The Livingston Alumni Association participates regularly in community service activities, organized by the LAA and other alumni organizations at Rutgers University. These events have included:
The Livingston Alumni Association (LAA) teamed up with the Rutgers Alumni Association (RAA) to help collect more than 200 new or gently used coats at the November 19, 2011, Rutgers-Cincinnati football game. The coats were donated for distribution by Jersey Cares, a nonprofit community organization. This event was a part of the Rutgers University Alumni Association’s Alumni Day of Service.
[Note: The following account by Jerome Aumente, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Rutgers’ School of Communication and Information, was written to promote the 2010 journalism panel. It has been edited to reflect the past tense.]
By Jerome Aumente
The role that Livingston College played in keeping journalism alive at Rutgers University after journalism curriculum entered a precarious fight for its survival in the 1970s [was] one focus of a special “legacy” program sponsored by the Livingston College Alumni Association on Wednesday, April 21, [2010], 7 p.m. at the Livingston College Student Center in Piscataway, N.J.
Key players in the original drama [gathered] to remember the past. But the program also [examined] the future challenges in the 21st century as the print and broadcast news media urgently redefine themselves in light of the new media and Internet revolution. Alumni, faculty, students, editors, publishers and journalists are welcome to join in the discussion that I [co-moderated] along with Marty Siederer, the Livingston alumni president. The School of Communication and Information Alumni Association and Livingston Dean Lea Stewart [were] co-sponsors of the program.
The New Jersey Press Association (NJPA) played a critically important role in lobbying successfully for the “re-creation” of a journalism department after the School of Journalism, one of the oldest in the United States, was deactivated at Rutgers College and replaced by a Department of Human Communication in the early 1970s. A groundswell of concern from publishers and editors resulted in the Rutgers University Provost authorizing me to reconstitute the journalism department on the New Brunswick campus.
In 1978, the Board of Governors and the N.J. Department of Higher Education approved creation of a new Department of Journalism and Urban Communications at Livingston College at a time when the individual colleges such as Livingston, Rutgers, Cook and Douglass controlled their own free-standing curricula.
A year later the university’s governing board and the state higher education department also approved creation of the Journalism Resources Institute (JRI) which I founded and directed. Over 14,000 journalists participated in programs during my tenure, and again, NJPA support from its publishers, editors and reporters was crucially important.
When the New Brunswick campus was consolidated into arts and sciences and professional studies faculties in the early 1980s, journalism at Livingston went campus-wide. I was named by the provost, along with the directors of the library sciences and communication programs to design a new entity to bring our related disciplines under one tent. The School of Communication, Information and Library Studies (SCILS) was born with the Journalism Department and JRI able to preserve their identity and join the new school as a full partner.
The school was a pioneer — one of the first in the United States — in bringing together journalism, communication and library studies as sub-disciplines with their own identities but able to interact in the new world of communication and information that was changing rapidly and technologically complex. Together, we formed a critical mass strong enough to survive the recurrent storms of budget crises, and enjoyed superior building facilities, shared computer and audiovisual resources, and vastly expanded interdisciplinary opportunities for the students and faculty.
Luckily, journalism today is alive and well at the School of Communication and Information (SC&I), the new name for SCILS, with a solid department of Journalism and Media Studies, a long track record of service to the profession through the Journalism Resources Institute (JRI), and a new Dean, Jorge Schement, who is committed to a vibrant journalism program in the school, at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.
The Livingston Legacy program on April 21 [included] among its panelists, Dean Schement and myself; Roger Cohen, emeritus professor in journalism and former acting dean of SCILS; John O’Brien, Executive Director of the New Jersey Press Association; John Pavlik, chair of the journalism department at SC&I and director of JRI; four of my former students, two of whom also taught at Livingston — Barry Orton, Professor of Telecommunications at University of Wisconsin-Madison and Jay Miller, Professor and Chair, Communication Studies and Theater, Ursinus College — and Robert W. Snyder, Associate Professor and Director of Journalism and Media Studies, Rutgers-Newark, and Jim Simon, Professor of Journalism at Fairfield University.
The Livingston College Legacy series can point to many programs the college influenced and that are campus-wide at Rutgers University today such as journalism; computer sciences; urban planning, policy and community development; comparative languages and literature, anthropology etc., that had their roots in the exciting but controversial incubator that Livingston was as the newest college on the New Brunswick-Piscataway campus, opened in 1969.
From the creation of the George Street Theater to African-American studies, or leading edge approaches to sociology while housing “Transaction” magazine, or an innovative physicians associate program, Livingston and its founding Dean Ernest Lynton and his successors nurtured an experimental, “let’s try it” atmosphere. Livingston faculty later dispersed among the larger, consolidated campus faculty in the 1980s, bringing with them their own special brand of commitment to students as individuals, engaging them in a humane, proactive, interactive learning environment they developed at Livingston College.
In my case, I joined the university faculty in 1969 after ten years in journalism and a recent Nieman Fellowship to Harvard. Having first accepted an offer to teach at Rutgers College, I instead decided to join the Livingston College faculty at the urging of Dean Lynton who could be a compelling advocate for his dream of new approaches to university curriculum and learning.
There, we developed an Urban Communications program within the Department of Community Development (in the Division of Urban Planning and Policy Development, now the Edward Bloustein School of Planning and Policy Development) that encompassed the newer technologies then emerging — from CATV to portable video field equipment, and a still evolving Internet testing the beginnings of electronic publishing. Students were involved in all of our grant-funded , community efforts from programs to assist municipalities in writing better CATV ordinances in the public interest, to multimedia documentation of environmental concerns in New Jersey communities, documentation of the work ethic, or creation of a full-fledged media training center in one community as part of an anti-poverty program.
The core courses in reporting, editing and multimedia documentation formed a natural platform upon which we built the revived Department of Journalism when the opportunity arose. Richard Hixson, a respected, senior journalism professor switched from Rutgers College to Livingston because, he said, that was where journalism now thrived. Other faculty including Roger Cohen, David Sachsman, and Thomas Hartmann brought additional strengths, and a strong adjunct faculty of journalism professionals gave us added lift. The code name for all of this might as well be “Lazarus” because journalism was back from the dead.
In my book, From Ink on Paper to the Internet: Past Challenges and Future Transformations for New Jersey’s Newspapers, I have a chapter tracing the origins of journalism at Rutgers University. It all began with a few courses organized by NJPA and eventually evolved into the School of Journalism by 1926 at Rutgers College. Yes, the school was deactivated in the 1970s but the embers were kept alive, glowing hot, long enough for journalism to be rekindled on the Livingston campus, and then introduced back into the entire New Brunswick-Piscataway campus through SC&I by the early 1980s.
Top photo: Jerome Aumente.
Bottom photo: Livingston College Journalism and Urban Communications faculty, as seen in the 1981 yearbook, The Last: Richard Hixson (upper left), Thomas Hartman (center), David Sachsman (top right), and Roger Cohen (lower right). At lower left: Bernice Weinberg, department secretary. Not shown: Aumente (department chair), and faculty members Juliet Lushbough, Warren Sloat, Emily Van Ness, and Roxanne Zimmer.
Jerome Aumente (1937-2023) was a Distinguished Professor Emeritus and Special Counselor to the Dean, School of Communication and Information (SC&I) at Rutgers University. He also was founding chair of the Department of Journalism and Media Studies and founding director of the Journalism Resources Institute, both units in SC&I.
A Look Back at the Livingston College Journalism Legacy of Rutgers University and a Future Forecast
More than 100 alumni, students and faculty joined us on April 21, 2010, at the Livingston Student Center for “Journalism: Past, Present and Future,” an exciting panel discussion celebrating the history and impact of the Department of Journalism and Urban Communications and journalism programs at Livingston College and the School of Communication and Information.
Professors Jerome Aumente and Roger Cohen; along with Jim Simon and Rob Snyder, two Livingston 1970s journalism and urban communications majors; John Pavlik, the director of the Journalism Resources Institute; and John O’Brien, executive director of the New Jersey Press Association, participated in a lively discussion on the history of the journalism programs at Livingston College and Rutgers University, and a look at the current and future state of the journalism industry.
The program was co-sponsored by the School of Communication and Information Alumni Association and the Livingston Campus Dean of Student Life.
Photo (from left): Panelists Roger Cohen, Jim Simon, and Rob Snyder.
The first Livingston Legacy program was held on March 11, 2009, with the LAA and the Livingston Campus Dean of Student Life celebrating the history and contributions of Livingston College. Professors Edward Ortiz, Gerald Pomper and Gordon Schochet, all members of the Livingston College faculty in its early years, during a lively panel discussion shared their memories of the key years in Livingston’s development and impact on the overall Rutgers and global communities.
In March 2008, Pomper and Schochet spoke to the Livingston Campus Council about the college’s history and the need to preserve that history, according to a March 30, 2008, article from The Daily Targum. “It was a troubled place, but also a very exciting place,” Schochet said. “There were hard times, but we have overcome them.”
The Livingston Alumni Association (LAA) is a proud sponsor of All-Alumni Theater Events, with a reception and entertainment provided by The Livingston Theatre Company (LTC), followed by a performance of LTC’s latest musical play.
On May 2, 2021, we enjoyed a live virtual All Alumni Theater Afternoon as we went “Behind The Curtain” with the LTC. Students from Rutgers’ premier musical theater organization performed songs from favorite musicals in this exciting showcase. The event also included interviews with cast members about their performances.
Past Theater Nights/Afternoons include the LTC’s productions of: Godspell (April 2000), The Will Rogers Follies (April 2003), Kiss Me Kate (November 2003), Damn Yankees (April 2004), A Chorus Line (November 2004), Camelot (April 2005), Little Shop of Horrors (October 2005), Ragtime (April 2006), Urinetown (October 2006 and April 2016), Cabaret (April 2007), The Full Monty (October 2007), Seussical (April 2008), Sweeney Todd (February 2010), The Producers (April 2013), Hair (February 2014), In the Heights (April 2015), Oklahoma! (April 2017), Legally Blonde (April 2018), and Violet (February 2019). A Theater Afternoon had been planned for the April 2020 production of Mamma Mia, which was canceled because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Top photo: The cast of LTC’s Legally Blonde, April 15, 2018. Additional photos from the 2018 event, by Qiumei Wang, Rutgers Business School Alumni Association.
Bottom photo: Jason Goldstein, founder of LTC and a former president of LAA, talks with Julia Mendes, MGSA’17, LTC’s managing director, at Theater Night on April 22, 2017. They spoke about the LTC’s presentation of Oklahoma! and the world of musical theater. Additional photos of the 2017 performers and attendees, courtesy of Fran Siederer.
As alumni, we feel a special connection with Livingston, Rutgers, and its students, which makes the Alumni-Student Speed Networking Night such a successful event. This event provides current students with support and networks to help them with their transition into becoming our future alumni.
At Speed Networking, alumni will have the opportunity to mingle over a light dinner.
Students participating in the program meet with a series of alumni in three-minute intervals, stressing the importance of networking and that every alumnus or alumna is an important resource.
Students can network with alumni throughout the evening to get advice and networking tips toward their career and post-graduation paths. Alumni from all job fields, including business, finance, marketing, human resources, nonprofit, government, education, entertainment, and legal, join us each year.
The most recent Speed Networking event was held Wednesday, October 4, 2017, at the College Avenue Student Center.
Pictured: LAA board members who participated at the 2013 Speed Networking event, from left: Jason Goldstein, Jeffrey Armus, Eric Schwarz, and Debra O’Neal.
From 2015-2019 Alumni Weekend was held in conjunction with Rutgers Day:
Reunion 2010, held May 14-16, featured exciting events, including socials, family events and class dinners, and a special Livingston-only cocktail reception with a reunion performance by Larry Friends and Family, a light-rock band which consists of members of Livingston’s graduating class of 1972.
According to Rosemary Eads, a band member who was a dorm advisor in House 19, “Some of the band members were also Livingston students, and we often played in the commuter lounge, not to mention many nights in the hallways of House 19. The band broke up after a few years, but recently reunited after a 30-year hiatus.
“We play light rock with great harmonies, and we’re actually still pretty good! We recently performed at the Strand Theater in Lakewood, opening for the Strawbs, in addition to a variety of coffeehouses in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.”
An archived version of the band’s MySpace page lists 10 songs from the group’s album Cycles.
Photo credit: Dave Hutchison. More photos.
Join us for Homecoming each year and enjoy a pregame celebration that has something for the entire family, with plenty of fun, games, and giveaways. Complete the perfect outing by joining a stadium of fans to cheer the Scarlet Knights to victory!
Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, there was no official Rutgers Homecoming football game in 2020. The Homecoming celebration was held online and combined with Alumni Weekend on Oct. 16-17, 2020.
Photo: Livingston College alumni Marty Siederer, Bill Bauer, Iris Martinez-Campbell and Jason Goldstein celebrate at Homecoming 2007. Additional photos from Homecoming 2007.
Those of us who were members of the Livingston College family, whether as a student, faculty or staff member, or friend, know of the vital and eternal legacy Livingston has to this day on the overall programs of Rutgers University and on a global scale.
Livingston graduates and staff play key roles in the national and international communities, and Livingston’s programs and unique attributes live on in a variety of Rutgers University programs.
To celebrate Livingston’s contributions to the overall Rutgers and global communities, the Livingston Alumni Association hosted two Livingston Legacy Lecture programs in 2009 and 2010.