Friday, April 30, 2010

Earth Day

On April 21 and 23 over ninety students, faculty, staff, alumni  and friends put on their gardening clothes and helped make Newark green and beautiful - and had a lot of fun doing it!

On the first day, the volunteers weeded and pruned the campus bird gardens. Yes, you read that right - we have over 100 types of birds visiting campus year round; in fact our resident expert, Professor Claus Holzapfel, is running bird watching tours every week in May.

Thank you to everyone for all their hard work!



Does this look like Newark? Well, it is!!
 

This year, we also installed a bird 'water feature' (aka a small pond) in the garden near Smith Hall.



NJN even stopped by to interview some of our students about the event.


On Friday everyone went over to the Newark Conservancy's Urban Education Garden on Prince St. and helped them with their compost heap - which according to Carlos, our liaison at the Conservancy, they save up special just for Rutgers every year.


Below, one of our students becomes a human sun dial.



Photos above are by Rebecca Yuschak, Helen Paxton, and myself. To see more photos, go to our Earth Day Photo Album

Thursday, April 15, 2010

Honoring a Pioneer of Human Rights from Nigeria

A remarkable group of women attended a special breakfast last Friday at Rutgers-Newark, to honor a pioneer of human rights, the Honorable Abike Dabiri Erewa, chairman, House Committee on Diaspora Affairs, Nigeria Federal House of Representatives.


The breakfast was jointly hosted by Rutgers-Newark Vice Chancellor Marcia Brown and the Honorable Sheila Oliver, speaker, New Jersey Assembly; and organized by Lorna Johnson, CEO of Global Linkages, Inc. and a alumna of Rutgers School of Law-Newark.

R-N graduate student Yetunde Odugbesan, whose family is from Nigeria, said:



"It was an honor to be in a room filled with such great and powerful women leaders that I admire. Hon. Abike Dabiri-Erewa is not only an inspiration to me but to Nigerians all over the world. She is leading the way for young leaders like myself to make a difference in their homeland and communities. City Council President Mildred Crump said at the breakfast meeting that, 'A powerful woman does not have to shout, she only has to whisper and the whole world will hear.' I believe this quote attributes to the hard work so many women are humbly doing all over the world and especially in our own communities. That our power is not in what we say but how we lead. It is our leadership, talents, skills, intelligence and so much more that speaks for us. This was a meeting filled with empowerment, motivation, and hope. It gave me the assurance that nothing can stop a women who has made up her mind to change the world, absolutely nothing. "



This event was a kick-off to a project that will promote and support economic and educational exchanges between New Jersey and Nigeria.

All photos are by Helen Paxton, director of Communications at Rutgers-Newark