• Sam L. Agron

    Description: Dr. Sam Agron was born in Lugansk, Ukraine on November 27, 1920.  His father was a barber and served in the Russian Army for six years.  The family immigrated to Brooklyn in 1926.  Prior to his service, Dr. Agron worked as a shipfitter and loftsman in Oakland, California.  He enlisted in the United States Navy on December 12, 1942, attended Midshipman School at Notre Dame University (Indiana), Officer Training School, and minesweeping school in Little Creek, Virginia.  From there he was assigned to the USS Merganser, a YMS-1 Class minesweeper, conducting convoy work and minesweeping operations in the Atlantic and Pacific Theaters.  While on leave, Agron married his wife Beatrice in Norfolk, Virginia.  For his service, Dr. Agron earned American Campaign and Asiatic-Pacific Campaign medals and the World War II Victory Medal.  Following the war, Dr. Agron attended graduate school on the G.I. Bill and earned his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University.  Later, he was a Professor of Geology at Brown University in Rhode Island and Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey.
  • Frank Askin

    Description: Frank Askin was born in Baltimore in 1932.  Askin joined the Rutgers Newark Law School faculty in 1966.  He originally got involved in American Civil Liberties Union through the New Jersey affiliate as part of legal response to Newark riots. He was later elected to National Board amid Dr. Spock case controversy.  In 1970, Frank Askin founded the Constitutional Litigation Clinic in 1970.
  • Jerome Aumente

    Description:   Jerome Aumente was born on September 23, 1937 in Jersey City, New Jersey.  He earned his undergraduate degree at Rutgers-Newark in 1959 and graduate degrees at the Columbia University School of Journalism and at Harvard University as a Nieman Fellow.  Dr. Aumente spent time in Europe and then worked for a decade at newspapers, including The Detroit News.  He returned to Rutgers in 1969 and became a faculty member at Livingston College, where he founded and directed the Department of Journalism and Urban Communications, as well as the Urban Communications Teaching and Research Center.  In 1989, he started his work with the State Department and traveled overseas more than two hundred times to help in various journalism-related projects over many years.  After retiring in 2000, Dr. Aumente became a Distinguished Professor Emeritus, and from 2000 to 2015, he served as a special counselor to three deans at the School of Communication and Information.  Additionally, Dr. Aumente was one of three named by the provost to draw up the proposal for the School of Communication, Information and Library Studies.  He founded and directed the Journalism Resources Institute and founded and chaired the Department of Journalism and Media Studies.  He has published five books, including From Ink on Paper to the Internet (2007), which has received numerous awards and acclaim.
  • Ross Baker

    Description:Ross Baker, Ph.D., is a Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Rutgers University. He was born and raised in Philadelphia and went to high school at Akiba Academy in Lower Merion. He received his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. He began his career at the Special Operations Research Office and then as a research associate at the Brookings Institution. In 1968, he joined the Rutgers College Political Science Department, one of four political science departments in New Brunswick at the time. In the interview, he recalls the consolidation of the political science faculty in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Dr. Baker shifted the focus of his scholarship from international relations/comparative politics in Africa to American government and U.S. legislative politics. In 1975, he accepted a position in the office of Senator Walter Mondale, which led to Dr. Baker's academic focus on the U.S. Senate. Over the course of his career, he has worked in the offices of Senators Birch Bayh, Frank Church, Chuck Hagel, with whom he traveled as a part of a congressional delegation to Russia in 2000, Patrick Leahy, and Harry Reid, as well as serving as a consultant to the Democratic Caucus of the House of Representatives. His publications include The Afro-American, American Government (with Gerald Pomper and W. Carey McWilliams), Friend and Foe in the U.S. Senate, The New Fat Cats, House and Senate, and Strangers on a Hill. He received a Fulbright lectureship at the Swedish Institute of International Relations in Stockholm. In addition to being a member of the Board of Contributors of USA Today, he is a frequent commentator on various National Public Radio programs.
  • William H. Bauer

    Description: MajGen Bauer served as a staff officer with the Fifth Air Force in the PTO during World War II.
  • Nancy Topping Bazin

    Description: Nancy Topping Bazin was born in 1934 in Pittsburgh and grew up in Oakmont. She received a B.A. in French and English at Ohio Wesleyan University, M.A. at Middlebury Graduate School for French, studying in Paris in 1956-'57, and Ph.D. in English at Stanford University, where she wrote her dissertation on Virginia Woolf. Dr. Bazin served as an assistant professor in the Rutgers College English Department from 1970 to 1977. At Rutgers, she pioneered the development of Women's Studies courses and started a women's speaker series. In addition to being active in the Women's Caucus, she helped found the Women's Studies Institute (now called the Institute for Research on Women), serving as the director in the fall of 1974. After coordinating the Women's Studies Program at the University of Pittsburgh, she became the director of Women's Studies and an English professor at Old Dominion University in 1978. She was the second woman to become a full professor in the College of Arts and Letters and was the third woman to become Eminent Scholar in the university as a whole and the first in the College of Arts and Letters. In 2000, she retired and became an artist. Her paintings and drawings, along with scholarly publications, are showcased on her website www.nancytoppingbazin.com
  • Rudolph Bell

    Description: Rudolph "Rudy" Bell was born on November 5, 1942 in New York City. His father came from Dalmatia (now Croatia), and his mother was born in Antwerp, Belgium. Growing up in Queens, Dr. Bell attended P.S. 117, Stephen Halsey Junior High in Forest Hills and Richmond Hill High School. Dr. Bell went to Queens College, where he double majored in mathematics and history. After graduating in 1963, he got a job as a computer programmer at MetLife and also entered a Master's degree program at Queens College. In 1965, Dr. Bell entered the doctoral program in history at the City University of New York (CUNY), earning his Ph.D. in quantitative history in 1969. After coming to Rutgers College as a history instructor in 1968, he became an assistant professor in 1969. Over the past fifty years, Dr. Bell has enjoyed a distinguished career as a member of the history faculty at Rutgers-New Brunswick. With Donald Roden, he co-taught the classes "Patterns in Civilization: Love" and "Patterns in Civilization: Death," nicknamed the "Love" and "Death" classes and beloved by many undergraduates. He received a teaching Fulbright in Italy in 1971-'72. Over the years, Dr. Bell has participated in the Junior Year Abroad program, directing the program in 1976-'77. From 1988 to 1993, he served as the chair of the History Department, during which time he oversaw the founding of the Rutgers Oral History Archives. Dr. Bell headed the RU American Association of University Professors (AAUP) from 2002 to 2004.
  • Dorothea Berkhout

    Description: Dorothea Berkhout was born in Paterson, New Jersey, in 1950.  Early on in her life, she and her siblings attended Public School 12 in Paterson, New Jersey, as part of the Eastern Christian School Association. Through the Eastern Christian School Association, she then went to Eastern Christian High School in North Haledon, New Jersey, from 1963 to 1967.After graduating from Eastern Christian High School, she initially attended Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, from 1967 to 1969, but then, she moved to California. As a result, she finished her schooling at the University of Southern California after attending there from 1969 to 1971 and obtaining a major in French with a minor in Linguistics. Following her interest in language, she would go on to attend graduate school at Ohio University from 1971 to 1977, and there, she obtained her Master of Arts in French in 1973. Following her time in graduate school, she worked several jobs such as a staff associate at the Association of American University Presses in New York, and the general manager of Transaction Books & Periodicals in New Brunswick, New Jersey. She returned to Ohio University and obtained her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature in 1983, and in the same year, she began to work at Rutgers University’s Graduate School of New Brunswick. At Rutgers, she first worked as an Assistant Provost from 1983 to 1990 and then as an Associate Provost for Administration and Planning from 1990 to 1996. She transitioned from the Graduate School to Rutgers’ Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy, where she worked as the school’s Associate Dean from 1996 until her retirement in 2021.
  • Leonard Bethel

    Description: Dr. Leonard Bethel is a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Africana Studies at Rutgers. He was born in 1939 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In the interview, he describes growing up in the predominantly Black neighborhood of West Philadelphia, being involved in the Fellowship House, through which he became exposed to the Civil Rights Movement, and working at La Citadelle Camp, operated by activist and educator Layle Lane. After attending Lincoln University for his undergraduate degree, he earned a Master of Divinity at Johnson C. Smith University, during which time he was active in desegregation efforts in North Carolina. He earned a Master of Arts in Theology at New Brunswick Theological Seminary (NBTS) and received a doctorate at the Rutgers Graduate School of Education. He became an ordained Presbyterian minister in 1964. After coming to Rutgers in 1969, he worked to establish the Department of Africana Studies, chaired the department for fifteen years, and served as a faculty member for forty-two years. Through his ministry, he became involved in the anti-apartheid movement, as well as in community service organizations and initiatives. A long-time resident of Plainfield, he served as the pastor at Bethel Presbyterian Church. He is the author of numerous books and articles including Educating African Leaders: Missionism in America and La Citadelle: Layle Lane and Social Activism in 20th Century America.
  • Richard R. Bird

    Description: Richard R. Bird, retired Rutgers University Graduate Registrar, was born in 1939 on Governor's Island in New York, where his father was stationed during World War II. During his upbringing, he lived on Camp Kilmer, in Nebraska, and then in Stelton (now Edison). He went to high school in Highland Park, where he played football and track. After starting at Rutgers in 1958, he went to college on and off, until he was drafted in 1963. He later returned to Rutgers, earning a degree in 1966. He served in the Army stateside at Fort Irwin, Fort Knox, Fort Monmouth and Edgewood Arsenal. He discusses volunteering to participate in experiments in which the Army was testing chemical agents on humans. In 1966, he began working at Rutgers in the Registrar's Office, where he spent the duration of his career until he retired in 2017. He was active in the anti-Vietnam War movement through the groups Central Jersey Vets for Peace, American Servicemen's Union, and Vietnam Veterans Against the War.
  • William Neal Brown

    Description: Dr. William Neal Brown trained at Tuskegee Air Field and served as a special services officer with the 618th Bomb Squadron in the American Theater of Operations during World War II. He earned his BA at the Hampton Institute (now Hampton University) in Virginia, MSW from Columbia University in 1950 and Ph.D. in Human Growth and Development from City University of New York. He taught at the Rutgers School of Social Work from 1956 until his retirement in 1989. See Also: Dr. William Neal Brown WWII Photographs
  • Antonio Calcado

    Description: Antonio M. Calcado has served as the Executive Vice President for Strategic Planning and Operations and Chief Operating Officer at Rutgers since 2016. In this two-part oral history conducted by ROHA Director Shaun Illingworth and History Professor Dr. Paul Clemens, Calcado discusses his family's roots in Portugal, childhood, education, career and experiences during the Covid-19 pandemic. Calcado grew up in the Ironbound section of Newark and earned his undergraduate degree in political science at Seton Hall and Master of Public Administration at LaSalle University. In a career at Rutgers spanning more than thirty years, Calcado has held a number of leadership positions, including Vice President of Facilities and Capital Planning, and Senior Vice President of Institutional Planning and Operations. He is a leading expert on deferred maintenance. As the Emergency Management Coordinator, Calcado directs the University's responses to crises. Topics discussed in the interviews include preventative maintenance, involvement in professional organizations, Hurricane Floyd, Y2K, the merger of Rutgers and the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey and subsequent establishment of Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences, Hurricane Sandy, public safety issues, development of the College Avenue and Livingston campuses, emergency preparedness, and the 2030 master plan. In the second session, Calcado delves into the Covid-19 pandemic. He traces the opening of the Emergency Operations Center and mobilization of the Rutgers COVID-19 Task Force during the early days of the pandemic in February 2020. Having contracted the virus in March, Calcado discusses his own experiences battling Covid-19, during which time he was hospitalized. He explores the University's response to the pandemic, highlighting considerations that have factored into decision-making involving a number of topics, including switching to remote instruction, repopulating campuses, and dealing with the impact of the financial crisis.
  • Melbourne R. Carriker

    Description: Dr. Carriker served as a US Navy officer on a submarine chaser in the Aleutian Island Chain during World War II.
  • Lucrecia Dayci Chivukula

    Description: Lucrecia Dayci Chivukula was born in Havana, Cuba, in 1953. Her paternal great grandparents trace their roots to India, and she describes her mother’s side of the family as Afro-Cuban. In the interview, Chivukula recalls the impact of the Cuban Revolution on her family. It took her family twelve years to be able to emigrate, first to Madrid, Spain, where they lived for two years, and then to the United States.Initially living in the South Bronx, she finished her high school equivalency, scored high on the test, and earned a full scholarship to City College of New York (CCNY), earning her degree in 1980. She met her future husband at CCNY and they got married, living first in Howell and then settling in Franklin. She pursued graduate studies at Rutgers in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, where she worked as an adjunct professor for over thirty years. She taught at Saint Peter's High School for fourteen years and then became a language teacher at Thomas Grover Middle School in West Windsor-Plainsboro for twenty years. During her retirement, Dayci continues to dedicate time to serve her community. She has shared her experiences as an immigrant at programs at Middlesex County College and at Douglass College at Rutgers. She has been involved in a local diabetes prevention program geared toward South Asian and Hispanic communities. She also participates in Share Your Foodways, which provides food for individuals in need, while celebrating ancestral cooking and food traditions. The Rutgers Oral History Archives received an operating support grant from the New Jersey Historical Commission, a division of the Department of State. In the 2022-2023 cycle, this grant assisted the ROHA staff in making this oral history available to you for your use.
  • Saskia Leo Cipriani

    Description: Saskia Leo Cipriani was born in 1980 in Santurce, Puerto Rico. Her parents were born in the Dominican Republic. In 1981, her family moved to Passaic, New Jersey, where she grew up in a neighborhood that was, at the time, largely Dominican and Puerto Rican. She attended Catholic schools and then Clifton High School. After going to Passaic County Community College for one semester, she transferred to Rutgers University, first to University College and then to Livingston College, where she graduated in 2004. During her undergraduate years, she was involved in Lambda Theta Alpha sorority, Casa Boricua, the Latin American Student Organization (LASO), and the Latin American Womxn’s Association (LAWO). Additionally, her work-study job was at the Center for Latino Arts and Culture (CLAC). Over the course of her career, she has worked in the private sector and in higher education. In 2010, she earned a Master’s in Public Affairs and Administration at Rutgers-Newark. At the time of the interview, she was working on her dissertation in the Ed.D. program in Educational Leadership at Rowan University. In 2009, she co-founded the Latino Alumni Association at Rutgers University (LAARU). Since 2012, Ms. Cipriani has served as the Assistant Director of CLAC.  This oral history interview was conducted as a part of the Latino New Jersey History Project, directed by Dr. Lilia Fernandez.
  • Cheryl Clarke

    Description: Cheryl Clarke was born in 1947 in Washington, D.C. Her father served in the U.S. Army in the Red Ball Express in France during World War II. Growing up in Northwest Washington, D.C., Clarke attended parochial schools, including Immaculate Conception Academy for high school. From 1965 to 1969, she attended Howard University and majored in English. During college, she worked part time at the Washington Post and at a Peace Corps office. In 1969, Clarke came to Rutgers-New Brunswick as a graduate student in English. She earned her M.A. in English in 1974. She taught courses in the Urban University Program and discusses educational opportunity programs in the interview. From 1972 to 1974, she taught courses in the English Department at Rutgers. A life-long activist, Clarke discusses her many experiences participating in social movements, including the anti-war and Black Power movements at Howard University, anti-apartheid activism at Rutgers, LGBT activism, feminism and lesbian-feminism, and activism surrounding the defense of Assata Shakur. From 1974 to 1978, she worked in Middlesex County in the Comprehensive Employment and Training Program. In 1978, she returned to Rutgers to study social work, obtaining her M.S.W. in 1980. In 1980, she began working in Student Affairs at Rutgers. In 1992, she served as the founding director of the Office of Diverse Community Affairs and Lesbian/Gay Concerns (now called the Center for Social Justice Education and LGBT Communities). From 2009 to 2013, she served as the Dean of Students for Livingston Campus. In 2000, she earned her Ph.D. in English. (Read more)
  • Steven Diner

    Description: Dr. Steven J. Diner, Rutgers University Professor and former Chancellor of Rutgers-Newark, is an academic professional who has sought to bridge the gap between universities and the cities in which they are situated. While he served as Chancellor of Rutgers-Newark, he fostered relationships with key community members and established connections that endure as vital ties between the university and the city.Diner received both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Binghamton University, where he, after writing an editorial that was critical of the university’s administration, was first told that he would have a future in university administration. He went on to receive his Ph.D. in history from the University of Chicago in 1972.Diner began his career at the University of the District of Columbia, where he chaired the Department of Urban Studies and served as the director of the Center for Applied Research and Urban Policy. Then, at George Mason University, he served as a history professor, Associate Senior Vice President and Director of the Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study, and Vice Provost for Academic Programs. Diner joined the faculty and administration at Rutgers University-Newark in 1998. He served as the Dean of the Faculty of Arts & Sciences at Rutgers-Newark from 1998 to 2002. From 2002 to 2011, he held the post of Chancellor (formerly Provost) of Rutgers-Newark. Since 2011, Diner has served as University Professor at Rutgers University-Newark.His publications include Universities and Their Cities: Urban Higher Education in America; A Very Different Age: Americans of the Progressive Era; Managing the Nation’s Capital: The Evolution of the Office of City Administrator in the District of Columbia (edited with Helen Young); Housing Washington’s People: Public Policy in Retrospect (edited with Helen Young); A City and Its Universities: Public Policy in Chicago 1982-1919; Compassion and Responsibility: Readings in the History of Social Welfare Policy (edited with Frank R. Bruel); and The Center of a Metropolis: Washington Since 1954.
  • John Dowling, Jr.

    Description: Prof. Dowling flew missions in a B-24 for the OSS during World War II, dropping supplies and agents into Nazi-occupied Europe.
  • Maria Ealey

    Description: Maria Ealey was born in Medellín, Colombia in 1981. During her early childhood, she grew up in a middle-class family and attended Catholic schools. In the interview, she describes drug cartel-related violence in Medellín and the impact on her family. Following her aunt and grandmother, her family immigrated to the U.S. in 1995 and settled in Paterson, New Jersey. They lived in South Paterson in what was, at that time, a predominantly Colombian and Arab neighborhood. While working part-time jobs to help support her family, Ms. Ealey went to high school at John F. Kennedy. She discusses the difficulties of transitioning to life in Paterson, learning English, and dealing with financial constraints associated with access to health care and higher education. Initially, she went to Bergen County Community College for nursing, while also working full time. Then, she attended Berkeley College and studied international business, working early in her career for an attorney and a foundation. Currently, Ms. Ealey is a staff person in the Department of Latino and Caribbean Studies at Rutgers University. She resides in Middlesex County. This oral history interview was conducted as a part of the Latino New Jersey History Project, directed by Dr. Lilia Fernandez.
  • Elmer C. Easton

    Description: Dr. Easton served as the Dean of the Rutgers College of Engineering from 1948 until his retirement in 1974. During the Second World War, he taught RADAR to officers in the US Armed Forces studying at Harvard University.
  • Hans Fisher

    Description: Professor Fisher and his family emigrated from Germany in the late 1930s to escape the Nazi regime's persecution of Jews. He was among the refugees aboard the St. Louis in 1939 when the ship was turned away from the United States and Cuba. He later settled in New Jersey, attended Rutgers College of Agriculture and became a professor and administrator at the University.
  • Linda Flynn

    Description: Linda Flynn, PhD, RN, FAAN, serves as dean and professor of the Rutgers School of Nursing. In part one (Jan. 14, 2021), Dr. Flynn traces her background growing up Washington, D.C. and attending the University of Maryland School of Nursing. She began her nursing career in labor and delivery and then in acute care. For nearly thirty years, she worked in community health and Medicare-certified home health. She earned her master's in community health nursing and PhD in Nursing Research from the Rutgers School of Nursing. She served as a professor at the University of Colorado and University of Maryland-Baltimore, before returning to Rutgers in 2017. In the interview, she traces the early response at Rutgers and at the School of Nursing to the COVID-19 pandemic, such as shifting to remote learning in classrooms and adapting clinical placements to a virtual model. She talks about the toll the pandemic took on the student body educationally, as well as for students working in the health care profession, and how the school responded in terms of curriculum and support structures. She discusses the evolution of clinical placements at different times in 2020. In part two (July 18, 2022), Dr. Flynn discusses the role of the School of Nursing in the VAX Corps and the establishment of vaccine clinics in Newark and New Brunswick, as well as the creation of the Student Nurse Reserve Corps to help during the nursing shortage. She examines changes in curriculum in terms of mental health, population health, public health, and diversity, inclusion and equity. She talks about how the pandemic has affected the nursing profession overall and undergraduate education in nursing specifically. This oral history is a part of Paul Clemens and Johanna Schoen's research into Rutgers during the COVID-19 pandemic.
  • Lloyd Gardner

    Description: Lloyd C. Gardner is a Professor Emeritus of History at Rutgers. He was born in Delaware, Ohio in 1934. He earned his undergraduate degree at Ohio Wesleyan University in 1956 and doctorate in history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1959. From 1960 to 1963, he served in the U.S. Air Force. In 1963, he joined the faculty in the Department of History at Rutgers College. He participated in the first teach-in about the Vietnam War on April 23, 1965 and, in the oral history interviews, provides insight into the event and subsequent controversy. In May 1970, when the student strike occurred protesting the expansion of the Vietnam War to Cambodia, Dr. Gardner co-chaired the Action for Peace Committee and introduced the resolution at the Rutgers College faculty meeting to make classes and final exams optional and institute pass/fail grades for that semester. He discusses the occupation of Old Queens and campus protests, as well as Class Day activities and Commencement on June 3, 1970. Oral history sessions one and two delve into Dr. Gardner's life, education and career, and session three, conducted as a part of the Class of 1970 Oral History Project, focuses on Dr. Gardner's life and experiences during the 1960s and 1970s.  Lloyd Gardner's Oral History Session #3 is a part of the Class of 1970 Oral History Project to commemorate the class's fiftieth reunion milestone.
  • Wayne Glasker

    Description: Dr. Wayne Glasker is Emeritus Professor of History at Rutgers University-Camden. He is the author of the book Black Students in the Ivory Tower: African American Student Activism at the University of Pennsylvania, 1967-1990.He was born in 1957 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Mary Johnson and Morris Glasker. His parents were part of the Great Migration and had moved from Virginia to Pennsylvania in search of better work opportunities. In these interviews, Glasker discusses his childhood in Philadelphia and his experiences at the University of Pennsylvania from 1974 to 1994. Glasker earned his Bachelor’s degree in History and Sociology in 1980. He attended graduate school at UPenn as well, earning a PhD in History in 1994. During this time, he was active in the Black Student Union on campus, student government, and in the anti-apartheid movement. He discusses his experiences as a student activist and student government leader, as well as the challenges on campus for African American students.In 1990, Glasker began teaching African American history at Rutgers-Camden. He served as director of the Africana Studies program from 1998 to 2011. He describes race relations on campus in the 1990s and student activism at Rutgers. He emphasizes the list of demands from Black student activists following the occupation of the Campus Center at Rutgers-Camden in 1969. He also describes his efforts to increase civic engagement in his classes. This interview was recorded as part of the Black Camden Oral History Project.
  • Michael R. Greenberg

    Michael R. Greenberg, Ph.D., is a Distinguished Professor in the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers. Born in the Bronx in 1943, he grew up in the Bronx and Yonkers and attended public schools. He attended Hunter College, where he played baseball and earned his B.A. For graduate school, he studied at Columbia, where he received his M.A. in urban geography and Ph.D. in environmental and medical geography. In the interview, he recalls being a graduate student at Columbia during the turbulent years of the late 1960s. After beginning his career at Columbia, he joined the faculty at Livingston College in 1971. He discusses the early years of Livingston and the development of the urban planning department. Over the course of his career, he has specialized in environmental health, environmental planning and management and risk analysis and has written more than thirty books and over three hundred articles. He has been a member of numerous National Research Council Committees, including those focusing on the disposal of the U.S. chemical weapons stockpile, chemical waste management, and the degradation of the U.S. physical infrastructure. He has served on advisory boards for several governmental departments and agencies, including the Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency and the New Jersey Commission on Cancer Research. He served as the editor-in-chief of Risk Analysis and as associate editor for environmental health for the American Journal of Public Health. He served as the Associate Dean of the Bloustein School from 2000 to 2017 and as Interim Dean in 2017-'18. Dr. Greenberg is the 2019 recipient of the Gorenstein Memorial Award. In the oral history, he examines changes at Rutgers over the course of the pandemic, as well as public policy issues concerning COVID-19 and resulting health disparities.
  • Richard D. Heffner

    Listen to the ROHA Spotlight Podcast Description: Richard D. Heffner was born in 1925 in New York City. He grew up in Tucson, Arizona and New York City, where he graduated from De Witt Clinton High School in 1942. He studied history at Columbia University, earning his B.A. and membership in Phi Beta Kappa in 1946 and M.A. in 1947. Heffner went on to a career as a historian, educator and broadcaster. He wrote the renowned A Documentary History of the United States, in addition to editing Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America and writing A Conversational History of Modern America. In 1964, Rutgers University President Mason Gross appointed Heffner as University Professor of Communications and Public Policy, a position he then held for almost fifty years. In 1953, he entered broadcasting with a program about Franklin D. Roosevelt that included an interview with Eleanor Roosevelt. The success of the program propelled Heffner into broadcasting full time with programs such as History in the News, Man of the Year and Princeton '56, but he made his mark as the founder and host of The Open Mind, a nationally-broadcast public affairs interview program. Beginning in 1956, Heffner hosted The Open Mind for fifty-six years until his death in 2013. Heffner recalls of the first episode featuring American historians William Leuchtenburg and Allan Nevins and political scientists Richard Neustadt and Lawrence Chamberlain, "You could see people and hear them dealing with other intellects, and it was a wonderful thing, and the notion of an 'open mind' ... the title was born for this sort of encounter." In over 1,500 programs, Heffner's guests included Martin Luther King, Mario Cuomo, Malcolm X, Elie Wiesel, Betty Friedan and Jonas Salk. His grandson Alexander Heffner took over as host in 2014. Heffner took part in the creation of New York City's first public broadcasting station, Channel 13, and served as the vice president/general manager of the Educational Broadcasting Corporation. For two decades, he chaired the Motion Picture Association of America Classification and Ratings Administration. He died in 2013 at the age of eighty-eight. The Rutgers Oral History Archives received an operating support grant from the New Jersey Historical Commission, a division of the Department of State. In the 2020-2022 cycle, this grant assisted the ROHA staff in making this oral history available to you for your use. (Photo courtesy of Rutgers School of Arts and Sciences Honors Program)
  • Allen Howard

    Description: Allen Howard was born in 1938 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Growing up in post-depression Wisconsin, he was exposed to the civil rights movement, which influenced his career path. He earned a bachelor’s degree at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and went right into graduate studies there the following year. He completed a master’s in history in 1962 with a certificate in African studies. From 1963 to 1965, he taught African history at the University of Sierra Leone. Afterwards, he returned to the University of Wisconsin-Madison to complete his Ph.D. Dr. Howard became a professor of African history at Livingston College in 1969, the college's inaugural year. He worked to develop curriculum in Africana studies and taught courses in African history. In the interviews, Dr. Howard explores the early years of Livingston College, the interdisciplinary nature of the curriculum, the student body and the faculty. In his forty-plus years as a history professor at Rutgers, he specialized in African and Atlantic history, taught at the undergraduate and graduate levels, and published numerous works. He served on the executive committee of the Center for Africa Studies and chaired the center from 1999 to 2004. Dr. Howard is a Professor Emeritus of History.
  • M. William Howard

    Description: Born in 1946, Moses William Howard, Jr., known as Bill, grew up in Americus, Georgia. In the first interview, he discusses his family history and growing up in the segregated South. He details his involvement in the civil rights movement in the early 1960s with voter registration efforts through the Sumter County Voters League and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. At Morehouse College in Atlanta, he majored in psychology and minored in philosophy. He continued civil rights activism at Morehouse, becoming acquainted with major figures such as Benjamin Mays, the president of the Morehouse. He recalls the aftermath of Dr. Martin Luther King's assassination and May’s eulogy at King’s funeral. Reverend Howard went on to work as a research assistant on May’s autobiography, a topic that he explores in the second interview. After graduating from Morehouse in 1968, he went to Navy Officer Candidate School, before attending Princeton Theological Seminary. There, he studied the history of religions and became interested in pastoral care. After earning his Master of Divinity in 1972, he was ordained in the American Baptist Church. He worked as a campus representative of the United Campus Ministry at Rutgers’ Livingston College during its early years. The third interview session delves into his international humanitarian and social justice work. From 1972 to 1992, he headed the African American Council of the Reformed Church in America, through which he became involved in the anti-apartheid and divestiture movements. He served as the moderator of the Programme to Combat Racism (World Council of Churches), president of the National Council on Churches, member of the Human Rights Advisory Group (World Council of Churches), and president of the American Committee on Africa. In December 1979, he traveled to Tehran during the Iranian hostage crisis and met with a group of American hostages. In early 1983, Reverend Howard, along with Reverend Jesse Jackson and others, negotiated the release of Navy pilot Robert Goodman from Syria. Howard’s participation in Nelson Mandela’s visit to New York City in 1990 is also detailed in the interview.
  • Marge Howes

    Description: Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, Marge Howes grew up in Delhi. She went to public schools and became an avid athlete. She attended the University of Cincinnati, where she played three varsity sports: field hockey, basketball and softball. She became part of the Chi Omega sorority, majored in physical education, and minored in health and biology. She graduated in 1958 on the Dean’s List and received the C-Ring for Women’s Leadership Award in recognition for her leadership and service. After graduation, she landed her first job at Douglass College at Rutgers University, where she started working in September 1958 in the Department of Physical and Health Education. She started the interscholastic sports programs in basketball, field hockey and softball and coached the teams. She became basketball chair in New Jersey of the Division of Girls and Women's Sports (DGWS) and taught coaches in high schools and colleges the evolving rules of the sport. After leaving Rutgers, she moved to Connecticut, becoming the basketball chair for the state, officiating games, coaching basketball at several colleges, and coaching her childrens' athletic teams. Later, she became involved in supporting women's basketball at the University of Connecticut and the University of Cincinatti. In 1997, Howes was inducted in the Rutgers Athletics Hall of Fame. Her Hall of Fame inscription reads: "Marge Howes was a pioneer in women's basketball ... Women's basketball today is a reflection of Howes' solo efforts in the sport nearly 40 years ago."    Listen to the ROHA Spotlight Podcast of Marge Howes by clicking on the Podcast tab on the main menu.
  • Arnold Hyndman

    Description: Born in Los Angeles, California, Arnold Hyndman was interested in science from a young age and was encouraged by his teachers to attend programs and assist with research, prompting a career in science and education. During his time in high school, he was able to participate in summer research programs with institutions such as the University of Southern California in their marine animal laboratory. He participated in a school walkout after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  After graduating high school in 1970, he went on to attend Princeton University, majoring in Biology. He attended graduate school at the University of California, Los Angeles from 1974 to 1978 and he earned his Ph.D. in Philosophy and Neuroscience. During his graduate work, he was actively involved in recruiting more students of color to the biology department. He also made quick use of the teaching credentials he obtained from Princeton, working, over the summers, with an Upward Bound program. Dr. Hyndman took his first post-doctoral assignment at Ohio State University in the medical school working on research, before finding himself presented with offers for positions at both the University of California (UCSD), San Diego and at Livingston College. He worked out a compromise wherein he asked Rutgers to hold the position for a year, while he went to UCSD to complete a second post-doctoral program. While working at UCSD, Dr. Hyndman and his collaborators developed a cell culture technique and were among the early describers of the natural cell division and replication of post-mitotic cells.In 1981, he became an assistant professor in the Department of Biological Science at Rutgers, during which time the faculty reorganized into the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS).
  • Peter Klein

    Description: Peter D. Klein was born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1940.  His father, Bela Klein, was born in 1902 to a Jewish family in Austria-Hungary.  In 1938, Bela escaped Europe through the aid of the American Friends Service Committee.  Peter Klein grew up in Cincinnati.  During his time attending Walnut Hills High School, he participated in activities at the Fellowship House of Cincinnati and then became involved in the civil rights movement through the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE).  During his undergraduate years, Klein went to Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana.  He attended Highlander Folk School and received training in nonviolent civil disobedience.  In the summertime, he worked in fire towers in Montana and ended up working for the Forest Service every summer from 1961 to 1983.  Studying under Rulon S. Wells III at Yale University, Klein earned his M.A. in 1964 and Ph.D. in philosophy in 1966.  After beginning his career as a professor at Colgate University from 1966 to 1970, he came to Livingston College at Rutgers University in 1970, during the second year of the college's operation.  He and his wife lived in Quad 2 as faculty resident advisors for three years.  Klein helped shape the philosophy curriculum at Livingston College in its early years, and then once the faculties of the undergraduate colleges merged into the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), he served as the Chair of the Department of Philosophy three times.  In 1987, Klein became the Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education and Associate Provost for Humanities/Fine Arts, a post he held until 1992.  He served as the Acting Associate Dean of the FAS from 1999 to 2000 and then as the Executive Vice Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences from 2006 to 2009.  In 2016, after forty-six years as a faculty member and administrator at Rutgers University, Klein retired.  As Professor Emeritus, he continues to write and give talks about philosophy, focusing on the various theories of justification: foundationalism, coherentism and infinitism.    Photo courtesy of Peter Klein's web page on the Department of Philosophy website
  • Ruth Anne Koenick

    Description: Ruth Anne Koenick was born in 1949 in Washington, D.C.  During her childhood, she attended Rock Creek Forest Elementary, in Chevy Chase, Maryland, before attending Bethesda Chevy Chase High School from 1963 to 1967.  Ms. Koenick attended the University of Maryland, where she co-founded what is credited as being the first rape crisis center on a college campus in the United States.  With a major in criminology and a minor in psychology, she graduated in 1972.  She then went to graduate school, first at the University of Maryland and then at George Washington University, where she earned a master's degree in student affairs in 1976.  Over the course of her career, Ms. Koenick has held numerous positions, including working as a social worker in the Department of Social Services at Roosevelt Hospital in Metuchen and coordinator at the Rape Crisis Intervention Center at Roosevelt Hospital.  In 1991, she became the director of Violence Prevention and Victim Assistance (formerly Sexual Assault Services and Crime Victim Assistance) at Rutgers University.  During her time as director, she worked as a member of the ACPA Presidential Task Force on Sexual Violence in Higher Education in 2014, as well as developing a statewide Campus Sexual Assault Victim's Bill of Rights in New Jersey.  Ms. Koenick retired in 2016.  She has published numerous works and has taught classes at Rutgers in the Graduate School of Education, School of Social Work and the Department of Women's and Gender Studies.
  • Paul L. Leath

    Description: Paul Leath was born in Moberly, Missouri.  He received his undergraduate training at the University of Missouri and received his Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics in 1966.  Leath joined the Rutgers faculty in 1967 as an Assistant Professor and advanced to Professor II in the Physics Department.  During his time at Rutgers, he served in many administrative capacities, including as Associate Provost and Provost for New Brunswick, and Chair of the Physics Department. 
  • Barbara Lee

    Description: Barbara A. Lee is a Distinguished Professor of Human Resource Management at the Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations (SMLR). She was born in 1949 in Newton, New Jersey. Growing up in Newton and Andover Township, she attended public schools. She went to the University of Vermont, where she majored in English and joined the Alpha Chi Omega sorority. She was inducted in Phi Beta Kappa as a junior. After graduating in 1971, she went to graduate school at Ohio State University, earning a M.A. in English in 1972 and Ph.D. in higher education administration in 1977. She attended law school at the Georgetown University Law Center, receiving a J.D. in 1982. Dr. Lee became a professor at the Graduate School of Education at Rutgers in 1982.  In 1984, she joined the faculty in the Department of Industrial Relations and Human Resources at SMLR. Over the years, she has taught classes on employment law, labor law and higher education law. She is the author of numerous articles and books, including The Law of Higher Education, A Legal Guide for Student Affairs Professionals, and Academics in Court: The Consequences of Faculty Discrimination Litigation. As an administrator, Dr. Lee has served as department chair, associate dean, associate provost and dean, as well as director of the Center for Women and Work. In 2015, she became the Senior Vice President of Academic Affairs, a post she held until June 2020. When the COVID-19 pandemic struck in early 2020, she worked with others in the Emergency Operations Center to manage the University's response and the shift to remote instruction.
  • Richard A. Levao

    Description:Richard A. Levao, Ph.D., JD, was born in Manhattan in 1948. He grew up in Washington Heights and Tenafly. From 1966 to 1970, he attended Rutgers College, known at the time as the College of Arts and Sciences, and majored in political science. He was a Henry Rutgers Scholar, studying with Dr. Ross Baker, then a junior faculty member. Dr. Levao served as the student body president and representative to the National Student Association, as well as the student representative to the University Senate. At WRSU, he worked as a disc jockey and delivered news commentaries and movie reviews. He recalls administrators Mason Gross, Arnold Grobman and Howard Crosby, with whom he had a close relationship, and professors Ross Baker, Lloyd Gardner, Warren Susman, Michael Curtis and Josef Silverstein. During the turbulent late 1960s, he remembers the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the student protest movements, the controversy surrounding the draft lottery, the debate over coeducation, and the student strike following the U.S. invasion of Cambodia. As Student Council president, he delivered a speech about President Richard Nixon's highly-contentious plans to attend the centennial college football game in 1969. After attending Cornell Law School, he went on to a career practicing law and in higher education. He was a member of both the Rutgers University Board of Trustees and Board of Governors. Dr. Levao served as the President of Bloomfield College for sixteen years, before retiring with emeritus status in 2019.
  • George Levine

    Description: George Levine was born in New York City on August 27, 1931. After earning a master’s degree in literature from the University of Minnesota, Levine spent two years in the U.S. Army. Afterwards, he chose to continue his education in Minnesota and received his doctorate in literature in 1959. He began his professorship at Indiana University and later conducted research in England on Victorian-era essays and novels. Levine was hired by Rutgers University in 1968 to chair the English Department at Livingston College, which opened to students in 1969. In 1981, Levine became the first chair of the Rutgers Department of English in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. In 1986, Levine became the director of the Center for the Critical Analysis of Contemporary Culture (currently known as the Center for Cultural Analysis). Levine has authored several books and essays on Victorian literature and culture and continues to study literature’s connection with the sciences. 
  • Peter Lindenfeld

    Description: Peter Lindenfeld was born in 1925 in Vienna, Austria. He grew up in Vienna in a Jewish household. After Germany annexed Austria in 1938, Lindenfeld and his mother escaped Austria via Switzerland and England, before eventually settling in British Columbia. His father reunited with the family in 1942. Lindenfeld went to high school in Vancouver and then attended college at the University of British Columbia, where he earned his B.S. and M.S. He received his Ph.D. in physics at Columbia University in 1954. Lindenfeld came to Rutgers University in 1953 as an instructor and spent the duration of his career as a member of the physics faculty, retiring in 1999. In the mid-1960s, Lindenfeld participated in the planning committee for Livingston College, which opened in 1969 under the direction of Dean Ernest Lynton, who was a physics professor. In the interview, Lindenfeld discusses the founding principles of Livingston College and the early years of the college. He was active in the AAUP in the Executive Council and in the Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure. Lindenfeld won the Warren I. Susman Award for Excellence, given by Rutgers University, and the Robert A Millikan Medal, awarded by the American Association of Physics Teachers.
  • Rebecca Lubetkin

    Description: Rebecca Lubetkin was born in 1938. She grew up in Kenilworth and Millburn, New Jersey. She received her B.A. at Barnard College in 1960 and master's degree in political science at Rutgers in 1961, after which she worked as a political science instructor at the Eagleton Institute of Politics until 1964. In 1975, Lubetkin returned to Rutgers, where she founded and directed the Training Institute for Sex Desegregation of the Public Schools, which later became known as the Consortium for Educational Equity. Lubetkin and her staff developed training programs to assist schools in implementing gender equity in accordance with Title IX and New Jersey statutes. From 1993 to 2000, she also served as the associate director of equity of the Rutgers Center for Mathematics, Science and Computer Education. Lubetkin is a Professor Emerita at Rutgers University. In 1971, she became active in the National Organization for Women (NOW). She was a member of the Essex County and Morris County Chapters of NOW. In 1995, she served as a delegate to the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing. She hosted New Directions for Women, a television program produced by Morris County NOW. She co-chairs the Holocaust Council of Greater MetroWest and serves as a national board member of the Veteran Feminists of America. Lubetkin is featured in Feminists Who Changed America, edited by Barbara Love. She and her husband have two daughters.
  • Terre Martin

    Terre Martin was born in Newark, New Jersey in 1947. In the interview, she discusses her parents' experiences emigrating from Italy and settling in Newark. Her father owned a barber shop in South Orange, and her mother worked as a seamstress. She grew up in Maplewood and went to school at Clinton School, South Orange Junior High, and Columbia High School. At Douglass College from 1965 to 1969, she majored in Italian and recalls her Italian professor, Maria Teresa Moevs, along with her chemistry professor, Dr. Schombert. She describes Douglass traditions and changes in student life during that time period. Living at Gibbons, she became involved in campus activities, organizing the Soph-Frosh Picnic one year and serving as the house chair her senior year. While an undergraduate, she met her future husband, Douglas, who graduated from the Ag School in 1967 and then served in the Navy in Vietnam. After graduating in 1969, she and her husband moved to St. Louis, where he served as a naval recruiter. Returning to New Jersey, she took care of her three daughters, all of whom are alumni of Rutgers University, and volunteered with the Jaycettes. Over the course of her career, she has worked as a newspaper reporter, in public relations at the Sparta School District, and at Rutgers University in Admissions, the Office of Print and Electronic Communication, and the Office of Community Affairs. Active in Douglass alumnae affairs, she co-chaired the Douglass 100th Anniversary Committee and has been an active member of her class. In the interview, she analyzes changes at Douglass College and Rutgers University over the past fifty years. She states in her interview, "The one constant in all our lives--we can always come home to Rutgers."
  • Edna Newby

    Description: Ms. Newby organized and ran USO R&R centers on the home front during WWII.
  • Donna Nickitas

    Donna M. Nickitas, PhD, RN, NEA-BC, CNE, FNAP, FAAN, is the dean of the Rutgers School of Nursing-Camden. She became dean in July 2018, after a distinguished career at the City University of New York's Hunter-Bellevue School of Nursing and the Graduate Center, where she was a professor, executive officer of the nursing science Ph.D. program, and specialty coordinator of the dual degree in nursing administration/public administration. A native of Brooklyn, she earned her bachelor's at SUNY Stony Brook, master's degree at New York University and Ph.D. at Adelphi University. Dr. Nickitas served on active duty in the U.S. Air Force Nurse Corps at Ellsworth Air Force Base from 1976 to 1978. She then served as a Reservist in the Air Force Nurse Corps from 1978 to 2000, when she retired as a major. Early in her civilian career, she served as assistant director of maternal/child health nursing at Bellevue Medical Center in New York and as a staff nurse in the labor and delivery unit at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn. She is the author of numerous books and articles and has served as the editor of the journal Nursing Economic$. In the first session, she discusses her family history, upbringing, education, active-duty military service, and Reserve service as a flight nurse in the 69th Aero-Medical Evacuation Squadron. In the second interview session, she delves into her graduate education, career in nursing and academia, service in the Reserves in the 34th Medical Service Squadron, transitioning to the deanship at Rutgers, and changes brought on by Covid-19 at the School of Nursing-Camden, as well as how the school has responded to the pandemic in terms of education and community engagement.(Photo below: John Costello, U.S. Navy, World War II, father of Donna Nickitas)
  • Arlene Nora

    Description: Arlene Nora was born in 1938, in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Her mother emigrated from Holland when she was seventeen and settled in Edison. Her father emigrated from London, England. During World War I, he served in the U.S. military in Europe, where he was wounded. Her parents raised their eight children in Highland Park, and her father worked at Rutgers in facilities and maintenance. Growing up in Highland Park, Ms. Nora attended Irving School and Highland Park High School. Ms. Nora spent her career working at Rutgers University, in the offices of the Football Hall of Fame, Graduate Admissions, and the Institute for Research on Women (IRW). She and her husband raised their family in North Brunswick.
  • Ferris Olin

    Description: Ferris Olin was born in 1948 in Trenton, New Jersey.  Growing up in Ewing, she attended schools at Parkway School, Antheil Junior High School and Ewing High School.  Following high school graduation in 1966, Dr. Olin went to Douglass College at Rutgers.At Douglass, Dr. Olin majored in Art History and participated in activities such as Chapel Usher and Honor Board.  After graduating from Douglass in the Class of 1970, Dr. Olin earned a Master's in Library Science in 1972 and a Master's in Art History in 1975.  Later, she obtained a Graduate Certificate in Women's Studies in 1988 and earned her Ph.D. in Art History in 1998.In 1975, Dr. Olin worked at the Training Institute for the Sex Desegregation of the Public Schools at the Consortium for Educational Equity, based at Douglass.  In 1976, Dr. Olin became a faculty member at the Art Library at Rutgers-New Brunswick.  From 1985 to 1994, she held the position of Executive Officer of both the Blanche, Edith and Irving Laurie New Jersey Chair in Women's Studies and the Institute for Research on Women (IRW).  In the interviews, Dr. Olin discusses administrative issues, programming and accomplishments of the Laurie NJ Chair and IRW, as well as tracing the development of Women's and Gender Studies at Douglass and the establishment of the consortium of the Institute for Women's Leadership (IWL).In the mid-1990s, Dr. Olin returned to Rutgers University Libraries as an associate professor at the Mabel Smith Douglass Library.  From 1994 to 2014, she served as the co-curator of the Mary H. Dana Women Artists Series, which was founded by Joan Snyder in 1971.  Dr. Olin founded the Margery Somers Foster Center: A Resource Center and Digital Archive on Women, Scholarship and Leadership at the Mabel Smith Douglass Library.  Along with Judy Brodsky, Dr. Olin founded and directed the Institute for Women and Art (IWA), which is now called the Center for Women in the Arts and Humanities and is part of the IWL consortium.Dr. Olin is a Distinguished Professor Emerita at Rutgers University.  In 2012, the Women's Caucus for Art awarded Dr. Olin the Art Lifetime Achievement Award.
  • Sandra M. Petway

    Description: Sandra "Sandee" Petway started the women’s track and field program at Rutgers-New Brunswick in 1974, a year after joining the University as a physical education instructor. She was the first Black head coach at Rutgers and led the track team until 1980. In 2022, she was inducted into the Rutgers Athletics Hall of Fame in recognition of her contribution to women’s sports and the many successes that her track team achieved during her tenure. Born in 1950 in Plainfield, Petway grew up in Vineland. She attended Trenton State College, now The College of New Jersey, where she developed her leadership experience by creating a women’s varsity track team as an undergraduate. In her interview, she discusses her memories of Rutgers athletics in the 1970s and the changes that Title IX brought to the University. She also discusses her family history and the impact that her mother, teacher and principal Pauline Petway, had on the community in Vineland. This interview was conducted by Professor Deborah Gray White for the Scarlet and Black Research Center.
  • Gerald Pomper

    Description: Gerald Pomper was born in the Bronx, New York, in 1935 to Jewish parents who had emigrated from Poland.  He grew up in Midtown Manhattan and graduated from Stuyvesant High School. Dr. Pomper attended Columbia University on a Ford Foundation scholarship.  He majored in political science and served as managing editor of the newspaper. After receiving his bachelor's degree in 1955 from Columbia, Dr. Pomper went to Princeton University, where he earned his master's in 1957 and doctorate in 1959 under Stanley Kelley. Dr. Pomper began his career in academia at the City College of New York.  In 1962, Dr. Pomper came to Rutgers University and taught in the political science department at Rutgers College.   In 1965, when Dean Ernest Lynton formed the planning committee for what was to become Livingston College, Dr. Pomper joined as the founding chair of the political science department.  In the first session of his oral history, Dr. Pomper discusses the founding principles of Livingston College and describes the initial years of Livingston after the college opened in 1969 as Rutgers-New Brunswick's first coeducational undergraduate college.  In the second session, Dr. Pomper analyzes the early years of Livingston College, the centralization of academics and administration at Rutgers-New Brunswick, and his career development and notable publications. In a career at Rutgers that has spanned over five decades, Dr. Pomper has written or edited nineteen books, chaired a select committee that proposed major changes in undergraduate education at Rutgers-New Brunswick, and held Fulbright or visiting professorships at Tel-Aviv University, Oxford and Australian National University.  A specialist in American elections and politics, Dr. Pomper is Board of Governors Professor of Political Science at the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers.
  • Madai Cruz Poole

    Description: Madai Cruz Poole was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey in 1974. Her mother was born in Utuado, Puerto Rico, and her father was born in Salinas, Puerto Rico. Her parents moved to the New Jersey-New York area when they were young, eventually settling in New Brunswick. Her father worked for Suburban Transit, and her mother worked in the Public Defender's Office. Growing up in New Brunswick, Poole attended the parochial schools Sacred Heart and St. Peter's Elementary School. For high school, she went to Rutgers Prep. Poole went to Rutgers College and double majored in Administration of Justice and Puerto Rican and Hispanic Caribbean Studies. She participated in Rutgers Unión Estudiantil Puertorriqueña and spent time in Latin Images Living-Learning Community. After working for many years in the pharmaceutical industry in marketing, she became the department administrator for Latino and Caribbean Studies in the Rutgers School of Arts and Science. In the interview, Poole discusses being an EOF student at Rutgers and then working as an EOF counselor, organizing support for her extended family in Puerto Rico in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, being a cancer survivor, and returning to Rutgers to work in the department from which she graduated. This oral history interview was conducted as a part of the Latino New Jersey History Project, directed by Dr. Lilia Fernandez.
  • Zaneta Rago-Craft

    Description: Zaneta Rago-Craft, Ed.D., is the former Director of the Center for Social Justice Education and LGBT Communities at Rutgers and current Director of the Intercultural Center and Advisor to the President on Diversity and Inclusion at Monmouth University. Born in 1988, she grew up in Long Branch, New Jersey. In the interview, she discusses her experiences growing up in a working-class family, going to public schools, where she excelled academically, and being involved in extracurricular activities such as band. She also notes the influences of extended family members who raised her while her mother was incarcerated. She went on to higher education at Ramapo College, earning her bachelor's degree in history with a minor in women's and gender studies. At Ramapo, she got involved in the Women's Center, her first exposure to a campus-based identity center, and became the center's queer peer services coordinator. She was active in Ramapo Pride, the Black Student Union and Ebony Women for Social Change. Motivated by Proposition 8 in California and the election of Barack Obama in 2008, she extended her activism beyond the campus. She volunteered at Garden State Equality and organized a busload of students to support the National Equality March in Washington, D.C in 2009. Deciding upon student affairs and higher education administration as her career path, she earned her master's degree at New York University. At NYU, she interned at the LGBTQ Student Center and Center for Multicultural Education, through which she gained experience exploring the intersectionality of multiple identities in campus-based centers. While in graduate school, she first got involved with the Consortium of Higher Education LGBT Resource Professionals, an organization that addresses issues of national advocacy and public policy. Rago-Craft came to Rutgers in 2012 as the Assistant Director of the Center for Social Justice Education and LGBT Communities and became the Director in 2013. She embraced the historic LGBTQIA work of the center, along with its foci on intersecting and multiple social justice issues. She expanded existing programs, such as the Safer Space Program and Trans Awareness and Visibility in November. She describes the momentum to take the center to the next level in programming and visibility following the tragedy of Tyler Clementi's suicide. (Read more)
  • Rebecca Reynolds

    Description: Rebecca Reynolds was born in Washington, DC in 1962. Her maternal grandmother, Pauline Miller Shereshefsky, graduated from the University of Chicago, after which she worked at the Hull House settlement house. She spent her career in social work, later becoming closely associated with Jessie Taft and Virginia Robinson at the University of Pennsylvania and the Otto Rank Association. Her grandfather Judah Leon Shereshefsky was a notable chemist who worked on the Manhattan Project and went on to serve as a professor at Howard University. While Rebecca Reynolds was growing up, her father worked as a psychiatrist in the public sector, and her mother became a psychologist, earning her Ph.D. after her children were grown. Raised in Chevy Chase, Reynolds attended public schools. She earned her undergraduate degree in English at Vassar College. She received a M.A. in English at Rutgers and MFA at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, where she studied creative writing and poetry and won the Avery Hopwood Award for Poetry. While a graduate student at Rutgers, she worked at the Institute for Research on Women during the summertime. Reynolds is the author of two books of poetry, Daughter of the Hangnail (1997), which won the Norma Farber First Book Award from the Poetry Society of America, and The Bovine Two-Step (2002). She has spent her career at Rutgers dedicated to women's education as an advisor/administrator at Douglass and instructor in English and Women's and Gender Studies. She has been involved in LGBTQIA+ advocacy on campus, serving as a liaison and helping to found the organization Q-mmunity. She worked as the Assistant Director of the Douglass Scholars Program and the Mabel Smith Douglass Honors Program from 1991 to 2000 and as Assistant Dean of Academic Services from 2000 to 2007. Currently, she serves at Douglass Residential College as the Assistant Dean and Director of Mentoring and Advising at the BOLD Center (Building Opportunities for Leadership and Career Development) and as the Director of the Mary I. Bunting Program for Returning Women Students.The Rutgers Oral History Archives received an operating support grant from the New Jersey Historical Commission, a division of the Department of State. In the 2020-2021 cycle, this grant assisted the ROHA staff in making this oral history available to you for your use.
  • Donald N. Riemer

    Description: Professor Riemer was a child during World War II. He served as a Nike missile site officer and base wildlife conservation officer in the US Army in the 1950s.
  • Michael Aaron Rockland

    Description: Professor Rockland served as a corpsman in the US Navy during the Cold War in the mid-1950s, including service in Naval Hospital Yokosuka in a psychiatric unit. He served in the US Information Agency from 1961 to 1968, with postings in Argentina and Spain. He served as Executive Assistant to the NJ Chancellor of Higher Education from 1968 to 1969. He came to Rutgers University in 1969, first as an Assistant Dean at Douglass College (1969-72), then as a Professor of American Studies (1972-present), serving as chair of American Studies from 1972 to 2000.
  • Patricia A. Roos

    Patricia A. Roos, Professor Emerita of Sociology, has been a faculty member and administrator at Rutgers since 1989. Growing up in a military family, she lived in various locales, including West Point, New York and Honolulu, Hawaii. She earned her B.A. and M.A. at the University of California, Davis and Ph.D. at the University of California, Los Angeles. She served as a sociology professor at the State University of New York, Stony Brook, before coming to Rutgers. Her scholarship has focused on inequalities, gender and work, stratification, work and family and, more recently, addiction and mental health. Among her many publications are Gender and Work: A Comparative Analysis of Industrial Societies and Job Queues, Gender Queues: Explaining Women's Inroads Into Male Occupations, which is coauthored by Barbara Reskin. At Rutgers, she served as chair of the Sociology Department from 1991 to 1997 and area dean for the Social and Behavioral Sciences from 1997 to 2000. From 1999 to 2001, Dr. Roos led the effort within the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Deans Office to produce the "FAS Gender Equity Report," released in October 2001. From 2008 through 2011, she served as co-principal investigator on the National Science Foundation ADVANCE Institutional Transformation Grant: “RU-FAIR:-Rutgers University for Faculty Advancement and Institutional Re-Imagination.” She also served in various directing roles at the Center for Women and Work from 2008 to 2011. Following the death of her son from opioid addition, she redefined her research and advocacy to focus on mental health and addiction. In 2018-2019, she was a fellow at the Institute for Research on Women's seminar "Public Catastrophes, Private Losses," working on a project entitled "Grief and Resilience in the Midst of the Opioid Epidemic." She is the author of the memoir Surviving Alex: A Mother's Story of Love, Loss, and Addiction (Rutgers University Press, May 2024).
  • Jeffrey Rubin

    Description: Dr. Jeffrey Rubin is a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Economics at Rutgers University. Born in 1949, Rubin grew up in Hoboken and went to Rutgers College, majoring in mathematics. In the interviews, Rubin recalls his undergraduate years as a member of the Class of 1970, focusing on memorable professors, speakers who visited campus, the effect of the draft on his class, and the turbulent spring semester of 1970. Rubin went to graduate school at Duke University from 1970 to 1975 and earned his Ph.D. in economics. Rubin served as an economics professor at Rutgers University from 1976 until his retirement in 2016. Over the course of his career as a faculty member, Rubin served as the undergraduate director in the Economics Department, faculty advisor for the Rutgers-New Brunswick College Fed Challenge Team, member of the Academic Oversight Committee for Intercollegiate Athletics, and NCAA Faculty Athletics Representative. He received the Warren Susman Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2013. Jeffrey Rubin's oral history is a part of the Class of 1970 Oral History Project to commemorate the class's fiftieth reunion milestone. (Shown in the photo from left to right are Jeff Rubin and Barbara Rubin.)
  • Joseph J. Seneca

    Description: Joseph J. Seneca was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on January 6, 1943.  He grew up in Upper Darby and graduated from Upper Darby High School in 1960.Dr. Seneca went to the University of Pennsylvania for his undergraduate education, earning membership in Phi Beta Kappa.  He studied economics in graduate school at the University of Pennsylvania and received his Ph.D. in 1968.Dr. Seneca came to Rutgers in 1967 as a junior faculty member in the Economics Department at Rutgers College.  Over the years, he has taught at all levels of instruction, chaired the Economics Department, and published over 150 articles, reports and books on economics, finance, environmental economics and state economic development.  He served on the New Jersey Council of Economic Advisors, holding the position of chair for many years.  From 1991 to 2003, Dr. Seneca served as Rutgers University's Vice President for Academic Affairs.  He is now a University Professor Emeritus.
  • Robert Snyder

    Description: Dr. Robert Snyder is a journalist, author, and public historian. Born in New York in 1955, Dr. Snyder spent his life pursuing journalism and history through most of his college career, studying at Livingston College in the mid 1970's. He is currently the Director of the Graduate Program in the American Studies at Rutgers-Newark, and has been a Rutgers faculty member and professor since 2000.
  • Linda Stamato

    Description: Part 1 - Early Life and Education: Professor Stamato describes her upbringing and education in Northern New Jersey and her years as an undergraduate at Douglass College and a graduate student at Seton Hall and NYU. Part 2 - Forging a Career in Public Service and Education: Stamato discusses her work as an advocate for public higher education in NJ through the League of Women Voters, the Rutgers Governing Boards and the NJ Board of Higher Education. She also describes her tenure at the Ford Foundation as an advocate for the emerging field of negotiation and conflict resolution. Part 3 - Stateswoman of Higher Education and Conflict Resolution: Stamato relates her efforts in furthering the development of the field as Co-Director, with Sanford Jaffe, of the Center for Negotiation and Conflict Resolution in the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University. She also recalls her days as Acting Dean of Douglass College and her later service on Rutgers University task forces.
  • Brian Strom

    Description: Brian L. Strom, M.D., M.P.H., is the Inaugural Chancellor of Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences (RBHS) and the Executive Vice President for Health Affairs at Rutgers University. Born in 1949, he grew up in Queens and attended public schools. He earned a B.S. at Yale University in 1971, M.D. at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 1975, and M.P.H. in Epidemiology at the University of California, Berkeley. From 1975 to 1978, he was an intern and resident in Internal Medicine and from 1978 to 1980 he was an NIH fellow in Clinical Pharmacology at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). In 1980, he joined the faculty at the Perelman School of Medicine of the University of Pennsylvania, where he went on to serve as the Executive Vice Dean of Institutional Affairs, Founding Chair of the Department of Biostatistics and Epidemiology, Founding Director of the Center for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, and Founding Director of the Graduate Program in Epidemiology and Biostatistics. Part one of the oral history delves into Rutgers University's response to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and then traces the evolution of the pandemic and Rutgers' decision making over the course of 2020-2021. At the end of part one, Dr. Strom relates his family's history and his own upbringing and education. In part two, he discusses his undergraduate years at Yale during the late 1960s, experiences in medical school and as an intern and resident at UCSF, interests and research in clinical epidemiology and pharmacoepidemiology, career at Penn, transition to Rutgers, role as Inaugural Chancellor of RBHS after the merger with UMDNJ, and the current status and challenges facing RBHS.
  • Judith S. Weis

    Description: Judith S. Weis is a Professor Emerita of Biological Sciences at Rutgers-Newark. Born and raised in Manhattan, she received her bachelor's degree from Cornell in 1962 and M.S. and Ph.D. from New York University. At Rutgers since 1967, her research has focused primarily on estuarine ecology and ecotoxicology. Weis was involved in the complaint led by professors Dorothy Dinnerstein and Helen Strausser against Rutgers-Newark for sex discrimination in employment in 1971. She founded and served as the president of the Essex County Chapter of the National Organization for Women, through which she led a complaint against Little League Baseball that eventually won the right of young women to play. A long-time member of the Sierra Club, Weis has been active in environmental justice for over forty years. In part two, Dr. Weis delves into her research into stresses in estuaries and salt marshes, including pollution, invasive species, and parasites, and their effects on organisms, populations and communities. Particular areas of focus have included the effects of contaminants on growth, development, behavior and trophic interactions; development of pollution tolerance in populations in contaminated areas; effects of contaminants and parasites on behavior and ecology; interactions of invasive and native species; the role of mangroves and marsh grasses as habitat; and effects of invasive marsh plants on estuarine ecology and contaminants. During the 1980s, she became involved in environmental policy. She is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and served as a Science Policy Fellow with the U.S Senate. She has been on numerous advisory committees for the EPA, NOAA (National Sea Grant Advisory Board), and the National Research Council. She chairs the Science Advisory Board of the NJ Department of Environmental Protection and, in the interview, discusses the study undertaken on tidal marshes and sea level rise, as well as issues surrounding microplastics. The Rutgers Oral History Archives received an operating support grant from the New Jersey Historical Commission, a division of the Department of State. In the 2021-2022 cycle, this grant assisted the ROHA staff in making this oral history available to you for your use.
  • Jeffrey Wilson

    Description: Jeffrey Wilson was born in Greenfield, Massachusetts in 1948. His father was born and raised in New Brunswick, New Jersey. During World War II, his father was a contentious objector and did alternative service at a hospital in Massachusetts. His mother grew up in Massachusetts and attended Simmons College, earning a degree in library science. Jeffrey Wilson and his older brother grew up in Roselle and Green Brook, New Jersey. In 1966, he started at Rutgers in the School of Engineering, before deciding to switch to Rutgers College and majoring in economics. A commuter during his undergraduate years, he describes the Commuter's Lounge in Clothier Hall, along with mandatory programs that freshmen had to attend and memorable speakers and musical performances on campus. During the campus shutdown in the spring of 1970, he remembers how professors handled final exams and grading procedures. With the Vietnam War draft looming, he became a contentious objector, serving his alternative service at Goodwill in Jersey City. He spent his career working at Rutgers University in several positions, including the budget and resources department in New Brunswick and in the Newark provost's office as a budget manager. He earned graduate degrees in education and business and taught economics part time at Middlesex County College. Jeffrey Wilson's oral history is a part of the Class of 1970 Oral History Project to commemorate the class's fiftieth reunion milestone.