as a former New Jersey governor. And by the way when Governor Christie's time as governor is up the university will reach out to him as well hoping that he too will become part of the program on the governors. That's the extent of the role that Governor Corzine would have at Rutgers. I know a lot about the Rutgers program on the governor and I've done some work for it.

We have 15 seconds left. Have you sat down with Chris Christie since he was inaugurated? Not since he was inaugurated. His inauguration exactly coincided with our heading out to the Midwest to pick up Katie. So I was not able to be there but I'm looking forward to continuing my conversations with the governor by sitting down with him before long. Dick McCormick, thanks very much. Thank you Michael. It's a pleasure to be here. Thanks. Thank you very much for joining us today on this week's edition of On the Record of Conversation with Governor Chris Christie. That's next Sunday morning at 9 and 11 and Monday morning at 6.30 and JN will also carry the governor's address to a joint session of the legislature this Thursday live as it happens and with a rebroadcast at 10 p.m. that night. You can catch reporters around table Sunday mornings at 10 and Friday nights at 7. All our programming is on our website njn.net. Premier funding for on the record is provided by pse and g committed to serving customers strengthening the business community and investing in new jersey's future with major funding

provided by the fuel merchants association of new jersey and the national oil heat research alliance committed to saving energy and the environment today's oil heat intelligent warmth for your home promotional support provided by new jersey business magazine the magazine of the New Jersey Business and Industry Association reporting business news from more than 50 years reaching over 28,000 businesses statewide.