every day Rutgers influence radiates
well beyond our campus and converges
with places like our homes, communities
and the environment. this engagement is
central to the university's mission of
teaching research and service and
actively involves our entire community
one away Rutgers connects the campus to
our homes is with the annual Dance
Marathon a fundraising event for
Embrace Kids Foundation a
not-for-profit organization which
provides support to the families of
children battling cancer, sickle cell
anemia and other diseases. throughout the
year embrace kids partners the families
with Rutgers students. three-year-old
Izzy was born with a spinal tumor but
these days her Rutgers family has her
dancing. embracedKids Foundation paired
up our organization with Isabelle and
Sonia and it has been the most amazing
experience I've had since I've been at
Rutgers. they are just the sum of the
kindest people we have never met they
love her and all a parent ever wants is
for as their child to be loved. I mean
it's humbling to say the least because
she's such a smart brilliant wonderful
little girl and she is so so determined
to get better I think she's taught us so
much more than we could ever teach her
she has this amazing charisma and sass
she's hilarious and she probably
the smartest three-year-old you will
ever meet in your entire life she loves
to dance was to sing. we've just formed a
really special bond with her and she's
just taught me so much about life and
just really appreciating every moment
and trying to make a difference whenever
I can I can't even count on how many
ways but the whole program has changed
us and that that fills me out because
my Isabelle is the most important thing
to me and any other Embrace parent can
say the same and Rutgers really brings
joy to all of us. this year's Rutgers
embrace kids dance marathon raised over
1 million dollars to support families
like Izzy's meanwhile around New Jersey
other Rutgers students are impacting
entire communities through the Graduate
School of Education's community school
partnership network and a program called
conversation cafe an adult English
learning program for the parents of
elementary school students the
conversation cafe is a unique
opportunity for students and parents to
come together to form a better sense of
community the research says that highly
engaged students oftentimes come from
households where the parents are highly
engaged. you see every day. If you're going to
be a professional teacher you have to
learn how to talk to adults and parents
and how to and also understand what
their lives are and sort of the family
as a unit.
The more that I can get involved with parents and students in
situations like this with this
conversation cafe, the more chances
I'll actually have to form
relationships. if you don't have a solid
relationship with the students and the
parents and the teachers at the school
it's going to be really hard to move
forward in terms of having a strong impact on the community.
Another place
where Rutgers is moving forward is
environmental research. this new teaching
vessel from the department of marine and
coastal sciences is bringing students
directly to the raritan bay and their
research findings to the global science community.
so we're excited about this
new boat because it allows us to get
students out on the water and there is
nothing like being hands-on and seeing
the environment that you're measuring
the students are learning several
methods in oceanography how to collect
water samples how to collect samples for
looking at the plankton so kind of the
base of the food web they're also
looking at water quality which is really
important. we're collecting data that
actually has strong importance to this
area so if you look at where we can go
with the boat we're at the intersection
of where one of the biggest urban rivers
comes through one of the biggest urban
in the world and joins the ocean water
we've built up this really great
observation system in the mid-atlantic
region to the point where we have people
coming from all over the nation and a
lot of international people looking to
us now to start learning how to build
their own observatories it is this
relationship between our campus and the
world beyond that makes Rutgers New
Brunswick a truly special University one
where students and faculty are empowered
to apply their minds and efforts in real
time to meet real challenges with
innovation our commitment to our
communities whether at home in our state
or our environment is central to our
sense of place and why America converges
here
