WPUNJ Legislative Breakfast, Oct. 27, 2011. (front row, left to right)Mayor (38 Assembly candidate) Tim Eustace, Sen. Robert Gordon, Asm. Gary Schaer, Asw. Connie Wagner, 35 Assembly candidate Shavonda Sumter, 35 Assembly More »
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Randi Weingarten
AFT members: Join this discussion of state and national legislation and how to make our voices heard in the process.
Event Location
Rutgers Labor Education Center
50 Labor Center Way
New Brunswick, NJ
Jan. 27, 2012.
5:00 p.m. Light Refreshments
6:00 p.m. Program “Moving Forward Together” with President Weingarten
The third time could be the charm for the long-debated realignment of New Jersey’s major university, with the added bonus that this time South Jersey will get a chance to compete for top academic honors.
Gov. Christie’s ringing endorsement Wednesday of a plan to have Rowan University take over the Camden campus of Rutgers University — while the University of Medicine and Dentistry merges with Rutgers — could jump-start hopes of making better sense of the state’s sprawling higher-education network.
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Patti Sapone/The Star-Ledger. Dawood Farahi, Kean University president
The last thing New Jersey needs is another public official lying about his past. We’ve had our fill of people who should know better than to shade the truth to their advantage, followed by the tepid non-apology when they get caught. It usually begins “Mistakes were made … ”
That’s why it’s disheartening to hear the faculty union charges against Kean University president Dawood Farahi.
Union president James Castiglione says Farahi misrepresented his academic credentials, listing articles he claimed he wrote as a paid consultant that were never published in academic journals, among other things. “He lied on his résumé, and these are egregious violations of academic integrity,” Castiglione said.
The Kean board of trustees has launched an investigation.
These charges don’t come out of thin air. A large segment of the faculty has been highly critical of Farahi and gave him a vote of no confidence in 2010.
Farahi has made some unpopular changes since he took office in 2003.
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Written by BARBARA ROTHSCHILD and KEVIN C. SHELLY
FORUMS SET: Rutgers-Camden is to host two forums for discussion of a proposed merger into Rowan University of Glassboro. The hourlong sessions will be held Thursday, Feb. 2, at 12:20 p.m. in the 401 Penn classroom and Monday, Feb. 6, at 5 p.m. in the Multipurpose Room on the main level of the Campus Center.
New campus buildings, including the Whitney Center, are part of Rowan University's expansion. / AL SCHELL/Courier-Post
Instead, the Haddon Township resident chose Rutgers School of Law in Camden.
“If it was Rowan Law School, I wouldn’t be here,” Abay said Wednesday after Gov. Chris Christie unveiled a plan to merge Rutgers-Camden into Glassboro-based Rowan University.
Advocates say the reorganization will provide more and better educational choices for local students, and will spur economic growth in South Jersey. But students and teachers at both schools reacted with criticism and concern over the creation of a single school called Rowan University.
“They won’t be able to attract the quality of staff they already have,” said Abay, who asserted the Rutgers name carries a cachet that Rowan can’t match.
In Glassboro, Rowan senior Raymond Davidson expressed concern over the school’s potential transformation into a research university.
“I do think research is important, but the quality of education would drop,” said Davidson, 25, a philosophy and religion major from Franklinville. “Graduate students would start teaching classes. Now, we get to study with people who are already experts in their field,” he said.
“Money going to this merger should be going to academic programs. If this is where the state is going with its dwindling funding for higher education, New Jersey has a terrible idea of what education is all about,” Davidson said.
Freshman Matt O’Brien, 18, a marketing major from Mount Laurel, said many students came to Rowan “for a small student population and close interaction with teachers. I don’t think students would appreciate having the school double in size.”
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CAMDEN — Gov. Chris Christie unveiled a plan Wednesday to merge Rutgers-Camden into Rowan University, but the proposal didn’t get high marks from everyone involved.
Rutgers-Camden could become part of Rowan. / JOSE F. MORENO/Courier-Post
While Rowan officials praised the governor’s announcement, the top administrator at Rutgers University issued a tepid response. And students at both schools criticized the plan.
“The governor has taken the liberty of messing with South Jersey. Why is he destroying and devaluing the one thing Camden has?” asked Jeremy Abay, a student at Rutgers School of Law. The law school and Rutgers School of Business would become part of Rowan under the plan.
The combined institution, to be called Rowan University, would be based in Glassboro and Camden.
The proposed merger was among multiple changes recommended to Christie by a committee that considered ways to improve higher education in New Jersey, particularly for medicine.
The committee, which was formed in May of last year, initially considered changes that would involve the University of Medicine & Dentistry of New Jersey. At Christie’s request, the panel broadened its focus in September to include the South Jersey colleges.
Christie backed all of the committee’s recommendations, including a call to give more independence to UMDNJ’s School of Osteopathic Medicine in Stratford. UMDNJ officials said they “respectfully disagree” with that idea.
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Reorganization plan faces review
TRENTON — The head of the state Senate’s Higher Education Committee on Thursday said she wants to hold hearings on a proposed reorganization of higher-education institutions across the state.
01.24.12 Glassboro; New Campus buildings at Rowan University, including the new Barnes and Noble Book Store. / Al Schell/Courier-Post
Sen. Sandra Bolden Cunningham, D-Hudson, said hearings are needed for “a complete understanding of the statewide benefits and implications” of the plan, which was unveiled by Gov. Chris Christie one day earlier.
Among other changes, Christie’s plan calls for Rutgers-Camden and Rowan University to be “fully integrated” in South Jersey. The resulting school would take Rowan’s name, according to Christie’s plan.
State Sen. Donald Norcross, D-Camden, said any combination of the South Jersey schools should be “an equal joining of these institutions, not a folding of one into the other.”
Norcross also said the name of the surviving school “must be respectful of both distinguished universities” and its governing body “should reflect the interests and diversity of both communities.”
His brother, Cooper University Hospital George E. Norcross III, on Wednesday praised the proposed development of a research university in South Jersey, saying that would “transform education” and “ignite the economy.” The combined school would include the Cooper Medical School of Rowan University, now under way in Camden.
Camden Mayor Dana Redd on Thursday said she is still reviewing the proposal, but that, “upon first look,” it could promote growth in the city’s university district and other areas, and that it could bolster the city’s position as a center for graduate studies in law, business and medicine.
In her statement, Cunningham focused on the plan’s potential impact on University Hospital in Newark. “It is imperative that we approach these changes with caution,” she said, expressing concern over the long-term impact on patients and medical students at the Newark institution.
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By James Osborne, Inquirer Staff Writer
Gov. Christie offered a proposal Wednesday to overhaul the state’s university system, merging schools from Rutgers University and the University of Medicine and Dentistry, and creating a research university in South Jersey.
Rowan University – just 20 years ago a former teachers’ college known as Glassboro State – would take over Rutgers-Camden. The combined campus would include a soon-to-open medical school affiliated with Cooper University Hospital in Camden.
The mergers would represent a historic change to the structure of higher education in New Jersey. Whole institutions would shift between universities, and schools with decades of history and extensive alumni networks would disappear in name.
And staff at the universities, hospitals, and affiliated institutions – which numbers in the thousands – could face layoffs as programs are reconfigured.
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Governor plans to create N.J. Health Sciences University in Newark, merge Rutgers-Camden into Rowan University
Sol J. Barer, chairman of the UMDNJ Advisory Committee
Governor Christie yesterday outlined a sweeping overhaul of higher education that would create a New Jersey Health Sciences University in Newark to replace UMDNJ, place Newark’s University Hospital under nonprofit management, and fold Rutgers-Camden and its law school into Rowan University to give South Jersey its own research university.
Combined with the shift of the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, the Cancer Institute of New Jersey and the School of Public Health from UMDNJ to Rutgers University in New Brunswick last fall, Christie’s plan represents the most important restructuring of New Jersey’s higher education system since the creation of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey in 1970.
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Charles Stile, Columnist
New Jersey’s Uni-Government – Republican Governor Christie’s alliance with Democratic Party power brokers – has run the table in Trenton for the past two years.
It is the source of Christie’s “bipartisan” success. It has also maintained a rare period of detente between the Democratic factions in the northern and southern parts of the state.
That axis of pragmatic power ground out another long-sought byproduct Wednesday, a sweeping plan to restructure New Jersey’s university system, which includes a valuable prize for South Jersey Democratic kingpin George Norcross, whom many consider one of the most powerful, unelected charter members of the Uni-Government.
The plan calls for a dramatic upgrade turning Rowan University, once a sleepy teacher’s college in Glassboro, into a thriving South Jersey public research university.
Under the plan, Rowan would take over Rutgers University-Camden, which means Rowan gets its law school, business school and its Camden campus. Those new assets would join the Rowan roster just as it prepares to launch a medical school affiliated with the Camden-based Cooper University Health System. Norcross is chairman of Cooper’s board of trustees.
But South Jersey’s gain is also North and Central Jersey’s loss, which could threaten the delicate Uni-Government balance that exerts itself in the Legislature. Under the plan, the Newark-based University of Medicine and Dentistry would be dismantled, with some its properties spun off to operate autonomously, and others consolidated under the name New Jersey Health Sciences University. The state would retain control of University Hospital, but through a yet-to-be-named partnership with a private firm.
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By Cheryl Hehl, Staff Writer
Although there is a firestorm surrounding Kean University President Dawood Farahi and whether he lied on his resumes or not, the smoking gun might be found in how the school compares to other New Jersey state universities.
After remaining mum on the entire issue revolving around allegations by the Kean University Federation of Teachers that the university president falsified his academic credentials, Farahi admitted last week in a Star-Ledger interview that some errors were made on his resumes.
Kean University
However, the university president, who was appointed in 2003 at a salary of $293,000 plus benefits along with longevity bonuses that individually tally $200,000, placed the blame on Kean staff members who helped prepare his resume for routine accreditation reviews.
But, it appears some of the errors Farahi blamed on staff members actually can be traced back to 1983 when the former Union County consultant was applying for his first position at Kean. This means he was responsible for the contents of his original resume.
For example, both the letter and the Kean application completed and signed by Farahi in 1982 have the same inconsistencies brought out last week in a LocalSource article examining all six known resumes used by the university president in the past.
In the 1982 letter and resume Farahi used to apply to Kean, he noted he had tenured status at Avila College, but not that he was an academic dean. However, in a 2008 Curriculum Vitae the university president submitted, under the heading of “Other University Experience,” Farahi said he served as Acting Academic Dean,” at Avila College.
Also confusing is that Farahi lists a Fullbright-Hays Scholarship on all his resumes from 1972 to 1974, the same time he maintains he was at the University of Kansas studying for a political science degree.
At question is whether Farahi, a naturalized citizen who immigrated to the United States in 1972 as a college student was actually eligible for the Fullbright-Hays Scholarship.
According to the U.S. Department of Education, the Fullbright Scholarship specifically sends U.S. citizens abroad “but does not provide reciprocal opportunities for international scholars to visit the United States.”
While Farahi appears to have a long history of poor academic record keeping or not examining his own resumes prepared by Kean staff members, coincidently Kean University has developed a similar record of setting poor academic standards.
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By James Osborne, INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
Gov. Christie announced plans Wednesday to overhaul the state’s university system, merging schools from Rutgers and the University of Medicine and Dentistry and creating a research university in South Jersey.
The plan would shift whole schools between university administrations and potentially mean staff layoffs, a possibility Christie did not rule out at a news conference Wednesday in Trenton.
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