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It is commencement season. It was inspiring for me to lead SC&I’s own school convocation in the RAC. And as in the previous two years, I am captivated by the spirit and energy of our students and the passion of their families. With its JumboTron and elevated seating, the athletic center is an ideal venue for showing off the drama. I am confident that we are sending our students off well equipped for the very challenging world that lies beyond Rutgers. The outstanding employment statistics I noted in the last newsletter are an important illustration of this. 

This year’s student speaker, double major Alexandra DeMatos, who edited The Daily Targum while pursuing her degree, demonstrated the outstanding accomplishments of our student body. She emphasized that journalism is crucial, especially when only 13% of the world’s population can be counted as having a truly free press. This was echoed in the recent Borders report, that the U.S. has dropped to No. 45 in its annual ranking of press freedom for 180 countries around the world. “It is our responsibility to take the education we have received here, our experiences with one another, to battle those numbers like those before us," DeMatos said.

The theme of the daunting social challenges our graduates face was echoed at the University commencement in striking speeches by both President Barchi and speaker Dan Schulman , CEO of PayPal, who entreated the audience of graduating students to join the battle against bigotry and oppression.

Since his  arrival, Chancellor Dutta has laid out some priorities for growth at Rutgers. He has  started work on a plan t hat involves expanding faculty and student numbers in engineering, computer science and information science.  For SC&I, the information sciences cut across our disciplines and departments, including topics such as health informatics, organizational systems, patient provider interaction, computational social science, ethnography of analytics, participation and exclusion in digital life, platforms and digital communities, hyper-connected sociality, smart and connected cities. The discussion of where we take these topics has started and will evolve over the coming years with hiring and new research initiatives. 

This initiative also has implications for the establishment of a new innovation HUB based in New Brunswick on a large site next to the Railway Station. Recently, SC&I faculty met with faculty from across Rutgers, New Jersey state representatives and business leaders to discuss their possible role in this HUB. If it is built, this has the potential for a powerful economic role in the city and will provide opportunities for research and teaching for SC&I. The school was represented by a dynamic group of faculty who joined the discussion over five themes: health IT; healthcare delivery and clinical trials; smart and connected cities; cyberinfrastructure and public service systems. It is not yet clear how this will evolve, although the New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy has given the development his support . What is clear is that SC&I researchers have started to grasp a significant opportunity. 

Finally, I talked in the last newsletter about the feasibility study for a new building, which is now well under way. This is a long-term prospect that will require much more work to bring it to fruition. More immediately, you will see some changes to the main SC&I building over the coming months as we improve our foyer to provide a more stylish and welcoming environment that includes informal student study and meeting areas, and as we transform room 222 into a genuine multifunction space that can support research meetings, departmental meetings, short courses and weekend teaching. This new space is due to be ready for the new semester.

Dean Jonathan Potter

Rutgers School of Communication and Information

4 Huntington Street

New Brunswick, NJ 08901

 848.932.7500

[email protected]