I am proud to report that for 14th year in a row, U.S. News and World Report has ranked Rutgers-Newark the most diverse national university in the United States.
We have achieved this distinction every year since U.S. News first began assessing diversity.
This rich diversity offers an extraordinary educational opportunity to our students. The leaders of American higher education have long argued that student diversity is essential for first-rate education. Here at Rutgers-Newark, our students and recent graduates enthusiastically affirm the educational value of racial, ethnic and religious diversity.
Every year hundreds of graduating seniors, responding to open-ended questions on exit surveys, say that the diversity of the campus contributed profoundly to the quality of their Rutgers-Newark education. Indeed, students comment positively about our diversity many more times than they comment about any other aspect of their experience at Rutgers-Newark. And I hear the same theme repeatedly from alumni who have graduated in the last decade. Those who have gone into the business world tell me that diversity is widely recognized as integral to business creativity in the global marketplace, and that the experiences they gained here working with people from so many different backgrounds has given them a competitive advantage in their careers.
Many of our faculty recognize the unique learning opportunities offered by the unparalleled diversity they find in their classrooms, and they integrate it into their teaching. I plan to expand on these efforts by launching a program this year that will help faculty explore new ways to use our unique student diversity as a teaching tool.
The entire campus community should take pride in continuing to achieve this ranking and the unique educational opportunities it represents.
- Philip Yeagle, Interim Chancellor, Rutgers University in Newark
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