The Livingston Alumni Association (LAA) honored two faculty members and six alumni from the former Livingston College of Rutgers University-New Brunswick, at an awards dinner on Tuesday, March 20, 2018, held at the Rutgers Club at the Livingston Dining Commons.

In photo, from left: Carlyle E. Shelton Jr., Dr. Everette Penn, Marie Varghese, Jeanie Bryson with her granddaughter Ayanna Jean Bryson, Staci Berger, Michael Greenberg and Robert W. Snyder.

Printed program from the event. (PDF file)

We honored two faculty members who played a key role in the establishment and growth of Livingston College and its mission, and who have contributed to the overall Rutgers and global communities, with the Livingston Legacy Award:

Michael R. Greenberg, Interim Dean and Professor of the Edward J. Bloustein School of Public Policy at Rutgers University-New Brunswick.

Wells Hamilton Keddie (1925-2006), a Professor of Labor Studies and Employment Relations at Rutgers University-New Brunswick (posthumous, pictured at left).

We also honored six Livingston College Distinguished Alumni who have distinguished themselves by contributions they have made in their chosen fields of endeavor, by the leadership they have exhibited, and by the general benefits to the larger society resulting from their activities:

• Staci Berger, LC’94, EJB/GSNB’04*, Housing and community development advocate.
• Jeanie Bryson, LC’81, Jazz/pop/Latin vocalist.
• Dr. Everette Penn, LC’91, Criminology professor; race/youth/justice scholar.
• Carlyle E. Shelton Jr., LC’80, Deputy Inspector General, U.S. Marine Corps.
• Robert W. Snyder, LC’77, Professor, American studies and Journalism.
• Marie Varghese, LC’03, College advisor and social justice advocate.

Our thanks to:

• Kenny Hinds, Facebook Live videographer;
• Luis Largo, photographer;
• The Rutgers Club;
• Zimmerli Art Museum, for donating the gift book HereNow to the honorees;
• Student guests/presenters: Amanda Batista, Peter Carkhuff, Colin Chehanske, Nicoletta Eby, Lauren Forsman, Dezzie Ligon, and Rajanpreet Pannu. Student attendance was made possible through financial support received from the Rutgers University Alumni Association.

• Michelle Josias, event chairperson;
• Mindy Hoffman, audio interviews;
• Jason Goldstein and Iris Martinez-Campbell, printed programs;
• LAA board members in attendance/event committee members, in addition to those listed above: Rosemary Agrista, Jeffrey Armus, Debra O’Neal, Eric Schwarz, Marty Siederer, and Derek Young.

* Rutgers University acronyms for its colleges/schools include: LC (Livingston College), EJB (Edward J. Bloustein School of Public Policy), and GSNB (Graduate School-New Brunswick).

Abena Pokua Adompin Busia, a Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies and of English at Rutgers-New Brunswick’s School of Arts and Sciences, was named as Ghana’s Ambassador to Brazil in July 2017.

On August 2, 2017, she was sworn to that post by Ghana’s President, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, in a ceremony at the President’s residence, Flagstaff House, in Accra, Ghana.

In 1998 the Livingston Alumni Association (LAA) at Rutgers University named Professor Busia as an Honorary Member to recognize her contributions to Livingston College. She joined the Rutgers faculty in 1981.

Professor Busia served as the Women’s and Gender Studies chair from 2011 to 2017, and also formerly directed Rutgers’ Center for African Studies. She teaches courses in African American and African diaspora literature, colonial discourse and black feminism.

Her scholarship keeps her actively connected to her native Ghana, where a Fulbright-Hays Group Projects Abroad Grant enabled Professor Busia and two Rutgers historians to lead an interdisciplinary program on “Teaching the History of the Slave Trade Routes of Ghana and Benin.”

Among Professor Busia’s other work with students, she has directed a summer internship taking undergraduates to work with women’s rights organizations in Ghana and has led Rutgers’ study abroad program to Ghana. In 2005 she was one of several professors who led a discussion with students surrounding the Dalai Lama’s visit to Rutgers, as part of Livingston College’s first-year mission course, Building Community.

Born in Accra, Abena Busia settled with her family in the United Kingdom where she earned a degree in English language and literature at St. Anne’s College in 1976, and a Ph.D. in social anthropology at St. Antony’s College in 1984.

She is a daughter of Kofi Busia, who served as Ghana’s Prime Minister from 1969 to 1972, when he was overthrown in a coup d’état, according to an October 4, 2012, article from Rutgers Focus. Abena Busia spent much of her childhood under house arrest and “remembers waking to the sound of gunfire during political unrest,” according to the same article.

She was also an associate editor of a 20-year project which resulted in the publication of Women Writing Africa, a four-volume collaboration published by the Feminist Press at the City University of New York. According to Professor Busia’s Rutgers biography, this collection is designed to recognize the cultural legacy in that assortment of voices by gathering together the original “cultural production” of African women.

Professor Busia is the co-editor of Theorizing Black Feminisms (1993) as well as many articles and book chapters on topics including black women’s writing, black feminist criticism, and African literature. She is also the author of two poetry collections, Testimonies of Exile (1990) and Traces of a Life (2008).

Photos: (top) Abena P.A. Busia; (bottom) Ghana’s newly installed envoys, from left, on August 2, 2017: Busia, Ambassador to Brazil; Alowe Leo Kabah, Ambassador to Benin; Francisca Ashietey-Odunton, High Commissioner to Kenya; Virginia Hesse, Ambassador to the Czech Republic; and Dufie Agyarko Kusi, Ambassador to South Korea. Photo from The Presidency, Republic of Ghana, via Graphic Online.

Maria Alba (SAS’17), an aspiring clinical psychologist from Cranford, New Jersey, has been named as the 2017 recipient of the Riki Jacobs Livingston Pride Award, given by the Livingston Alumni Association of Rutgers University. She will begin studies toward a Doctor of Psychology degree at Rutgers’ Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology in fall 2017.

In 2013, the summer before she entered Rutgers’ School of Arts and Sciences, Alba attended an orientation program about campus sexual assault and bystander intervention. Around the same time, a friend confided that she had been the victim of sexual and domestic violence. “I wanted to fight for justice for her, and for every other individual whose voice has not been heard,” Alba wrote in her essay for the award.

“The message was clear: If you see something wrong, say or do something. Be a positive, active bystander no matter how big or small your intervention.”

These two events helped Alba realize that Rutgers’ SCREAM Theater, a violence prevention program, was her calling.

As a member of the SCREAM Theater staff, Alba traveled throughout New Jersey and across the country to educate people about sexual and domestic/dating violence through improv theater. She also created a video called “I Am Part of the Revolution,” showcasing other student leaders who spoke about why they choose to take a stand.

In her undergraduate research, Alba studied the effect of stress on health issues such as smoking and obesity, especially among minorities and women who identify as lesbian or bisexual. She also conducted research on psychotherapy and counseling as it related to the gay liberation movement at Rutgers from the 1950s to the 1980s. In fall 2016 she taught an introductory seminar on psychology to first-year students.

Alba has garnered numerous awards for her academic performance, and for her work on women’s and gender studies, women’s rights, and violence prevention and victim assistance.

“I believe a successful leader knows when to lead and when to listen,” she said. “I have carried this lesson with me throughout my life as an activist, student leader, and an aspiring clinical psychologist.”

The Riki Jacobs Livingston Pride Award has been given annually since 1990 by the Livingston Alumni Association (LAA) to the Rutgers-New Brunswick graduating senior who most embodies the spirit of Livingston College and its attributes of leadership and social action. Livingston College is a former undergraduate college of Rutgers which was merged into the School of Arts and Sciences in 2007.

Riki E. Jacobs (1957-2009) was the director of the Hyacinth Foundation, an AIDS support organization, among many roles she fulfilled to assist vulnerable populations, and also was one of LAA’s first Livingston College Distinguished Alumni, honored in 2000.

The following Livingston College alumni have been inducted into the Rutgers Athletics Hall of Fame:

• 1993: James Bailey, LC’80 (Men’s Basketball)
• 1994: Eddie Jordan, SMLR’15; attended Livingston College from 1973-1977 (Men’s Basketball)
• 1995: Roy Hinson, LC’83 (Men’s Basketball)
• 1999: Eric Young, LC’89, School of Business-New Brunswick’89 (Baseball, Football)
• 2003: Harry V. Swayne, III, LC’90 (Football)
• 2014: Shaun O’Hara, LC’05; originally scheduled to graduate in 1999 (Football)

James Bailey, LC’80	Eddie Jordan, SMLR’15	Roy Hinson, LC’83

Eric Young, LC’89, School of Business’89	Harry V. Swayne, III LC’90	Shaun O’Hara, LC’05

O’Hara photo from Flickr user Alexa, used under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

Eric O. Clark, a 1998 graduate of Livingston College at Rutgers University, was honored on April 8, 2017, as one of seven Loyal Sons and Loyal Daughters of Rutgers for 2017.

Clark, an Illinois native, has been the President of the Rutgers Club of Chicago for more than 12 years. A member of the Rutgers men’s basketball team during his years on the Banks, he was inspired to take on the task of revitalizing the Rutgers Club of Chicago upon his return to his home state. The position included the challenge of reaching out to the 2,500-plus alumni living in and around the Windy City.

Clark became and continues to be the Rutgers “go-to” guy for any BIG Ten event in Chicago, and was named the B1G10K Rutgers Representative in 2014. In 2006 Clark received the William of Orange Award for Dedicated Volunteerism from the Rutgers University Alumni Federation.

The Loyal Sons and Loyal Daughters of Rutgers are individuals who have made a meaningful and long-standing commitment to the betterment of Rutgers, the State University by exemplifying extraordinary alumni service or by making a significant impact on University life and culture. Nominations are made by existing Loyal Sons and Daughters, and the finalists named by a special selection committee of the RAA. The RAA is the nation’s fourth-oldest alumni association, serving alumni in multiple colleges and schools on Rutgers’ New Brunswick/Piscataway campus. 

The awardees were formally recognized during the 59th Annual Loyal Sons and Daughters Dinner, a “scarlet” tie event held at Neilson Dining Hall on the Douglass Campus. Bios for all of the 2017 honorees are online. In addition to Clark, they are:

• Joan A. DeBoer, CC’84
• Luis Largo, GSE’07
• Melissa Lieberman-Elimanco, DC’05, GSE’06,’14
• Alyssa Gentile Salvesen, RC’09, GSE’10
• Dorothy M. Stanaitis, UCC’82
• Roy H. Tanzman, RC’73, CLAW’76

Photos: Eric Clark in 2014 (top), and in the 1998 Livingston College yearbook, Diversity: Memorable Reflections, Volume VIII.

Rutgers University-related organizations have presented multiple special awards honoring Livingston College alumni for their service to alumni and the greater Rutgers community. These include:

• 2006 Rutgers University Alumni Federation, William of Orange Award for Dedicated Volunteerism: Eric Clark, LC’98, The Rutgers Club of Chicago
• 2012 Rutgers Committee to Advance Our Common Purposes, Human Dignity Award: Leroy C. Haines, LC’71
• 2013 Center for Latino Arts and Culture Honoree: Iris Martinez-Campbell, LC’75, SSW’81
• 2013 Rutgers Alumni Association, Class of 1931 Award: Jason Goldstein, LC’02, RBS’05
• 2013 Rutgers University Alumni Association, Block R Award: Eric Schwarz, LC’92, SCILS’92, ’07
• 2016 Rutgers Alumni Association, Outgoing President’s Award: Marty Siederer, LC ’77
• 2016 Rutgers University Alumni Association, Young Alumni Service Award: Matthew Aquino, LC’08, RBS’08
• 2017 Edward J. Bloustein School, Career Achievement Award: Staci Berger, LC’94, EJB/GSNB’04
• 2020 Rutgers Alumni Association, Walter Seward, RC 1917, Spirit Award:  Derek Young, RC ’87 (longtime executive board member of the Livingston Alumni Association; posthumous award)
• 2022 Rutgers Alumni Association, Class of 1931 Award: John Hester, LC ’94
• 2023 School of Communication & Information Alumni Association Distinguished Alumni Award: Vivian Salama, LC’00, SCILS (SC&I) ’00
• 2023 Rutgers Alumni Association, Walter Seward, RC 1917, Spirit Award: Marty Siederer, LC ’77
• 2023 Rutgers Business School Honorary Business Excellence Award: Harvey M. Schwartz, LC’87

Eric Clark LC’98	Leroy C. Haines LC’71	Iris Martinez-Campbell LC’75, SSW’81	Jason Goldstein LC’02, RBS’05

Eric Schwarz LC’92, SCILS’92,’07	Marty Siederer LC ’77	Matthew Aquino LC’08, RBS’08	Staci Berger LC’94, EJB/GSNB’04

Derek Young RC ’87	Vivian Salama LC’00, SCILS’00	Harvey M. Schwartz LC’87

The Rutgers University Alumni Federation has presented the Edward J. Bloustein Award to two Livingston College graduates, who are also Livingston College Distinguished Alumni:

2006 KEVIN APUZZIO (LC’06)	2010 JESSIE J. HANNA (LC’07, RWJMS’14)
Heroic Firefighter and Emergency Medical Technician (Posthumous; died in 2006)	Physician Researcher on Pediatric Cancer Founder, Sean Hanna Foundation

The Bloustein Award was established in 1992 in memory of the 17th president of Rutgers University. It recognizes community service outside of the university by a Rutgers alumnus or group of alumni. 

In 2009, this award was integrated into the Rutgers Excellence in Alumni Leadership Awards.

Matthew Aquino, a volunteer mentor for students at Rutgers Business School, was honored in 2016 with the Young Alumni Service Award, presented by the Rutgers University Alumni Association (RUAA).

Aquino, a 2008 graduate of both Rutgers’ Livingston College and Rutgers Business School (RBS), has volunteered with RBS’ TeamUP mentoring program since 2013. He has mentored five Rutgers students, and contributed to both their personal and professional development. Aquino spends numerous hours on the phone with his mentees, arranges in-person meetings, and invites them to visit his office. All his mentees have successfully completed their internship programs and earned full-time offers upon graduation. In addition to being involved in the Rutgers University TeamUP, Aquino has also volunteered for his five-year class reunion campaign. Aquino and three other classmates helped raised more than $20,000 for Rutgers through fundraising efforts.

Aquino has been a director of change management at Apollo Global Management LLC in New York City since March 2014. He previously was an assistant vice president at Barclays Investment Bank.

Photo: Matthew Aquino, center, accepts the RUAA’s Young Alumni Service Award from Donna K. Thornton, Rutgers’ Vice President for Alumni Relations, and Timothy S. Farrow, Chairman of the RUAA Board. The award was presented as part of the Rutgers Excellence in Alumni Leadership (REAL) Conference and Awards on October 14, 2016.

Kevin Anthony Bernardo Apuzzio, a volunteer firefighter and emergency medical technician (EMT), died on April 11, 2006, in the line of duty while attempting to rescue a woman in a house fire. He was 21, and the woman, Betty Scott, was 75.

A month later, Rutgers University’s Livingston College posthumously awarded him a bachelor’s degree. Also in 2006, Apuzzio was presented posthumously with the Rutgers University Alumni Federation’s Edward J. Bloustein Award for Community Service.

In 2009 the Livingston Alumni Association honored Apuzzio as a Seth Dvorin Distinguished Young Alumnus.

At age 16, Apuzzio, a lifelong resident of Union, New Jersey, had trained to become an EMT. In 2002 he graduated from Union Catholic High School in Scotch Plains, New Jersey.

Apuzzio had worked as a part-time EMT in Rutgers Department of Emergency Services for more than three years, and for about two years as a volunteer firefighter with the East Franklin Fire Department, Station 27, in Somerset, New Jersey, where he obtained his Firefighter 1 certification and was promoted to foreman.

Apuzzio, who had studied criminal justice at Rutgers, wanted to become a police officer in New York City. On the day of his death, his family received his police exam test results in the mail. Apuzzio achieved an almost perfect score of 99.6.

A 2009 tribute video to Apuzzio (embedded on this page) interweaves recollections from his parents and from Dan Krushinski, East Franklin Fire Chief.

Joseph Apuzzio called his son a role model. “If he even knew you just a little bit, he’d do anything he could. … He volunteered for just about anything.”

At the fatal fire, Chief Krushinski said, Apuzzio answered the call and entered the burning house “without hesitation, without doubt in his mind.”

His father also remembers taking Kevin fishing: “The first time I took him fishing, I guess he was 6, maybe 7 years old. And he caught a trout, a good size trout, OK? So he drags the trout onto the shore, and I got to pick it up and he saw where the hook was and he got very upset. He said he didn’t want to hurt the trout.”

Krushinski remembered Apuzzio as “a gentleman and easy-going, but he wanted to help people.”

“I think if you drove down (Interstate) 287 and passed five people with flat tires, he probably would have stopped and helped all five people change their tires.”

In 2007, one year to the day after Apuzzio’s passing, members of the Rutgers community and the Apuzzio family gathered in the university’s Public Safety Building to honor him by renaming the training facility the Kevin Apuzzio Training Center.

“Kevin personified the best of Rutgers students: hard work, community involvement and a desire to help others,” said Richard L. McCormick, then president of Rutgers. “We use this training center to prepare public safety personnel to serve and protect our community. It is only fitting that it bear Kevin’s name.”

In December 2013, the voting members of the East Franklin Fire Company established the Kevin A. Apuzzio Memorial Foundation to provide funds and support to student firefighters following in Apuzzio’s footsteps of community service. In June 2014, the foundation officially incorporated as a New Jersey nonprofit corporation. Funds raised support the foundation’s mission to carry on Apuzzio’s legacy through scholarships and outreach programs.

On the 10th anniversary of his death in 2016, friends and family remembered Apuzzio, with the Union Township Committee and the Union County Sheriff presenting commemorative resolutions to his family.

Apuzzio was survived by his parents, Joseph and Marili, and a sister, Leila. He is buried at Mount Olive Cemetery in Newark, New Jersey.

Read more about Apuzzio:

• An EMT and selfless hero who was devoted to others (The Star-Ledger, April 12, 2006)

• A hero, a role model (Coverage of his funeral, April 19, 2006)

Watch the LAA’s interview and video tribute to Apuzzio (2 minutes, 32 seconds), embedded on this page, or open in a new window.

Photos courtesy of the Apuzzio family and the East Franklin Fire Department.

Martha Nell Smith (LC’77) is a scholar who has focused her career on the life and work of Emily Dickinson, on American poetry, and on feminist and queer theory and criticism.

In 2009 the Livingston Alumni Association (LAA) of Rutgers University honored Smith as a Distinguished Alumna. Smith additionally earned a Master of Arts (1982) and a Ph.D (1985), both in English, from Rutgers’ Graduate School-New Brunswick.

As of 2021, Smith is a Professor of English, Distinguished Scholar-Teacher, and Founding Director of the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH) at the University of Maryland, College Park.

Her numerous print publications include five books on Dickinson:

• Rowing in Eden: Rereading Emily Dickinson (1992)

• Comic Power in Emily Dickinson, coauthored with Suzanne Juhasz and Cristanne Miller (1993)

• Open Me Carefully: Emily Dickinson’s Intimate Letters to Susan Dickinson, coauthored with Ellen Louise Hart (1998)

• A Companion to Emily Dickinson (2008), co-edited with Mary Loeffelholz

• Emily Dickinson: A User’s Guide (2012, with a revised edition planned for publication in 2022)

Smith also has written more than 40 articles and essays in American Literature, Studies in the Literary Imagination, South Atlantic Quarterly, Women’s Studies Quarterly, Profils Americains, San Jose Studies, The Emily Dickinson Journal, and A Companion to Digital Humanities.

Smith was an early proponent of using technology to advance scholarship, and in 1994 she began the Dickinson Electronic Archives.

At the Digital Humanities 2009 conference, hosted by MITH, Smith said: “Content counts first, and we use the technology, the technology does not use us.”

“I am really interested in how we can import literary theory and philosophy and actually do something innovative in terms of knowledge-building. So as an editor I’m really interested in ways we can import social editing into scholarly editing.”

In 2010, Smith was named a Distinguished Scholar-Teacher at the University of Maryland. In 2011 she was appointed ADVANCE Professor in the College of Arts and Humanities and in 2012 was appointed an ADVANCE Fellow.  In May 2011, Smith was voted Chair-Elect of the University of Maryland Senate, and became Chair for the 2012-2013 term.

Smith transferred to Livingston College from Rutgers College as a senior, taking 39 credits at Livingston in the 1976-1977 academic year. In a 2009 interview and profile for the Distinguished Alumni Award, Smith says: “I often refer to the year I was at Livingston as the year I learned more than anyplace else.

“That passion and that belief that learning is crucial, vital and important, I carry with me to this day.

“Be generous, follow your intellectual passion, not what is trending but follow what you really want to do, and specifically for Livingston, never forget the legacy of serious-minded politics. … Be great citizens, be fabulous students all throughout the rest of your life.”

Follow Martha Nell Smith on Twitter.

Watch the LAA’s interview and video tribute to Smith (3 minutes, 13 seconds), embedded on this page, or open in a new window.

Photos: (top) Courtesy of University of Maryland; (bottom) From the 1977 Livingston College yearbook, The Rock, Volume II.