Rutgers interim president charged with making UMDNJ merger a reality

By Bob Braun/Star-Ledger Columnist

Acting President of Rutgers, Dick Edwards, poses for a portrait at his home in Jersey City.
He’s been the quiet man in the Rutgers administration for two years, quiet and almost invisible, but now Dick Edwards is in charge of New Jersey’s state university — at least for a while — and he says he intends to “make things happen.” Most important: the university’s absorption of most units of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ).

Edwards, a 69-year-old former social worker, knows the challenge is daunting — he uses the phrase “certainly interesting” — and notes a set of statistics to illustrate: Rutgers, a university with 58,000 students and 13,000 employees, is about to take over most operations of a statewide medical school with only 7,000 students and 15,000 employees.

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