Libraries & Collections: Special Collections and University Archives: University Archives:
Leadership on the Banks:
Rutgers' Presidents, 1766–2004

Francis L. Lawrence, 1990-

Francis L. Lawrence became the President of Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, in the fall of 1990. To improve the efficiency, effectiveness and service orientation of the university in a time of fiscal constraint, he took immediate steps to streamline the administration, reduce red tape and encourage TQM-style teamwork. An independent management audit assisted the university in developing long- and short-term goals for improvement in its operations. At the same time, a university-wide strategic planning process was instituted for both administrative and academic units, culminating in a university-wide strategic plan completed this year.

The vision that President Lawrence has proposed for Rutgers is its transformation into a new model of the land-grant university that responds to the pervasive, continuing demand of our society for advanced knowledge. Rutgers is meeting this challenge by building a comprehensive, statewide network of outreach; educating a broader, more inclusive spectrum of our society; strengthening the learning community with additional supports for teaching and learning; taking the scholar-mentor as a model in the learning community; and building unity within its diversity.

One of the president's first initiatives in sharpening the focus of the university's mission was to place more emphasis upon teaching in promotion and tenure review and in hiring. Improvement of the quality of undergraduate education is among the president's foremost concerns. He also set in motion a university-wide study of the undergraduate curriculum. A teaching evaluation was administered university-wide. Teaching Excellence Centers were set up on all three regional campuses to offer teachers support in enhancing instruction. Several Learning Resource Centers were opened throughout the university to offer students assistance ranging from study skills and computer-assisted instruction to tutoring. "Rutgers Dia-logues," the report of the university-wide Curriculum Review Committee, is being implemented in new and revised undergraduate courses throughout the university. With financing from a student fee, the university and the state, new student-access computing facilities have been opened and student computing accounts made available for all Rutgers students.

The increase in quality of the 1980's, which was capped by the admission of Rutgers to the Association of American Universities in 1989, has gained momentum in the 1990's. The Rutgers faculty is winning impressive national honors for high distinction in scholarly accomplishment. In recent years, faculty members have earned awards that include a Pulitzer Prize, the National Medal of Science, the MacArthur Foundation "genius" prize, and a long list of other coveted awards, including Guggenheim Fellowships, National Science Foundation Young Investigator awards, Sloan Fellowships and the nation's highest teaching recognition, the U.S. Professor of the Year award. A record-breaking total of $149.4 million was raised in externally-sponsored research in 1994, an increase of 14.7 percent over the preceding year.

Increased diversity in the university community is also among the president's primary areas of priority for Rutgers. The university's enrollment of minorities has risen from under 23 percent in 1987 to more than 31percent. Admissions recruitment efforts have succeeded in ranking Rutgers first among 29 public AAU schools in African-American enrollment, third in Latino enrollment, third in Asian-Pacific Islander enrollment and first in total minority enrollment. Rutgers has been recognized nationally in two successive years for its graduation of the second-largest number of African-American students among predominantly-white universities. The two Rhodes scholarships won by Rutgers students in 1994 were awarded to the first woman student and the first African-American student to receive these prestigious awards at Rutgers. In the spring of 1995, a university-wide Plan for Multicultural Student Life was formulated in order to reinforce and renew a sense of community based on mutual respect and open communication in an environment that is welcoming and supportive for all students.

President Lawrence is a native of Rhode Island who received his bachelor's degree in French and Spanish from St. Louis University in 1959 and his Ph.D. in French Classical Literature from Tulane in 1962. He rose through Tulane's academic and administrative ranks to full professor and chief academic officer (Provost and Dean of the Graduate School). On the national level, President Lawrence has served as president of the North American Society for French Seventeenth-Century Literature and member or chair of several editorial boards of journals and a monograph series. In New Jersey, among other state responsibilities, he is the elected chair of the New Jersey Presidents' Council and a member of the New Jersey Commission on Higher Education.