Office of University-Community Partnerships Celebrates RU Ready for Work 2016

On Friday, July 29, 2016, the Office of University-Community Partnerships held its annual culminating luncheon to celebrate the participants of the RU Ready for Work program and salute its graduating high school seniors. RU Ready for Work (RURFW) is a year-round, youth development and work/career-readiness, demonstration model for Newark high school students that is held at Rutgers University-Newark (RU-N). For six weeks during the summer, nearly 60 students are introduced to select careers by RU-N faculty and staff and work as paid interns at more than 25 Newark-based community partner sites to further develop their career-readiness skills. Eighteen students graduated from RURFW this summer, and all 18 will be attending a post-secondary institution of higher education this fall.

Nine RURFW graduates are enrolled at RU-N, and five of the nine are scholars of RU-N’s Honors Living-Learning Community (HLLC). Established in 2015, the HLLC is an innovative RU-N initiative that is revolutionizing honors and redefining the notion of “honors” by creating intergenerational and interdisciplinary learning communities comprised of students, faculty, and community partners focused on tackling some of the nation’s most pressing social issues. Dynamic students are selected to join a living-learning community and intergenerational network across all intersections of identity focused on cultivating knowledge, fostering understanding across and within groups, and activating social, institutional, and cultural change. Utilizing a holistic acceptance rubric, the HLLC identifies exceptional first-year students and community college transfers from Newark and Greater Newark, while also extending its reach to other national and international regions.

The 2016 graduating class of RURFW consists of:

Photo of RU Ready for Work graduating seniors courtesy of Karrin Pitt (l-r: Caleb Akaho, Valnecia Nelson, Dihzae Bailey, Safiyyah Odom, Atasha Moore, Aliyah Rawles, Zinnaya Mercado, Glendon Conic, Dominick Smith, Ashely Lilman)