HOME >> LETTER FROM ENGAGE NJ BOARD CHAIR & EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
VISION 2027
OVERVIEW
We are delighted to share Engage NJ’s five-year plan: Advancing Democracy and Enabling Students to Thrive. We have strived for ten years to lead as a higher education presidents’ coalition focused on civic engagement in New Jersey. We operated for a decade under the old name of New Jersey Campus Compact. As Engage NJ, we look to the decade in front of us and our minds quickly focus on our spheres of influence and shared commitment to graduating tomorrow’s leaders.
Over the past year, with invaluable input from the civic leadership committee, strategic planning committee, plus friends from across the state including faculty, staff, students, leaders at other higher education associations, and our board and team members, we have developed a focused plan and pathway for the nonprofit coalition, Engage NJ. To identify our path forward for New Jersey, we have to first acknowledge the position in which we find ourselves.
LETTER FROM ENGAGE NJ BOARD & EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
It is scarcely believable the choices students are facing as the impacts of Covid continue to push many high schoolers off their college pathway. With the enormous challenge of climate change weighing ever more regularly on young minds and the need for clean energy on a global scale, planning for a future as a young person is certainly daunting. What we do in this decade will determine many of the choices young people have.
So how does our coalition map its path forward? Indeed, our very purpose must be to act collectively and with urgency to provide knowledge, experience, and hope to the next generation of public servants, executives and influencers. We must develop the motivation in students to become civically literate, encouraging them to accept the responsibilities of active citizenship. We must help students match passion with experience regarding global warming and environmental degradation. We must advance the skills necessary to fill career pathways urgent to this generation’s greatest opportunities and challenges.
With Engage NJ, not only can New Jersey’s colleges and universities be engines of economic opportunity, we can also be ecosystems for equality – transforming opportunities for this generation as well as those downstream.
Next, we lay out our vision for change, the values at the heart of it, and the means by which it will be expressed through the plan for Engage NJ. This will be followed by the five-year plan, what success will look like, and how we wish to build unbreakable partnerships of shared benefit with you from day one of this next phase in our work.
Sincerely,
Board of Directors, CEO, & Team
Michael McDonough
Officer
Harvey Kesselman
Treasurer
Mark McCormick
Officer
Sue Henderson
Chair
Rob Boyajieff
Officier
Lamont Repollet
Officer
Saul Petersen
Executive Director
Rochelle Hendricks
Officier
Steve Rose
Officer