No. 1: Jonathan Holloway

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“Excellence can be found everywhere, I know that to be true,” Rutgers President Jonathan Holloway said in a 2022 message when the school released its first-ever Diversity Strategic Plan. “But we have to look for it, we have to nurture and cultivate it, we have to remove barriers to it, and we have to reward and celebrate it throughout the university. This plan is Rutgers’ declaration that we will.”

Since 2020, Holloway has served as the 21st president in the history of New Jersey’s flagship state university. During that time, he has worked to shape and evolve Rutgers through a number of efforts and initiatives such as the Diversity Strategic Plan; physical development at the school’s campuses; as well as ambitious yet controversial plans like the one recently approved by the board of governors to combine New Jersey Medical School and Robert Wood Johnson under one umbrella as Rutgers School Medicine.

Holloway says that the merger would position Rutgers School of Medicine as one of the largest and leading public medical schools in the nation – creating an unparalleled hub of biomedical and health sciences education, research, and clinical care.

In the spring, Holloway navigated the first strike in the school’s 257-year history as Rutgers reached an agreement with three labor unions to end the nearly weekly-long standoff – with Gov. Phil Murphy helping to broker the talks.

“The framework that was reached today between Rutgers and its faculty unions provides fair and equitable wages, benefits, and work conditions for our faculty as well as our graduate students and part-time lecturers,” said Holloway in April.