President Barchi speaks at RUSA meeting

On Thursday at 7:30 p.m. in the Student Activities Center, President Barchi made an appearance at an event held by RUSA to address student concerns, issues around campus and the Rutgers 2030 Master Plan. The majority of Barchi’s work has revolved around the 5 year health plan, the 2030 Master Plan and the closing of Rutgers’s 250th anniversary.

250th Anniversary 

Barchi opened his discussion in regards to Rutgers’s 250th anniversary. The events celebrating this day are not exclusive to the New Brunswick campus, but open to Camden and Newark as well. “It’s a big deal,” Barchi explained. “Because not many universities celebrate 250 years of existence.” On November 10th, 2016, a “Day of Revolutionary Thinking” will carry as as many events will be planned for this celebration.

Upgrading housing 

“[Rutgers] has the largest [residential] system in the country,” Barchi explained, when talking about student housing. “We are also 250 years old so some of those beds are 200 years old and have been around for a long time.” To update current housing systems, Barchi is planning to knock down the old buildings and inhibit new, better buildings for student satisfaction and comfort. Of the most recent housing updates at Rutgers New Brunswick, there have been changes on College Avenue with the Yard, which introduced an additional 400 beds, the Honors College (500 beds), and on Douglass, the new Global Village (35 beds).

Updating classrooms

The need to update facilities extends to classrooms, as well. Regarding classroom updates, Barchi explained that there are ‘rolling upgrades’. He explained, “every year we put about three to three and a half million dollars into classroom renovations to try and get every classroom every six or seven years on a rolling basis.” Once again, to fully update classrooms he plans to knock down old buildings and replace them with new ones. “The big addition this year is the SAS building,” he announced. This building is the largest classroom addition the university has seen in about 30 years.

 Improving the bus system

With a big population of students and classes located on different campuses, the bus system is a big concern for Rutgers students. Barchi acknowledges this, and has been taking many ideas into consideration when it comes to establishing solutions for a more efficient transportation system.

One of the things taken into consideration this year is in regard to upcoming freshman. The class of 2020 may have faced their first semester of classes on multiple campuses; the professionals responsible for designing schedules are now keeping in mind locations of student housing and classes to help minimize transportation stress. The objective is to make moving between campuses a minimal hassle by locating students in housing on a campus where most of their courses will be. Additionally, Barchi is hopeful that separate bus lanes will be implemented to reduce traffic in New Brunswick.

Telepresence classrooms

In an attempt to minimize bus traffic, Barchi announced that Rutgers will be introducing telepresence classrooms to campuses. These are not online classes, and these will not cut professors’ jobs. Rather, this is said to be a revolutionary idea to broadcast a professor speaking on a certain campus onto a different campus for extended viewership. For example, a classroom on College Avenue can be broadcasted on Busch. Barchi explained, “we shouldn’t be moving students and we shouldn’t be moving faculty. We should be moving information.”

Telepresence technology allows two separate classrooms consisting of 150 students each to be taught to by the same professor, compared to the traditional class on a single campus. In one classroom, there will be a professor, and in the other, the professor and the alternate classroom will be televised. “[They] can hear you, you can hear them,” Barchi clarified, promising that classroom participation will be preserved through technology. Throughout the semester, the professor will switch between both classrooms. There will be 10 available telepresence courses holding 2200 students, which will prevent 1100 students from having to take a bus to get to class.

Chancellor search

Barchi said that the information regarding this search is “highly confidential” and could not provide any other information other than assuring us that the process is moving very well.

RBHS healthcare system

Rutgers was recently named the second in the nation to pursue undergraduate healthcare education, and announced that they created a new healthcare clinical practice known as ‘Rutgers Health’.

Improving parking

When a question was asked regarding commuters’ lifestyles, it was made obvious that one of Barchi’s major concerns is increasing parking availability to decrease commuter stress. Along with crowded driving, parking is an obvious issue around Rutgers. Barchi aims to increase the quantity of parking spots to help solve this problem.

A main priority right now is establishing a significantly larger amount of easily accessible parking. He explained one of his recent projects saying, “we just broke ground on a multipurpose sports performance facility next to the rack. It’s built on top of a parking lot that has a hundred and something spaces. It’s going to have embedded in the center of it a six story parking structure that’s going to add 500 spaces.”

Commuter/transit hubs

Commuter/transit hubs are large shelters that will be placed on each campus, correlated with student centers, and connected to a separate road specifically designed for buses and bikes only to make transportation more efficient (see page 96 of the Master Plan). The hubs will be comfortable places for commuters to relax and keep their belongings in between classes. They will include lounges, lockers and other essentials to help alleviate commuter stress.

Women’s soccer team and election day

Before opening up to questions, Barchi encouraged the audience to support the women’s soccer team in the semifinals and to vote in the upcoming election. “Vote. Every vote matters. You can’t sit this one out, you just can’t,” he said.

If you’re interested in learning more about any of these topics, feel free to check out the Master Plan 2030. It discusses all the upcoming ideas and plans meant to improve Rutgers.